China’s Digital Smart Power: exporting standards and projecting power in global digital governance

This article develops the concept of Digital Smart Power (DSP) to explain how states project power and accumulate influence through the internationalization of technical standards. We define DSP as a state’s ability to mobilize its technological, economic, and regulatory resources to make its digital ecosystem and standards attractive for voluntary adoption. We distinguish between material threshold conditions for DSP and three mechanisms through which these resources generate influence: technical, economic, and normative attraction. Bridging International Relations theory and Internet Governance, we examine China’s evolving standardization strategy through four cases: WAPI, IGRS, New IP, and IPv6+, using structured, focused comparison, within-case process tracing, and qualitative document analysis. The findings demonstrate that growing technological and economic capabilities do not automatically produce successful DSP implementation. Rather, outcomes depend on how DSP resources are mobilized: from WAPI’s coercive market-access strategy, through IGRS’s coalition-building, to New IP’s unsuccessful institutional strategy and IPv6+’s more adaptive commercial and infrastructural diffusion. DSP therefore highlights how material capabilities and attraction interact in shaping global digital governance.Footnote1