China trying to develop world ‘built on censorship and surveillance’
Al JazeeraApr 28
Report: China's Digital Silk Road Spreading Repression
Image copyright: Getty Images/Stringer/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The Facts
The UK-based human rights group Article 19 has claimed that China's Digital Silk Road, launched in 2015, is exporting digital authoritarianism across the world.
The watchdog has alleged that Cambodia, Nepal, and Thailand have been moving toward their version of the Chinese Great Firewall, while Malaysia favors Beijing's digital governance model.
The Spin
Anti-China narrative
China has sought to paint its Digital Silk Road as a harmless project to build digital infrastructure and expand connectivity, hiding its true intentions of turning its authoritarian model of digital governance into an alternative to the rights-based approach to the internet. China is undermining civil liberties abroad and more must be done to protect populations from this malicious interference.
Pro-China narrative
The West has all too often focused on surveillance and espionage when it comes to Chinese projects, so it isn't surprising that one of its publicly funded, so-called non-governmental organizations has purposefully neglected to acknowledge how the Digital Silk Road benefits the Global South. Instead of whining, the West should join Beijing in helping developing countries.