Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: This article examines how the People’s Republic of China challenges the digital colonialism enforced by U.S. Big Tech firms and explores the implications for technological sovereignty across the Global South. Grounded in Marxist perspectives on cognitive capitalism, it conducts a systematic literature review (2019-2025) focusing on Chinese-language scholarship from CNKI Overseas and Western debates on digital imperialism. China’s approach—building autonomous infrastructure (5G, semiconductors, AI), shielding domestic data flows, and promoting the Digital Silk Road—widens the bargaining space for peripheral economies long dependent on Western platforms. A Brazilian case study highlights common vulnerabilities: reliance on foreign clouds, hybrid-warfare offensives, and weak domestic law enforcement. It shows that state investment, mandatory local data storage and regional cloud consortia, inspired by the Chinese model, can reduce asymmetries. The study concludes that digital imperialism remains U.S.-centred but is no longer unchallenged; China functions as a structural counter-force that offers practical avenues of autonomy to the Global South, even while new forms of dependency may emerge.
Author: Ruan Sales de Paula Pinheiro
Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413880884