The ‘China’ Question in Mobile Internet Standard-Making: Insights From Expert Interviews

Abstract

This article explores the actions of Chinese stakeholders as norm entrepreneurs in mobile Internet standard-making within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Through semi-structured interviews with key experts from the Internet stakeholder communities, this article contextualises a rapidly transforming and increasingly politicised issue in the broader context of China’s engagement with the global multistakeholder Internet governance architecture, as well as the debate on China’s rise in the Liberal International Order. Furthermore, it incorporates the views and experiences of technologists working first-hand in standard-making, as they are often disregarded in political-scientific literature. Through the analytical lens of cognitivist regime theory, this article argues that the stronger China and Chinese stakeholders grow economically and politically, the more they become involved in the existing Internet governance regime complex, increasing their influence in the existing institutional arrangements without necessarily acting for changing their norms, rules, and principles. Through these theoretical and methodological approaches, new light is shed on the role of private and public Chinese stakeholders and on the relation between them.

Keywords: 5G, Mobile internet standards, Multistakeholderism, Global internet governance, Regime theory