Our new report, Tightening the Net: China’s infrastructure of oppression in Iran offers a comprehensive analysis of the digital cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It offers one of the few in-depth examinations of China’s adverse role in the expansion of digital repression in Iran.
The Iranian regime has been accused of deploying Russian and Chinese technology to aid its brutal crackdown on recent protests, and proliferate a near total internet shutdown, including disrupting satellite internet. This networked authoritarianism has equipped Iran with the technical capacity and political will to impose unprecedented infrastructure control to suppress the flow of information, as the regime massacred thousands of protesters and arrested many more.
The report documents how, for years, China has been instrumental in the foundation of Iran’s information control and how it continues to offer a blueprint for the architecture of digital authoritarianism in the country.
Michael Caster, Head of ARTICLE 19 Global China Programme, said:
‘In its pursuit of total control over the digital space, Iran borrows directly from the Chinese digital authoritarian playbook. From Chinese companies embedded inside Iran’s infrastructure, to Iran’s support for China’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ principles based on censorship and surveillance, both countries align in their ambition to disconnect their populations from the open, global internet.’
Mo Hoseini, ARTICLE 19’s Head of Resilience, said:
‘Emulating China’s infrastructure of oppression helps Iran entrench power, sidestepping accountability and exercising full control over the information environment. That way, dissent is not just silenced, it is prevented from ever surfacing.’
The report outlines how China, Iran’s largest trading partner, has been providing material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, supercharging its surveillance and censorship capabilities. Despite international sanctions, Chinese companies including ZTE, Huawei, Tiandy and Hikvision continue operations in Iran, often through front companies, providing surveillance and monitoring technologies that directly contribute to the regime’s ability to perpetuate gross human rights violations.
The research also charts the way in which China’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ doctrine appears to influence Iran’s approach to internet governance – best exemplified in the country’s efforts to replicate the Great Firewall of China through Iran’s National Information Network. Both systems intend to block free access to the global internet, centralising censorship and embedding surveillance deep into their infrastructure. Iranian officials have publicly praised China’s normative and technical capacity, and supported China’s global push for separation from ‘foreign’ internet regulation in international fora, including the United Nations.
This strategic alignment serves Iran and China amid current geopolitical shifts, as both countries seek to establish themselves within a new global order, while actively combatting perceived ‘foreign interference’ and avoiding accountability for their human rights abuses.
To address the growing threat of the Iran-China digital authoritarian nexus, the report calls for immediate action, including through smart, targeted sanctions of non-Iranian companies exporting or aiding the abusive system, while ensuring sanctions do not hinder civil society access to technologies. Noting China’s record of sanctions-evasion, smart sanctions must involve closer investigation and disclosure of Chinese and shell company involvement, and expand to include the next frontiers of digital repression, such as counterspace technologies.
It also urges greater investment in research and funding to scale satellite internet technology, including Direct-to-Cell opportunities, secure and resilient circumvention tools, and the work of Iranian diaspora organisations, frontline journalists and human rights defenders who expose abuses and work to combat repression.
Lastly, the report calls on states to urgently champion multistakeholderism and reaffirm the universality of human rights, including in internet governance, in order to counter the normalisation of cyber sovereignty.
For more information, or to arrange an interview with ARTICLE 19 spokespeople, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]