You-Hao Lai, Deputy Director of the Democratic Governance Program at the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), was invited to speak on September 4 at the 37th Australasian and Pacific Ombudsman Region (APOR) Annual Conference and International Human Rights Symposium, hosted by Taiwan’s Control Yuan. The event gathered over a hundred experts and representatives from ombudsman institutions and international organizations across the Asia-Pacific region to discuss emerging issues in human rights and democratic governance.
Lai spoke in the session “Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law”, delivering a presentation titled “International Human Rights in Countering AI-Enhanced Authoritarianism”, where he shared DSET’s recent research findings.
During his talk, Lai began by citing the recent proposal by the Taipei City Government to adopt AI-powered robotic dogs manufactured by China’s Unitree Robotics as an example of the risks of importing Chinese digital authoritarian technologies. He emphasized the need for governments to be vigilant about such risks when adopting AI applications. Lai then analyzed the actors, mechanisms, and practices of China’s digital authoritarianism and their impacts on human rights, focusing particularly on cybersecurity and privacy concerns. He highlighted that Chinese AI services are expanding rapidly overseas, noting that 22 of the world’s 50 most popular AI application services are already from Chinese companies.
However, Lai warned that these Chinese digital products ultimately serve the country’s authoritarian governance framework. Under China’s Data Security Law, National Intelligence Law, and Counter-Espionage Law, the government and national security agencies can demand access to overseas data or compel Chinese companies to provide technical assistance for surveillance, all without judicial oversight, citing an all-encompassing “holistic national security” doctrine.
He further cited several popular Chinese large language model (LLM) applications—such as DeepSeek, Kimi, and Quark—noting that their privacy policies often state that user data may be sent back to China or shared with parent companies and government agencies located in China. As a result, these Chinese digital services often come with “built-in” risks of government access to user data.
Lai warned that this creates multi-layered privacy harms and governance challenges for democratic societies, including: loss of individual data self-control; profiling, surveillance, and cross-border repression of dissidents by authoritarian governments; and the use of algorithmic cognitive warfare to influence public opinion more precisely and effectively.
Lai concluded by calling on democratic governments to fulfill their duty to “protect” under international human rights law, by safeguarding citizens’ personal data and privacy from ongoing encroachment by foreign authoritarian actors. He also urged companies to uphold their duty to “respect” privacy rights, avoiding the transfer of personal data to China and refraining from integrating high-risk Chinese AI products into their supply chains and service systems.
Other speakers in the same session included Paul Miller, Ombudsman of New South Wales, Australia, and Control Yuan Member Lin Wen-Cheng, with Diane Welborn, Regional Director for North America at the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) serving as moderator.
This year’s APOR Annual Conference, hosted in Taiwan for the first time in many years, is a major platform for ombudsman cooperation and human rights dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region. The opening ceremony was presided over by Control Yuan Vice President Hung-chun Lee, with remarks from IOI Secretary-General Bernhard Achitz and Acting Deputy Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) John Morgan, who highlighted the crucial role of oversight institutions in promoting accountability and safeguarding human rights, and urged governments to carefully manage the integration of AI into public governance to ensure it does not undermine fundamental human rights and democratic rule of law principles.
DSET will continue to focus on the intersection of technology, democratic governance, and human rights protection, and work with like-minded international partners to drive institutional innovation and cross-domain dialogue, helping Taiwan play a more active role in regional and global digital governance systems.
