Le Cheng, Jiamin Pei and Jian Li: "Belt & Road" digital and cyber governance system

Abstract

<p>With the growing popularity of the Internet and the rapid development of networktechnology, cyberspace has become an important arena for maintaining nationalsecurity as well as a key frontier for a new round of great power competitions.Countries have attached much attention to the issue of international cyberspacegovernance in terms of their strategic policies and legal frameworks, and theyhave developed a variety of concepts for such governance. Against this backdrop,numerous scholars have explored cyberspace governance from various perspec-tives. Liaropoulos (2017), for instance, believed that cyberspace transcends territorialand legal borders and is largely owned and managed by the private sector. Thus,countries need to develop cooperative mechanisms with other countries and eventhe private sector to secure cyberspace. According to Ramadhan (2021), geopolitics incyberspace has no borders. States must develop governance in cyberspace andmake it their political domain to prevent cyber conflicts. Chang (2017) provided anoverview of cybercrime trends in ASEAN, assessed current measures adopted byASEAN countries to combat cybercrime and make policy recommendations tostrengthen those measures.For China, cyberspace governance also plays a special and crucial role in itscurrent move toward the world’s center stage. The international recognition ofChina’s approach to cyberspace governance is growing along with its contributionof unique Chinese wisdom and solutions to the global system of cyberspacegovernance (Cheng and Liu 2022). Countries along the“Belt and Road”have alwaysbeen strategically significant in China’s global“circle of friends”, so maintaininggood cooperation in cyberspace governance is not only a trend but a necessity.<br></p>