China's desire to become a 'cyber superpower' is becoming the most controversial aspect of the Belt and Road Initiative
slipped from the quay at Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, and steamed out of Iron Bottom Sound. For weeks the boat had been a familiar sight as it finished its job of laying 4,700km of fibre-optic cable from Sydney to Honiara on Guadalcanal and 730km among the main outlying islands, with another branch heading to Port Moresby, capital of neighbouring Papua New Guinea. Less than a fifth of Solomon Islanders have access to the internet.
Yet Australia has taken its eye off the Pacific in recent years, as China has stolen a march. Two-way trade with the Pacific has grown tenfold, from under $1bn in 2005 to over $8bn in 2018. Chinese tourists to the region jumped from under 4,000 a year a decade ago to more than 140,000 in 2017. China’s leaders extol the potential forco-operation with Pacific nations. A “new Pacific diplomacy” has gathered pace since President Xi Jinping made his first trip to the region in late 2014.
Huawei’s loss, in other words, is just one battle in a larger contest. Increasingly, the digital Silk Road, which Mr Xi declared at the secondforum last year to be a priority for co-operation, is gaining prominence. China, he says, must become a “cyber superpower”. That is fast becoming the most controversial aspect of theGDigital spending along the belt and road still lags that on energy and other hard-infrastructure projects.
While cheaper telecoms and easier ways to pay are welcome, China’s digital initiatives concern those who care about open societies. First, along with Chinese standards some countries are also signing up to its digital authoritarianism. In setting up telecoms systems, Huawei and others happily help states snoop on communications. Without its citizens’ consent, Zimbabwe supplies data to China’s facial-recognition programmes.
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