Richard Heeks

China’s Digital Expansion in the Global South

For those wanting to understand implications for the Global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower, this book analyses China’s digital impact in Latin America, North Africa and Asia, covering issues including platforms, e-commerce, technology transfer and digital surveillance. It also incorporates a major literature review that outlines a six-part future research agenda. At the intersection of China’s growing global presence and growing digital power lies its digital expansion in the low- and middle-income countries of the Global South. Worth billions of USD annually in trade and investment, and having a significant impact on these countries’ social and economic development, this phenomenon has been relatively ignored by researchers to date. This major new volume provides significant new insights that help advance our knowledge of this important topic. A systematic review of literature identifies key issues within the field and outlines a six-part future research agenda. Those issues are then explored in greater depth: reviewing the relationship between activities of Chinese platform firms, the state’s Belt and Road Initiative, and local context in the Global South; investigating the activities of Alibaba as it has sought to grow its operations in Mexico; analysing whether two Chinese tech giants – Huawei and ZTE – are contributing to an upgrading of local technological capabilities in Algeria and Egypt; and digging behind portrayals of China exporting “digital authoritarianism” to understand the realities of surveillance system exports to countries in Latin America. Overall, the book fills important gaps in our understanding of China’s digital expansion in the Global South, and challenges preconceptions and one-sided views of this major recent activity. It was originally published as a special issue of The Information Society.