Promoting joint development of digital standards for the Belt and Road Initiative: Achievements, challenges, and future strategies

As a foundational regulatory framework in the digital economy era, digital standards serve as critical infrastructure for facilitating technological coordination, enabling data circulation, driving industrial upgrading, and ensuring security safeguards. Nevertheless, current practices reveal that the U.S. and Europe are strategically constraining China’s digital standardization efforts through the politicization of technical specifications and the imposition of cross-border data flow barriers, while China continues to face deficiencies in core technology innovation autonomy and influence within international standardization bodies. This study conducts a systematic analysis of the developmental trajectories, practical outcomes, and contemporary challenges in advancing digital standard co-construction under the Belt and Road Initiative. It synthesizes China’s empirical achievements in establishing digital standards within its competitive domains, such as 5G and blockchain, proposing a collaborative innovation pathway centered on three-dimensional synergies: government-enterprise coordination, technology-industry integration, and domestic-global alignment. Building upon this framework, the study advocates a tripartite strategic approach encompassing infrastructure connectivity, regulatory harmonization, and ecosystem convergence. Accordingly, it formulates policy recommendations to promote strategic cooperation on digital technology standards in emerging fields among Belt and Road partner nations, aiming to foster an inclusive innovation ecosystem within the evolving global digital governance architecture.