China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda

What are the implications for the global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower?

A recently-published literature review from myself and colleagues at the University of Manchester identifies seven key issues that have so far emerged:

• Chronology: a steady progression of Chinese investment in the global South up the digital stack (see Figure 1) since the 1990s.
• Synergies and Tensions: an external image of “Team China” with strong state financial and political support for overseas growth of Chinese tech firms but, underneath, some strains between state and firms, and competition between the firms themselves.
• State Strategy that espouses mutual “win-win” between China and global South countries in public, but which has been single-minded in delivering benefits for China from its external digital strategy.  Perhaps not so different from the approach of some Western nations.
• Design and Implementation: just a few nuggets suggesting Chinese digital developers may undertake “South-South” knowledge transfer e.g. from experiences in Chinese rural markets, but also that practice may differ quite a lot from the Principles for Digital Development.
• Impact: a delivery of economic and political benefits for China; a likely delivery of economic and political benefits for recipient countries in the South but with few well-researched examples; and a whole set of “concerns”.  Talked up by Sinophobic researchers and talked down by Sinophilic researchers, the concerns include data security and sovereignty; control over digital infrastructure; dependency and vulnerability to Chinese state leverage; digitally-enabled inequalities both between and within countries; and environmental impact.
• “Digital Authoritarianism”: rhetoric in US-origin literature about China exporting digital authoritarianism seems to run well ahead of evidence, to ignore the many Western nations exporting surveillance systems to the global South, and to ignore that demand-pull from the global South dominates supply-push.  But one should not swing too far the other way: China is now the South’s primary surveillance supplier, and the relationship between Chinese firms and Chinese state is not an exact mirror of Western equivalents.
• Global Digital Governance: a divergence of worldviews between the West and China on internet governance, digital standards, and data governance, with each side actively recruiting global South countries to their cause.

Figure 1: The Chinese technology stack

Although this research has been helpful, the rather small corpus of work so far published leaves not just a general knowledge gap around China’s digital expansion but also a specific six-part future research agenda:

1. More Southern Voices: more Southern-based researchers, more South-focused empirics, and more evidence from Southern policy-makers, implementers, local tech firms, consumers, etc.
2. Moving Up the Tech Stack: given the main research focus to date has been on telecom infrastructure there now needs to be more investigation of application platforms and services including e-commerce, smart cities, artificial intelligence, ICT4D projects, etc.
3. Beyond “Team China”: moving beyond specu­lation to understand the actual coherence, collabora­tion, competition, and conflict between different Chinese state agencies, between Chinese state agencies and tech firms, between Chinese tech firms, and between Chinese ICT and non-ICT businesses.
4. Between Sinophobia and Sinophilia: steering between the stereotypically-extreme views of some US and Chinese literature, and simultaneously steering between Sino-exceptionalism (treating China as a unique case) and Sino-identicaism (seeing China as just replicating patterns of Western (US particularly) digital imperialism).
5. Local Agency: pushing past the neocolonialism of much current literature that focuses on Chinese and Western actors and sees those in global South as mere pawns in a new Great Game; to ask – for example – what room for manoeuvre global South actors have in procurement, in digital policy and in international forums; and to ask what digital alignment strategies they can best adopt.
6. Local Development Impact: assessing the true cost-benefit of Chinese telecom infrastructure, data centres, platforms, etc., and the macro-level impact on local polities, debt, labour markets, etc.

Content in this post summarises the paper, “China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda”, published in the journal, The Information Society.

Get the full picture by reading the paper at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2024.2315875

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The rise of post-disaster digital communities: what role in shaping the humanitarian space and action?

Nimesh Dhungana (nimesh.dhungana@manchester.ac.uk)

How are post-disaster digital communities emerging and shaping the nature of humanitarian space and action?

Enabled by the growing proliferation of mobile technologies, online platforms and open source data, and dubbed by some as “Digital Humanitarianism” (1) or “Digital Disaster Communities (DDC)” (2), communities from disparate locales are increasingly acting as early-responders to humanitarian crises that may have until recently seemed distant and remote. Despite the increasing prominence of post-disaster digital communities, disaster and humanitarian scholars have been slow to theorise and critically examine their emergence, characteristics, and socio-political impacts. In my research, I have been investigating the politics of post-disaster digital organising; first as part of my PhD research in the wake of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes and, more recently, during the Covid-19 pandemic, through the Atlantic Equity Challenge-funded collaborative project with Accountability Lab, a Nepal-based youth-led organisation. Our emerging findings indicate three interrelated pathways through which digital communities are shaping humanitarian space and action.

First, digital communities are actively asserting their role in redefining how post-disaster humanitarian aid is mobilised and distributed and, in the process, reconfiguring the representation of the humanitarian crisis itself. The 2015 Nepal earthquakes witnessed the emergence of a range of digital volunteers who used crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, and infographics to establish their interpretation of the scale of the crisis, who deserves aid, where and in what forms. Such forms of digital politics of aid eligibility resonate with other post-disaster contexts, notably following the 2010 Haiti earthquake (2). In Nepal, though, the involvement of digital communities was not limited to the emergency response but also found their engagement in the latter stages of disaster recovery and reconstruction. As one example, Kathmandu Living Labs, a Nepal-based civic tech organisation, partnered with the National Planning Commission to collect data on the scale and intensity of the destruction of residential houses as part of the National Housing and Reconstruction Survey. Their ‘digital feedback’ initiative resulted in one of the largest post-disaster datasets, setting the evidence-based logics for the longer-term reconstruction, coupled with the conditions and eligibility for State-sponsored housing assistance. Likewise, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several youth groups resorted to online monitoring, for instance, to track the supply of medical supplies such as oxygen cylinders. In so doing, these online communities posed a newer set of questions about equity and inclusion in the governance of a health emergency.

Second, digital communities are increasingly redefining the arena of rights-based humanitarian action despite the authorities’ tendency to restrict people’s rights in the name of a coherent disaster response. Combining off-line community activism with community-based hotlines, community radios, and mobile feedback applications, in Nepal, a group of mobile monitors emerged and acted as ‘information agents’, safeguarding disaster-affected communities’ constitutionally guaranteed right to information concerning the nature of aid distribution (4). Such efforts to generate and transmit credible information also found their place in the wake of COVID-19. Notably, Shramik Sanjal, an online community of international migrants, actively utilised their Facebook account to dispel rumours and misinformation that they considered were exposing fellow migrants to the risk of infection. These myriad forms of digital organising, some spearheaded by those who are often considered ‘vulnerable’, represent a wider struggle to establish people’s ‘right to know’ and ‘be heard’ in the face of a major crisis.

Third, post-disaster digital communities are assuming a much more contentious and political role, centred on demanding accountability and justice from authorities for their failures in preparing for and responding to disasters. During both the 2015 Nepal earthquakes and COVID-19, online platforms such as Twitter (now X) and change.org were widely leveraged to serve as alert systems, laying bare the potential for corruption and abuse of power in the name of disaster response. Indeed, the deployment of online platforms to demand bottom-up accountability during COVID-19 was not limited to Nepal. In the UK, for instance, the survivors of COVID-19 and bereaved families put together online petitions, among other offline initiatives, to demand accountability from the government, providing a much-needed push for the formation of the ongoing UK COVID-19 Inquiry.

The growing intermingling of offline and online disaster communities represents the active reshaping of the humanitarian space, which was for a long time occupied and dominated by the international aid actors and the State but, in recent years, has become far more de-centred, contested and fluid (5). Even under politically restricted contexts, disaster survivors are resorting to data and digital platforms to deepen the values of transparency and trust in post-disaster recovery (6). At the same time, the rise of post-disaster digital communities has raised several questions that merit further investigation.

Research on data-driven civic initiatives has shown their tendency to overlook and even worsen socio-political inequalities due to their narrow fixation on leveraging open and ‘Big Data’ Fields (7). What are the larger socio-political conditions under which digital communities emerge and evolve post-disaster? Linked to this is also the question of the consequential value of these groups beyond their role as aid monitors, eligibility auditors and alert systems, as highlighted above. Can digital communities hold the power-holders accountable for their failure to prevent disaster, or mount a fair and equitable disaster response? These questions demand longitudinal and embedded studies that can trace the conditions under which they function, how they function and the socio-political consequences of their organising. Finally, while digital communities claim to help expedite post-disaster solidarity networks, how solidarity itself, defined as a socio-political practice of inclusion, reciprocity and peer-to-peer accountability, features in the internal workings of digital communities is far less known. In particular, whether or how the voices of those whom digital communities claim to ‘help’ are included in the design and deployment of digital or data-driven technologies remains under-examined. As disasters become more frequent and intense, and digital communities actively rely on data to shape humanitarian action, how data collected from vulnerable communities are protected from misuse is another concern that merits further investigation.

1.         Meier P. Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is changing the face of humanitarian response. Taylor & Francis; 2015.

2.         Chaffee D. Digital Disaster Communities. In: Elliot A, Hsu EL, editors. The Consequences of Global Disasters. Routledge; 2016. p. 80–94. 

4.         Dhungana N. Doing Civil Society-Driven Social Accountability in a Disaster Context: Evidence from Post-Earthquake Nepal. Polit Gov [Internet]. 2020 Dec 10 [cited 2022 Oct 24];8(4):395–406. Available from: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/3154

5.         Hilhorst D, Jansen BJ. Humanitarian Space as Arena: A Perspective on the Everyday Politics of Aid. Dev Change [Internet]. 2010 [cited 2024 Feb 19];41(6):1117–39. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2010.01673.x

6. Xu B. The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2017. 256 p.

7.         Mulder F, Ferguson J, Groenewegen P, Boersma K, Wolbers J. Questioning Big Data: Crowdsourcing crisis data towards an inclusive humanitarian response. Big Data Soc [Internet]. 2016 Dec 1 [cited 2023 Jul 27];3(2):2053951716662054. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716662054

From word-of-mouth to star ratings: Platforms and the changing nature of trust in the informal sector

By Mindy Park, Arfive Gandhi, Yudho Giri Sucahyo 

Do digital platforms formalise informal cities? 

To some, the arrival and penetration of digital platforms in the vast informal economies of the global South cities may sound no longer new. To others, it still is a momentous opportunity to transform the informal sector. As the bustling streets fuse into the virtual marketplaces, the dynamics of transactions, trust, and community are being reshaped. To explore the renewed landscape of informal economies in the platform age, we illustrate the changing nature of trust by drawing on our recent research on platform use in the informal sector in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Broadly, there are two important impacts of platformisation in the informal sector: incorporation and legitimisation. Platforms are seen to incorporate the informal sector into the broader economy. In doing so, certain platform features aim to guarantee the credibility and transparency of informal practices that are often deemed untrustworthy without active regulations in place. While some might frame this process as “formalisation of the informal sector”, in fact, platformisation itself hardly formalises existing sectors. What it does is simply insert the previously informal or marginalised groups into the wider urban economy, both as consumers and as traders.  

Then the legitimising effect is the impact of this insertion on trust building. What enables this trust are the new platform features (e.g., ratings/reviews and digital payment) that replace the traditional ways of building reputation and making transactions in the informal economy. Linking platforms with trust somewhat disguises us into thinking that there was simply no trust in the informal sector before platforms. On the contrary, trust was the most important factor that sustained the informal sector – word of mouth shaped trust and trust worked as an important “informal” institution even in the absence of formal regulations¹. In other words, with nothing much but mutual trust that people could resort to, trust has been the basis for their informal trade. 

With these incorporation and legitimisation effects, platformisation leads to evolving dynamics of trust amongst informal workers and consumers. In the traditional informal sector, the boundary of the interaction and social networks was largely within the physical informal city. The key change in the platformised city is that everyday interactions move beyond this physical informal space towards wider virtual networks that involve not only the informal class but also the middle and elite classes. That is, now the boundary that forms word-of-mouth has become much wider. The ratings and reviews formed by broader consumers (or simply the general public) shape reputations of platformised informal firms, not just the word-of-mouth formed within their existing social networks confined to the physical city.  

These dynamics are illustrated in our research in Jakarta. Here are several remarks and comments from the motorcycle drivers, street vendors and consumers in the informal sector, who now have become part of ride-hailing, delivery, and fintech platforms. These provide a glimpse of how differentiated their experiences are, and intriguingly, the way they express distrust against one another. For example: 

When asked about any negative or exploitative experiences working as platform drivers, they often mention how consumers or restaurant owners are treating them.  

•  “Sometimes passengers/customers use threatening or aggressive language” 
• “Their policies prioritise consumers. Drivers should only comply with the rules and ethical codes, which is not always easy” 
• “Platforms’ customer service only makes consumers more talkative” 
• “Platform fees include parking fees, but sometimes restaurants charge us these additional fees (due to misunderstandings of rules)” 

On the other hand, being entrepreneurs (albeit micro in scale), street vendors exercise more control over their business.  

• “I run this business, so I should take care of my customers myself. I can handle them myself and they’re (platforms) not part of it” 
• “In light of customer satisfaction, platform intervention is only a form of passive monitoring. Each business is already proactive in seeking solutions on its own” 

In the meantime, when asked about their overall experiences with platform use, some consumers are not entirely happy with drivers. 

• “Platform providers should carry out regular evaluations of workers on their digital platforms. So that workers with bad and dangerous ratings do not continue to work on the platform or are trained so that they do not endanger consumers” 
• “Platforms should try to increase motorcycle drivers’ digital literacy” 

Overall, the reality of platformisation is less aligned to claims of economic opportunities in incorporation and legitimacy in formalisation. Rather it presents new, more challenging domains around trust. With strong consumer beliefs in platforms’ contribution to transparency and a sense of distrust towards worker behaviour, these seem to amplify the distrust citizens already had against the informal sector (and vice versa). Adding fuel to this distrust may be heightened competition even amongst the drivers, street vendors and entrepreneurs. 

This might eventually hamper city-wide collective movements. With platform ecosystems still dependent on existing socio-cultural moral norms and class, negotiations between agents of differential power arise and contribute to shifting the consumer culture in platform use². Although there is growing conscientisation of the often exploitative and adverse impacts of platforms on workers across the globe, with a lack of trust, widespread collective action around platforms is less evident in the Indonesian context (but still, drawing only from a handful of comments above, we would not say it is conclusive yet). 

In the end, this is neither to romanticise traditional informality nor to critique consumers. Of course, trust only cannot fully fill the voids of formal institutions that are to serve broader purposes such as safety, protection as well as market efficiency. The solution also does not seem to be in denouncing “platform algorithms” that can make contributions to filling some (but with equal importance, not all) of the voids. Nevertheless, paying attention to the evolving dynamics of trust will shed new light on the way we understand the impacts of platforms and trust in the informal economy.  

As this evidence shows, we need to examine further the intersections of platforms and informality. What are the dynamics of legitimisation and extraction, control and autonomy, and order and freedom to make our platformised cities healthier?  

References

¹ Burbidge, D (2013) ‘Trust creation in the informal economy: the case of plastic bag sellers of Mwanza, Tanzania’, African Sociological Review, 17(1): 79-103. 

Odera, L.C (2013) ‘The role of trust as an informal institution in the informal sector in Africa’, Africa Development, 38(3-4): 121-146. 

² Rava, N & Lalvani, S (2022) ‘The moral economy of platform work’, Asiascape: Digital Asia, 9(0): 144-174, https://brill.com/view/journals/dias/9/1-2/article-p144_8.xml?language=en&ebody=pdf-89805.