Chinese companies have deployed fiber-optic cables, smart-city platforms, and 5G networks throughout Southeast Asia as part of Beijing's Digital Silk Road initiative. However, regulatory officials in three major partner countries indicate that Chinese hardware dominance has not translated into adoption of Chinese governance standards.
Indonesia's cybersecurity agency enforces technical standards developed internationally in Geneva. The Philippines modeled its data privacy law on European regulations, while Malaysia's artificial intelligence approach draws from United Nations principles and regional frameworks. Officials in all three countries described their regulatory systems as anchored to international or Western standards rather than Chinese norms.
Research conducted at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, including over a hundred interviews with government officials and regulators in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, found that Southeast Asian governments are "picking and choosing," adopting Beijing's hardware while writing their own rulebooks. The findings were recently published in the Review of International Studies.
In cybersecurity specifically, Chinese regulatory influence appears minimal. Indonesian banks follow central bank regulations aligned with international standards developed in Geneva and Washington. Malaysian cybersecurity governance took shape in response to United Nations processes, while Philippine officials explicitly describe international cybersecurity governance as Western-dominated. Technical standards carry significant switching costs once embedded in national financial and telecommunications systems, according to officials interviewed.
Officials in governments accepting Chinese infrastructure expressed widespread mistrust of Chinese platforms, according to interviews conducted. Analysts have argued that exporting digital governance models requires more than hardware—it demands the institutional apparatus, such as internal security bureaucracies, that enforce authoritarian systems domestically.
