Considering that you recently read an excellent report on China in Lider by my colleague Ksenija Puškarić, I have no choice but to highlight just one of many observations during my study trip for journalists organized by People’s Daily and the Yunnan province, which was conveniently combined with the Media Cooperation 2025 Forum on Belt and Road.
The specifics of internet usage in the second superpower of the world are widely known, but only when you confront the Great Chinese Firewall on-site do you realize certain things. First and foremost, how naive and thoughtless it was to leave the European economic everyday life to American digital platforms and payment systems. Unlike the disoriented Europe, China recognized the importance of developing its own digital infrastructure for the functioning of a modern economy in a timely manner.
Thus, payments can almost exclusively be made using one of the two most popular domestic applications, WeChat or Alipay, with merchants often not accepting cash or Western (read: American) cards (Google services are banned, and Apple services are heavily restricted). You can use them, but usually only if they are linked to your account on Alipay or WeChat, rarely directly.
Instead of scoffing or hesitating, the two most common reactions to such rules of the game, Europeans should take out their phones and see which applications are on them and then imagine what would happen if our American friends one day decided to ‘flip the switch’ and turn off all those applications, which, by the way, is a scenario that is no longer unimaginable with Donald Trump .
Without exaggeration, the European economy would simply come to a halt because there is no adequate and quick replacement for most American digital platforms and payment systems in Europe. Therefore, China’s insistence on homegrown solutions makes perfect sense. Moreover, it is an urgent strategic necessity for any economy that aspires to be a global player.
Simply put, key digital infrastructure cannot almost entirely depend on another power, and unfortunately, that is the case with Europe, which has only recently begun to very slowly become aware of this problem. On the other hand, it is certainly true that the Chinese have gone too far and banned almost all globally present American platforms, including various streaming-services.
A large part of outgoing internet traffic is extremely hindered or completely disabled and cannot function without the use of a VPN, which cannot be justified by strategic necessity and is clearly an element of internal population control, as well as constant surveillance by cameras along with extensive use of facial recognition technology. It is therefore extremely important to separate these two topics in public discourse.
One is to ensure the independence of infrastructure crucial for the daily functioning of the economy, and something entirely different is to use technology for censorship and surveillance of the population. Interestingly, Europeans do not engage much with the first topic, but they are salivating when it comes to the second. These days, in fact, European institutions are seriously discussing the introduction of control over private communications under the pretext of combating child abuse. Where else would the tear go but to the eye…
