Impact Turn– Without U.S led cyber hegemony, China will overtake the West and control the global dominion
Rush Doshi, et al. ‘ 21[Emily de La Bruyere, Nathan Picarisc, and John Fergusion; Senior Fellow at FDD with a focus on China policy; Senior Fellow at the Defense for Democracies based in Washington, DC; Former intern for the Center of East Asia Policy Studies], “China as a ‘cyber great power’: Beijing’s two voices in telecommunications”, Brookings Institute, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/china-as-a-cyber-great-power-beijings-two-voices-in-telecommunications/ AN
4 Beijing calls foreign security concerns over Huawei “lame excuse[s]” and pure “politics.”4 At the same time, China expresses similar concerns domestically over the incorporation of foreign technology into its networks. Security is paramount for Xi, who has repeatedly declared that “without cyber security, there will be no national security.”5 Accordingly, he argues for adoption only of foreign technology that is “controllable” — while leaders at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) stress that foreign technology networks tend not to be “controllable.”6 China must therefore build its own networks that are both “independent and controllable.”7
5 Commercial and academic Chinese sources suggest that the international community’s security concerns over Chinese telecommunications might not be misplaced, and that Beijing might see telecommunications and other commercial networks as means to project offensive power globally. Xi presents IT as a key part of China’s military-civil fusion strategy: In 2018, he said that “military-civil fusion in cybersecurity and informatization is the key field and frontier field for military-civil fusion.”8 Downstream, Qin An, director of the China Institute of Cyberspace Strategy, argued in 2016 that “due to the highly monopolistic nature of information technology systems, it is unlikely that there will be two different systems for military and civilian use … it is particularly necessary [for China] to integrate military and civilian resources through a military-civil fusion system.”9
6 When discussing standard-setting with foreign audiences, the Chinese government stresses win-win collaboration. Yet domestic discussion emphasizes the competitive value of standards for establishing technological dominance and, correspondingly, the need to build “discourse power” in global IT development. Xi argues that in cyber security and telecommunications, the “game of great powers is not only a game of technology but also a game of ideas and discourse power,” a reference to internet governance and standards.10 Other sources build on Xi’s language, noting that China works to set standards in 5G — and IT more broadly — in order to overtake the West, that doing so provides economic and military advantages. In short, those “who set the standards gain the world.”11