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The Digital Silk Road: Expanding China’s Digital Footprint

Eurasia Group (2020), 12 pp.

"First unveiled in 2015, the Digital Silk Road (DSR) component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted more political and commercial attention as technology-related tensions between the US and China have risen. Whereas large-scale traditional infrastructure projects have so far bee ... more

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Assessing China's Digital Silk Road Initiative: A Transformative Approach to Technology Financing or a Danger to Freedoms?

Joshua Kurlantzick

Council on Foreign Relations (2020)

"As part of China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the biggest infrastructure undertaking in the world, Beijing has launched the Digital Silk Road (DSR). Announced in 2015 with a loose mandate, the DSR has become a significant part of Beijing’s overall BRI strategy, under which China pr ... more

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Framing the Chinese Investment in Africa: Media Coverage in Africa, China, United Kingdom, and the United States

Frankline Matanji

Bowling Green State University, Master Thesis (2019), x, 61 pp.

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China’s Digital Silk Road: Strategic Technological Competition and Exporting Political Illiberalism

Clayton Cheney

Pacific Forum (2019), iv, 23 pp.

"The Digital Silk Road is the component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative that aims to establish China as the global technological superpower. While the Belt and Road Initiative is generally understood to be a foreign policy initiative, it is important to view the Digital Silk Road as both a for ... eign and domestically focused aspect of the initiative. The first step to analyzing this component of the Belt and Road Initiative is to create a conceptual roadmap to understand the components of the Digital Silk Road. This paper argues that it comprises four interrelated, technologically focused initiatives. First, China is investing abroad in digital infrastructure, including next generation cellular networks, fiberoptic cables and data centers. Second, it contains a domestic focus on developing advanced technologies that will be essential to global economic and military power. These advanced technologies include satellite navigation systems, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Third, because China recognizes the importance of economic interdependence to international influence, the Digital Silk Road promotes e-commerce through digital free trade zones. Last, digital diplomacy and governance, including through multilateral institutions, are key to China creating its ideal international digital environment. After outlining a broad conceptual map of the Digital Silk Road, this paper focuses on how China’s investment in digital infrastructure and the strategic technological competition between China and the United States will shape the international orders in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. It argues that China perceives technological advancement as the sphere in which it can most adequately challenge the United States’ global power without creating direct confrontation, including possible military confrontation. Second, the United States seeks to constrain the Digital Silk Road and China’s technological ascendancy by presenting Chinese technology corporations as posing an unacceptable risk to international security. Third, China does not want to replace the current international order that has persisted since the end of the Second World War. Rather, it would like to maintain the liberal economic order that has permitted its economic rise and export its form of digital authoritarianism to create an illiberal political international order. Finally, through investing in data centers and pursuing data localization policies, China aims to achieve strategic geopolitical objectives by projecting sharp power abroad, which will be facilitated by big data." (Executive Summary) more

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Entwicklungspolitiken: 33 Geberprofile

Reinold E. Thiel (ed.)

Hamburg: Deutsches Übersee-Institut, unveränderter Nachdruck (1998), 338 pp.

"Stellt die staatliche Entwicklungspolitik von 33 Geberländern vor, wobei nicht nur - wie üblicherweise - die Mitgliedsländer des DAC (Development Assistance Committee der OECD) mit jeweils einem Übersichtsartikel vertreten sind, sondern auch China, die ehemalige DDR, Indien, Israel, Kuba, Saudi ... more