Beyond authoritarianism and liberal democracy: understanding China’s artificial intelligence impact in Africa

ABSTRACT

China is the largest foreign information and communications technology (ICT) investor in Africa, and Chinese telecommunication companies including Huawei, CloudWalk, and Transsion have brought a range of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to Africa, from face recognition to smart cities. Existing analysis of China’s AI impact in Africa, however, habitually falls into a Cold War-style narrative of ‘authoritarianism’ against the backdrop of ‘liberal democracy.’ This article calls for going beyond the oversimplified paradigm and proposes to examine the new phenomenon through a more sophisticated and critical lens. First, I show how (English language) media’s investigations and academia’s analysis of China’s AI policy and its global impact (particularly in Africa) usually concentrate on a deep concern about the exportation of authoritarianism from Beijing. The article then demonstrates that the ‘authoritarianism vs liberal democracy’ model is problematic, if not outdated, and particularly insufficient to capture the multi-layered and overlapping realities of authoritarian and democratic moves by states around the world and the distinguishing properties of AI technologies. Based on a critical appraisal of the notions of surveillance capitalism and data colonialism and the recent empirical evidence from Africa in the third and fourth sections, I propose that these two concepts are more productive analytical frameworks for understanding what is going on in Africa related to the presence of China’s AI, as well as for updating and moving forward the debates about whether China is colonizing Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• authoritarianism
• China–African relations
• data colonialism
• liberal democracy
• surveillance capitalism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback that made this article more robust and comprehensive. I also appreciate Dr. Bryce C. Newell, Dr. Gabriela Martínez, Mr. Isaac Bisilki, and the students in J649 International Communication class and J424H Data Justice class for their insightful suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bibo Lin

Bibo Lin is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon. His research interests include artificial intelligence, journalism, international communication, cultural studies, and feelings and emotions. His recent research projects on the role of journalistic AI in promoting democracy and the algorithmic news distribution in China have been published in the journal of Digital Journalism. His dissertation inquiries how artificial intelligence shapes the ways we understand ourselves and our emotions (including love, friendship, sense of belonging, etc.). Previously, he was a senior editor of one of the most popular daily newspapers in China, City Express in Hangzhou, and as a journalist, he conducted interviews in Ukraine, Tanzania, Japan, and North Korea.