What Critics Get Wrong About China’s Digital Silk Road

The standard Western critique of China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) runs as follows: Beijing exports surveillance technology and authoritarian governance norms to developing countries under the guise of digital development, creating technological dependencies that serve Chinese strategic interests at the expense of local populations and global digital freedom. It is a compelling narrative. It is also incomplete.

As my research on DSR governance across Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates shows, the initiative operates through what scholars call digitalpolitik: the strategic deployment of digital infrastructure to pursue national interests, shape governance norms, and embed geopolitical influence. The question is not whether China pursues strategic objectives through digital infrastructure – of course it does. So does every major digital power. The question is why so many governments across the developing world continue to deepen DSR engagement despite sustained Western pressure to do otherwise.

The answer is structural, not ideological. China’s cyber sovereignty framework, which asserts state authority over digital infrastructure and data flows, resonates with governments that have watched U.S.-headquartered platform companies set the terms of data governance, determine content moderation standards, and capture the majority of digital value generated in their markets. These governments are not naive about Chinese strategic interests. They are making rational calculations about which form of external dependency is more manageable, and which partner offers more useful technology at lower cost with fewer governance conditions attached.

This is the part of the story that Western policymakers consistently miss. The DSR’s appeal is not primarily a product of Chinese soft power or propaganda. It is a product of the asymmetries and exclusions built into the existing digital order. A governance framework that has in practice served as a vehicle for the incumbency advantages of established digital powers is not going to be defended successfully by those same powers asserting its neutrality.

None of this means the DSR is without genuine risks. My comparative case studies document real concerns: surveillance capability transfer in Ethiopia, data sovereignty vulnerabilities in Indonesia, and the geopolitical complications of deep Chinese technology integration in the UAE. These risks are not fabricated by Western critics. But they cannot be addressed by containment strategies alone, because containment does not offer developing countries a credible alternative. It asks them to accept digital exclusion in the name of security.

The more honest and more effective approach is to engage the normative contest directly. This means acknowledging that states have legitimate interests in sovereignty over their digital environments. It means designing alternative connectivity initiatives with genuine governance capacity-building rather than infrastructure provision alone. And it means accepting that a global digital governance framework capable of commanding broad legitimacy will need to accommodate state sovereignty concerns alongside openness and rights protections.

The risk that deserves most attention is not Chinese dominance of the global digital order. It is the permanent fragmentation of that order into competing technological spheres with no shared governance architecture. That outcome serves no one’s long-term interests, including China’s. Building the institutional foundations to prevent it requires engaging Beijing as a governance interlocutor, not just a strategic competitor.

The splinternet is not inevitable, but avoiding it requires more than containment.