The recent initiative proposed by China, entails a model of digital authoritarianism that advances their leadership position in the technology sector. The Digital Silk Road is a part of a variety of infrastructure projects that range between trade, financial, cultural and defence agreements, connecting with 140 countries across the globe. The implications of such a project reveal a significant change in China’s advancements within the technological sphere, and furthermore how this enables an extended level of control over censorship online. The Digital Silk Road would provide China with the ability to extend censorship and surveillance practices, opening the involved countries up to a level of digital authoritarianism that could potentially undermine the global norms of free internet access.
When I discovered this project, my first thought was how are countries able to balance the development of technological advancements with the preservation of privacy and data. Many concerns surrounding this project have included the possibility for data privacy risks, as the data collected through these introduced technologies could be misused or potentially accessed by state agencies within China. Following the lectures this week, we learnt that information in China is already incredibly restricted, and censorship and surveillance is currently one of the primary ways the government controls the spread of outside information. With China wanting to extend this power further by introducing platforms to be used by collaborating countries, expression of opinion will be restricted to the highest degree. With this in mind, the only relevant questions should be regarding global organisations' positions and potential steps that should be taken to prevent reliance on Chinese technology. Does this mean that these global organisations need to diversify their technological partnerships? Or does this mean that regulatory mechanisms must be introduced to avoid the misuse of data by foreign state agencies?
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