Although the pipelines, roads, and grand infrastructure projects of China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have garnered the most attention as part of Beijing’s efforts to expand its economic and political influence around the world, a new book focuses on the growing digital side of that venture that could shape the economies of the future.
From a planned Chinese subsea cable connecting Pakistan and Djibouti to Safe City surveillance initiatives in Serbia and facial-recognition software used to crackdown on Uyghurs and other Muslims in western China now being used in Central Asia, author Jonathan Hillman gives a tour of this new battleground, charting its origins and showing where the competition is heading.
“We have only seen the first phase of the U.S.-China technology competition and it has been mostly focused in developed countries,” Hillman, author of The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest To Wire The World And Win The Future, told RFE/RL. “But the real competition is set to play out across the developing world."
Hillman, an analyst and director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "It’s invisible, but everywhere. Even the traditional infrastructure projects all have a digital component to them."
From 5G to AI-enabled surveillance systems and fiber-optic cables, Beijing and Washington are fighting for control over the networks of the future and, as Hillman writes in his book, "the...
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