Smartphones, Mobile Apps, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, Blockchain, Metaverse – The Chinese Internet has evolved into a multilayered stack of digital technologies and devices with embedded protocols, cultures, and norms, used by billions of people around the globe.  The Global South is where Made-in-China digital technology meets the world, reconfiguring how billions live and China’s own relationship with the world.

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Flows

Chinese smartphone manufacturers make up close to ⅓ of the global market share (and a dominant share in Southeast and South Asia). Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance, along with dozens of smaller companies, have invested several billions in local tech startups in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. TikTok, the world’s fastest growing social media platform, counts Indonesia, Brazil, and West Asia as central to its global success. Huawei is nearly universally present in the Global South, growing from a telecom supplier to a digital transformation partner. Within the past decade Chinese technologies, along with a supply chain of capital and people, have been deeply embedded in the Global South, reconfiguring the dynamics of economies and societies. This conference will examine the influence of the Chinese Internet in the Global South, especially highlighting the interplay and bi-directional linkages between local innovation and startup ecosystems, how they may compare with their Western peers, and how Western or other technology companies are learning from China’s approach.

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Frictions and Futures

China has permeated public consciousness globally and brings new frictions as political rhetoric around China affects how Made-in-China digital technologies are perceived and consumed. India became the first country in the world to ban and block WeChat and TikTok alongside hundreds of other Chinese apps, having found them to “violate Indian sovereignty and security.” How countries in the Global South interpret and act against perceived influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) deserves more study to help shed light on non-Western attitudes towards Chinese technology. Several countries, notably Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, are introducing new laws and rules to more closely control the national Internet, regulate international platforms, and spur local innovation. Inquiry around how governments may be mirroring and building on the “China model” is timely as governments around the world are actively regulating digital spaces and data flows, another example of the multi-directional flows of knowledge and practices.

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The globalisation of the Chinese Internet also includes values, norms, and legal frameworks for governing digital spaces. The landscape within the PRC is presently in a period of significant flux. The Data Security Law (数据安全法), the Personal Information Protection Law (个人信息保护法), and a more empowered “super regulator” the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), are reconfiguring the Chinese Internet. How these new changes affect global data flows, governance norms and rules, and even the culture of innovation in China need to be better understood to determine what the future of the Chinese Internet in the Global South will look like.

This conference will examine these frictions and the multidirectional nature of laws, values, and norms for digital spaces between China and the Global South. 

 

For further inquiries, please contact: circ2023@digitalasiahub.org.