Discussions on technological sovereignty – both in Poland and Europe – are inactive focused on the issue of dependence on the United States. American large techs are ubiquitous in our private lives, the functioning of our states or our electoral processes. This is simply a constant controversy. It besides gives emergence to attempts to control them, both at EU and associate State level. They are increasingly faced with frontal criticism from Washington and attempts at political interference. This case has long gone beyond the issue of taxation – both parties are aware that there is not only large capital behind digital platforms, but besides power.
The debate on digital sovereignty in Europe present focuses almost exclusively on the dominance of American technological giants. In parallel, the digital power built in a completely different model – Chinese – whose expansion is associated with the expansion of its own control ecosystem (e.g. user data).
Against the background of America, the expansion of Chinese digital giants inactive appears to us to be something far more distant or even exotic. It is besides considered comparatively little harmful compared to American digital hegemony. Our imagination is fueled by reports of highly advanced surveillance systems and monitoring of Chinese citizens, awakening associations with Orwell's prose, but frequently this reflection stops in half a step. We seldom ask ourselves the nature of the technological expansion of China outside the PRC. Moreover, discussions about the risks associated with this for our privacy or systemic espionage are frequently accompanied by the argument that "Americans do it too".
Although there is most likely a grain of fact in this, this way of assessing reality is an expression of any independency in reasoning about digital threats to Poland and Europe. "What would the Chinese do to us if they were so far away?". Well, in a technological dimension that does not know geographical boundaries, they are already here – everywhere around us.
Looking at the Chinese digital expansion solely through the threat of American dominance leads to confusion. The increasing Chinese technodomination is simply a phenomenon of a completely different, circumstantial character that is worth trying to understand.
The last decade brought the first examples of the global expansion of Chinese large techs, specified as Huawei, TikTok or Alibaba. Let us not let our defender down the fact that we are only at the threshold of this phenomenon. China is the arena of booming innovation and the dynamic growth of digital giants, and the digital ecosystem there – built on a completely different foundation than ours – will increasingly spread with Chinese products. Moreover, this expansion will not always be akin to that of the US, focused mainly on digital services – in China, physical products are frequently the carrier of digital dominance. We must prepare for this mentally and regularly.
Where did the Chinese technological power come from?
It is worth asking ourselves at first why China is actually able to compete with the United States in the technological and digital sphere, while the remainder of the planet – including Europe – inactive cannot establish real competition with American large techs. The answer to this question lies in decisions taken by the Communist organization of China more than 2 decades ago, at the threshold of the 21st century.
The Chinese technological power was not created by chance or solely by marketplace competition. Its foundation was the political decision to build a sovereign net and defend its own marketplace from the dominance of American giants.
It was then, by constructing its own sovereign Internet, the Beijing authorities made a fundamental decision to exclude American technological giants – specified as Google, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter – from access to the Chinese market. The logic of the Chinese authorities was based on 2 fundamental objectives: political and economic.
Firstly, and most importantly, this diagnosis was already based on the belief that the presence of American digital platforms and social media would make a fundamental threat to the political stableness of the PRC regime. The external supplier means that it is not possible to control the transmission and the likelihood of spreading "unlawful content". It besides gives large insight into the functioning of the smallest aspects of the state and society.
Although any solutions – specified as Microsoft Bing's search engine – were conditionally allowed in the implementation of the censorship system, most American platforms were not only removed from the Chinese market, but besides cut off for users in China through the alleged large Firewall – an extended technology-legislation strategy allowing filtering abroad network traffic from and to China. Beijing has already made a decision on full digital sovereignty at the beginning of the net – a decision on far-reaching consequences, besides for us in Europe.
The decision to make a sovereign net was primarily a political decision for China. Control over digital space has been recognised as a condition for stableness of power and the foundation of building your own technological power.
Protectionism, which created Chinese large techs
Secondly, the decision to throw out American platforms should be taken as a form of economical protectionism, which has produced tremendous results years later. The cancerous Chinese digital ecosystem initially reacted simply by creating local copies of American solutions. And so RenRen was created as an alternate to Facebook, Weibo functions as a Chinese Twitter counterpart, and the niche left by Google filled Baidu.
Over time, however, this ecosystem, powered by the massive spread of the net and smartphones in China, generated a stream of data and money for nearly a billion Chinese netizens. Chinese large techs – due to the fact that we are already talking about specified a scale – began investing in innovation, creating increasingly complex products and building powerful financial facilities. Today, not only do they begin to grow abroad, but they frequently besides become a pattern of innovation taken over by abroad competition – a somewhat grim example of which are the unsuccessful attempts to imitate TikTok's algorithm by American platforms. The improvement of the sovereign digital ecosystem was besides an invaluable asset in the era of artificial intelligence – data from a billion Chinese consumers. Moreover, he was the only 1 in the planet to make space for the growth of non-American technological giants.
The Chinese digital ecosystem is so a unique phenomenon in the world. By deciding to partially disconnect from the US-dominated Internet, Beijing authorities de facto cut from the global digital space almost 1.5 billion, an isolated “bubble” in which a completely different digital planet began to make rapidly. So it is no coincidence that our globe is now becoming the arena of digital competition between the United States and China.
Under conditions of tremendous economies of scale and almost unlimited access to global data, American companies could grow and then destruct or take over most competitors and challengers – including in Europe. While digital unicorns are possible in this planet outside the United States, cases of their subsequent promotion to the group of actual large techs are highly rare. On the another hand, developing “beyond the walls of the digital fortress” Chinese companies can accomplish a scale and level of complexity there that allows them to then go beyond this wall and take on real competition with the Americans.
Chinese large techs were not created by spontaneous marketplace competition but by a protected, sovereign digital ecosystem created by a political decision. The cut-off from the U.S. platforms allowed them to accomplish a scale that present allows real competition with the US's technological power.
Not just the market: clashing 2 models of digital power
Following TikTok's conflict with Meta or DeepSeek from OpenAI, however, it may be mistaken to think that this competition is purely economical and that we, consumers of digital content, vote only for a better product. However, under the layer of applications, algorithms and digital services there are deeper foundations for digital ecosystems that we should consider.
The American side is more transparent and thus much better described. In a large, authorial summary, the logic of the American ecosystem is based on an unbridled appetition for profit from large techs, their desire to lift all barriers to the interference of consumers, and besides on a kind of symbiosis with an American state apparatus – both in terms of surveillance and military exploitation of their capabilities. With Donald Trump's re-introduction of power, the power of digital giants has increased, and the support of "tech bros" has translated into an even clearer articulate of their interests by Washington.
The Chinese digital ecosystem is mostly the reverse of the US, primarily in terms of the power relation between the state and large tech. The word “cyberlenism” is helpful to realize this difference. By placing it on first factors, it refers to the Leninist rule of full dominance of the revolutionary organization organization – in this case the Communist organization of China – over the state and society. Unlike a 100 years ago, its strength present is based on powerful digital foundations: algorithms, data and digital surveillance systems. In short, in the Chinese digital ecosystem, large techs are subordinate to the party's will and are to service it, in return receiving the chance to grow and multiply immense fortunes. At the same time, they become the digital foundation of organization power.
Competition between American and Chinese technological giants is not just marketplace competition. It is indeed a clash of 2 models of digital power, in which technology intertwins with the interests of the state and politics.
The political subordination of digital giants is very direct in China. Many Chinese large tech bosses hold organization cards and are subject to organization discipline. Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba empire, found this to be true, who dared to challenge the dominance of state banks in the financial sphere. As a result, he disappeared for respective months from public life, and his Fintech empire was divided. This was a kind of effort between president Xi Jinping and the most celebrated Chinese billionaire—win, of course, by the Party.
All leaders of the Chinese digital ecosystem realize this relation well, regularly appearing on the Central Committee at meetings with the leaders of the KPC. Therefore, while the relation between large techs and political power in both the USA and the PRC is highly close, there is no uncertainty in China who dominates and imposes the rules of the game.
In the Chinese digital ecosystem, technology is not an autonomous marketplace power but a tool of political power. large techs can only grow and get rich if they stay subject to the interests of the Communist organization of China.
Data, surveillance and social engineering
The central function of the organization and its interests translates into a number of circumstantial features of the Chinese digital ecosystem expressed in circumstantial regulations. Firstly, while Chinese citizens are protected from the greed of native large techs by the extended law on individual data (designated on the European GDPR!), the organization and the state have virtually unfettered access to this data. This opens the way to highly advanced surveillance, monitoring, censorship of social media or artificial intelligence-supported tracking of billions of conversations conducted on communicators. The Chinese state does not request backdoors in digital platforms – it has frontdoors wherever it needs them.
Big techs, specified as Alibaba, Baidu or Tencent, supply all kinds of services essential to the parties – from algorithms profiling “unlawful” behavior, through solutions smart city to track citizens, to the cloud computing essential for an extended surveillance system. And yes, the United States government frequently tries to scope out to large techs to prosecute its political goals – at home and abroad – but each time this is simply a subject of serious controversy and is fundamentally within the limits of the law. In China, however, this is simply a key, systemic rule for the functioning of the digital ecosystem.
Secondly, Chinese companies have the ambition to usage modern digital technologies to advance circumstantial attitudes among citizens. In an extended strategy of standardization of artificial intelligence, the Chinese administration sets standards and limits for "unrighteous" models, ordering AI systems to advance socialist values and loyalty to the Party. The extended regulations on recommending algorithms – for example, in the Chinese equivalent of TikToka, or Douyin – propose showing young people content of a ‘building’ nature encouraging learning.
An extended network identity control strategy besides allows you to identify children facing top-down limits on online gaming time. any of these solutions may not origin much controversy or even jealousy in the West. Of course, the Chinese net should not be imagined as a Platoan academy – it is inactive full of violence, fraud and empty content. However, the above regulations show another feature of the Chinese digital ecosystem: it is expected to be a carrier of a peculiar ideology, shaped by a organization accustomed to conducting social engineering.
In the Chinese digital model, data is primarily a tool of power alternatively than an economical resource. The technology ecosystem was designed there to drive innovation at the same time, strengthen state surveillance and form desirable social attitudes.
Exports of technology – exports of the full ecosystem
With the Chinese technology boom, driven by a immense and circumstantial digital bubble, over a billion netizens, as well as a fast export expansion, the Chinese ecosystem gradually begins to spill beyond the borders of the PRC. It is worth remembering that we are not just talking about purely digital services – specified as social media, software, artificial intelligence or cloud services – which usually associate with large techs from the United States.
Of course, the last decade has brought any loud stories of global expansion from China, specified as the world's storming TikTok, the spectacular success of DeepSeek, the cloud expansion of Huawei, and the improvement of e-commerce platforms of Alibaba. These are examples of widely commented but truly fundamental advancement in the technological dominance of China is being made somewhat elsewhere – in increasingly digital industrial products.
Today practically all modern products – smartphones, telecommunications equipment, cameras and sensors of cars, steaming with our telephone appliances, energy retention and photovoltaic inverters – make billions of terabytes of data. If the maker of specified a device comes from China, this means that it is supplied by a company that grew up in the "cyberleninow" digital ecosystem of the People's Republic of China. It processes immense streams of our data and operates according to the rules imposed by the organization – principles based on social control and social engineering.
Consequences for Poland and Europe
Looking at China's increasing technological dominance, we must remember the basic fact – by importing digital products and services, we besides import a circumstantial digital ecosystem with them. This in turn reflects certain relations between power and the nature of the political system, and frequently besides circumstantial values and ideologies.
In Europe's strengthening of attempts to keep technological and digital dominance by the United States, we frequently neglect to see the more fundamental technological risks coming from China – the only place outside America where truly immense technology companies have been created. erstwhile they go outside China, we frequently forget that inside their country they have been coupled – regardless of their own will – into the construction of an advanced cyberlenin system, in which modern digital economy is utilized for mass surveillance and social engineering.
Chinese technological expansion is not just about exporting equipment and applications. It is besides the export of the full digital ecosystem – along with the logic of power, data control and political principles that shaped it.
What warrant do we have that this digital ecosystem outside China will operate under another rules? Will the Party, obsessed with control and oversight, actually close its eyes erstwhile hundreds of terabytes of data from abroad begin to be hit in its hands? How can we guarantee that, most likely inevitable in the modern world, technological interdependence with China will not affect the functioning of our political systems and will not supply the organization with the vast cognition of ourselves?
By importing digital technologies, we do not just import products and services – we besides import the model of power that shaped them. Therefore, the question of Europe's digital sovereignty is indeed a question of what technological ecosystems we let into our own political and social system.
These are questions that should accompany any discussion about Polish and European digital sovereignty.
