Nicolás Pascual de la Parte
Ambassador at large on Cybersecurity and Hybrid Threats
In its planned rise to global power, China has identified the mastery of new disruptive technologies as the strategic platform on which to project its hegemonic position in the new world order. It has therefore designed a detailed medium-term program (“China: Vision 2035”), which includes a massive investment plan for research and development in 5G mobile telephony, automation and robotization of production processes and services, quantum computing, the Internet of Things, data management in the cloud, biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The proclaimed ultimate goal is to overtake the USA and thus become the world’s leading power.
China has undoubted comparative advantages in this race for technological hegemony, among others: long-term state planning with concrete and codified action plans, budgeted and monitored; virtually unlimited public funding; a huge domestic market reoriented towards domestic consumption; as well as strict social discipline. As a result of its planning and sustained effort, China is today at the forefront of new technologies with digital platforms and international operators leading the world rankings, both in “enabling” technologies such as those related to information and communication (China Telecom, China Mobile Ltd.), the new internet, and cell phone services (Huawei, ZTE), as well as in determining “finalist” technologies such as artificial intelligence. On the other hand, China monopolizes the production of 85% of the so-called “rare earths” used in the world, i.e. the 17 scarce minerals that are essential for the production of technological devices (cell phones, computers, semiconductors, batteries, cameras).
China sees its booming technological development as an instrument for achieving global economic, commercial, military and finally political hegemony, in fierce competition with the U.S. Both powers are far ahead of Europe in the field of new disruptive technologies, an advance that some experts put at around a decade. It is from this privileged position that Beijing is trying to influence and develop international regulatory frameworks for access to and use of cyberspace and the new Internet in line with its national interests, to some extent dissociating itself from the negotiations taking place within the specific working groups of the United Nations (group of governmental experts and open working group). This hegemonic aim brings China into direct confrontation with the USA, where more and more voices are calling for the global cyberspace to be “decoupled” into zones of influence around Washington and Beijing respectively, with their own regulations on standards, certifications and technical specifications.
The interest of Europe, and therefore of Spain, lies in preventing and avoiding such fragmentation of global cyberspace into mutually incompatible spheres of influence, as we are committed to free, open, secure, equitable and non-discriminatory access to cyberspace as a global public good and a powerful multiplier of wealth creation and prosperity for nations, companies and individuals. Europe should therefore urge Beijing to abandon any unilateral temptations in this regard and participate more actively in the existing multilateral forums for negotiating regulations governing the proper use of global cyberspace, the eventual fragmentation of which could only be detrimental to all countries.
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