My Way or No Highway

Global Infrastructures

  • Leonard SchütteAuthorLeonard Schütte
  • Leonard SchütteAuthorLeonard Schütte
Why have global infrastructures become main sites of geopolitical competition? Do Europe and the US share visions for key global infrastructures? Why is the global trade infrastructure eroding, and what comes next? And how are democratic and autocratic visions playing out in the race to shape physical and digital infrastructures?

Key Points

  1. Global infrastructures have become major sites of systemic competition because they promise to yield structural power: the power to set the rules of the game and create dependencies.

  2. The global trade infrastructure based on the WTO’s rules is eroding as China, the US, India, and even its stalwart defender, the EU, are increasingly resorting to protectionism. The old rules are dying but no new vision is in sight.

  3. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has engaged in massive physical infrastructure projects in the developing world to create a Sino-centric regional order. The G7 has only recently responded by launching its own infrastructure funds.

  4. Democracies and autocracies are competing to shape both the physical enablers and the very principles of the emerging digital infrastructure. But the US and EU are only slowly converging on their digital vision.

Global infrastructures create connectivity between peoples and economies. But establishing such connections is neither a mere technical exercise, nor do these connections necessarily reduce conflict.[1] Instead, power politics is increasingly permeating global infrastructures. Whoever controls these infrastructures enjoys structural power: they can set the rules of the game in their favor and render other states dependent on them.[2] For example, the fact that China has so far not systematically violated the US and EU sanctions against Russia in the wake of the war on Ukraine is largely due to Beijing’s fear of secondary US sanctions, given US control over the global financial architecture.[3] As a result, shaping global infrastructures has become a central prize in the systemic competition.

The existing trade infrastructure was largely designed to encourage free trade, market forces, and interdependence. But emerging powers like China seek to reassert the primacy of the state over the trade infrastructure as security concerns increasingly drive economic policy. The US is also pursuing a more protectionist vision, and even the EU has had to adopt defensive economic instruments while scrambling to defend the open trade infrastructure in this geoeconomic age. Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has unleashed a race to construct physical infrastructure in Eurasia and Africa, and brought rival autocratic and democratic visions of governance to the fore. And major powers are competing to shape the emerging digital infrastructure that is set to shape states’ prosperity and security in the decades to come. China is spearheading a group of autocratic states intent on promoting their techno-authoritarian vision for the digital age, while the transatlantic partners are only gradually converging on their vision of an open digital infrastructure.

We will strengthen the safeguards for ensuring economic, major infrastructure, financial, cyber, data, biological, resource, nuclear, space, and maritime security. Mechanisms for countering foreign sanctions, interference, and long-arm jurisdiction will be strengthened.

Xi JinpingChinese President, 20th Party Congress, October 16, 2022

Trading Interdependence for Autonomy

Growing geopolitical competition has upended the very logic of the international trade architecture. The post–Cold War era was one of markets and cooperative trade multilateralism embodied by the WTO.[4] Underpinned by the dominance of the US dollar, this international trade infrastructure served to reduce trade barriers between states, curtail state interventions through limits on dumping and subsidies, globalize supply chains, and foster the movement of capital. The resulting interdependencies were considered beneficial for economic prosperity and political convergence between disparate systems.

Today, this vision of an open trade infrastructure has fewer and fewer supporters, even if narratives of deglobalization have no basis in data so far.[5] Once seen as a driver of prosperity and amity between erstwhile rivals, states now primarily view interdependence both as a vulnerability and a conduit for coercion.[6] Russia’s weaponization of Europe’s gas and oil dependency is a case in point. The international trade infrastructure has thus become securitized. Protectionism incompatible with open trade infrastructure is on the rise. And states are increasingly resorting to industrial policies, trade restrictions, export controls, and investment screening. Figure 3.1 illustrates these trends, though Chinese interventions tend to be underreported and likely higher in reality. We may be at the cusp of a new geoeconomic age shaped by power, states, and pursuits of autonomy rather than rules, markets, and interdependence.

China’s “party-state capitalism”[7] is a primary driver of ushering in this new age. For years, China has been systematically violating WTO principles by subsidizing key industries, discriminating against foreign companies, and stealing intellectual property.[8] These practices have distorted markets not only in the West, where economic dislocation has undermined support for globalization, but also in developing countries whose interests China purports to defend. For instance, China has become the largest subsidizer of agricultural products and cotton, at the expense of predominantly African farmers.[9] At the same time, China rejects WTO rulebook reforms and clings to its status as a developing economy.

Joe Biden

America invented the semiconductor […] and this law brings it back home. It’s in our economic interest and it’s in our national security interest to do so.

Joseph BidenUS President, signing of the CHIPS and Science Act, August 9, 2022

Even more consequentially, national security concerns have gradually replaced economic prosperity as the primary driver of Chinese trade policy.[10] Chinese sanctions against Lithuania for forging closer relations with Taiwan, or against Australia for calling for an independent inquiry into the origins of the pandemic, exemplify that China prioritizes national security concerns over trade. The Made in China 2025 plan and the Dual Circulation Strategy are further manifestations of these security concerns, marking a definitive break with the long-standing focus on export- and investment-led growth.[11] To become less dependent on foreign markets and technology, the new Chinese economic model aims to strengthen consumption and support domestic innovation to dominate key technologies of the 21st century, while making other countries dependent on China. In parallel, the Chinese Communist Party seeks to elevate the role of the Chinese yuan to push back against the hegemony of the US dollar.[12]

In the US, too, trade has become a matter of national security. The country was long the guardian of the open trade infrastructure, but the Trump administration launched a trade war against China, imposed hefty sanctions upon its European partners, and rendered the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism defunct. While President Biden has suspended most tariffs against the EU, he has kept course on other issues as trade has become highly politicized in Congress; the US continues to block the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, and pursuing free trade agreements is no longer a priority, as the 2022 National Security Strategy testifies.

The Biden administration also uses active industrial policy, paired with protectionist policies, to prevail in the great-power rivalry with China. Nowhere is this more pronounced than on semiconductors. In August 2022, US Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides an enormous 52.7 billion US dollars to reduce dependencies on foreign producers. In October 2022, the Biden administration doubled down and announced
a comprehensive export ban on advanced semiconductors. In the past, the US had sanctioned individual Chinese companies including Huawei and ZTE, but these new sanctions encompass an entire technology. US-China decoupling, at least in technology, is well underway. And this American form of weaponizing interdependence is not limited to chips. As the US dollar continues to be the dominant reserve currency and primary currency for international payments, the US enjoys substantial control over the global financial architecture, which it regularly uses to sanction its enemies by cutting them off from the dollar-based system.[13] The landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also contains protectionist provisions to reshore manufacturing, which have drawn the ire of the EU, where the IRA is seen as discriminating against European companies.

Emmanuel Macron

We need a Buy European Act like the Americans […]. You have China that is protecting its industry, the US that is protecting its industry, and Europe that is an open house.

Emmanuel MacronFrench President, TV interview, October 26, 2022

The escalation of trade relations between the US and China, pursuits of greater self-sufficiency, and the weaponization of interdependence all pose a fundamental challenge to the EU’s vision of an open trade infrastructure. The founding premise of the EU is that rules-based economic interdependence – embodied in the European single market – helps overcome historical enmity. The EU has therefore long been among the main supporters of the WTO and was a crucial driving force behind creating an interim dispute settlement mechanism.[14] It continues to push for wider WTO reform and pursues multilateral trade agreements around the world. And it is much more integrated into the global economy and more dependent on the Chinese market than the US is.[15]

Sabine Weyand

[W]e must accept this duality, whereby we continue to defend a multilateral order based on rules, but also accept that it is essential to do so from a stronger position, equipping
ourselves with all necessary instruments.

Sabine WeyandDirector-General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade, interview, January 31, 2022

The beleaguered EU has thus been trying to walk the fine line of maintaining the open trade infrastructure while becoming more autonomous. It has grudgingly created new instruments to tackle market distortions, protect critical infrastructure, defend itself against economic coercion, and limit the reach of US dollar dominance.[16] These instruments include a revised Trade Enforcement Regulation to unilaterally respond to breaches of trade rules by the EU’s trading partners; the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges to circumvent secondary financial sanctions; investment screening regulations; and a dual-use export regime to restrict the export of technologies used for surveillance, for example. But some EU countries have been sending mixed signals. While German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck proclaimed the “awakening of German trade policy,”[17] the social-democrat-led chancellery overruled its coalition partners to sanction the sale of a 24.9 percent stake in a terminal of the port of Hamburg to the China Ocean Shipping Company, owned by the Chinese state.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

[F]ragmentation and decoupling of the multilateral trading system would not just be economically costly: it would leave all countries more vulnerable to the global commons problems that now represent some of the biggest threats to our lives and livelihoods.

Ngozi Okonjo-IwealaDirector-General of the WTO, 2022 Lowy Lecture at the Lowy Institute, November 22, 2022

The open trade infrastructure has become the collateral of geopolitical tensions. Visions for global trade multilateralism hardly resonate in this age of geoeconomics. China, the US, the EU, and also India have intensified their efforts to become less integrated with the global economy. Many new trade initiatives – such as the US-initiated Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC), or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement that China joined – lack ambitions to seriously increase market access, and primarily concern geoeconomic issues like supply chain security or critical infrastructure. The securitization of trade may usher in the end of the rules-based trade infrastructure. This would have repercussions for prosperity everywhere, but particularly in the EU and countries in the “Global South,” for whom (even imperfect) trade multilateralism is preferable to unregulated power politics.[18] Transatlantic partners must therefore strike a delicate balance. In light of widespread economic coercion by autocratic states, they need to enhance their resilience and diversify supply chains in sensitive sectors, without bifurcating the trade infrastructure or terminally undermining the WTO.

Building and Burning Bridges

Physical infrastructure, too, has become a site of systemic competition. Multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, and rich countries have long provided funds for infrastructure projects. But these have been vastly insufficient to close the global infrastructure investment gap of around 15 trillion US dollars.[19] Over the past decade, China has tried to fill this void, becoming the central infrastructure provider in the developing world.[20] Through the BRI – a framework that encompasses a sprawling panoply of infrastructure projects such as ports, electricity grids, and train links – China’s spending could amount to one trillion US dollars by 2027.[21] However, Chinese infrastructure investment levels have markedly declined since 2016, as domestic economic woes and problems with debt unsustainability have mounted, aggravated by the pandemic.[22] But the BRI, as the Chinese Communist Party’s recent National Congress affirmed, is here to stay.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the BRI in 2013 in a quest to create greater connectivity across Eurasia and enable China to become the dominant economic power in the region. Almost 170 states and international organizations have since signed cooperation agreements. The BRI has several core aims. The infrastructure program will create new export markets for Chinese goods and outlets for its industrial surplus capacity, while also creating access to strategic resources such as minerals and food. In addition, the BRI should help make Chinese energy supplies more resilient. China is currently dependent on shipments via the Strait of Malacca – 80 percent of Chinese oil imports run through it. Given US naval dominance, constructing land routes to the Persian Gulf should help reduce this vulnerability for China.[23]

A. K. Abdul Momen

China comes forward with a basket of money, aggressive proposal, and affordable proposal. And then we have a problem. What to do?

A. K. Abdul MomenBangladeshi Foreign Minister, Munich Security Conference, February 19, 2022

But the BRI is not merely an economic project. It promotes Chinese standards and institutions, reduces vulnerabilities vis-à-vis the US by reshifting trade flows, draws states into Beijing’s orbit, and weaves webs of dependencies by becoming a major creditor and creating debt traps. Almost 60 percent of Chinese foreign loans are held by countries in financial distress.[24] Chinese investment has thus bought the Chinese Communist Party significant influence in recipient states, many of whom vote with China in UN bodies or veto EU positions.[25] China also uses the BRI to promote its governance model. Investments are state-led, and the absence of social, environmental, or human rights conditionalities strengthens autocratic recipient governments and abets corruption. Here too, China is busy creating an alternative financial infrastructure with “Chinese characteristics” to insulate the BRI from US financial hegemony.[26] The BRI therefore furthers China’s vision of a multipolar world order and increases China’s say over international rules, which those outside of China (and to some extent India) disapprove of (Figure 3.2).

Transatlantic partners have been slow to respond to the BRI.[27] Until recently, infrastructural efforts had largely been disjointed. This is supposed to change with new initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. To counter China’s increasingly obvious geopolitical ambitions, the EU launched its Connectivity Strategy in 2018 to deepen networks between Europe and Asia. This was followed by the more comprehensive Global Gateway Initiative, which pledged 60 billion euros annually. In a similar vein, the Biden administration launched the Build Back Better World initiative, through which it intends to allocate 40 billion US dollars every year. Finally, in 2022, the G7 aggregated these initiatives under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) to mobilize 600 billion US dollars through to 2027.

Ursula von der Leyen

The fate of future generations depends more than ever before on the quality and quantity of our infrastructure investment today.

Ursula von der Leyen President of the European Commission, European Development Days, June 21, 2022

What unites these initiatives is their claim to offer a democratic alternative to the BRI. The PGII aims to promote “transparency, good governance, environmental, and climate as well as financial and debt sustainability.”[28] But it is too early to say whether this lofty infrastructure vision will become reality. Questions remain around where the pledged sums will come from. So far, the EU has not dispensed any new funds through the Global Gateway Initiative, which lacks ownership within the European Commission.[29] The EU’s and G7’s loans also come with conditionalities, which many autocratic governments may be disinclined to accept. Funding processes are also more cumbersome, given the array of public and private actors involved, compared to China’s “state-led one-stop shop.”[30] But as problems with the BRI mount and Chinese funds abate, the competition between different visions for development infrastructure is set to intensify.

Digital Divides

Competing visions of governance are also playing out in the race to shape the emerging digital infrastructure. Access to and control of data has become a central ingredient for innovation, international trade, and national security. Like with physical infrastructure, there are enormous funding gaps, especially in the “Global South.”[31] The emerging digital infrastructure has hitherto been shaped by liberal visions. American pioneers conceived the internet as an open, free, and global agora for ideas, governed my multiple private stakeholders with a strictly limited role for the state.[32] But China, as the vanguard of autocratic powers, is pushing to revise the principles of the open digital infrastructure and dominate its physical enablers. Meanwhile, the EU aims to wrest back control from big tech companies to enhance citizens’ privacy while maintaining the internet’s open nature. Other powers, such as India, have also become active players in the quest to shape the digital age.

The liberal digital vision contradicts the Marxist-Leninist foundation of the Chinese Communist Party as the ultimate control organ over Chinese society. For the “biggest of big brother,”[33] an open internet that allows for freedom of speech and anonymity poses a threat to domestic stability. China has therefore long insulated itself from the free flow of data by erecting a Great Firewall of technological barriers and laws. But China has recently gone on the offensive to project its vision for the digital infrastructure abroad. First, China has promoted its vision of a “clearly bounded national internet space”[34] by trying to change the prevailing technical internet standards. The China Standards 2035 Strategy calls for expanding Chinese presence in bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and deepening standardization dialogues with BRI countries. As part of its wider effort to strategically staff UN agencies, China managed to install Houlin Zhao, who has attracted attention for his overt support for Huawei, as head of the ITU in 2014 (US national Doreen Bogdan-Martin replaced him in January 2023).

The most prominent effort to introduce new digital standards is China’s 2019 proposal for a New Internet Protocol (New IP). Internet protocols enable communications across hardware devices, and are essential for the internet to function. The existing protocol embodies an open internet based on the same standards worldwide. The New IP instead promotes a centralized, controllable Chinese model, whereby each country can impose its own restrictions and potentially require individuals to register to use the internet.[35] Such a digital vision would enhance state control and surveillance while eroding free speech and citizens’ privacy. The New IP negotiations have stalled in the ITU, but China has found supporters in Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. China also recently turned the World Internet Conference, which it founded and controls, into a formal organization to shift authority away from Western-dominated institutions.[36]

Second, China is exporting its digital vision by building physical enablers abroad, especially in developing economies. As part of its Digital Silk Road (DSR), China has already invested 50 billion US dollars and is emerging as a prime provider of networks, undersea cables, surveillance systems, and satellites.[37] Huawei alone has built 70 percent of the 4G networks in Africa,[38] and China has become a central provider of high tech in Europe’s neighborhood.[39] Aside from reaping commercial benefits, China uses the DSR to promote its techno-authoritarian vision of governance. Huawei’s Smart City and Safe City projects serve as an integrated framework through which China diffuses technologies such as facial recognition software, surveillance cameras, and big-data analysis programs to digitize public services while systematically surveilling citizens. According to the company’s 2021 annual report, more than 700 cities around the globe use Huawei’s smart technology. Not surprisingly, autocratic regimes are much more likely to sign Safe City contracts with Huawei than democratic ones are.[40]

Margrethe Vestager

[The EU and US] may not end up with the exact same laws, but it is becoming increasingly clear that we share the same basic vision when it comes to developing digital policy to protect our citizens, and to keep our markets fair and open.

Margrethe VestagerVice President of the European Commission, Stefan A. Riesenfeld Symposium at the University of California, February 22, 2022

The US and EU have pushed back against Chinese efforts to impose its authoritarian vision upon the digital infrastructure, even if many EU member states still use Huawei components in their telecommunications systems.[41] Both the US and EU agree that the New IP would undermine the foundation of the open and inclusive internet. But the transatlantic partners have long not seen eye to eye on digital strategy. The EU has recognized its lack of digital sovereignty, not only because of the dearth of European tech players but also because of diverging views on privacy and monopolies.[42] The EU has pursued a “bourgeois” vision rather than the US “commercial” vision for the internet, where the European Commission assumes an active regulatory role to protect citizens’ privacy, minimize hate speech, and dispel digital monopolies.[43] To these ends, the EU adopted the landmark General Data Protection Regulation to allow citizens to decide how companies use their data,[44] the EU Digital Markets Act to prevent big tech companies from abusing their market positions, and the Digital Services Act that obliges providers to delete disinformation and hate speech. The European vision has created tensions with the US, whose tech companies appear to be the primary addressees of European initiatives.

But amid the wider renaissance of the transatlantic relationship under the Biden administration, the EU and US have begun building a common Euro-Atlantic digital infrastructure.[45] In April 2022, they spearheaded the signing of the Declaration for the Future of the Internet by more than 60 states, which affirms the objective of preserving an “open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure internet.” Signatories mostly included democracies but also partially free states such as Kenya and Serbia, reflecting the digital divide between democracies and autocracies (Figure 3.3). In turn, the TTC convened for the third time in December to spur transatlantic coordination on technology sanctions against Russia, infrastructure programs to compete with the DSR, and initiatives on key technologies. The two sides have also made progress on a data privacy agreement, which has traditionally been a divisive issue.[46] Notwithstanding remaining differences on issues of privacy and big tech regulation, the transatlantic partners are gradually converging on a vision for digital infrastructure that should be open and global but subject to greater regulation.

In the competition between digital visions, India is playing an increasingly central role. Not only is it an emerging tech superpower, it has also been busy setting digital standards and pushing back against Chinese digital authoritarianism by banning Chinese apps, including TikTok, and Chinese telecommunications hardware. However, amid an increase in internet shutdowns by the Indian government during protests, India has yet to sign the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, highlighting continued differences with the transatlantic partners.[47] It is still all to play for in the high-stakes game of shaping the future digital infrastructure.

Scrambling for Structural Power

Global infrastructures have become major sites of systemic competition, thus securitizing the erstwhile technical realm of connectivity. All major powers are busy protecting themselves from the risks of the open trading infrastructure by curtailing their interdependencies. A new vision for trade infrastructure to generate mutual prosperity while limiting vulnerabilities is not in sight. In contrast, democratic and autocratic camps openly compete to imbue both physical and digital infrastructures with their visions of governance. But the transatlantic partners have been slow to recognize the gravity of the challenge posed by their autocratic rivals, and they are not yet aligned on trade and digital issues. And when it comes to physical infrastructure – notwithstanding lofty announcements – they are yet to put money where their mouths are. The competition over global infrastructures highlights that trade, security, and development policy cannot be disentangled. Liberal democracies therefore need to adjust their political structures to create coherence across all relevant infrastructure policies and place much greater emphasis upon them. This will be crucial to shape the international order in the decades to come.

Re:vision – Munich Security Report 2023

Bibliographical Information: Tobias Bunde, Sophie Eisentraut, Natalie Knapp, Leonard Schütte, Julia Hammelehle, Isabell Kump, Amadée Mudie-Mantz, and Jintro Pauly, “Munich Security Report 2023: Re:vision,” Munich: Munich Security Conference, February 2023, https://doi.org/10.47342/ZBJA9198.

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Bibliographical information for this chapter:
Leonard Schütte, “Global Infrastructures: My Way or No Highway,” in: Tobias Bunde/Sophie Eisentraut/Natalie Knapp/Leonard Schütte (eds.), Munich Security Report 2023: Re:vision, Munich: Munich Security Conference, February 2023, 75−87, https://doi.org/10.47342/ZBJA9198.

More about Leonard Schütte

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