Digitalization

For decades, the systems that governments, banks, universities, and public institutions built to verify who someone is rested on a single foundational assumption that personal information, documents, and physical characteristics were difficult to convincingly fake. A Social Security number combined with a date of birth and a driver's license was, for most practical purposes, enough to establish identity.   That assumption has now been broken. The US recorded its highest number of data breaches in 2025 since tracking began, identity theft reports to the Federal Trade Commission rose nearly 20% year over year, and global fraud losses now exceed $534 billion annually. Generative AI, the same technology powering productivity tools and creative applications across the economy, has become a force multiplier for those seeking to deceive digital systems at scale. The speed, sophistication, and accessibility of these tools mean that the problem is no longer confined to the margins of financial crime. It has moved to the centre of a broader question about whether the digital infrastructure modern states depend on to function is as reliable as they have assumed.

China has a long-term goal to be a global leader in technology. To achieve such ambition, the country has taken serious steps widening its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) traditional infrastructure projects to incorporate digital infrastructure projects embodied in the Digital Silk Road (DSR). The DSR was initially launched in 2015 by the government as an idea on paper and during the opening ceremony of the First Belt and Road Forum in May 2017, China’s President Xi Jinping, adopted the DSR term officially and it was incorporated in the government’s BRI strategy as the digital dimension.   The DSR initiative focuses on building digital infrastructure and exporting its technology to the beneficiary countries, it includes telecommunications infrastructure, like 5G networks, overland fibre-optic cables, data centres, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), as well as applications that support e-commerce and mobile payments, along with smart cities and surveillance technology.  Additionally, the DSR provides support to Chinese tech companies, like ZTE, Huawei, and Alibaba, to carry on the work with the beneficiaries.   The DSR aims to enhance Beijing's global digital influence as it creates opportunities for a wide range of cooperation and partnerships between Chinses tech companies and other beneficiaries around the world in areas of digitalization and AI. China’s DSR encompass a variety of projects in 5G deployment, e-commerce platforms, and AI applications, such as DeepSeek which is an alternative model to ChatGPT.   China signed DSR cooperation agreements with several countries in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The cooperation takes place between scientists and engineers from the recipient country and Beijing, like opening a training centre or in research and development (R&D). The areas of cooperation are wide, including smart cities, AI and robotics, clean energy, and surveillance capabilities, like data localization. GCC countries are considered one of the important partners to China’s DSR, where it is closely integrating in the GCC digitalization goals.