China won’t export digital authoritarianism through tech
Xiang 20 (Nina Xiang is a renowned author and award-winning journalist, and an expert on the Chinese venture capital and technology sector with nearly twenty years of financial and business media experience. 7/8/20, “How China winning the race to install 5G will be good for the world,” NikkeiAsia, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/How-China-winning-the-race-to-install-5G-will-be-good-for-the-world, L.B.)
Still, while the surveillance tech that forms a key part of any smart city project is clearly a thorny subject, the fear that Beijing can export authoritarianism around the world through the sale of surveillance tech is about as credible as the idea that the U.S. can export democracy by selling more Big Macs and getting more people to watch Hollywood films. To be sure, there are troubling ethical questions around the use of surveillance tech. But the best solution is to have a global regulatory framework to address them, such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. But when it comes to seeing more technological innovations coming out of China, the rest of the world should relax. As the mobile internet era showed, China can innovate on its own without inflicting much harm.