Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Richard Heeks
(University of Manchester)
Ping Gao (University of Manchester)
Qingna Zhou (University of Manchester)
Christopher Foster (University of Manchester)
Nicholas Jepson (University of Manchester)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Business, finance and digital technologies
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
China - its state and multinationals - has a new and fast-growing digital influence on economies, societies, infrastructure and politics of the global South. The panel analyses: Chinese strategies and policies, implementations and impacts; and competition and comparisons with Western nations.
Long Abstract:
China - through actions of its state and its digital multinationals - has a new and fast-growing digital influence on economies, societies, infrastructure and politics of the global South. Prior work in development has focused on China's expansion in resource- and labour-intensive sectors, but rapid growth in digital means that research is pushing to keep up with the potentially disruptive effect of this new digital superpower.
The panel welcomes papers on any aspect of this topic area - policies, strategies, implementations, impacts - with analyses that could include but are not limited to:
- Infrastructure: "Digital Silk Road" components of the Belt and Road Initiative
- Economy: growing presence of Chinese digital firms in key economic sectors of global South nations; the impact of digital trade with China; the role of China's digital currency
- Society: growth of Chinese social media platforms and apps
- Politics: export of China's surveillance and public security technologies; issues of data sovereignty
- Standards: China's role in development and promotion of new digital standards
- Geopolitics: implications of multi-polar global digital leadership including comparative analysis of China's digital strategies and role and impacts compared to those of Western nations
- Actors and Processes: the relationship between various arms of China's party-state, its digital firms and other actors in driving forward digital expansion; mechanisms of trade and investment; rationale behind strategic digital actions
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 July, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
ICT4D attracted transnational crimes by Chinese in developing countries. Pacific Island Countries developed ICT for most of their remote areas, but now Chinese Cyber Criminals use these networks. Why did they come and what is happening? This paper examines the meaning of "Development" from ICT4D.
Paper long abstract:
China`s penetration of the telecommunications of Pacific Island Countries (PICs) has been of concern to the US, Australia and Japan. Since 2000 ICT4D has become the main agenda for international arenas, with PICs having the opportunity to connect to the world and WIFI reaching the "last one mile" problems. PICs are spread across the vast Pacific Ocean and characterized by small economies. Palau for example has less than 20,000 people while Samoa has 100,000. Chinese telecommunication companies such as Huawei started to approach PICs through their mobile phone service to backbone cable. Resulting security issues range from military perspectives to online gambling and money laundering. These criminal activities came into the island's society through multiple lines, ranging from bribery of PICs lawmakers to the utilization of passports from foreign countries which eliminated the identity of criminals. Hundreds of Chinese nationals have entered these small PICs and have worked for the illegal online casinos under illegal status. Sometimes they owned or rented whole complexes to operate cybercrimes. Chinese criminals have also tried to influence PIC officials to change the laws of their governments for the easing of cybercrime activities.
ICT development was originally intended for the people of these island countries to improve welfare and education. However, ICT infrastructure and the weak legal capacity of Island governments have attracted Chinese cybercriminals. The US, Japan and Australia have tried to support safe telecommunication services such as Clean Network for PICs. Yet how can PICs deal with these cybercrimes within such a limited capacity?
Paper short abstract:
The paper is dedicated to the study of Chinese official development assistance flows in the ICT sector and its characteristics. We will compare Chinese aid portfolio with the other major donors, look at its tying and conditionality status, to answer to the question what is China as an ICT donor.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is dedicated to the study of Chinese official development assistance in the ICT sector. The main source of the study is the database of Chinese official finance collected by the William and Mary AidData laboratory, providing information on Chinese ICT sector projects conducted in 2000-2014. This information is further benchmarked with the data from the OECD official development finance project level database (CRS). Our findings show that China has become the world leader of ICT aid, providing the major bulk of the preferential loans and grants to the developing countries, with the Republic of Korea, Japan and the United States trailing far behind. In terms of format, we can see that China is more likely to provide preferential loans over grants, reflecting its development cooperation focus, as well as use aid ‘tied’ to Chinese ICT vendors. On the other side, China is also far less likely to impose additional conditions on its aid, whether its blank liberalization of the sector, or targeted concessions. Chinese portfolio of projects is often fine targeted at one country or one region. As the data available only by the year of 2014, it is assumed that these trends are still true today, and even more pronounced on the background of the geopolitical standoff between the United States and China, and with heavy sanctions on Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE.
Paper short abstract:
There is tremendous potential in Africa and China's digital economies. There is a need to enhance digital cooperation through promoting efficient digital connectivity, data and services flows, and access to online services and platforms across the two digital economies.
Paper long abstract:
China's digital economy maintains a high growth with its value accounting for 36.2% of the GDP. The Africa Free Trade Area, AFCTA, formally came into force in January 2021. It is estimated to be a combined GDP of 2.5 Trillion USD. Estimates place 10% -20% of the GDP to digital economy indicating the potential of Africa's digital economy.
In 2015, China signed the Digital Silk Road Initiative that seeks digital cooperation globally. The World Bank in its report "A single digital market for East Africa" outlined a single digital market framework as follows:
1. A single connectivity market that ensures connectivity beyond physical borders.
2. A single data market to enable data exchange and support cross-border digital services.
3. A single online market to enable access to online services seamlessly across borders.
This paper will discuss:
1. Digital infrastructure development in light of China's president pledges in 2018 for more infrastructure investments to Africa and best approaches to remove connectivity barriers.
2. Legal and regulatory issues around data protection and privacy in Africa and China in light of China ongoing development of its Personal Information Protection law.
3. The single online market between the two to facilitate digital trade, online platforms, digital public services, etc.
This paper will result in strategic recommendations for enhancing digital cooperation between Africa and China digital development policymakers at national, regional, and continental levels.
Paper long abstract:
While every country has their national ICT goals, the cross-border cooperation and projects can greatly facilitate the achievement of such national goals. China's Digital Silk Road is a giant cross-border project that entails technology transfer, local countries’ ICT infrastructure development, providing concessional and non-concessional funds, establishing training centers as well as launching research and development programs. As China has launched digital Silk Road (DSR) initiatives, such as installation of 5G network, improving artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, easy and cheap access to cloud computing, facilitating e-commerce and mobile payment systems, supporting with surveillance technology, building smart cities, and assisting with other high-tech initiatives in the global South countries, it is important to examine how these projects impact these countries in terms of technological changes, social changes, economic changes, environmental changes, and cooperation dynamic changes by being aligned with their national ICT goals. For that, the author will review news, policy papers, government document, and journal articles. For impact assessment, the Impact Assessment Toolkit for Cross-Border Cooperation will be used to investigate and summarise the contribution of China's Digital Silk Road project in the local context. Overall, this will be a systematic and evidence-based study that will critically evaluate the impact and alignment of China's Digital Silk Road with the ICT goals in global South countries. This study is significant as there is a lack of studies that have examined the challenges and methodologies used for cross-border project impact evolution in the global South countries, especially regarding China's Digital Silk Road project.