China and Evolving Multilateral Craftmanship in the Age of Digitalization

Contested and subject to enhanced major power rivalry, the international governance of digitech issues is yet only nascently institutionalized. Still, all states, not least developing and low-income countries, need and rely on digital resources, and their access to such resources depends on certain international facilitation and agreement.

Employing quantitative and qualitative methods and data, we zoom in on several interrelated digitech issues, including AI standards, e-commerce rules, and aid and cybersecurity guidelines, and develop typological theory for how countries operate within and surrounding organizations with evolving responsibilities in the digitech area.

CHIMULTI provides novel and usable knowledge about how and why digitech responsibilities evolve in organizations and how China and other influential countries and actors work to promote interests, shape policy, and contribute to reaching relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. The targeted comparison between China and India, USA and other G20 countries, ensures that data and research findings are grounded in Asian and broader global development contexts.

Practicing responsible internationalization, CHIMULTI brings together a team of highly skilled and dedicated scholars, who will jointly inform scholarly and policy debates concerning international digitech governance, multilateral development, and major power rivalry and cooperation.