The “Digital Silk Road” and the Chinese IoT
The “Digital Silk Road” and the Chinese IoT
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Digital Silk Road - China Media Project
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Precisely what activities fall under the umbrella of the DSR has not been officially disclosed, but all known projects work to integrate the hard and soft infrastructures underpinning next-generation IoT capabilities. Examples include 5G antenna and base stations, fiber optic cables, data centers, smart city initiatives, and e-commerce platforms. Across the board, Beijing has encouraged tech companies to deepen cooperation with recipient countries. Some of the flagship companies that have joined the project are state-owned enterprises such as China Telecom and Unicom, as well as ostensibly private operators like China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE, and Dahua. The common denominator among these actors is a commitment to consolidating China’s presence in emerging markets and developing economies.
Over the past decade, Beijing has been able to build a parallel technological ecosystem that challenges Western-dominated norms. While this Initiative has the potential to enhance digital connectivity in developing economies, it also provides Beijing with a mechanism that can be used both to test its surveillance technology in third countries and to train these countries’ leaders on how to leverage the information that they collect. In a 2018 report, Freedom House cited a seminar on “Cyberspace Management for Officials from Countries Along the Belt and Road Initiative” that was repeated this year. It saw foreign officials visit the offices of a Chinese company that uses a big data toolkit to track negative public sentiment in real time and promote positive opinions of the government.
This style of surveillance and public opinion “guidance” is consistent with some of the other projects DSR sponsors have exported to third countries. In Venezuela, for example, PRC tech giant ZTE has been closely working with authorities to develop a system that can monitor citizens and, most importantly, their voting preferences.