Democracy is "withering" under the influence of a decreasingly free internet, a democracy watchdog group has warned in its annual report.
US-funded group NGO Freedom House found that global internet freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018 as more countries embrace a "Chinese model of extensive censorship".
Disinformation and propaganda spread online had "poisoned" the public sphere, it said in the report released on Wednesday.
The report found that in 2018 China was "once again the worst abuser of internet freedom" and that the superpower is actively propagating its model of "digital authoritarianism" abroad.
"Digital authoritarianism is being promoted as a way for governments to control their citizens through technology, inverting the concept of the internet as an engine of human liberation," the report said.
"Democratic governments will have to devote much greater diplomatic and other resources to countering China's charm offensive on the international stage," the report said, adding that, with the US turning away from its role as a global leader, the Asian superpower has been emboldened in its effort to rewrite international rules in its favour.
"If democracies fail to advance their own principles and interests with equal determination, digital authoritarianism will become an inescapable reality almost by default," Freedom House warned.
Among the other challenges to democracy, the NGO cited the breakdown of traditional notions of privacy and the instrumentalisation by authoritarian leaders of "fake news" to justify crackdowns on dissent.