Data And A New Global Order

Context: Analysing the role of changing global order in shaping India’s aspirations to be the leader of the Digital Data Revolution.

3 Strategic implications of Digital Data Revolution

1. Symbiotic relationship between military and civilian systems: Because of nature and pervasiveness of digital data.
   • Cybersecurity is national security, and this requires both a new military doctrine and a diplomatic framework.
   • The U.S. Indo­-Pacific Commander recently said the erosion of conventional deterrence capabilities was the greatest danger in the strategic competition with China.
2. Blurred distinctions between domestic and foreign policy: Replacement of global rules with issue-based understanding converge with the growth of smartphone-based e-commerce, which ensures that massive amounts of data give a sustained productivity advantage to Asia.
3. India’s capacity to negotiate new rules as equal with U.S. and China: As data streams are now at the centre of global trade and countries’ economic and national power.

How China utilised innovations based data streams?

• Technology-led capitalism: The Fourteenth Five Year Plan emphasises a $1.4­ trillion strategy for the development of science and technology.
  • China is moving fast to utilise the economic potential of data, pushing the recently launched e­-yuan and shaking the dollar­-based settlement for global trade.
  • China has a $53­trillion mobile payments market, and it is the global leader in the online transactions arena, controlling over 50% of the global market value.
    • India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volume is expected to cross $1 trillion by 2025.
• Developing new standards: China formed a joint venture with SWIFT for cross-­border payments and suggested foundational principles for interoperability between central bank digital currencies at the Bank for International Settlements.

Conclusion:

• The fluid dynamics of the region (Indo-Pacific) is complicated over the trade-offs between the key players – India, China and the U.S. While China presents a clear challenge, India has issues with the U.S. too.
• • E.g. India, like China, is uncomfortable with treating Western values as universal values and with the U.S. interpretation of Freedom of Navigation rules in others’ territorial waters.
• Thus, India must adopt an equity-based perspective to competing visions, moulding rules for the hyper-connected world, facing off both U.S. and China to become the second largest nation in the world.