The Digital Silk Road between National Rhetoric and Provincial Ambitions

Highlights

• The DSR is not a cohesive, unified project.

• Following an early period of engagement after its launch in 2015, the central government has been steadily disengaging with the initiative. This may reflect the changing international landscape, especially in the tech field, an inward turn towards state regulation of the tech industry and a renewed emphasis on self-reliance and indigenous innovation.

• Provinces use its rhetoric selectively to serve their own goals, as do Chinese tech companies, which also often avoid the DSR rhetoric to refrain from being conflated with the government.

• Its impact, and more generally the impact of Chinese digital technologies in the Global South, remains under-explored.