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

As part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has recently launched the “Digital Silk Road” program, focused on investments in digital technologies and infrastructure in countries that are part of its loosely reimagined Silk Road. This program is seen as having the potential to create a second, China-led internet, which splits from the US-centered one and is ruled by a different set of priorities and values. Are the Digital Silk Road and the global expansion of Chinese tech companies prefiguring a future with two internets: an existing one that is US-led and founded on market-driven ideology, and a new, alternative one that is China-led and characterized by state control, national boundaries, and national governance over what began as a borderless new space? What values and politics are built into the various components of the Digital Silk Road, and is - or how is - the internet they are creating fundamentally different from the current one? The project will employ qualitative and ethnographic methods, digital methods, and document analysis to understand the emergence of the Digital Silk Road from the ground-up and from the comparative perspective of business, governments, and ordinary people in four countries: China, where Digital Silk Road policies, finances, devices, online platforms and apps originate; Kazakhstan, a key player in Central Asia; Myanmar, whose economic dependence on China is the cause of considerable ambivalence; and Cambodia, that under Prime Minister Hun Sen has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Chinese investments.The project aims at illuminating the deployment of the Digital Silk Road to see what this second internet might consist of; seeks to understand what values and politics are embedded in it; and explores how they are received and negotiated in the countries concerned, thus contributing to the wider debate on values, ethics, and technology.