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{"id":7060,"date":"2022-11-01T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.pro.radio\/wp12\/general\/the-subways-tour-diary-days-6-10\/"},"modified":"2023-04-21T18:08:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T17:08:42","slug":"chinatech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.channelradio.co.uk\/chinatech\/","title":{"rendered":"China Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

What the West\u2019s rejection of Chinese tech really means<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Dario Betti, CEO of The Mobile Ecosystem Forum<\/strong><\/p>\n

State-sponsored spying and cyber-attacks have been happening since before the birth of the internet. So why is the western world so concerned about digital security right now?<\/p>\n

In March 2023, the short video app TikTok, was challenged by the USA Congress bipartisan committee over its Chinese ownership. TikTok\u2019s parent company ByteDance shared details of a $1.5 billion project with Oracle Corp designed to safeguard data and content from its 150 million American users from Chinese influence. But, despite this, the members of the energy and commerce committee remained unmoved.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI still believe that the Beijing communist government will still control and have the ability to influence what you\u2019re doing<\/em>,\u201d said democratic congressman Frank Pallone. Multiple government and legislative bodies have banned Tik Tok usage by its employees based on fears of profiling and tracing technologies.<\/p>\n

It is not just data spying that concerns the West. Another reason is the anticipated ubiquity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and these being used as trojan horses for attacks. With multiple connected devices in any one home, there is a greater potential to inflict damage on a national level. If every washing machine in the UK switched on simultaneously, for example, it could overload the National Grid while also causing a temporary water shortage.<\/p>\n

That being said, these new attack vectors have been widely known for a while now. Taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, security is simply the tip of a very large iceberg. What lies underneath are issues of power and money.<\/p>\n

In the bigger geopolitics picture, cyber security is really about cyber politics and cyber economics. Cyber security is more visible at the moment, partly due to things like spy balloons and Huawei being designated \u2018high risk\u2019 in the UK and USA (among others). Over the next decade, we will see cyber concerns change the global political and economic status quo.<\/p>\n

The End of Globalisation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Globalisation of supply chains has been the status quo since the late 1980s. China became the world\u2019s factory, developing its economy using cheap labour and a wealth of natural resources. The trade-off for cheap, innovative products has been a reduction in security. As standards became globalised, imports were less closely monitored.<\/p>\n

However, China has now reached the stage of being an affluent country with a thriving middle class. In fact, they are now the largest single market in the world, making China less interested in the global economy.<\/p>\n

As such, there is a move away from globalisation. Prices are rising and China is starting to dominate both economically and technologically. Feeling threatened, the Western world is seeking greater protection of its economy and technology.<\/p>\n

The current Western concern around securing networks and devices will extend outward to cover the entire supply chain, allowing countries to secure economic and political power while still sharing in technological advances.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s unlikely that we\u2019ll return to the protectionist policies of the early 20th century, we will see a greater bifurcation of technology. We are already seeing it when it comes to things like semiconductors and applications \u2500 there is one set of technologies operating in the West, one in China, another in Russia, and so on.<\/p>\n

Changing Pace of Innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zooming out, it seems clear that the world moves in big cycles, shifting back and forth between protectionism and globalisation. In the coming, more protected, cycle, consumers will still enjoy a lot of the benefits of technology but things like 6G will take longer to roll out and likely cost much more.<\/p>\n

The growing bifurcation of technologies and protection of national interests will likely lead to a slowing of innovation. We are already seeing tech giants cutting jobs in anticipation of things slowing down, readjusting the levels of investment that delivered the tech boom of the past two decades.<\/p>\n

And with China no longer serving as the world\u2019s factory, products will also become more expensive. Shifting manufacturing out of China will likely cause a lot of friction and disruption of supply chains in the near future. In the longer term, however, this shift may help rebalance job creation and wealth distribution, especially in developing regions like Africa.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the learnings and development will still be shared; the global market won\u2019t be closed just yet. Rather, organisations, like the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), will step in to become facilitators of collaboration and development, helping manufacturers, software engineers and application developers work closely together to create technologies that work seamlessly across different regions, networks and devices.<\/p>\n

Control of Standards<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the ways globalisation has helped technology work seamlessly over the past few decades is through aligned global standards. This has helped to ensure that development and innovation have remained open yet still relatively secure.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, China has been careful to keep itself somewhat removed from these global standards while still using them to manufacture technology. As such, there is essentially a \u2018Chinese internet\u2019 that differs from the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

As China stops playing manufacturer and grows into a large, mature market, the rest of the world has come to recognise the power that this separation has allowed the Chinese government. In its internal market, China can control technologies, social media platforms, applications, and information centrally \u2013 something the global West is ideologically opposed to.<\/p>\n

Yet, as technology companies have grown, so too has the need to gain some level of control over how technologies and information are used. If Facebook is bigger than any individual country and there is no control over how they use data, they have the potential to become incredibly powerful, as illustrated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.<\/p>\n

As a result, the EU and US are now going down a path of trying to control various internet players. The pushback has come in the form of decentralised Web 3.0 which provides new de facto standards. Concerned about sovereignty and security, national governments are trying to reign in Web 3.0 technologies and\/or create their own.<\/p>\n

This may end up in much more localised standards and technologies. The UK government, for example, is currently working on a central bank digital currency (CBDC), based on Web 3.0 principles. Much like other cryptocurrencies, the UK CBDC may operate using different standards to other countries.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see whether Web 3.0 will become Chinese vs the rest of the world or whether there will be a more granular differentiation of digital standards. It already seems that the EU is challenging the dominance of US-based tech giants by developing its own standards, such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), to try to gain greater control and regulation of digital markets and services.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

End-to-end protection of service delivery will likely lead to a bifurcation of technologies and standards, potentially creating localised services tied to particular nations, regions, and\/or technology providers, and a shift away from globalisation.<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dario Betti is CEO of MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum)\u00a0a global trade body\u00a0established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across\u00a0the world. As\u00a0the voice of the mobile ecosystem, it focuses\u00a0on\u00a0cross-industry\u00a0best practices, anti-fraud\u00a0and monetisation.\u00a0The Forum\u00a0provides\u00a0its\u00a0members with global and cross-sector platforms\u00a0for networking, collaboration and advancing industry solutions.<\/p>\n

Web:\u00a0https:\/\/mobileecosystemforum.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Twitter:\u00a0 https:\/\/twitter.com\/mef<\/a><\/p>\n

LinkedIn:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/mobile-ecosystem-forum<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/MobileEcosystemForum\/<\/a><\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

TikTok \u2013\u00a0https:\/\/www1.cbn.com\/cbnnews\/us\/2022\/july\/how-china-uses-tiktok-to-collect-your-personal-data-and-why-you-should-be-concerned#:~:text=TikTok%20is%20the%20most%20downloaded%20app%20in%20the,platform%2C%20along%20with%20users%27%20locations%20and%20behavioral%20information<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Huawei \u2013\u00a0 https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/huawei-legal-notices-issued<\/a>Cambridge Analytica scandal \u2013\u00a0 https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-64075067<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"