Resist Pressure from China

On the videoconferencing platform Zoom, Chinese dissidents outside of China had their accounts deleted after online Tiananmen Square commemorations. The trigger: pressure from Beijing. Mareike Ohlberg, China expert at the German Marshall Found, knows the background.

According to Ohlberg, the company Zoom has made rather flimsy statements about the affair between the Tiananmen commemoration activists and China. In response to pressure from Beijing, the video conferencing provider pointed out that conference topics from different countries had to comply with local laws. Chinese leadership has been trying to impose its censorship thinking on the world more and more, said Ohlberg. For example, China has been pushing that Taiwan should no longer be listed as a separate country or certain terms. Ohlberg argues U.S. companies must resist the threat of Chinese censorship. The consequences of zoom use for activists in and outside of China are "frightening," according to the China expert. Every zoom conference that a Chinese citizen is joining in must be conducted according to Chinese censorship laws. "This is an approach one should not be backing," said Ohlberg.