This report explores how the Chinese party-state’s globally focused propaganda and disinformation capabilities are evolving and increasing in sophistication. Concerningly, this emerging approach by the Chinese party-state to influence international discourse on China, including obfuscating its record of human rights violations, is largely flying under...

This year's Freedom on the Net report finds that global internet freedom declined for the 12th consecutive year in 2022, and governments are on a campaign to divide the open internet into a patchwork of repressive enclaves.

The increasing sophistication and spread of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital surveillance technologies has drawn concerns over privacy and human rights. This paper provides five recommendations for democratic governments and three for civil society.

This paper focuses on the report 'Our Common Agenda', arguably one of the most hard-hitting reports recently released by the United Nations to strengthen multilateralism to address a range of crises, and urges more robust Australian engagement with these processes.

This report evaluates the state of freedom in 195 countries and 15 territories during calendar year 2021. The report assesses the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals, rather than governments or government performance per se. Political rights and civil liberties can be affected by...

This report explains China’s domestic and international ambitions in developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), reviews the main technical framework of Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) and discusses how the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and private firms are working to implement it. The report...

This paper argues that the onus is on democracies to do more to counter the harmful aspects of China’s global technology agenda, and to find ways to harness technology, including artificial intelligence, for the global public good, while preserving hard-won democratic rights and liberties.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly deploying coercive diplomacy against foreign governments and companies. This report tracks the CCP’s use of coercive diplomacy over the past 10 years, recording 152 cases of coercive diplomacy affecting 27 countries, as well as the European Union.

This collection of essays aim to give policymakers a deeper understanding of how China is innovating with artificial intelligence (AI) in public services, challenging current misconceptions and illuminating nuances in the debate.

Despite the Arab uprisings of the last decade, most countries in the Middle East remain in the grip of autocrats, with a widespread view that this is the 'default setting' for the region.

Freedom on the Net is a comprehensive study of internet freedom in 65 countries around the globe, covering 87 percent of the world’s internet users. It tracks improvements and declines in internet freedom conditions each year. The countries included in the study have been selected...

The Morrison Government’s authoritarian policy agenda has a punitive element that has become more evident since the election.

Huawei’s “Safe City” products have fueled concerns that China is “exporting authoritarianism.”

This paper is intended to start an initial mapping and exploration of the expanding cooperative ecosystem involving Moscow and Beijing. It will be important to track the trajectory and assess the implications of these Sino-Russian technological collaborations, given the risks and threats that could result...

Following the push for reform during the popular uprising in 2011, authoritarianism is once again dominating domestic politics and power relations in the MENA region. Drawing on data collected during field trips to Cairo, Tehran, Beirut and Kuwait city, the authors of this MENARA report...

This report argues that democratic governments must become more proactive in countering the CCP’s extension of social credit. This includes planning ahead and moving beyond reactive reciprocal responses.