To explain what drives the demand for Chinese infrastructure spending and the adoption of its digital standards among low- and middle-income countries, we must begin by considering how they effectively address market failures. A first set of market failures regards impediments to private investment for building infrastructure. Western multilateral development banks such as the World Bank commonly impose liberalizing conditionalities on recipient states. These can be politically problematic for rulers of autocratic countries that rely on state controls to retain their hold on power. China, by contrast, has an explicit policy of noninterference in the domestic politics of foreign nations. China’s own political motivations coupled with huge dollar reserves have enabled it to effectively address the market failures of autocracies in a politically palatable way. A second type of market failure regards transaction costs and coordination failures. These can be addressed via the adoption of digital technologies. China can leverage its preferential access to autocracies for infrastructure spending in order to promote the adoption of its digital and related technical standards.

In 2013, Xi Jinping announced the launch of the Maritime Silk Road Initiative while visiting Indonesia. However, Malaysia became a far more avid recipient of Chinese spending in the years afterward. What can account for this surprising outcome? In this opening chapter, Richard Carney explains that we should care about the answer to this puzzle because it can help us understand how China can acquire global influence by addressing developing countries’ enormous unmet demand for infrastructure and spread the adoption of its digital standards. In contrast to existing explanations that focus on the demand for foreign investment by private firms, Carney proposes a novel explanation for why demand for Chinese SOE-led investment varies across countries. He argues state versus private control over the delivery of clientelist resources varies across political regimes, and this affects the demand for Chinese infrastructure spending that is principally delivered by SOEs. He argues electoral autocracies, which hold semi-competitive elections, possess the highest demand due to their heavy reliance on clientelism coupled with a high level of state control over the corporate sector.

This chapter conceptualizes technical standards and ICT standards, discussing their types and functions. It then introduces different types of standards development organization (SDOs), focusing in particular on competitive dynamics among standards developers. While discussing ICT standardization as a regime of private transnational governance, this chapter offers a theoretical background on non-State regulatory arrangements and explains how voluntary standards created in different types of SDOs may acquire a binding force. To that end, this chapter reviews the relevant scholarship in the field of global governance, transnational private regulation, and global administrative law, outlining the normative framework of this study.

This chapter conceptualizes technical standards and ICT standards, discussing their types and functions. It then introduces different types of standards development organization (SDOs), focusing in particular on competitive dynamics among standards developers. While discussing ICT standardization as a regime of private transnational governance, this chapter offers a theoretical background on non-State regulatory arrangements and explains how voluntary standards created in different types of SDOs may acquire a binding force. To that end, this chapter reviews the relevant scholarship in the field of global governance, transnational private regulation, and global administrative law, outlining the normative framework of this study.

Chapter 1 frames VSS within the transnational emergence of a regulatory space for private actors due to the difficulty for States to unilaterally regulate transboundary phenomena and the impasse at the multilateral level. Civil society organisations, producers and retailers thus emerged as regulatory actors in the domain of sustainability. Relevant characteristics of VSS are discussed in preparation for the legal analysis. The chapter also illustrates key differences between technical standards and VSS tackling, respectively, network externalities and policy externalities. Three ideal–typical categories of VSS are designed to facilitate and fine-tune the legal analysis, and to clarify the extent of public reach vis-à-vis each of three groups. The three categories of multi-stakeholder, sectoral and company schemes are established on the basis of the actors participating in standard-setting, its procedures and normative justifications behind the schemes. The chapter then illustrates the contested effectiveness of VSS, their frequent negative impact on trade and their distributional implications.