The CCP has constructed the Great Firewall, obstructing citizens from accessing truthful information from overseas. (Dajiyuan composite image)
[Yibao https://yibaochina.com/?p=256563]
Documents leaked from Geedge Networks and GoLaxy reveal that China’s (CCP’s) repression is both a political necessity and a profitable business.
China’s (CCP’s) surveillance and propaganda industry is often depicted as a seamless extension of state power, controlled top-down by the Chinese Communist Party. However, the latest leaks from Geedge Networks and GoLaxy (these are two contractors for China’s Great Firewall/GFW project) reveal a more complex picture: a commercial ecosystem where private companies compete for contracts, leverage academic connections, and build sophisticated products to satisfy both ideological requirements and market pressures. Their story shows that in China, repression is not only a political need but also a lucrative business, increasingly crossing national borders. Geedge and GoLaxy jointly demonstrate that China is not only perfecting digital authoritarianism domestically but also packaging it for export—a profound challenge to democracies in the global AI supremacy race.
Geedge Networks became prominent after over 100,000 internal documents were leaked to a coalition of journalists, tech experts, and human rights organizations. These documents include technical specifications, source code, client contracts, and marketing materials, exposing how Geedge positions itself as a cybersecurity company while actually building censorship and surveillance infrastructure.
Meanwhile, researchers at Vanderbilt University uncovered nearly 400 pages of internal planning documents, including corporate propaganda strategies, brochures, sales targets, and even complaints from dissatisfied employees, revealing the truth about GoLaxy. These leaks provide an unprecedented window into how China’s censorship and propaganda machine operates.
Their products differ but complement each other within the larger control system. Geedge is an infrastructure-building company. Its flagship product, the Tiangou Security Gateway, is essentially a ready-to-use integrated firewall. It performs deep packet inspection, blocks VPNs and other circumvention tools, identifies device fingerprints, analyzes metadata, and even provides prototype reputation-based access controls. To make these tools usable by non-technical officials, Geedge equips them with user-friendly dashboards showing connected users, their locations, and running applications. In practice, Geedge provides hardware and software to restrict, monitor, and deny information flow across entire networks.
GoLaxy operates at a higher-end level in perception and influence. Its systems collect open-source social media data, map relationships between political actors and influencers, and use AI to generate content for carefully curated campaigns. Dashboards allow operators to monitor discussions on sensitive topics (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, U.S. politics) and plan interventions by spreading narratives or amplifying favored voices.
Geedge builds the information control pipeline, while GoLaxy provides the tools to fill that pipeline with content aligned with government priorities.
These product differences shape their business models and clientele. Geedge’s model revolves around infrastructure contracts with the government. The company sells bundled systems—including hardware, software, training, and maintenance—designed to connect to telecom backbones or provincial networks. Domestic clients include provincial public security bureaus, state-owned telecom operators, and local governments, with pilot deployments in Xinjiang and other provinces.
Geedge has also expanded overseas, marketing its “integrated Great Firewall” to regimes seeking Chinese-style control. Reports indicate deployments in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. In Pakistan, Amnesty International tracked the country’s “Network Monitoring System 2.0” back to Geedge technology, noting how the system integrates Western components to monitor all inbound and outbound traffic. In Myanmar, the “Justice for Myanmar” organization documented how Geedge systems aid military censorship, facilitating arrests and torture of dissidents. These cases show that Geedge is not merely a domestic contractor but a global exporter of authoritarian infrastructure.
GoLaxy’s client base is narrower but politically significant. Vanderbilt University documents show its main clients are CCP propaganda departments, national security agencies, the military, and other government entities responsible for “public opinion guidance.” Its business explicitly serves the CCP’s narrative goals. Company records also indicate ownership ties between GoLaxy and government-affiliated supercomputing and research institutions, ensuring its operation under both commercial and political authorization.
Unlike Geedge, GoLaxy does not appear to have widely exported its tools to foreign regimes; instead, it focuses on strengthening the CCP’s domestic propaganda system and building global influence capabilities. Its export is narrative rather than hardware, promoting disinformation or pro-Beijing narratives through coordinated social media campaigns.
These client patterns reveal how both companies embody the party-state’s dual strategy: perfect control domestically while promoting the model abroad. Geedge’s exports to regimes in Pakistan and Myanmar show that China’s censorship technology is becoming a commercial product on the international market, offering turnkey solutions to governments eager to monitor and suppress dissent. Meanwhile, GoLaxy demonstrates the CCP’s ambition to shape global narratives—not by selling software to foreign governments directly, but by running influence operations and embedding its narratives in the international information space. In both companies, their clients—provincial security departments, authoritarian allies, and CCP propaganda agencies—illustrate the intertwining of political ideology and commercial opportunity.
Both companies maintain close ties with China’s top research institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Records show CAS laboratories have visited Geedge facilities, and GoLaxy staff often hold positions at CAS. These ties provide GoLaxy with credibility, talent pipelines, and technical resources. They also blur the line between academic research and commercial repression, ensuring that cutting-edge AI technologies developed in national labs can quickly be applied in products serving censorship and propaganda.
These leaks highlight how ideology and commerce reinforce each other in China’s digital control industry. Ideology generates demand: the CCP’s obsession with “cyber sovereignty,” “public opinion guidance,” and repression of “hostile forces” creates a continuous market for new tools. Commercial competition provides the means: companies like Geedge and GoLaxy package censorship and propaganda into modular, exportable products backed by sales targets and marketing campaigns. Provincial governments procure ready-to-use information censorship systems, while party and government departments purchase influence dashboards. Competition drives iterative improvements—from user-friendly interfaces to sophisticated AI models—creating an ecosystem where political objectives and commercial incentives align, driving rapid innovation in repression.
This has broad implications for understanding China’s AI ecosystem. First, it is state-led but market-driven: political priorities determine problems, and companies compete to provide solutions, advancing technology. Second, it is deeply integrated: academia, private enterprises, and government share personnel and resources, breaking boundaries between research and deployment. Third, it is adaptive: when Western component supply is disrupted by sanctions, companies like Geedge repurpose old hardware or use domestic alternatives to maintain continuity. Finally, it is entrepreneurial: both companies demonstrate the ability to productize surveillance and propaganda, turning repressive capabilities into revenue streams.
For the United States, these cases highlight the multi-dimensional challenges of competing with China in AI. It is not just about large language models or semiconductor supply chains; it is about the infrastructure and narratives that shape the global information environment. Geedge’s export of censorship systems shows China spreading its digital authoritarianism abroad, creating dependencies and normalizing mass surveillance. GoLaxy’s focus on narrative operations shows that AI can industrialize perception management, manipulate discourse, and undermine democratic resilience. Democracies face asymmetrical constraints: China can integrate academia, industry, and government to rapidly deploy tools, while the U.S. must operate within privacy, transparency, and accountability frameworks. Yet these constraints uphold the values the Chinese system seeks to erode.
To meet these challenges, the U.S. must broaden its understanding of the AI race. Competition in computing and models is necessary but insufficient. Washington and its allies must also invest in secure, human-rights-respecting alternatives to Chinese network equipment, support civil society tools resisting censorship, and build coalitions to counter disinformation. They must demonstrate that openness and innovation, not surveillance and propaganda, offer a more sustainable path for society.
The Geedge and GoLaxy leaks clearly show one thing: China has turned repression into an export industry. Unless democracies respond with technological innovation and principled leadership, the global balance in the digital age may decisively tilt toward authoritarianism.
Original link: https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/inside-chinas-surveillance-and-propaganda-industries-where-profit-meets-party/yibaochina.com
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