Reliance on China’s surveillance architecture could compromise Pakistan’s sovereignty, digital future

New Delhi: China‑Pakistan Economic Corridor has entered a new phase -- dubbed “CPEC 2.0” -- that prioritises artificial intelligence, cloud computing and surveillance technologies over the heavy infrastructure projects that defined the first decade of cooperation, a new report has said.

The report from Asia Times said Beijing’s push to export AI architectures and “Safe City” surveillance systems to Pakistan is reshaping the partnership from physical connectivity to digital governance.

Driven by Chinese AI-powered facial recognition, automated license plate readers and predictive policing algorithms, the 'Safe City' networks are publicly framed as modernisation efforts to tackle urban crime and persistent militant threats.

However, the system provides an efficient mechanism for state control for Islamabad, and for Beijing, it is an invaluable source of real-world operational data, the report noted. Further, Pakistan’s nascent IT and software export sector will also be a causality of this new co-operation.

Chinese firms are supplying hardware, software and cloud services at subsidised rates and they are faster to deploy, but it creates long‑term technological dependence, the report warned.

The technological dependence will make future diversification away from Chinese platforms difficult and expensive.

“If data is the primary commodity of the modern economy, Pakistan is rapidly surrendering the drilling rights of its domestic digital landscape to a singular external power,” the media house said.

Such digital and technological dependence could compromise sovereignty in a geopolitical crisis, and could dictate “who holds the encryption keys to the state’s digital nervous system.”

Pakistan got attracted to Chinese technological solutions due to constrained public finances and the urgent need to rapidly modernise urban governance and internal security.

Pakistan's IT industry relies heavily on Western markets for revenue, and tighter data‑security regulations and supply‑chain scrutiny in the United States could penalise Pakistani firms that become deeply integrated with Chinese architectures.

"Islamabad risks locking out its most dynamic economic sector from lucrative Western tech ecosystems in exchange for subsidized sovereign tech infrastructure from Beijing," the report noted.