In 2015, SAC issued the Belt and Road Initiative for Standards Connectivity (2015–17). This was followed by the Action Plan for Standards Connectivity to Build the Belt and Road Initiative (2018–20).

When Chinese entities build infrastructure projects internationally, they tend to do so according to Chinese standards.

eijing’s size and centralization allow it to leverage trade, investment, and industry partnerships to proliferate de facto standards

In August 2020, Tian Shihong, director of SAC, met with DIN’s chair of the executive board. They discussed the ISO Strategy 2030, the digitalization of standards, and the governance of ISO/IEC JTC 1.6

The commission’s work feeds directly into international standards bodies, including ISO and IEC (e.g., ISO/IEC Joint Working Group 21).60

China has secured a close standards partnership with Germany in precisely the emerging domains where Germany excels and which China prioritizes, including advanced manufacturing.

with Germany emphasizes the auto industry

China’s standards engagement with the UK prioritizes smart cities and graphene

ith ASEAN partners, Beijing tends to focus on standards for smart manufacturing, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and financial information—

The two parties also operate a China-ASEAN standards research center and have identified a set of “major projects for China-ASEAN standards cooperation.”

Beijing channels much of its standards cooperation with ASEAN countries through the regional organization itself.

China reports 98 standardization agreements with 55 different countries

But in China’s case, such cooperation is asymmetric.

he SAC’s Main Points of National Standardization Work in 2008 notes that China should “strengthen exchanges and cooperation with African countries and strive for support from African countries in international standardization activities.”

Huawei proposed a fixed 5G standard in cooperation with ETSI.

At the Reno Conference...almost all Chinese companies coordinated tacitly to support the polar code led by Huawei as a control channel coding standard....This shows strong nationalism. While on the surface, the 5G international standard competition is a competition between technical solutions, at a deeper level, it is dominated by nationalism....This is particularly obvious among Chinese companies.48

to standards also means that the proposals it brings to SDOs tend to align with the strategic interests of the Chinese government and be backed by the broader ecosystem of Chinese actors.

to “submit four Beidou-3 B1C signal technology proposals” to 3GPP.4

companies engage with a centralized platform to develop and hone their standard recommendations before taking them to international standards bodies

of the fifteen 3GPP chairs and vice chairs in open working groups affiliated with Chinese entities, 60% work for state-owned enterprises.

“other countries’ delegates act like individuals. China’s act like a group.”

73 are headquartered in the United States, but that does not mean they coordinate or respond to U.S. national directives.

One of the most important points is interconnection in telecommunications, which both improves the level of interconnection and interoperability of international communications and promotes a new generation of ICT....In the current complex background of the world, the issue of standards in the field of international telecommunications has become one of the focal issues of global governance

for example, an October 2021 meeting of ITU-T Study Group 20, dedicated to IoT and smart cities. This meeting addressed 94 total standards contributions, 53 of which were proposed by Chinese actors. South Korea had the next most contributions with 21.

the branch of ITU responsible for ICT standards, than any other country, with 34 posts out of a total of 225

what that means for tomorrow’s ecosystem.

Beijing’s influence over the international standards ecosystem remains limited.

e that standards bodies are structurally sound and that Beijing—whatever its ambitions—neither does nor will claim disproportionate influence over them.

China’s presence is not outsized relative to the size of its market, nor is it the most significant player in ISO or IEC

This growth in Chinese representation correlates with an increase in Chinese-led standards in ISO and IEC: between 2013 and 2020, these increased by 4.1 times to reach 788.

More empirically, ISO data suggests a correlation between working group chairs and the publication of standards suggested by Chinese players: approximately 50% of ISO technical committees with SAC secretariats published standards recommended by China in 2019 or 2020. Overall, only around 25% of ISO technical committees did.35

These subgroups also have management teams (e.g., secretariats, chairs, and vice chairs) that grant influence over standardization agendas.

takes place in domain-specific subgroups (i.e., technical committees or working groups)

The section also finds that Beijing’s centralization may allow it to take advantage of representation in SDOs in a way that other national governments cannot.

competitive asymmetries that might result.

Participation in SSOs and SDOs tends to be an expensive, laborious, and knowledge-intensive process. Meetings are long and take place all over the world, membership costs can be high, and progress tends to be measured over long-term time horizons.

These include monetary rewards for companies that propose international standards; training for delegates, or “standardization talents”; and financial support to join standardization organizations.32

for “expand[ing] the number of participating members in ISO technical committees or subcommittees.”

The United States tends to follow a market-driven approach: companies form standards of their own volition and through their own partnerships, with little government attention. By contrast, the European Union and its member governments are more involved in the process.27And in China, most standard setting is government-led, and companies and academic entities receive state support for participation in international standardization.2

the ASEAN Consultative Committee for Standards and Quality sits under the purview of the ASEAN economic ministers.

“if you’re an industry, and your standards group wants to make a global standard, ultimately it will have to bubble up to ISO/IEC JTC 1” or ITU

ETSI, Japan’s Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) and Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC), China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI), South Korea’s Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA), and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) of the United States together formed the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in 1998.

the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) focuses on standards for, as the name suggests, the World Wide Web.

ETSI’s committees cover everything from emergency communications to IPv6.

it has hundreds of individual members representing government, private, and academic sectors

ITU-T develops technical standards to ensure interconnectivity and interoperability of international ICT systems

ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1)

NSBs can be government (e.g., the SAC) or nongovernment (e.g., the American National Standards Institute) entities, or a combination of the two.

Membership for both ISO and IEC is composed of one representative per country, subordinate to that country’s national standards body (NSB)

SO, IEC, and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Together, these three organizations constitute the World Standards Cooperation (WSC)

https://joryburson.com/standardization-project.

A standards consultant interviewed for this report describes it as a “rat’s nest.”2

Consortia are like SDOs but focus on specific industry verticals.

nternational standard-developing organizations (SDOs), standard-setting organizations (SSOs), and market-based consortia

“With the birth of the fourth industrial revolution, the international standards competition pattern...has undergone significant changes. The competitive advantage in standards is shifting from developed countries such as the United States to emerging economies represented by China.

“the country that takes the lead in dominance over international standards will enjoy the first-mover advantage in the fourth industrial revolution.

Such integration “can only be realized when a globally consistent international standard is formulated.”

he nature of digital technologies is likely to make standards more strategically significant.

The last industrial revolution proved as much—the United States, Europe, South Korea, and Japan were able to dominate in large part because they controlled international standards.

including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, IPV6 (Internet Protocol version 6), new infrastructure, information and information infrastructure security, the industrial internet and intelligent manufacturing, and unmanned aerial vehicles, smart cars, smart ships, smart roads, and smart car data collection.

participate in at least half of all standards drafting and revision in recognized international standard-setting bodies,

In 2015 the State Council issued the National Standardization System Construction and Development Plan (2016–2020).

Beijing sees today’s industrial revolution as a chance to challenge developed economies’ long-standing control of international standards.

The Main Points of National Standardization Work released by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) in 2008

a non-zero-sum,

The company reportedly stacked delegations with supporters, stuffed ballots, and outright bought votes. This campaign caused an uproar: movements erupted calling on members to vote against OOXML, and IBM threatened to leave ISO and other software-relevant standards bodies. But the campaign also worked, and ISO ratified OOXML.

standards constitute the rules of new-type geopolitical power

entralization allows it to take advantage of that voice, ensuring coordination among its commercial, academic, and government entities—both in developing standards (

Size grants China a significant voice

Beijing benefits from asymmetric structural advantages.

Beijing pursues its standards strategy through international standard-setting bodies, such as the ISO; international investments and commercial footholds, such as infrastructure construction; and regional and national standard-setting organizations, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Association Française de Normalisation.

standards are difficult to uproot.

ill have to pay Huawei to license its technology.

a key factor in enabling market dominance

permit interoperability across countries, technologies, and industries

Technical standards are established norms or requirements for engineering or technical criteria.

for greater transparency in international standard setting, defending against China’s efforts to co-opt cooperation, and promoting a proactive standards development agenda.

n effective response to China’s standards strategy will demand international coordination among private- and public-sector actors across not only formal standards bodies but also informal commercial and industrial partnerships that shape the standards environment on the ground

China’s influence over standards is both growing and greater

the lure of China’s market incentivizes international players to comply with Beijing’s national standards.

China influence over the commercial ecosystems that develop de jure standards and define de facto ones.

In the process, it benefits from size, as well as centralization that allows it to leverage that size by ensuring coordination among Chinese actors both in developing standards and in promoting them internationally.

Standard setting promises Chinese commercial players an advantage in defining digital infrastructure.

China’s Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group (XCMG) operates an industrial digital platform in Germany that focuses on technology transfer and talent training for its operations in Germany and in China.

hese platforms facilitate the transfer of advanced manufacturing capabilities and talent training from leaders in the field such as Germany

Foreign digital platforms that compete and partner with China include Microsoft’s Azure, PTC’s ThingWorx, Siemens’ MindSphere, and SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform.

In the developing world, it is working with countries that lack energy access and may assess that current energy distribution systems are unfair.

In the developed world, GEIDCO is appealing to environmental interests in clean energies and efficiencies.

To develop the platform from the technology infrastructure side, State Grid and China’s other state monopoly in the power sector, China Southern Power Grid, are working with Huawei’s global energy business unit to use its data and cloud services. Huawei provides these firms cloud-based data services for their smart-grid operations in China.

CEPRI also oversees the development and operation of China’s domestic digital platform for electric power allocation and trading.

he Global Energy Interconnection and Development Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO),

The plan promotes Chinese renewable technologies and products (wind, solar, and hydropower) and State Grid’s ultra-high voltage AC/DC hybrid-power grid that it can overlay on traditional grids to transmit renewable energy.

tate Grid,

Si m i la rly, China’s national blockchain technology could be used within these digital payments, which could allow greater interoperability and also points of visibility and control for the state

In January 2022, Chinese Android and Apple app stores offered a pilot digital currency “e-CNY” app that was developed by PBOC’s Digital Currency Institute for use in trial cities and locations in China hosting the Olympics.

seek to gain advantages in standardizing the technologies and systems it is using that could in turn be adopted by other countries.

to issue a sovereign digital currency as part of efforts to internationalize the renminbi, reduce dependence on the global U.S. dollar system, and safeguard China’s monetary sovereignty

t the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Summit in March 2021, China submitted a proposal on global digital governance that discusses its views for standards and norms on cross-border digital transactions, risk supervision, and the use and ownership of data.

Alibaba almost certainly gains data and insights from the manufacturing and logistics firms that use its platform.

Ahead of the October 2021 G-20 Leaders’ Summit, Xi Jinping announced China’s intent to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), an agreement launched by Singapore, New Zealand, and Chile

The Zhejiang FTZ plans promote the global role of eWTP and Zhejiang’s role as one of two national agriculture and energy stockpiling bases.

The Chinese government initially proposed the concept for eWTP at the 2016 G-20 Leaders’ Summit held in Hangzhou.

China’s digital industrial platforms are partnered with advanced manufacturing leaders in Germany to gain competencies

to diversify away from its dependence on the U.S. dollar and promote alternative payment systems with other countries

n trade, Alibaba’s eWTP (electronic World Trade Platform) is leading the Chinese government’s efforts to create digital trade zones with partner countries and working to build out China’s global logistics capabilities to support this platform.

to secure greater access to global data, increase its control over information flows in third countries, shape the emerging digital ecosystems in developing countries, and ultimately exert greater influence over the global digital domain.

The Trump administration’s efforts to ban TikTok and WeChat from the U.S. market due to national security concerns faced pushback in part because of how such a restriction might curtail cross-border communication options.

Most international policy tools leveraged thus far to protect against China’s digital platforms and the information superiority they might provide the Chinese government are tactical in nature and consider risks on a case-by-case basis.

hese digital platforms are also breaking into sensitive and otherwise highly regulated foreign markets that are considered critical infrastructure, including finance, health, media, public utilities, telecommunications, and government services.

China’s policies restrict foreign access to its digital market and increasingly curtail the ability of foreign firms to collect or leverage data from China.

Data is increasingly the underlying source of value in economic and geopolitical activity.

Its platforms may appear to be open, but that openness tends to be limited to areas where China seeks to obtain certain foreign expertise.

China’s OpenAtom Foundation—a Chinese alternative to the Linux Foundation

Huawei is hosting its operating system, HarmonyOS, on Gitee in an effort to expand globally despite U.S. export controls.

Gitee

The Chinese government’s industrial plans for information technology and software development promote the use of open-source technology and its global community of expertise to advance innovation within an “open, collaborative, and international ecosystem.

China is advancing interoperability and common infrastructure and standards that, while often used in global markets to promote commercial development,

a framework blockchain standard project.

many companies are developing and deploying blockchain technologies in applications that promote decentralization and anonymity and attempt to circumvent government oversight.

China is aiming to issue a national blockchain standard in 2022.

The Hainan Free Trade Zone is China’s first blockchain pilot zone. In a nod to state priorities, its plan is called Secure, Sharing, Compliance+ (SSC+).54 At a Hainan trade forum in December 2019, participating countries signed a digital agreement with blockchain provisions.

in financial payments, supply chain management, and e-governance.

Measures since 2020 related to antitrust, privacy, and data appear designed to ensure that the state has access to its digital platforms and that these platforms open their proprietary services to one another to facilitate innovation and development of the sector.

China’s recent actions against its technology champions appear aimed at state centralization and convergence.

This use of both private and state-owned companies to increase Chinese influence and control over international digital ecosystems is a core pillar of Beijing’s digital strategy.

n 2018, for example, the Chinese government integrated the national ID card with Tencent’s QR code and is now leveraging Tencent facial recognition technology to enforce its rules restricting minors’ access to gaming domestically.

Convergence aligns with and fuels centralized government control over platforms and their information. It may also make China’s platforms uniquely competitive and powerful.

In Russia, Alibaba’s AliExpress created a joint venture with MegaFun, Mail.ru, and Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. Alibaba has acquired Trendyol (Turkey), Daraz (Pakistan), and Lazada (Singapore) and invested in other firms in India and Indonesia.

ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly in November 2017 allowed TikTok to immediately add an estimated 80 million U.S. users to its platform

Tencent has developed its global gaming network largely through investments in foreign gaming firms, including Supercell and Epic Games.

are also expanding overseas through foreign partnerships and investments.

Many of China’s industrial and innovation platforms use foreign platforms, such as Microsoft’s GitHub, for cross-border technology transfer and collaboration.

Baidu’s autonomous driving platform, Apollo, is based on open-source Android software and operates on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.

Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent are examples of platform providers that have rapidly expanded their global cloud services.

any social media and super apps, such as TikTok and WeChat, use a model that allows their platforms to reside within operating systems on mobile phones, such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

BRI leverages the provision of digital infrastructure and systems, as well as preferential financing, to bypass normal trade liberalization reciprocity rules and allow China to expand in foreign markets without having to open its own market in return.

This asymmetry has allowed Chinese firms to develop within China in a protected market and then expand globally, while U.S. digital platforms are kept out of the world’s largest and fastest-growing market.

Due to the size of China’s market and its focus on mobile networks and digitalization, in absolute terms China’s domestic market represents around 40% of global e-commerce.

Chinese firms are able to grow in the protected, insulated, and government-bolstered Chinese market with little international competition and the advantages of building a globally significant position by leveraging China’s enormous domestic user base.

Until 2012, Chinese technology firms generally pursued a copycat strategy in which they created digital platforms for Chinese users that mimicked leading U.S. digital platforms. Alibaba began in 1999 as a competitor to Amazon, and in 2003 it developed Alipay as a competitor to PayPal. Baidu started as a competitor to Google in search engine and mapping services and developed a competitor video and movie service (iQIYI) and Chinese version of Wikipedia (Baike). Sina Weibo began as a challenger to Twitter. In 2011, Tencent launched WeChat to challenge Facebook’s WhatsApp. In 2012, ByteDance began as a news aggregator, Toutiao, which used an algorithm the company refined in 2016 to launch a short video business, Douyin (the domestic version of TikTok), to challenge Facebook and YouTube.

China’s digital platforms both advance and build off this global construction of digital infrastructure, including transnational land and submarine cable networks, fiber-optic cables, satellite navigation networks (BeiDou), data centers, and related cloud services.

Chinese digital policies outline intentions for China to own and control the intellectual property and standards in global technology value chains as part of broader efforts to gain a leadership position.

China has committed $1.4 trillion over the next five years to digital infrastructure, including in 5G and 6G, smart cities, and IoT applications for manufacturing.

China’s Internet Plus strategy,

While they also have their own commercial interests, Chinese technology firms and the digital platforms they develop and operate are closely tied to the Chinese state.

hina’s new data security law restricts cross-border data transfers, and the new personal information privacy law enhances the state’s authority over the collection and use of data

Since 2020, the Chinese government has strengthened its control over data, algorithms, and digital platform operations.

China still depends on certain foreign technology, hardware, and software to operate its platforms—including sensors, semiconductors, and high-end programmable logic controllers

The Chinese government has also tightened the ability to use workarounds such as VPNs.1

Beijing seeks to create alternative global digital platforms and related architecture that are centered on and controlled by China.

digital platforms are by nature disruptive to established businesses and sectors

China is developing digital platforms to promote Chinese technology and economic competitiveness, enhance political and social controls, and challenge current global trade, technology, energy, information, and financial networks by creating alternatives that it controls.

According to Shiji, over 56% of all hotels in the United States now use its technology in their stack.

A prominent example of a PRC firm operating in this area is China’s state-tied Shiji Group, which operates back-office software systems for the hospitality industry.

through partnerships with leaders in advanced manufacturing such as Germany,

Tencent’s WeChat

hey offer points of connection, exchange, and control.

they are generally understood to be internet-connected and software-based digital spaces that facilitate the exchange of information and the creation of value through the online interactions of businesses and individuals.

China’s digital strategy leverages one-sided market protections and access. Its leading digital platforms—such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, DiDi, and TikTok—have a significant global market share as a result of their dominant position in China’s massive domestic market.

by other governments that have sought to use antitrust authorities and other regulatory approaches to encourage innovation and competition.

In absolute terms, China’s domestic market represents around 40% of global e-commerce.1 It has an estimated 1.3 billion mobile internet users and is a top global market for mobile payments. Between 2015 and 2020, China’s digital economy grew faster than any other market, at an annual rate of almost 17%.

his statist approach keeps China’s domestic digital market walled off from foreign competition and global connections not controlled by China while Chinese firms create and expand China’s digital platforms offshore.

China’s digital platforms seek to operationalize its development efforts across the entire technology value chain in hardware, software, and related design, manufacturing, infrastructure, and services.

Digital platforms play a key role in this effort.

are controlled or influenced by China; China’s technology firms have a leadership position; and China governs a significant share of international information flows

These persistent asymmetries due to digital protectionism and state controls allow China to secure a global market position that could become increasingly difficult and costly to counter over time.

to access, analyze, and leverage wide swaths of global data across a range of platforms and applications

China seeks to operationalize its technology development efforts across the entire value chain in hardware, software, and related design, manufacturing, infrastructure, and services

he Chinese government’s global ambitions as conveyed through its Belt and Road Initiative and related Digital Silk Road plans and seek to leverage and integrate the hard and soft infrastructure that China’s firms have established or acquired overseas

China’s digital platforms are the likely place where the full range of China’s technology, economic, and geopolitical efforts, if successful, could converge and solidify China’s position in global markets.

Developing responses that better account for uncertainties around a technology’s trajectory or a country’s ability to translate concepts into capabilities.

Taking a more multidisciplinary approach to due diligence on decisions related to digital infrastructure.

Recalibrating data security policy and privacy frameworks to account for the fact that PRC regulations on each are not motivated by the same drivers as in liberal democracies.

decision-makers must bear in mind that digital technology is constantly evolving.

China’s export of digital infrastructure abroad is a critical element of its broader digital strategy.

eople’s Bank of China officials conduct monitoring using big-data analytics that flag unusual activity that might indicate illegal activity (as defined in the PRC). The People’s Bank of China might also seek to more closely monitor a specific subset of individuals and entities who are targets of the regime.

CEP is already integrated with digital payment technology such as Alipay, which is accepted globally

digital currency electronic payment (DCEP)

he real focus should be on the implications of DCEP as a financial technology.

The standardization also embeds a values system that ultimately runs against liberal democratic values

Chinese technology companies are comparable to U.S. companies in that they tend to occupy all layers of the “technology stack”: the physical layer, the network layer, and the application layer.

For example, one GTCOM product, Language Box, was reportedly integrated into a Huawei smart conferencing solution sold as part of smart-city packages.

Global Tone Communications Technology (GTCOM) is a company controlled by the Central Propaganda Department that engages in global big-data collection.

This does not mean that Hisense will use the data for purposes beyond business, but it does mean that the company has the ability to do so.

One such company, Hisense, is a leading global company that sells smart products at more affordable prices than its competitors (using the Roku TV interface).

In the United States, this data has been sold to political campaigns.

For China, there is strategic value in having access to data from which it can extract valuable information to maintain an internationally competitive edge.

These devices ultimately allow for greater visibility and transparency about the state of global supply chains.

Supply chains held up better during the pandemic than is often assumed, it argues, and greater self-sufficiency is likely to leave countries more vulnerable to future shocks, not less.

a surge in shipping delays, shortages of critical components and soaring prices.

by the emergence of complex supply chains, through which firms could efficiently produce all sorts of goods at low cost and enormous scale

Countries that conduct anti-satellite tests are tellingly defensive about them.

After an Indian test in 2019, the country’s foreign ministry claimed that, by deliberately choosing a target in a relatively low orbit, the resulting debris would “decay and fall back onto the Earth within weeks”. The battle, in other words, may be half-won already.

more on building “norms of responsible behaviour” than formal arms-control agreements—leaving other countries free to adopt bans without international pressure.

More than half of all active satellites are American, meaning that other countries would have less to lose if parts of Earth’s orbit became too dangerous to use.

Alongside $2.5bn in weapons shipments, America is thought to be supplying intelligence, including from satellites, to Ukraine’s army, to help that country fight Russia’s invasion.

This Kessler syndrome—named after the NASA scientist who first modelled the phenomenon in 1978—could leave important orbits unusable for decades.

SpaceX, an American firm, has permission to launch around 12,000 satellites for its Starlink orbital-internet service, more than have been launched since the Space Age began in 1957.

A typical test might generate over 100,000 pieces of debris, says Marlon Sorge at the Aerospace Corporation, a non-profit organisation based in California.

Four countries—America, China, India and Russia—have conducted such tests, most recently Russia in November last year.