No terminal to China 5G dominance.

Rethinking China’s “export strategy.” On the other hand, China’s export strategy is more complicated in practice. Surveillance technology is provided by liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes alike.36 Therefore, China is not simply propagating a digital authoritarian model to export an alternative form of governance. As its actions depend on political context, bilateral relations, and mutual economic interests, China appears more opportunistic than strategic with respect to exporting advanced surveillance technologies. Beijing may not be linking these technologies to a specific political use.

The adoption of Chinese surveillance technology in strong liberal democracies across Europe shows that regime type is not a good predictor of countries that will adopt artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance technology.37 The demands for these technologies (e.g., controlling migration, tracking terrorist activity) are diverse and often not clearly connected to China’s geopolitical goals—including the promotion of authoritarian practices. For example, in France, domestic terrorist threats appear to drive the need for these technologies.38 In Greece, however, the use of advanced surveillance technologies in automated border control (ABC) systems are a priority to process passengers more efficiently, as well as to screen the influx of migrants at Europe’s borders.39

A closer look at the demand for China’s technology exports reveals that customers’ agency and local dynamics may complicate the logic that Chinese surveillance technologies lead to greater authoritarianism in practice. Huawei’s presence in Thailand—a country considered repressive regarding internet freedoms—does not appear to reveal a clear Chinese agenda to push monitoring systems. Additionally, one of the major selling points for this technology—Huawei’s Safe City—has garnered skepticism.40 As new crime data from deployed Huawei Safe City and Smart City projects suggests, “the perception of Chinese surveillance technology as particularly effective and sophisticated is not matched by the actuality of its chaotic implementation.”41

The success of Huawei’s Safe City and Smart City projects in China, which largely forms the marketing narrative to foreign customers, is based not only on the technology itself, but on supporting policies and resources (e.g., trained security personnel to transform data into actionable information). 42 The policies and resources must develop alongside these technologies. Of course, such a supportive framework varies across countries—seventeen in Africa alone—with Huawei Safe City and Smart City projects.43