China: technological dragon
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 programme ("China: Vision 2035"), which includes a plan for massive investment in research and development of 5G mobile telephony, automation and robotisation 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 US to become the world's leading power.
China has undoubted comparative advantages in this race for technological hegemony, including: 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; and strict social discipline. As a result of its planning and sustained effort, China is now at the forefront of new technologies with digital platforms and international operators at the top of the world rankings, both in "enabling" technologies such as information and communication (China Telecom, China Mobile Ltd.), the new internet, and mobile phone services (Huawei, ZTE), and in key "enabling" technologies such as artificial intelligence. On the other hand, China monopolises 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 (mobile phones, computers, semiconductors, batteries, cameras).
China sees its booming technological development as instrumental to achieving global economic, commercial, military and ultimately political hegemony, in fierce competition with the US. Both powers are far ahead of Europe in the field of new disruptive technologies, a lead 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 accordance with its national interests, to a certain extent disengaging itself from the negotiations that take place in the specific working groups of the United Nations (governmental experts group and open working group). This hegemonic aim pits China directly against the US, where more and more voices are calling for a decoupling of the global cyberspace into zones of influence around Washington and Beijing respectively, with their own regulations on standards, certifications and technical specifications.
Europe's, and therefore Spain's, interest 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 to participate more actively in existing multilateral fora for negotiating rules governing the proper use of global cyberspace, the eventual fragmentation of which can only be detrimental to all countries.
Nicolás Pascual de la Parte/ Ambassador-at-Large for Cybersecurity and Hybrid Threats/The Diplomat