主题：【商榷】【讨论】关于"社会信用系统" -- HAL

苦闹中就掩盖了真相，浑水摸鱼

为了方便一些人我有Google翻译的译文。

乔治索罗斯

世界经济论坛发表的讲话

瑞士达沃斯，2019年1月24日

晚上好，谢谢大家的光临。

我想利用我今晚的时间来警告全世界前所未有的危险，这种危险威胁着开放社会的生存。

去年，当我站在你面前时，我花了大部分时间来分析IT垄断的邪恶角色。这就是我所说的：“专制国家和大数据丰富的IT垄断企业之间正在形成一种联盟，它将新兴的企业监督系统与已经发展起来的国家资助监督系统结合在一起。这很可能导致一个极权主义控制的网络，甚至连乔治奥威尔都无法想象的那样。“

今晚，我想提请注意开放社会面临的致命危险，即机器学习和人工智能可以掌握在专制政权手中的控制手段。我将关注中国，习近平希望一党制国家能够统治至高无上。

自去年以来发生了很多事情，我已经了解了很多关于极权主义控制将在中国采取的形式。

所有关于一个人的快速扩展信息将被整合到一个中央数据库中，以创建一个“社会信用系统”。根据这些数据，人们将通过算法进行评估，这些算法将决定他们是否对一个人构成威胁 - 党的国家。然后人们将得到相应的待遇。

社会信用体系尚未全面运作，但很清楚它的发展方向。它将以历史上前所未有的方式将个人的命运从属于一党制国家的利益。

我发现社会信用体系令人恐惧和令人憎恶。不幸的是，一些中国人觉得它很有吸引力，因为它提供了目前无法获得的信息和服务，也可以保护守法公民免受国家敌人的侵害。

中国不是世界上唯一的独裁政权，但它无疑是机器学习和人工智能方面最富有，最强大和最发达的政权。这使习近平成为那些相信开放社会概念​​的人最危险的对手。但习近平并不孤单。威权政权正在全世界扩散，如果它们成功，它们将成为极权主义。

作为开放社会基金会的创始人，我毕生致力于打击极端主义的极端主义意识形态，这种意识形态错误地宣称其结果证明了手段的合理性。我相信人民对自由的渴望不能永远受到压制。但我也认识到，开放社会目前受到严重威胁。

我发现特别令人不安的是，人工智能开发的控制工具为专制政权提供了一个固有的优势，而不是开放的社会。对他们来说，控制工具提供了有用的工具;对于开放的社会来说，它们构成了致命的威胁。

我用“开放社会”作为一个法治社会的速记，而不是一个人的统治，而国家的角色是保护人权和个人自由。在我个人看来，一个开放的社会应该特别关注那些遭受歧视或社会排斥的人以及那些无法自卫的人。

相比之下，专制政权使用他们拥有的任何控制手段来维持自己的权力，而牺牲他们利用和压制的人。

如果这些新技术为专制政权提供内在优势，那么开放社会如何得到保护？这是我最关心的问题。它也应该吸引所有喜欢生活在开放社会中的人。

开放社会需要规范生产控制工具的公司，而专制政权可以宣称它们是“国家冠军”。这使得一些中国国有企业能够赶上甚至超越跨国巨头。

当然，这不是我们今天应该关注的唯一问题。例如，人为的气候变化威胁着我们文明的生存。但是，开放社会所面临的结构性劣势是一个令我全神贯注的问题，我想与你分享我对如何处理它的想法。

我对这个问题的深切关注源于我的个人历史。我1930年出生在匈牙利，我是犹太人。当纳粹占领匈牙利并开始将犹太人驱逐到灭绝营时，我才13岁。

我非常幸运，因为我的父亲了解纳粹政权的性质，并为他的所有家庭成员以及其他一些犹太人安排了假身份证件和藏身之处。我们大多数人幸免于难。

1944年是我生命的成长经历。我从小就了解到什么样的政治制度占主导地位是多么重要。当纳粹政权被苏联占领所取代时，我尽快离开匈牙利并在英格兰避难。

在伦敦经济学院，我在我的导师卡尔波普尔的影响下开发了我的概念框架。当我发现自己在金融市场工作时，该框架被证明是出乎意料的有用。该框架与金融无关，但它基于批判性思维。这使我能够分析指导机构投资者的流行理论的不足之处。我成为了一名成功的对冲基金经理，我为成为世界上收入最高的评论家而感到自豪。

经营一家对冲基金非常紧张。当我为自己或家人赚到的钱多于我需要的时候，我经历了一种中年危机。我为什么要自杀才赚更多钱？我对我真正关心的事情进行了长时间的努力反思，1979年我成立了开放社会基金会。我将其目标定义为帮助开放封闭社会，减少开放社会的不足并促进批判性思维。

我的第一项努力是为了破坏南非的种族隔离制度。然后我把注意力转向开放苏维埃制度。我与匈牙利科学院成立了一家合资企业，由共产党控制，但其代表暗中同情我的努力。这种安排超越了我最疯狂的梦想。我迷上了我所谓的“政治慈善事业”。那是在1984年。

在接下来的几年里，我试图在匈牙利和其他共产主义国家复制我的成功。我在苏联帝国中表现得相当不错，包括苏联本身，但在中国这是一个不同的故事。

我在中国的第一次努力看起来很有希望。它涉及在共产主义世界中备受钦佩的匈牙利经济学家和一个渴望向匈牙利人学习的新成立的中国智库的团队之间的互访。

基于最初的成功，我向智库的领导者陈毅子提议在中国复制匈牙利模式。陈先生得到了赵紫阳总理及其改革思想政策局局长鲍彤的支持。

一家名为中国基金的合资企业于1986年10月落成。这是一个与中国不同的机构。从理论上讲，它具有完全的自主权。

宝彤是其冠军。但激进改革的反对者，他们众多，联合起来攻击他。他们声称我是中央情报局特工并要求内部安全机构进行调查。为了保护自己，赵紫阳用外部安全警察的一名高级官员取代了陈一子。这两个组织是平等的，他们不能干涉彼此的事务。

我批准了这个改变，因为我对陈毅子因为给自己研究所的成员过多的补助而感到恼火，我不知道幕后的政治内斗。但中国基金的申请人很快注意到该组织已经受到政治警察的控制，并开始远离。没有人有勇气向我解释它的原因。

最后，一位中国的受助者在纽约拜访了我并告诉我，他自己面临相当大的风险。此后不久，赵紫阳被取消了权力，我利用这个借口关闭了基金会。这发生在1989年天安门广场大屠杀之前，它留下了与基金会相关人员记录的“黑点”。他们竭尽全力清除自己的名字，最终成功了。

回想起来，很明显我在试图建立一个以与中国人不同的方式运作的基金会时犯了一个错误。那时，赠予赠款会在捐赠者和接受者之间产生相互义务感，并迫使他们两人永远保持忠诚。

历史如此之多。现在让我谈谈去年发生的事件，其中一些令我感到惊讶。

当我第一次去中国时，我遇到了很多掌权的人，他们热衷于信奉开放社会的原则。在他们年轻时，他们被驱逐到农村接受再教育，经常遭受比匈牙利更大的艰辛。但他们活了下来，我们有很多共同点。我们都是独裁政权的接收者。

他们渴望了解卡尔波普尔对开放社会的看法。虽然他们发现这个概念非常吸引人，但他们的解释与我的解释有所不同。他们熟悉儒家传统，但在中国没有投票的传统。他们的思想仍然是等级制的，对高级职位有着内在的尊重。另一方面，我更平等，希望每个人都有投票权。

所以，当习近平在国内遭遇严重反对时，我并不感到惊讶;但我对它的形式感到惊讶。去年夏天在北戴河海滨度假胜地举行的领导集会上，习近平显然已经取消了一两个。虽然没有官方公报，但有传言说，这次集会不赞成取消任期限制和习近平围绕自己建立的人​​格崇拜。

重要的是要意识到这种批评只是对习近平的过度警告，但没有扭转两个限制的解除。而且，他提倡的“习近平思想”，他提升为共产主义理论的升华，被提升到与“毛主席思想”相同的水平。因此，习近平仍然是最高领导者，可能是终生的。当前政治内斗的最终结果仍未得到解决。

我一直专注于中国，但开放的社会有更多的敌人，普京的俄罗斯是其中最重要的。而最危险的情况是，当这些敌人与如何更好地压迫他们的人民共谋并相互学习时。

问题出现了，我们可以做些什么来制止它们呢？

第一步是认识到危险。这就是为什么我今晚要说出来的原因。但现在来了困难的部分。我们这些想要维护开放社会的人必须共同努力，形成有效的联盟。我们的任务不能留给政府。

历史表明，即使是希望保护个人自由的政府也有许多其他利益，并且它们也优先考虑本国公民的自由而不是个人自由作为一般原则。

我的开放社会基金会致力于保护人权，特别是那些没有政府捍卫人权的人。当我们四十年前开始时，有许多政府支持我们的努力，但他们的队伍已经变薄了。美国和欧洲是我们最强大的盟友，但现在他们全神贯注于自己的问题。

因此，我想把重点放在我认为对开放社会最重要的问题上：中国会发生什么？

这个问题只能由中国人来回答。我们所能做的就是将它们与习近平区分开来。由于习近平宣称他对开放社会的敌意，中国人民仍然是我们的主要希望之源。

事实上，有希望的理由。正如一些中国专家向我解释的那样，有一种儒家传统，根据该传统，当皇帝的顾问强烈不同意他的一项行为或法令时，他们应该大声说出来，即使它可能导致流亡或被处决。

当我处于绝望的边缘时，这对我来说是一种极大的安慰。在我这个年龄段，中国开放社会的忠诚捍卫者大多退休，他们的地方被依赖习近平晋升的年轻人所占据。但是出现了一个愿意坚持儒家传统的新政治精英。这意味着习近平将继续在国内拥有政治反对派。

习近平将中国视为其他国家效仿的榜样，但他不仅在国内而且在国外都面临着批评。他的“一带一路”倡议已经运作足够长，以揭示其不足之处。

它旨在促进中国的利益，而不是受援国的利益;其雄心勃勃的基础设施项目主要由贷款提供资金，而不是通过赠款，外国官员经常受到贿赂接受。许多这些项目被证明是不经济的。

标志性案件在斯里兰卡。中国建立了一个服务于其战略利益的港口。它未能吸引足够的商业流量来偿还债务，使中国能够占有港口。在其他地方有几个类似的案例，它们引起了广泛的不满。

马来西亚正在引领阻力。以前由纳吉布拉扎克率领的政府卖给了中国，但在2018年5月，拉扎克被马哈蒂尔穆罕默德领导的联盟投票否决。马哈蒂尔立即停止了几个大型基础设施项目，目前正在与中国谈判马来西亚仍将需要支付多少赔偿金。

巴基斯坦的情况并不明朗，巴基斯坦是中国投资的最大接受国。巴基斯坦军队对中国完全感激不尽，但去年8月成为总理的伊姆兰汗的立场更加矛盾。 2018年初，中国和巴基斯坦宣布了军事合作的宏伟计划。到今年年底，巴基斯坦陷入了严重的金融危机。但有一点显而易见：中国打算将“一带一路”倡议用于军事目的。

所有这些挫折迫使习近平改变他对“一带一路”倡议的态度。 9月，他宣布将避免“虚荣项目”，转而采取更为精心设想的举措。10月，“人民日报”警告说，项目应符合受援国的利益。

客户现在已被预先警告，其中一些人，从塞拉利昂到厄瓜多尔，正在质疑或重新谈判项目。

最重要的是，美国政府现在已将中国视为“战略对手”。特朗普总统众所周知是不可预测的，但这一决定是经过精心准备的计划的结果。从那时起，特朗普的特殊行为在很大程度上被政府机构采取的中国政策所取代，并由国家安全委员会亚洲事务顾问马特波廷格等人监督。 10月4日，副总统迈克·彭斯在开创性讲话中概述了这项政策。

即便如此，宣布中国成为战略对手也过于简单化。中国是一个重要的全球演员。对中国的有效政策不能简化为口号。

它需要更加复杂，细致和实用;它必须包括美国对“一带一路”倡议的经济回应。 Pottinger计划没有回答这个问题，即它的最终目标是公平竞争还是完全脱离中国。

习近平完全理解美国新政策对他领导的威胁。他在布宜诺斯艾利斯举行的G20会议上与特朗普总统进行了个人会谈。与此同时，全球贸易战的危险升级，股市在12月开始严重抛售。这给特朗普造成了问题，特朗普将所有努力都集中在2018年的中期选举中。当特朗普和习近平见面时，双方都渴望达成协议。难怪他们达成了一个，但这是非常不确定的：一个九十天的休战。

与此同时，有明显的迹象表明，中国正在形成广泛的经济衰退，这正在影响世界其他地区。全球经济放缓是市场最不希望看到的。

中国未言明的社会契约建立在稳步提高的生活水平基础上。如果中国经济和股市的下跌足够严重，这种社会契约可能会受到破坏，甚至商界也可能会反对习近平。这种低迷也可能听起来是“一带一路”倡议的丧钟，因为习近平可能会耗尽资源继续为这么多亏损投资提供融资。

在全球互联网治理问题上，西方与中国之间存在着不公正的斗争。中国希望通过其新的平台和技术主导发展中国家来规定管理数字经济的规则和程序。这是对互联网自由和间接开放社会本身的威胁。

去年我仍然认为中国应该更深入地融入全球治理机构，但从那时起，习近平的行为改变了我的观点。我现在的观点是，美国不应该与全世界发动贸易战，而应该关注中国。它不是让中兴通讯和华为轻视，而是需要打击它们。如果这些公司主导5G市场，它们将给世界其他地区带来不可接受的安全风险。

令人遗憾的是，特朗普总统似乎正在采取不同的做法：向中国做出让步并宣布胜利，同时重申对美国盟友的袭击。这可能会破坏美国遏制中国滥用和过度行为的政策目标。

最后，让我总结一下我今晚要传达的信息。我的关键点是，专制政权与信息技术垄断相结合，赋予这些政权在开放社会中具有内在优势。控制手段是专制政权手中的有用工具，但它们对开放社会构成致命威胁。

中国不是世界上唯一的独裁政权，但它是最富有，最强大，技术最先进的政权。这使习近平成为开放社会最危险的对手。这就是为什么将习近平的政策与中国人民的愿望区分开来是如此重要。如果社会信用体系开始运作，它将使Xi完全控制人民。由于习近平是开放社会最危险的敌人，我们必须寄希望于中国人民，特别是工商界和愿意坚持儒家传统的政治精英。

这并不意味着我们这些相信开放社会的人应该保持被动。现实情况是，我们处于冷战期，可能会变成一场炙手可热的战争。另一方面，如果习近平和特朗普不再执政，那么两个网络超级大国之间将有机会发展更多的合作。

可以梦想类似于第二次世界大战期间产生的“联合国条约”。这将是当前美中冲突循环的适当结局。它将重新建立国际合作，并使开放社会蓬勃发展。这总结了我的信息。

• 香港的事背后

George Soros

Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum

Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2019

Good evening and thank you all for coming.

I want to use my time tonight to warn the world about an unprecedented danger that’s threatening the very survival of open societies.

Last year when I stood before you I spent most of my time analyzing the nefarious role of the IT monopolies. This is what I said: “An alliance is emerging between authoritarian states and the large data rich IT monopolies that bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with an already developing system of state sponsored surveillance. This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even George Orwell could have imagined.”

Tonight I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I’ll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme.

A lot of things have happened since last year and I’ve learned a lot about the shape that totalitarian control is going to take in China.

All the rapidly expanding information available about a person is going to be consolidated in a centralized database to create a “social credit system.” Based on that data, people will be evaluated by algorithms that will determine whether they pose a threat to the one-party state. People will then be treated accordingly.

The social credit system is not yet fully operational, but it’s clear where it’s heading. It will subordinate the fate of the individual to the interests of the one-party state in ways unprecedented in history.

I find the social credit system frightening and abhorrent. Unfortunately, some Chinese find it rather attractive because it provides information and services that aren’t currently available and can also protect law-abiding citizens against enemies of the state.

China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society. But Xi isn’t alone. Authoritarian regimes are proliferating all over the world and if they succeed, they will become totalitarian.

As the founder of the Open Society Foundations, I’ve devoted my life to fighting totalizing, extremist ideologies, which falsely claim that the ends justify the means. I believe that the desire of people for freedom can’t be repressed forever. But I also recognize that open societies are profoundly endangered at present.

What I find particularly disturbing is that the instruments of control developed by artificial intelligence give an inherent advantage to authoritarian regimes over open societies. For them, instruments of control provide a useful tool; for open societies, they pose a mortal threat.

I use “open society” as shorthand for a society in which the rule of law prevails as opposed to rule by a single individual and where the role of the state is to protect human rights and individual freedom. In my personal view, an open society should pay special attention to those who suffer from discrimination or social exclusion and those who can’t defend themselves.

By contrast, authoritarian regimes use whatever instruments of control they possess to maintain themselves in power at the expense of those whom they exploit and suppress.

How can open societies be protected if these new technologies give authoritarian regimes a built-in advantage? That’s the question that preoccupies me. And it should also preoccupy all those who prefer to live in an open society.

Open societies need to regulate companies that produce instruments of control, while authoritarian regimes can declare them “national champions.” That’s what has enabled some Chinese state-owned companies to catch up with and even surpass the multinational giants.

This, of course, isn’t the only problem that should concern us today. For instance, man-made climate change threatens the very survival of our civilization. But the structural disadvantage that confronts open societies is a problem which has preoccupied me and I’d like to share with you my ideas on how to deal with it.

My deep concern for this issue arises out of my personal history. I was born in Hungary in 1930 and I’m Jewish. I was 13 years old when the Nazis occupied Hungary and started deporting Jews to extermination camps.

I was very fortunate because my father understood the nature of the Nazi regime and arranged false identity papers and hiding places for all members of his family, and for a number of other Jews as well. Most of us survived.

The year 1944 was the formative experience of my life. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of political regime prevails. When the Nazi regime was replaced by Soviet occupation I left Hungary as soon as I could and found refuge in England.

At the London School of Economics I developed my conceptual framework under the influence of my mentor, Karl Popper. That framework proved to be unexpectedly useful when I found myself a job in the financial markets. The framework had nothing to do with finance, but it is based on critical thinking. This allowed me to analyze the deficiencies of the prevailing theories guiding institutional investors. I became a successful hedge fund manager and I prided myself on being the best paid critic in the world.

Running a hedge fund was very stressful. When I had made more money than I needed for myself or my family, I underwent a kind of midlife crisis. Why should I kill myself to make more money? I reflected long and hard on what I really cared about and in 1979 I set up the Open Society Fund. I defined its objectives as helping to open up closed societies, reducing the deficiencies of open societies and promoting critical thinking.

My first efforts were directed at undermining the apartheid system in South Africa. Then I turned my attention to opening up the Soviet system. I set up a joint venture with the Hungarian Academy of Science, which was under Communist control, but its representatives secretly sympathized with my efforts. This arrangement succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I got hooked on what I like to call “political philanthropy.” That was in 1984.

In the years that followed, I tried to replicate my success in Hungary and in other Communist countries. I did rather well in the Soviet empire, including the Soviet Union itself, but in China it was a different story.

My first effort in China looked rather promising. It involved an exchange of visits between Hungarian economists who were greatly admired in the Communist world, and a team from a newly established Chinese think tank which was eager to learn from the Hungarians.

Based on that initial success, I proposed to Chen Yizi, the leader of the think tank, to replicate the Hungarian model in China. Chen obtained the support of Premier Zhao Ziyang and his reform-minded policy secretary Bao Tong.

A joint venture called the China Fund was inaugurated in October 1986. It was an institution unlike any other in China. On paper, it had complete autonomy.

Bao Tong was its champion. But the opponents of radical reforms, who were numerous, banded together to attack him. They claimed that I was a CIA agent and asked the internal security agency to investigate. To protect himself, Zhao Ziyang replaced Chen Yizi with a high-ranking official in the external security police. The two organizations were co-equal and they couldn’t interfere in each other’s affairs.

I approved this change because I was annoyed with Chen Yizi for awarding too many grants to members of his own institute and I was unaware of the political infighting behind the scenes. But applicants to the China Fund soon noticed that the organization had come under the control of the political police and started to stay away. Nobody had the courage to explain to me the reason for it.

Eventually, a Chinese grantee visited me in New York and told me, at considerable risk to himself. Soon thereafter, Zhao Ziyang was removed from power and I used that excuse to close the foundation. This happened just before the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and it left a “black spot” on the record of the people associated with the foundation. They went to great length to clear their names and eventually they succeeded.

In retrospect, it’s clear that I made a mistake in trying to establish a foundation which operated in ways that were alien to people in China. At that time, giving a grant created a sense of mutual obligation between the donor and recipient and obliged both of them to remain loyal to each other forever.

So much for history. Let me now turn to the events that occurred in the last year, some of which surprised me.

When I first started going to China, I met many people in positions of power who were fervent believers in the principles of open society. In their youth they had been deported to the countryside to be re-educated, often suffering hardships far greater than mine in Hungary. But they survived and we had much in common. We had all been on the receiving end of a dictatorship.

They were eager to learn about Karl Popper’s thoughts on the open society. While they found the concept very appealing, their interpretation remained somewhat different from mine. They were familiar with Confucian tradition, but there was no tradition of voting in China. Their thinking remained hierarchical and carried a built-in respect for high office. I, on the other hand I was more egalitarian and wanted everyone to have a vote.

So, I wasn’t surprised when Xi Jinping ran into serious opposition at home; but I was surprised by the form it took. At last summer’s leadership convocation at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, Xi Jinping was apparently taken down a peg or two. Although there was no official communique, rumor had it that the convocation disapproved of the abolition of term limits and the cult of personality that Xi had built around himself.

It’s important to realize that such criticisms were only a warning to Xi about his excesses, but did not reverse the lifting of the two-term limit. Moreover, “The Thought of Xi Jinping,” which he promoted as his distillation of Communist theory was elevated to the same level as the “Thought of Chairman Mao.” So Xi remains the supreme leader, possibly for lifetime. The ultimate outcome of the current political infighting remains unresolved.

I’ve been concentrating on China, but open societies have many more enemies, Putin’s Russia foremost among them. And the most dangerous scenario is when these enemies conspire with, and learn from, each other on how to better oppress their people.

The question poses itself, what can we do to stop them?

The first step is to recognize the danger. That’s why I’m speaking out tonight. But now comes the difficult part. Those of us who want to preserve the open society must work together and form an effective alliance. We have a task that can’t be left to governments.

History has shown that even governments that want to protect individual freedom have many other interests and they also give precedence to the freedom of their own citizens over the freedom of the individual as a general principle.

My Open Society Foundations are dedicated to protecting human rights, especially for those who don’t have a government defending them. When we started four decades ago there were many governments which supported our efforts but their ranks have thinned out. The US and Europe were our strongest allies, but now they’re preoccupied with their own problems.

Therefore, I want to focus on what I consider the most important question for open societies: what will happen in China?

The question can be answered only by the Chinese people. All we can do is to draw a sharp distinction between them and Xi Jinping. Since Xi has declared his hostility to open society, the Chinese people remain our main source of hope.

And there are, in fact, grounds for hope. As some China experts have explained to me, there is a Confucian tradition, according to which advisors of the emperor are expected to speak out when they strongly disagree with one of his actions or decrees, even if that it may result in exile or execution.

This came as a great relief to me when I had been on the verge of despair. The committed defenders of open society in China, who are around my age, have mostly retired and their places have been taken by younger people who are dependent on Xi Jinping for promotion. But a new political elite has emerged that is willing to uphold the Confucian tradition. This means that Xi will continue to have a political opposition at home.

Xi presents China as a role model for other countries to emulate, but he’s facing criticism not only at home but also abroad. His Belt and Road Initiative has been in operation long enough to reveal its deficiencies.

It was designed to promote the interests of China, not the interests of the recipient countries; its ambitious infrastructure projects were mainly financed by loans, not by grants, and foreign officials were often bribed to accept them. Many of these projects proved to be uneconomic.

The iconic case is in Sri Lanka. China built a port that serves its strategic interests. It failed to attract sufficient commercial traffic to service the debt and enabled China to take possession of the port. There are several similar cases elsewhere and they’re causing widespread resentment.

Malaysia is leading the pushback. The previous government headed by Najib Razak sold out to China but in May 2018 Razak was voted out of office by a coalition led by Mahathir Mohamed. Mahathir immediately stopped several big infrastructure projects and is currently negotiating with China how much compensation Malaysia will still have to pay.

The situation is not as clear-cut in Pakistan, which has been the largest recipient of Chinese investments. The Pakistani army is fully beholden to China but the position of Imran Khan who became prime minister last August is more ambivalent. At the beginning of 2018, China and Pakistan announced grandiose plans in military cooperation. By the end of the year, Pakistan was in a deep financial crisis. But one thing became evident: China intends to use the Belt and Road Initiative for military purposes as well.

All these setbacks have forced Xi Jinping to modify his attitude toward the Belt and Road Initiative. In September, he announced that “vanity projects” will be shunned in favor of more carefully conceived initiatives and in October, the People’s Daily warned that projects should serve the interests of the recipient countries.

Customers are now forewarned and several of them, ranging from Sierra Leone to Ecuador, are questioning or renegotiating projects.

Most importantly, the US government has now identified China as a “strategic rival.” President Trump is notoriously unpredictable, but this decision was the result of a carefully prepared plan. Since then, the idiosyncratic behavior of Trump has been largely superseded by a China policy adopted by the agencies of the administration and overseen by Asian affairs advisor of the National Security Council Matt Pottinger and others. The policy was outlined in a seminal speech by Vice President Mike Pence on October 4th.

Even so, declaring China a strategic rival is too simplistic. China is an important global actor. An effective policy towards China can’t be reduced to a slogan.

It needs to be far more sophisticated, detailed and practical; and it must include an American economic response to the Belt and Road Initiative. The Pottinger plan doesn’t answer the question whether its ultimate goal is to level the playing field or to disengage from China altogether.

Xi Jinping fully understood the threat that the new US policy posed for his leadership. He gambled on a personal meeting with President Trump at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. In the meantime, the danger of global trade war escalated and the stock market embarked on a serious sell-off in December. This created problems for Trump who had concentrated all his efforts on the 2018 midterm elections. When Trump and Xi met, both sides were eager for a deal. No wonder that they reached one, but it’s very inconclusive: a ninety-day truce.

In the meantime, there are clear indications that a broad based economic decline is in the making in China, which is affecting the rest of the world. A global slowdown is the last thing the market wants to see.

The unspoken social contract in China is built on steadily rising living standards. If the decline in the Chinese economy and stock market is severe enough, this social contract may be undermined and even the business community may turn against Xi Jinping. Such a downturn could also sound the death knell of the Belt and Road Initiative, because Xi may run out of resources to continue financing so many lossmaking investments.

On the question of global internet governance, there’s an undeclared struggle between the West and China. China wants to dictate rules and procedures that govern the digital economy by dominating the developing world with its new platforms and technologies. This is a threat to the freedom of the Internet and indirectly open society itself.

Last year I still believed that China ought to be more deeply embedded in the institutions of global governance, but since then Xi Jinping’s behavior has changed my opinion. My present view is that instead of waging a trade war with practically the whole world, the US should focus on China. Instead of letting ZTE and Huawei off lightly, it needs to crack down on them. If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.

Regrettably, President Trump seems to be following a different course: make concessions to China and declare victory while renewing his attacks on US allies. This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses.

To conclude, let me summarize the message I’m delivering tonight. My key point is that the combination of repressive regimes with IT monopolies endows those regimes with a built-in advantage over open societies. The instruments of control are useful tools in the hands of authoritarian regimes, but they pose a mortal threat to open societies.

China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advance. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of open societies. That’s why it’s so important to distinguish Xi Jinping’s policies from the aspirations of the Chinese people. The social credit system, if it became operational, would give Xi total control over the people. Since Xi is the most dangerous enemy of the open society, we must pin our hopes on the Chinese people, and especially on the business community and a political elite willing to uphold the Confucian tradition.

This doesn’t mean that those of us who believe in the open society should remain passive. The reality is that we are in a Cold War that threatens to turn into a hot one. On the other hand, if Xi and Trump were no longer in power, an opportunity would present itself to develop greater cooperation between the two cyber-superpowers.

It is possible to dream of something similar to the United Nations Treaty that arose out of the Second World War. This would be the appropriate ending to the current cycle of conflict between the US and China. It would reestablish international cooperation and allow open societies to flourish. That sums up my message.