CHINA'S DIGITAL SILK ROAD: Setting Standards, Powering Growth.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen

CHINA'S DIGITAL SILK ROAD

Setting Standards, Powering Growth

Author: Gerald Chan

Published by: Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2022, 183pp, 44 [pounds sterling].

This book is the latest in an impressive trilogy on China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by University of Auckland Professor Gerald Chan. The first, Understanding China's New Diplomacy: Silk Roads and Bullet Trains (Edward Elgar, 2018), focused on overland connectivity and highspeed train lines. The second, China's Maritime Silk Road: Advancing Global Development? (Edward Elgar, 2020), focused on maritime connectivity by investments in shipping and port development. The current volume presents China's aims, leadership and achievements in digital technology and international connectivity. It should be read in the context of the land and sea aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Conveniently, Chan provides an initial chapter summarising the impressive advances of the BRI from 2013 to mid-2022. This chapter documents the growing magnitude of BRI decisions, institutions, agreements and projects ranging from Asia and Oceania to Western Europe and North and South America that now link China to 140 countries and 32 international organisations. Readers will find this chapter a useful source of information and an aid to appreciating the unprecedented scope of China's initiatives. As Chan, with statistics to back it up, asserts:

Never in the history of humankind has such a large infrastructure programme been attempted as China's Belt and Road Initiative ... And never has there been such as huge deployment of digital connections across the land and the seas as its digital Silk Road (DSR). Turning to the digital Silk Road, Chan divides this complex topic into four policy sectors: digital infrastructure; next-generation technologies; e-commerce and digital free-trade zones; and digital diplomacy and internet governance. Four chapters then follow, on

* the institutions leading China's digitalisation, led by Huawei,

* the initiatives to introduce digital currency and e-commerce,

* the sponsorship of fibre-optic cables across the globe to convey digital information economically, and

* China's space programme for communication.

Readers interested in the political implications of China's BRI and DSR initiatives will welcome a thought-provoking chapter on 'Digital diplomacy and internet governance' followed by a substantive conclusion. These focus on China's explicit rivalry with the United States...