Huawei’s Expansion into the Global South: A Path Toward Alternative Globalization?

Abstract

This chapter combines the political economic approach and industrial studies of global information and communication technology (ICT) to examine the motive, pattern and implications of Huawei’s expansion in the Global South. Moving beyond the firm-specific perspective, this chapter draws particular attention to the state-firm relationship as well as the geopolitical-economic tensions that underlie Huawei’s transnationalization. Amid the growing geo-technological rivalry between the United States and China, Huawei’s increasing presence as a new source of investment and technological support in the Global South exemplifies China’s effort to extend the country’s control over transnational network infrastructures and to reconstruct an alternative model of globalization toward a multipolar political economic order in the digital economic era.