China’s Technological Odyssey: Exploring the Digital Silk Road Initiative

In the rapidly evolving landscape of global technology, China is emerging as a dominant force, reshaping the digital realm through initiatives such as the Digital Silk Road (DSR). Introduced in 2015 as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, the DSR signifies China’s strategic push to become the world’s leader in digital infrastructure and technology. At its core, the DSR aims to expand China’s influence by fostering digital connectivity, cultivating political leverage with foreign governments, deepening China’s geo-economic interests, and creating favourable global digital norms and standards.

The DSR is the technological dimension of China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); the DSR’s objective is to improve digital connectivity between Belt and Road countries. First mentioned in the National Development and Reform Commission’s 2015 Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Centry Maritime Silk Road document, the Chinese Communist Party outlined their objectives to ‘build bilateral cross-border optical cables,’ ‘plan transcontinental submarine optical cables project’ and improve ‘satellite information passageways’ to create an ‘Information Silk Road.’ Since 2015, the DSR has evolved into a major Chinese foreign policy effort to establish itself as the technological global leader, setting the standard for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, 5G internet or the Internet of Things (IoT); such objectives have been restated in national movements such as ‘Made in China 2025’ or ‘China Standards 2035’.

Structurally, the DSR is not a top-down monolithic enterprise but involves actors in both the private and public sectors at all levels across the project, while China remains the main driver of the process. Despite its composite and multilateral nature, the DSR provides China with an immense amount of influence in participating countries. Within Africa, for example, Chinese company Huawei provides 70% of Africa’s 4G telecommunications network, with Huawei as the first company to offer 5G anywhere on the continent. The Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable, built by China-based company Hengtong, and the 2Africa cable, built in partnership with Chinese company China Mobile, further demonstrate Africa’s reliance upon Chinese technology. Looking closer, China has been able to provide countries such as Kenya and Rwanda with cheap television, which includes channels that depict Chinese culture or Chinese politics in a favourable light. Some commentators are becoming worried that Chinese Television companies, such as StarTimes, are being utilised to spread a CCP narrative. Chinese technology companies have already assisted African countries in development of surveillance technology that could be used against opposition political groups.

China appears to be attempting to garner political support and to exert soft power through its efforts at closing a global digital divide; in doing so, China is capitalising on the insufficient economic capital of developing nations, who cannot themselves finance technological innovation. Such a digital divide can be seen in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic where ‘90% of learners in the sub-Saharan region lacked access to internet and computers at home and were isolated from online learning and digital education.’ Access to the internet and digital infrastructure is closely related to economic performance; in 2000, Estonia went so far as to pronounce access to the internet a human right, highlighting the importance of digital infrastructure in the modern age. In this context, China possesses a great deal of leverage over developing nations.

Closer to home, Chinese company, Tencent, threatening investment withdrawal, succeeded in censoring the Japanese and Taiwanese flag from the jacket of the protagonist in the trailer for Hollywood film Top Gun: Maverick. While this was later brought back for the film, the initial censoring demonstrates Chinese influence, even within Hollywood.

However, the DSR does face some pushback. Chief among them is the authoritarian nature of the CCP and its restrictions over the private technology sector. This is particularly the case in Southeast Asian BRI countries, where Chinese companies are bound by Chinese National Intelligence Law to ‘support, assist and cooperate with [state] intelligence efforts,’ potentially threatening the cybersecurity of the host country. In this sentiment, the FBI director Christopher Wray claims that China has ‘the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information’ via digital infrastructure, and that companies such as Huawei or ZTE can, in consort with Chinese intelligence services ‘conduct undetected espionage.’ Fears of Chinese surveillance have served to temper the growth of Chinese companies in some markets.

So, what are the strategic implications of China’s DSR? China’s growing influence in the development of technology may place it at the epicentre of technological innovation. This could provide the country with the opportunity to set the global standards of digital infrastructure, particularly as it relates to next-generation technology such as robotics, blockchain, serverless computing or artificial intelligence. Such an influence provides China with digital and economic arteries from which China may boost its economy. Additionally, Chinese technology companies, and by extension, Chinese government officials, may be provided access to large sets of personal data, further increasing the government’s leverage over BRI countries. Concerns over surveillance are perhaps most identifiable in relation to smart cities –a key tenet of the DSR. China’s position as the largest funder of the new smart city being built in Egypt, exemplifies a geo-strategic characteristic of the DSR. Finally, the DSR may allow China to set global cyber-governance standards and values, with no such current standard being used globally. If this is the case, the global standard may become more paternalistic in nature than is accepted in the West, as the Chinese may set the standard for less-transparent cyber activities.

As the digital economy continues to evolve, the battle for technological supremacy will shape the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century. China's Digital Silk Road represents a bold stride towards global technological dominance, challenging existing power structures and reshaping the digital order. However, its success hinges not only on technological prowess but also on navigating complex geopolitical dynamics and addressing concerns over data privacy, security, and governance. Ultimately, the trajectory of the DSR will determine China's position in the digital era and its influence on the world stage.

Image courtesy of Maxim Hopman via Unsplash, ©2020. Some rights reserved.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.