Digital Infrastructures Along the New Silk Road: A Mixed-methods Exploration of China's Digital Investments in Its Borderland Regions

Project Information

DIGISILK

Grant agreement ID: 850891

DOI

10.3030/850891

Project closed

EC signature date 20 February 2020

Start date 1 March 2020

End date 28 February 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 236,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 236,00

Coordinated by

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DIGISILK (Digital Infrastructures Along the New Silk Road: A Mixed-methods Exploration of China's Digital Investments in Its Borderland Regions)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Chinese tech companies and the Chinese government are an increasingly important player in the global digital world, through their hardware, software, and participation to governance initiatives. Is this creating the potential for a second, China-led internet, which splits from the US-centered one and is ruled by a different set of priorities and values, as many claim? Will countries have to choose between the two, in particular countries whose digital ecosystems are still emerging?

DIGISILK explores the assumptions, the myths and the reality behind these propositions in China and in three countries that are seeing a significant influx of Chinese digital investments, partly because of the Digital Silk Road program, the area of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that focuses on the digital. The DIGISILK team employs qualitative and ethnographic methods, digital methods, and document analysis to un¬derstand Chinese tech in these three countries from the ground-up and comparative perspective of business, governments, and ordinary people. The project aims at going beyond the headlines and understanding what is really happening on the ground: is the Digital Silk Road a cohesive project? Is Chinese tech creating a parallel internet that is incompatible with existing systems? How are ordinary people experiencing Chinese tech in the three countries, and how do Chinese people involved in the tech industry see the globalization of their products and services? How are the values and politics embedded in tech (both Chinese and Western) received and negotiated in the countries concerned?

DIGISILK’s main objective is to trace the travels of Chinese tech from where it is created to the three countries we focus on, and to connect it to local historical legacies, current socio-economic conditions, and emerging digital eco-systems. The ultimate goal is to understand whether there is a different set of values being embedded in digital technologies, and how that might shape the future of the internet and of the digital world.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Project Set-up
As the project was delayed by the COVID19 pandemic, the PI started an extensive literature review and the training of undergraduate students from King’s College London who worked on a series of small projects related to the Digital Silk Road. This activity has been highly successful among students, and so far nine have been trained to be ‘research apprentices,’ working alongside the main team on stand-alone small projects.
Recruitment and desk work
In 2021 and early 2022 the project recruited and onboarded a project manager, a postdoc researcher for China, a researcher for Kazakhstan, a researcher for Myanmar, and a digital methods researcher. The team spent the first few months together in London, working on their ethics protocol, on translating the website content in 3 languages, on an extensive literature review in English, Chinese and Russian, on collecting and analyzing primary sources related to the Digital Silk Road, and on experimenting with digital methods and on what kind of questions they are suitable to answer in conjunction with qualitative and documentary analysis. The team traveled to Kazakhstan to start field work and gather a variety of data in June 2022, and has participated to a number of dissemination events (see below)
Data collection
-document analysis: the team has collected, organized into a database that will be made public in 2023, and started to analyze primary documents related to the Digital Silk Road, mostly in Chinese. Collection of news items and non-academic resources in local languages related to Chinese tech in the three countries is also ongoing.
-fieldwork has began in Kazakhstan in June 2022, with the researcher for the country carrying out interviews and observations, as well as participating to events related to digitization. We have also established local partnerships, and are organizing a public conference/workshop on digitization in Central Asia for the Spring.
-fieldwork has also began in China in October 2022, but there is no significant data collection yet.
-the digital methods researcher has started studying data flows to/from Kazakhstan, and to collaborate with the rest of the team to define research questions that can be answered from both a technical and a social perspective.
Research dissemination
The team has started to participate to academic conferences as well as public events, both as a team (e.g. organizing a panel on “The Digital Silk Road between Internet Sovereignty and Globalization Imperatives” at the 19th Chinese Internet Research Conference, where each team member presented work-in-progress) and as individuals. Project updates are also available on the project’s website, available in English, Chinese, Russian and Burmese and on its social media channels, https://twitter.com/Digisilk_kcl and https://www.instagram.com/digisilk_kcl/
Academic publications are expected to begin in 2023.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Progress beyond the state of the art can only come from field work in the four countries, which unfortunately has been significantly delayed by both the COVID19 pandemic and by political turmoil in three of the four countries. This has made travel extremely challenging, and thus delayed primary data collection. The initial findings from Kazakhstan upend the common belief that Chinese tech is splitting local digital eco-systems away from the ‘global internet’ but it is too early to be more specific. The analysis also needs a comparative perspective from all the countries to arrive at more theoretically-informed conclusions.
Significant progress is however being made in digital methods, where we are experimenting with novel approaches that have the potential of being truly innovative. However, this work has also started quite recently, and will need more time to be fully developed.
As far as future work is concerned, all researchers should be in their respective field sites in 2023 and early 2024, which is when we expect to see breakthroughs in our findings, first in data collections and then in theoretical and methodological advancements.

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