Digital Silk Road

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the use of digital technologies in the name of public health and safety and vividly illustrated how societies, even democratic ones, can tolerate the expansion of executive power and accept restrictions on liberties. In China,

This report is especially written for audiences in Europe and India, but the findings are equally relevant to global observers. The report offers a big-picture analysis of the Chinese Digital Silk Road’s (DSR) three most strategically pressing implications for the global digital order. The three implications are:

a) the creation of a full-fledged Chinese digital backbone;
b) the setting of technological standards in the unfolding Fourth Industrial Revolution; and
c) the shaping of cyber governance, norms, and a ‘digital experience’ with ‘Chinese characteristics’.

The DSR offers countries involved in the initiative with economic opportunities, and can  assist in enabling a more level playing field with advanced economies. Equally, it also poses challenges. From the EU and Indian economic and security points of view, neither can afford to ignore the DSR, or be reactionary in policy responses.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Latin American Nations.

Authors: Anant Singh Mann (London School of Economics) & Dipayan Pal (IIT Gandhinagar)

Link: https://www.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ORF_Monograph_BRI.pdf#page=70

Digital Repository (IIT Gandhinagar): http://repository.iitgn.ac.in/handle/123456789/6328

This course will explore the emerging issues in Political Economy of International Communication through the lens of the debated ‘Global Power Shift’ from West to East.  We will begin by critically assessing how the communications and entertainment industries are deeply integrated with the historical foundations of the ‘world systems’ and the neoliberal transformations of global economic and political forces.  We will focus on the deeper relationship between communications, cultures, and changing structures of soft and hard power, especially with the rise of the BRICS economies and the most recent expansion of the China’s Belt and Road Initiative/New Silk Road.  The second part of the course will pay particular attention to how various media and entertainment enterprises, such as global television and film industries, as well as digital communications platforms, tactics, and infrastructures, such as algorithmic media, disinformation, and next-generation internet technologies, along with their business models, are profoundly reshaped, contested and renegotiated through geopolitical reordering, regional forces and local resistances.  Students will chart the terrain of transformations and produce case studies combining insights from the both parts of the course.

This is a senior-level seminar, so it is expected that all students will be prepared to participate in the discussions/activities that will take place each week.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the following:
• Key concepts and theories in international political economy of communication.
• Contemporary issues and debates in international political economy of communication.
• Application of theories and concepts to contemporary issues.

Required Books
Srnicek, Nick (2016) Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. (ISBN-13: 9781509504879).
Dyer-Witheford, Nick and Svitlana Matviyenko (2019) Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (ISBN 978-1-5179-0411-1) (available online through the library website)

The rest of reading materials will be available through the Canvas site: https://canvas.sfu.ca/courses/47432

Supplementary materials are will be posted on Canvas and Course Facebook group CMNS444@SFU

The digital Silk Road, which involves the internationalization of Chinese internet firms across countries that are party to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has remained underexplored in the literature. This paper employs a poststructuralist discourse theory to analyze one of the most important Chinese internet firms, Alibaba, and its initiative for global trade: the electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP). The article argues that the eWTP is a counter-hegemonic discourse that, based on the economic and technological power of Alibaba and its support of the BRI, attempts to globalize a China-centered and privately led global digital trade order to challenge the previous wave of US-led globalization. However, the eWTP has at least five contradictions. First, despite its criticisms of globalization, the initiative remains essentially neoliberal. Secondly, it sidelines inherent tensions with the Chinese state-centric internet governance model. Thirdly, it excludes some social identities and makes utopian promises. Fourthly, it is unclear to what extent it really will be inclusive. Finally, unless carefully hedged, it might entrap partner countries in new types of problematic digital dependence.

This paper will analyze the digital policies of China by focusing on the role of political values in liberal world order. China’s advanced technology based upon their unique digital values, which are absolutely different from the EU and the USA’s main ideas. This study will present this issue in five parts. Before starting, I talk about Realist and Liberal Understandings of International Relations and the basic principles of liberal international system. First, I shed light on current policies of China by focusing its main strategies. In the second part, I touch upon Digital Silk Road and Made in China policies of Chinese government. In the third part, I mention about 5G technologies and surveillance mechanisms of Chinese government. In the fourth part, I will talk about main strategies of the USA against the principles of China. In conclusion, I will blend all the things I have described and draw a general framework.

This chapter analyses various causal relations through which Ethiopian and Chinese actors interact in the context of the Digital Silk Road initiative. What is playing out in Africa is part of a larger contest between the West and China for dominance over technology and global influence. From a Chinese perspective, the Digital Silk Road is an attempt to narrow the gap between underdeveloped and developed countries through capacity building. From a Western perspective (Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, etc.), Chinese investments in the Digital Silk Road provide unethical support to authoritarian leaders. The chapter moves beyond this simple dichotomy of good and bad Chinese investments in the digitalization of Africa, instead identifying the actors involved and investigating their motives and levels of influence.

Afghanistan was historically a major trade and transit hub of eastern and western civilizations, and it can be a hub for subsea and transcontinental telecommunication. Afghanistan holds the promise to be, in effect, a hub for Central Asian ICT along a modern-day “Digital Silk Road.”
To realize this, the region needs to expand existing and develop new commercial optical fiber “transit” routes through South and Central Asia, thereby increasing access, capacity and revenues within the region. Commercial optical capacity supporting international carriers between Asia and Europe are heavily dependent on undersea fiber cables routed through the Red Sea and across Egypt. The exposure of these routes to accidental cuts, sabotage, and political instability has demonstrated their vulnerabilities time and time again, particularly off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt.
The continued demand from commercial bandwidth providers between the Far East and Europe is driving interest in seeking new and diverse routes between the regions. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia provide viable transit routes that are attractive to the multinational Tier-1 operators and will generate lower-cost access, increased revenue and greater domestic penetration as routes through the region are exploited. Tier-1 carriers believe there are no signs of a looming collapse in demand for long-haul capacity. They note that as broadband, particularly mobile broadband, becomes commonplace around the world, access capacity required by end-users will continue to grow. According to Cisco Systems, monthly global mobile data traffic will increase 7-fold from 2016 to 2021 reaching 49 Exabytes/month. Increased bandwidth at the local level will lead to more demand for long-haul capacity.

India, in an attempt to upgrade its technology, has in recent years bolstered its relationship with China, particularly in telecommunications and digital technology. Despite perceptions of rivalry, China-India synergy in digital technology shows there is great potential for cooperation in their relations. While both India and China seeks to expand its technological influence in South Asia, it will be imperative for New Delhi to find a balance between both a competitor and beneficiary of Chinese technology in the region.

China’s ambitious Digital Silk Road (DSR) poses challenges that go far beyond technological competition. The DSR should serve as a wakeup call to the ‘digital emergency’ that India and the EU find themselves in. At stake for both actors are how global digital governance values are shaped, and Indian and EU positions in the global digital order.

This peer reviewed policy brief was developed based on consultations with experts from Indian and EU governments and civil society. It is part of the project, titled ‘China’s Digital Silk Road: Challenges and Opportunities for India and the EU’, run collaboratively by the Leiden Asia Centre (LAC), the Netherlands, and the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), India. A background report centred on the DSR's strategic implications can be found on my Academia site.

While the paper focusses on India and the EU, many of the observations and recommendations should be of value to other stakeholders.

An important element of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), the Digital Silk Road (DSR) is a comprehensive response to the Third Offset Strategy of the US and aims to establish China as a global technological superpower. Although projected by the Chinese Government as a global development project, the real objectives of the BRI and its components such as the DSR are essentially geopolitical in nature. The e-commerce aspect of the DSR strategy aims to increase the economic inter-dependence between China and participating states, and leverage these dependencies for achieving the status of an economic superpower. China’s promotion of cyber-sovereignty as the preferred model of cyber governance facilitates the furtherance of its authoritarian ideology among participating states. Indeed, the DSR is one of the more potent elements of China’s BRI in pursuit of its strategic objective of replacing the United States as the dominant world power. Although India has resisted the BRI and refused to participate in the physical infrastructure projects, it has unwittingly become a participant in the DSR initiative, thus exposing itself to the associated vulnerabilities. This work analysis the various features and pitfalls of China’s DSR and its national security implications for India.