Exploiting the Chinese Exit

Context: The current India-China border standoff has expanded watchful Indian eyes into cyberspace.

Chinese dominance in cyberspace:

• Great Internet Wall of China: Chinese government began erecting censorship barriers more than a decade ago

• Pull back of Tech giants in 2010: Google and others were forced out due to some censor issues, but this was converted into Chinese Internet market explosion and has grown to over 900 million users from just over 300 million in early 2010. 

• China’s lead: 

• Chinese had learnt their lesson from failing to make themselves an IT outsourcing services superpower like India had.
• Chinese have surpassed the U.S. in AI research, especially in the components of “neural networks” and “deep learning”.

India’s position in cyberspace

• Widened reach of Internet connection across the country: Provide hundreds of millions of non-urban Indians with fluid access to the Internet.

• Lowest Internet data costs in the world

Effects of banning Chinese websites and applications

• Economic impact: Not only a geopolitical move but also a strategic trade manoeuvre that can have a significant economic impact
• Focus on new users: Allows our home-grown IT talent to focus on the newly arrived Internet user. 
• Develop new websites and Apps: Indian techies have started trying to fill the holes with copycat replacement websites and applications. 

Way Forward

• Shift from servicing others to providing for ourselves.

• Focus on providing services and products of high quality: copycat replacement is not enough

• Providing the same services across diverse markets is overarching:  Create smaller markets and provide specialised Internet services created for a local community.

• Provide for hyper-regional necessities and preferences: 

• For, E.g. apps and services that provide specific market prices, local train and bus routes, 

• Allow for non-traditional banking and lending, education, health, online sales, classified advertising, and so on.

Conclusion:

• Serve our own:

• If we go forward with the aim of servicing our own, India’s experiences as a modernising power are of great use to the bulk of the world’s population.
• We can export our “India stack” to other countries in the “south”, such as those in Africa and Latin America.