ABSTRACT
While the core of the BRI remains its large-scale physical infrastructure development, it also includes an impressive “virtual grid”. This constitutes fibre optic cables, satellite systems, 5G technology, facilitating e-commerce, and smart city development, among others. On the more controversial end, however, it also potentially spreads an almost totalitarian surveillance system in the context of which peoples’ privacy tends to be suspended – a system which is already technically operational inside China’s sovereign territories. This chapter discusses about e-commerce and the Spatial Silk Road! Moreover, China develops its own virtual financial and banking infrastructure, which inter alia has got the potential to by-pass the Western-controlled SWIFT system. After all, together with Russia and assisted also by other members of the BRICS and supported by a large part of the developing world, the BRI’s virtual connectivity grid effectively provides for direct bilateral currency settlement schemes, thereby avoiding the dollar as the monetary intermediary. The chapter also mentions about China’s space exploration technology in which it has invested massively. It possesses a vast system of satellites running its own high-precision geo-positioning system, i.e. BeiDou, which also figures as the BRI’s outer space pillar. It is also occasionally referred to as the Spatial Silk Road.
