Throughout Southeast Asia, Chinese language corporations have laid fiber-optic cable, constructed smart-city platforms, provided 5G networks, and even donated laptops to protection ministries. By one frequent account in Washington, that is what shedding appears like: via its Digital Silk Highway, Beijing is exporting not simply know-how however authoritarianism itself.
However ask the officers who really regulate these programs what guidelines they observe, and a extra sophisticated image emerges. Indonesia’s cybersecurity companies implement technical requirements developed in Geneva. The Philippines modeled its knowledge privateness regulation on European regulation. Malaysia’s strategy to synthetic intelligence borrows from U.N. ideas and regional frameworks. In three of the Digital Silk Highway’s most necessary accomplice nations, Chinese language {hardware} is widespread however Chinese language guidelines should not.
China could also be profitable lots of the contracts to construct out Southeast Asia’s digital infrastructure, however Beijing is making much less headway on the principles. Understanding this – and the elements behind this actuality – complicates the prevailing concern about digital authoritarianism. Nevertheless, there may be one state of affairs during which the hand-wringing about digital authoritarianism might turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
China’s Digital Silk Highway
China’s Digital Silk Highway (DSR), the technological arm of the Belt and Highway Initiative (BRI), has unfold Chinese language-built networks, surveillance programs, and cloud infrastructure throughout the growing world. Embedded in that infrastructure, many argue, is a political mannequin: “cyber sovereignty,” centralized knowledge management, and a state’s proper to intervene in its digital sphere because it sees match. Analysts have warned that the world might fragment into technological spheres of affect, and Southeast Asia – a area that’s younger, quickly digitalizing, and ambivalent about democracy – is seen as fertile soil for Beijing’s mannequin.
These considerations are reliable and need to be taken critically. As I wrote final yr, the DSR goals to export each China’s know-how and its most well-liked norms, in a bid to set the principles of digital governance reasonably than merely construct the infrastructure. Beijing’s personal Chinese language-language framing of the initiative leaves little doubt about that ambition. However whether or not these norms really take root is a separate query.
Minxin Pei argued in his ebook “The Sentinel State” that China can not export its surveillance mannequin in any respect. In keeping with Pei, the know-how is barely a part of China’s digital authoritarianism; what issues most is the human infrastructure that may mobilize hundreds of thousands of citizen informants towards anybody suspected of disloyalty. China’s Leninist police and internal-security paperwork reaches into workplaces, campuses, villages, and neighborhood committees. Cameras and facial recognition software program has supercharged this equipment, however know-how by itself can’t replicate China’s safety state. One might infer from this {that a} international authorities that buys the {hardware} with out the Leninist paperwork primarily inherits a shell.
Pei is true, and his argument is a vital corrective to a lot of the hype round exporting digital authoritarianism. However what do host nations’ governments really need from Chinese language know-how? What do they do with it as soon as it’s put in, and whose guidelines do they write round it?
Over the previous a number of years, a analysis venture I lead on the Peace Analysis Institute Oslo (PRIO) has put these inquiries to the take a look at. I carried out over 100 interviews with authorities officers, regulators, technologists, trade figures, and civil society actors in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – three of the Digital Silk Highway’s flagship companions – alongside systematic evaluation of official paperwork and speeches.
A few of my findings have been just lately printed within the Evaluation of Worldwide Research. To summarize, Southeast Asian governments should not adopting China’s digital governance mannequin along with the know-how, no less than not but. Neither are they rejecting it in favor of the West’s mannequin. Quite, they’re choosing and selecting, taking Beijing’s {hardware} whereas writing their very own rulebooks, drawing from European regulation, U.N. norms, regional frameworks, and their very own political traditions.
Locked Out of Cybersecurity?
Think about the area the place Chinese language affect must be fairly sturdy: cybersecurity. Right here, Chinese language norms are primarily absent.
In Indonesia, the nationwide cyber company, BSSN, anchors its steerage in ISO 27001, the worldwide commonplace for info safety administration. Banks observe central financial institution laws; fintech corporations reply to the monetary companies authority; and all of it, as one member of the nation’s cybersecurity neighborhood described it, aligns in the end with worldwide requirements. Indonesian officers speak an amazing deal about digital sovereignty, however the guidelines their establishments really implement have been largely written in Geneva and Washington.
Equally, Malaysia’s cybersecurity governance took form in response to U.N. processes, and Kuala Lumpur has endorsed U.N. norms of accountable state habits in our on-line world. Its capacity-building companions are Canadian corporations and EU applications. The Philippines aligns much more explicitly with the West: its Information Privateness Act was consciously constructed on the European GDPR mannequin, and officers describe worldwide cybersecurity governance as a Western-dominated affair.
Thus, in cybersecurity, evidently steadiness was struck way back in favor of the incumbent powers reasonably than Beijing. Technical requirements have monumental inertia. As soon as a rustic’s banks, telecoms, and certification regimes run on ISO and Western frameworks, the switching prices are prohibitive, and each new regulation layers on high of the outdated ones. And Beijing arrived to the requirements race a long time late.
On high of this, there may be widespread official distrust of Chinese language platforms. Such sentiments have been voiced repeatedly in interviews, even by officers in governments glad to simply accept Chinese language infrastructure.
Pei argued convincingly that officers overseas might by no means replicate the Chinese language social gathering equipment. However my analysis discovered that no one within the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines gave the impression to be seeking to Beijing for guidelines within the first place – even in areas the place Chinese language know-how is most deeply embedded. Recipient states have their very own establishments, values, and strategic calculations, which they search to pursue whereas utilizing Chinese language know-how.
The Opening in AI Governance
Not like cybersecurity, nonetheless, the ethics and governance of synthetic intelligence signify new terrain. There’s as but no entrenched requirements regime for these applied sciences. If Chinese language norms have been going to take root wherever, it might be right here. What’s rising as a substitute is a mix of norms.
That is regardless of China’s apparent efforts to advertise its personal mannequin. I current years, Beijing has issued a gradual run of normative presents aimed squarely at this house, together with a International Initiative on Information Safety in 2020, a International AI Governance Initiative in 2023, a International Governance Initiative unveiled on the Shanghai Cooperation Group summit in Tianjin in September 2025, and most just lately the World Synthetic Intelligence Cooperation Group established in July 2026. As Henry Tugendhat noticed, regardless of this succession of declarations, their precise influence is tough to outline, not to mention measure.
My fieldwork in Southeast Asia suggests one cause why we’re not seeing China’s efforts repay: Nobody is definitely referencing these initiatives when drafting laws or statues throughout the area’s governments.
In Indonesia, officers body digital ethics via Pancasila, the state’s founding philosophy, insisting that the nation’s digital life should replicate nationwide values reasonably than any imported template. Nonetheless, these similar officers describe an ambition to form world norms, by taking part in worldwide boards and pushing for frameworks that match Indonesia’s circumstances. There’s little curiosity in merely adopting a international strategy to AI governance – from China or elsewhere.
Malaysia’s strategy is extra brazenly pragmatic. Analysts there acknowledge that the nation lacks an indigenous framework for regulating AI. As an alternative, policymakers examine international examples, then match these approaches to the home market. The most important coverage debate in Kuala Lumpur is whether or not to soak up Europe’s knowledge safety regulation wholesale, as the worth of buying and selling with Europe, or to jot down a separate privateness regulation for Malaysian consumption. Both manner, the reference factors are European and multilateral. China’s most well-liked fashions barely function within the dialogue.
For its half, the Philippines’ nationwide AI technique addresses equity and bias; companies throughout authorities fear concerning the moral deployment of automated programs. On the bottom, Filipino knowledge scientists describe retraining imported AI fashions as a result of they produce skewed outcomes when utilized to Philippine knowledge. International know-how and its embedded assumptions are carefully recalibrated to suit native realities.
Hovering over all three nations is ASEAN. Its regional guides on AI governance and knowledge – paperwork which are largely ignored exterior the area – perform as templates via which Southeast Asian governments mediate between exterior fashions and home priorities. Regional multilateralism, so usually dismissed as speak, acts as a filtration system.
In cybersecurity, the place the principles have been settled way back, the West’s requirements gained by default and China is locked out. And within the subject of AI, the place the principles are nonetheless being written, Southeast Asia is drawing overwhelmingly on Western and multilateral sources, tailored via native values and establishments. China’s normative mannequin isn’t profitable converts in both case.
Combating Requirements With Requirements
It will be a mistake to learn these findings as grounds for complacency, although. The strongest predictor of whether or not a state filters international norms reasonably than absorbing them wholesale, our new analysis suggests, is institutional and regulatory capability, the energy of civil society, and the particular methods the know-how is adopted. Likewise, states have extra scope to train their digital autonomy when nice powers compete for alignment.
Right now, Southeast Asia mixes and matches know-how laws. However in a world of Western retrenchment, China could be the one full-service supplier of infrastructure, financing, and governance templates. The outcomes would tilt towards Beijing – much less as a result of Chinese language norms had turn out to be extra persuasive than as a result of the accessible choices had shrunk.
That is already taking place, as evidenced in Washington’s personal paperwork. The Nationwide Safety Technique (NSS) launched final yr barely mentions Southeast Asia. The place the area did determine within the NSS, as Derek Grossman argued, it was as a automobile for American financial targets reasonably than a strategic accomplice in its personal proper. When the Trump administration launched Pax Silica, its initiative to safe semiconductor and important mineral provide chains, the one Southeast Asian nation initially named as a key accomplice was Singapore. (The Philippines finally joined in April 2026).
In the meantime, Chinese language officers and corporations alter their pitch over time, tailoring normative messaging to native elites. Huawei’s coaching applications throughout Southeast Asia are constructing relationships with the subsequent technology of engineers and regulators. The adoption of Western-leaning cybersecurity norms is perhaps immovable at this level, however the area’s eventual stance on AI governance continues to be in flux – and that provides China a chance.
Three implications observe for Washington and its companions.
First, cease issuing warnings and begin preventing requirements with requirements. A decade of pressuring Southeast Asian governments to tear out Chinese language gear has yielded little besides irritation. The area’s governments purchase Chinese language {hardware} as a result of it’s low cost and accessible, they usually resent being informed their sovereignty is at stake. The bodily infrastructure issues lower than Washington appears to assume; the competition that really issues is taking part in out in venues like ISO and ITU processes, regional regulatory boards, and ASEAN’s AI governance observe, the place the principles hooked up to the {hardware} get written. The West’s best benefit in Southeast Asia is that its requirements are already the area’s default, however that gained’t final if nobody from Washington or Brussels exhibits as much as defend and lengthen these ideas.
Second, the US should deal with Southeast Asian company because the asset it’s. The intuition in Washington is to demand alignment, however ASEAN’s hedging tradition rejects this mentality. The states finest in a position to withstand China’s normative affect should not essentially probably the most loyal U.S. allies however probably the most institutionally succesful. Supporting regulatory capability, coaching, and authorized reform – with out requiring alignment – can strengthen the filtering mechanisms which have saved Beijing’s mannequin at bay up to now.
Third, Washington should present up for the AI governance contest particularly, as a result of it’s right here that the top result’s most in query. Meaning funding Southeast Asian participation in worldwide AI boards, partaking ASEAN’s governance course of as a critical interlocutor reasonably than an afterthought, and providing frameworks price borrowing from. Each factor the area’s regulators splice into their hybrid rulebooks is a component somebody made accessible. For now, the elements are overwhelmingly Western and multilateral. But when China is the one authorities providing fashions for regulating cutting-edge AI, that can change.
Chinese language know-how has unfold via Southeast Asia, and it’ll proceed to. However that doesn’t imply China is writing the principles for that know-how. As an alternative, regional governments are forging their very own paths, drawing on a world of choices. That may stay true solely so long as there is a world of choices to attract on. The surest manner for Washington to lose the digital contest in Southeast Asia is to imagine Beijing has already gained.