Alexei Navalny Sends a Warning Shot to China

Navalny being arrested during a protest against Putin’s government in 2017. Photo via Evgeny Feldman.

On January 17, 2021, the world watched in suspense as Alexei Navalny, the prominent Russian opposition leader, journeyed home. On Navalny’s flight, journalists scrambled to capture his final moments of freedom. Less than a year ago, Navalny narrowly survived the Kremlin’s attack on his life. His homecoming would bring him back into the arms of the Russian police and even closer to death. Through live-streamed videos, millions watched Navalny kiss his wife goodbye in Moscow’s airport—moments before Russian authorities detained him. 

But, the media storm didn’t end there: less than 24 hours later, the frenzy continued after Navalny released a pre-recorded YouTube video exposing a secret billion-dollar palace owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the 113-minute-long video, Navalny acts more like a late-night show host than a politician. His political commentary is channeled through memes, creative editing, and light-hearted comedy. His statements feel scripted, but by a production team rather than a speechwriter. This style has enabled Navalny to capture Russia’s massive YouTube viewership—the third-largest in the world.

Even in his arrest, Navalny exemplifies a new kind of threat to authoritarian regimes. Long gone are the days when dissent can be swiftly hushed and crushed; Navalny and his contemporaries can now make soundwaves across the world through the Internet. The rapid ascendance of Navalny sends a warning shot across the border to China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leader President Xi Jinping have long been preoccupied by the open internet’s threat to the internal stability of their regime. As Russia grapples with the uproar over Navalny and democratic countries coordinate their responses to his arrest, China watches closely.

The ascendance of Navalny is particularly relevant to China given the state’s history of censorship. Both China and Russia have the infrastructure to censor Internet access, yet only China has implemented a “Great Firewall” to do so. The Kremlin fears that an open Internet will spread criticism of Putin’s regime, but its population is enamored with Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and the like. The Russian leadership now struggles to find a way to suppress dissent online while avoiding the backlash of its population that has ample access to Western media sites.

China, on the other hand, has censored the Internet since its arrival. This difference in strategy is one reason why President Putin confronts nation-wide protests in the wake of Navalny’s arrest while Chinese President Xi Jinping has successfully quelled the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and blocked its spread to the mainland. The hysteria in Russia over Navalny may convince China to double down on its censorship efforts, which have been hurled with new challenges over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, China may act more quickly to suppress dissent from citizen journalists like Zhang Zhan who chronicled China’s stumbling response to the pandemic in Wuhan.

China’s conservative attitude towards the Internet is inextricably linked with the CCP’s goal of maintaining internal stability. An open Internet facilitates the exchange of all ideas, including dissenting ones, and proliferates them at an unmatched speed. In China—an expansive country with a myriad of regional differences—the Internet provides the most convenient way for critics to mobilize and unite. What would have happened if Mao’s Little Red Book was on Facebook? President Xi does not want to know.

President Putin, ironically, has shown a shrewd understanding of the dangers that come with an open Internet, utilizing YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to meddle in two US general elections. Yet, President Putin seems unable to account for Russia’s own vulnerabilities to these sites—vulnerabilities that Navalny is an expert in exploiting. Russia’s current strategy is to outcompete western sites with copy-cat, state-sponsored platforms that can be monitored and censored, such as the video streaming platform, RuTube. The vision is for RuTube to be to YouTube what Chinese WeChat is to WhatsApp—a home-grown platform that captures the domestic market and surveils from within. Yet, Navalny's rise is testament enough to the fact that YouTube and other western sites still reign supreme in Russia.

To learn from Navalny, President Xi should also analyze Russia’s changing relationship with the international community and reflect on how it may indirectly impact China. Navalny represents more than just a flawed attempt at censorship: he is a push towards democracy that Russia has not seen in some time. Through his arrest, the Kremlin has squelched the rumblings of democracy - a maneuver that is bound to elicit an international response. 

Additionally, his arrest falls upon a historical moment in United States politics—the transition between two administrations. The Biden administration has made clear that it would put an end to former President Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia, starting with imposing targeted sanctions for Navalny’s treatment.  This decision communicates that the Biden administration will be more proactive about promoting democratic values. It is important that China parse these signals because President Biden’s foreign policy strategy is neither antithetical to President Trump’s nor identical to President Obama’s, and therefore unknown territory. In fact, President Biden aligns himself with President Trump when it comes to China. Under the new administration, trade war tariffs have yet to be rolled back and sparring words between the two states continue to fly, as shown by the recent talks in Alaska.

However, the United States is not the only Western power that China should be eyeing right now. Shortly after Navalny’s arrest, the European Union—one of China’s top trading partners—imposed targeted sanctions on top Russian leaders. At the same time, EU officials circulated a confidential paper on Hong Kong that urged greater cooperation with the United States in countering the power of China and Russia. These coinciding responses demonstrate that Russia’s treatment of Navalny bears an impact on the international community’s perception of China.  

While China and Russia have distinct foreign policy agendas, both countries have commonly been grouped as challengers to Western ideals. Navalny’s recent arrest, which is in close proximity to China’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, does little to help this perception. Indeed, the fact that Western responses to Navalny are coupled with a rethinking of strategy towards China is not a good omen for President Xi, who has bolstered his efforts to strengthen ties with the international community.

Overall, Navalny’s story may confirm China’s deep suspicion that an open Internet allows for the emergence of critical ideas, leaders, and movements, all of which threaten to overthrow an authoritarian regime. This threat is top of mind for President Xi, an authoritarian ruler managing the world’s most populous country with a not-too-distant populist past.

Moreover, Navalny’s starpower reveals the risks of a fragmented and slow approach to Internet censorship. The unrest in Russia in some ways boils down to its original permission of an open Internet—a decision it now finds itself unable to turn back on. This lesson can be useful to China when thinking about how to deal with emerging western technologies and platforms, such as Clubhouse, the western drop-in audio app.

The geopolitical response to Navalny should be taken just as seriously by China. The world has questioned what a Biden administration would mean for the next four years of international affairs. Less than seventy days into office, President Biden may be giving China a preview. At least in the short term, it would be strategic for President Xi to tread watchfully as the United States and its European allies take a more forceful stance abroad.

Moving forward, President Xi must perform a unique balancing act that advances both his domestic and geopolitical interests. This requires finding a way to suppress the free exchange of ideas and democratic impulses at home while reassuring the international community that China is a good actor and will comply with international norms. At the crux of this strategy lies an uncomfortable contradiction: the exact ideals that the international community promotes abroad—freedom and democracy—are the ones that President Xi aims to curtail internally. To avoid a Navalny incident, President Xi must continue to tiptoe around this paradox. He must exalt China’s status on the world stage and keep its critical voices confined behind closed doors, so that they will never reach the bastion of freedom and democracy that is the open internet.

Tamar Vidra is a junior in Columbia College majoring in Political Science with a strong interest in Russia-China relations and the impact of technology on foreign affairs.