The geopolitics of global high-tech standards: Key issues and debates

Event description

Global standards for critical and emerging digital technologies (CETs, such as 5G and AI) will play an increasingly crucial role in the adoption and governance of these technologies. In recent years, many countries/regions such as the US, China, and the EU have laid down standards strategies or industry policies, aiming to maintain or pursue global leadership in international standards-setting for CETs. Among them, China has stepped up its efforts in participating in the negotiation of global technology standards since around 2015. The US and the EU have enhanced their cooperation in technology standard setting through the US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) framework and emphasised partnership with countries (such as Japan and South Korea) in line with shared democratic values. This webinar aims to facilitate dialogue and an exchange of views among leading policy analysts and industry experts from major players in international standards-setting—from the US, China, Europe and others. Panellists will discuss challenges to and solutions for international cooperation around global standardisation for selected CETs, as well as the consequences of non-cooperation in this area.

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Chair/moderator

Prof. Robin Mansell FAcSS, FBA (Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE)

Speakers

Prof. Milton Mueller (Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy and School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, United States)

Mr. Thomas Li (President of Industry Standardisation, Huawei, China)

Prof. Andrea Renda (Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels & Professor of Digital Policy of the European University Institute in Florence)

Dr. June Park (Fung Global Fellow of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University)

Dr. Scott Kennedy (Senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS))

Dr. Baisheng An (Associate Fellow at the China Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC) & former head of the Chinese delegation for the WTO negotiations on technical barriers and standardisation)

Ms Claire Milne MBE (senior visiting Fellow at the LSE, independent consultant on telecommunication policies, senior advisor for OXGS Digital Cluster)

 

Bios of speakers

Robin Mansell, FAcSS, FBA, is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on media and communications regulation and policy, internet governance, privacy and surveillance, digital platforms, socio-technical features of data and information systems, and the social, political and economic impacts of innovation in digital networks and applications. She has published numerous books and peer-reviewed papers including Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics (Edward Elgar 2020) and Imagining the Internet (Oxford UP, 2012).

Professor Mansell received the 2021 Outstanding Alumni Award for Academic Achievement from Simon Fraser University, was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Fribourg in 2020 and was recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy 2020 by the International Communication Association.  She is Secretary of TPRC and past President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.

 

Milton Mueller is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA) in the School of Public Policy and School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. He directs GT’s Master of Science program in Cybersecurity Policy. An internationally prominent scholar specializing in the political economy of information and communication, he is the author of seven books and many journal articles, including Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace (Polity, 2017), Networks and States: The global politics of Internet governance (MIT Press, 2010) and Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002). His work informs public policy, science and technology studies, law, economics, communications, and international studies.  

Dr. Mueller is the co-founder and director of Georgia Tech’s Internet Governance Project (IGP), which has played a prominent role in shaping global Internet policies and institutions such as ICANN and the Internet Governance Forum. He has participated in proceedings and policy development activities of ICANN, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the European Commission, Hong Kong and New Zealand. He has served as an expert witness in prominent legal cases related to domain names and telecommunication policy. He was elected to the Advisory Committee of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) from 2013-2016 and served on the IANA Stewardship Coordination Group during the IANA transition. Dr. Mueller was one of the founders of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), an international association of scholars focused on Internet governance. Mueller received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School in 1989.

 

Thomas Li (Li Li) is the President of Industry Standardization of Huawei. He is one of the founders of Huawei’s Standardization & Industry Department. In the past decade, Mr. Li has distinguished himself as the standard policy-maker and a technology strategist inside the company. He has been a leader on Huawei’s overall standard strategy and standard policies for 4G, 5G and many other technologies. Mr. Li has participated in/initiated several standards-related international organisations or programmes, including the NGSON of IEEE, the oneM2M (international standardisation organisation for Internet of Things). He sat on the boards of IEEE, WiMAX Forum and oneM2M.

Thomas is also a core member of Huawei’s corporate strategy circle and has taken part in corporate-level technology strategies in recent years. He received his bachelor’s degree in radio technologies from Xi’an Jiaotong University, and his Master’s in Business Administration from Tsing Hua University.

 

Andrea Renda is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, where he directs the research group on Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation and the Digital Economy (GRID). He is Professor of Digital Policy at the School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute, in Florence (Italy), where he teaches Courses on AI Policy and on the regulation of emerging technologies. He is also Visiting Professor of Competition Policy and the Digital Economy at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium).

Andrea is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science, a CITI Fellow at Columbia University’s Centre for Tele-Information, member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI and a member of the European Parliament’s STOA International Advisory Board. Andrea provides regular advice to several institutions, including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the OECD, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and many more. He sits on the Editorial Board of the journals Telecommunications Policy (Elsevier), and European Journal of Risk Regulation (Cambridge). He was a member of the EU High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence; member of the advisory group on Economic and Societal Impacts of Research (ESIR) for the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation; and member of the Expert Group on “Smart Specialisation Strategies for Sustainability” (S4) at the European Commission, DG Joint Research Centre. He is the Co-director of the Brookings/CEPS Forum for Global Cooperation on AI and a former member of the Task Force on AI of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. From May 2022, Andrea is the Director of the Trade and Technology Dialogue, a consortium of universities and think tanks that provides support to the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council for the period May 2022-May 2025.   

 

Dr. June Park is a 2021-22 Fung Global Fellow of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University. In 2022, she was selected as an inaugural International Strategy Forum Asia Fellow by Schmidt Futures. She is a political economist by training and works on trade, energy, and tech conflicts, analyzing different policy outcomes as a response to pressures based on governance structures. Her current work pertains to post-pandemic geoeconomic conflicts in data governance and emerging technology.

Outside academia, she advises public and private sectors with analyses at global, regional, and domestic levels. She provides expert commentary to various international media outlets and contributes her analysis to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of Economist Group. She serves as an expert for global consulting firms Duco and Enquire, while providing analyses to policy think-tanks in Washington, DC as a member of the ‘Democracy in Asia’ project of the Brookings Institution and as a non-resident fellow of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). Dr. Park received her PhD in Political Science with a focus on international political economy from Boston University as a Fulbright Fellow and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. 

 

Dr. Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance. A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, Scott is the editor of China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, February 2020) and the author of several books includingThe State and the State of the Art on Philanthropy in China (Voluntas, August 2019) and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005). His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and China Quarterly. He is currently finishing a report, Beyond Decoupling: Maintaining America’s Hi-Tech Advantages over China (CSIS, forthcoming Spring 2022).

From 2000 to 2014, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. Kennedy received his PhD in political science from George Washington University.

 

Dr. Baisheng An is an Associate Fellow at the China Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC) of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Before joining the CAITEC, Dr. An had been a trade negotiator for China’s Commerce Ministry for many years, acting as the head of the Chinese delegation for the WTO negotiations on technical barriers and standardisation.

Dr. An specialises in standardisation policy, regulation, and international trade laws. He has been invited to speak at seminars/conferences organised by Yale, Stanford, UNCTAD, OECD, APEC, EU Commission and others. Dr. An obtained his PhD in economics from Renmin University of China and his master’s degree in international law and Economics (MILE) from the World Trade Institute in Bern (Switzerland).

 

Claire Milne is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).  Since 2019 she has worked with the Consumer and Public Interest Network of the British Standards Institution (BSI/CPIN) (she is on its Steering Group). She is also a senior advisor for the digital cluster of Oxford Global Society.

Claire has had a long and varied career with telecommunications policy as its central theme. Since 1989 she has worked as an independent consultant, providing policy and regulatory advice in dozens of countries on all continents, including recently in The Bahamas, Bhutan, Myanmar, Somalia, and Iraq. In parallel she has served on several public bodies in the UK, including the premium rate service regulator Phone-paid Services Authority (then ICSTIS) and the Internet Watch Foundation. In 2015 she was awarded an MBE for services to the telecommunications sector. Her early career was with BT, where her responsibilities included network engineering, marketing strategy and regulation. She has degrees in Mathematics (Cambridge University) and Statistics (Imperial College).