The Third Way: Why Rising Powers Reject U.S.–China Digital Models

American and Chinese officials are making a costly mistake in their competition for digital influence. They are treating countries like India, Indonesia, and Brazil as “swing states” or “digital deciders” to be won over. These emerging powers are not looking to pick sides. They are pursuing their own path that could reshape global cyber governance.

This misunderstanding has real costs. When the United Nations recently established a permanent cybersecurity mechanism after five years of negotiations, these emerging powers did not line up behind either Washington or Beijing. Instead, they crafted positions that prioritized their own development needs over great power competition. The result: Both the United States and China found themselves with less influence than expected in shaping the rules that will govern cyberspace for the next decade.

Countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa are better understood as “emerging powers” focused on strategic autonomy rather than ideological alignment. They face a unique challenge: managing growing international influence while dealing with urgent domestic needs like poverty, healthcare, and digital infrastructure gaps. This dual pressure explains their seemingly contradictory behavior in international forums.

The implications for American policy are clear. Rather than viewing these countries as prizes to be won in a zero-sum competition with China, policymakers should engage them as partners with their own legitimate interests. This means focusing on practical cooperation in areas like supply chain resilience, capacity building, and technical standards rather than demanding ideological loyalty.

As the United States, China, and the European Union wrestle over cyberspace and its governance at the United Nations and other international forums, the points of departure often fall along ideological lines: Will global digital frameworks be multi-stakeholder-led or state-centric? Government-controlled, driven by markets and corporate imperatives, or rooted in universal human rights? Will data be closely controlled within national borders or flow freely across them? 

These ideological commitments do not align with the priorities of post-colonial powers and fail to explain their behavior effectively. Countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa are representative but not constitutive of the developing world. While they have risen in this century to boast large economies and growing militaries, they are also “premature powers” who must balance their increasing global clout and expectations against pervasive developmental, educational, and health challenges at home.  

Their ostensibly paradoxical behavior often confounds external analysts and observers. For instance, their neutrality in the aftermath of Russian aggression in Ukraine did not square up with their entrenched support for the norms of equal sovereignty and non-interference in international relations. But from their perspective, the explanation is relatively simple: They want to maintain strategic autonomy and policy independence to deal with domestic challenges while avoiding becoming pawns in the “petty squabbles” of the great powers.

For the world’s leading powers, this trend signals a fundamental shift. Both American and Chinese strategies assume these countries will eventually align with one camp or the other. But emerging powers are building their own coalitions and frameworks, reducing the influence of both Washington and Beijing in shaping global cyber rules.

Digital policy is central to these countries’ growth strategies. When Pretoria held the G20 meeting on digital development as G20 chair this year, South African Minister of Communication and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi focused on the group’s digital agenda on developing country needs rather than great power competition. The three previous G20 hosts (Indonesia, India, and Brazil) did the same, prioritizing digital skills training and AI development over ideological debates about internet governance.

Yet, as these emerging powers step up to the plate, their track record at multilateral forums has also perplexed observers. At the United Nations, for example, emerging powers have chosen to remain agnostic on controversial questions such as state control of the internet and information flows, with apparently contradictory votes for resolutions sponsored by the United States or Russia. 

On the other hand, they have been persistently active at the World Trade Organization, opposing international rules on digital trade that would hamper their ability to frame domestic policy or legislation—explicitly underscoring the need for domestic policy to constrain the powers of “Big Tech,” support small local digital businesses, and protect consumers. 

This divergent behaviour can be explained not by ideology but rather by a pragmatic commitment to their strategic autonomy and national developmental interests. They will assert themselves if their interests are directly threatened, but have no intention of swinging decisively one way or the other in great power debates that are unlikely to be resolved or impact their citizens or other domestic stakeholders any time soon.

Emerging powers are equally comfortable procuring critical and emerging technologies like 5G hardware from U.S.- and EU-based providers like Nokia or Ericsson or Chinese players like Huawei or ZTE. They are as wary of spying by the Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as they are of Chinese surveillance. Huawei’s long-term investment in research, development, and capacity building in emerging power countries has made decoupling unattractive, unless spurred by issues such as the 2020 border spat between India and China, which precipitated India’s restriction on Chinese participation in auctions for 5G technologies.

Rather than choosing sides, these countries join everyone’s club. India works with the United States on technology security through the Quad while simultaneously partnering with China and Russia in BRICS on digital economy issues. Indonesia belongs to both the U.S.-backed Indo–Pacific Economic Framework and now the China-friendly BRICS group. By maintaining ties with both Washington and Beijing, emerging powers can shop for the best deals on technology transfer, investment, and development assistance without ideological constraints. Likewise, South Africa is a founding member of BRICS and works with the African Union, which has developed a common position on the application of international law to cyberspace.

Emerging powers are clearly vital for reinvigorating multilateralism and fostering stability in an increasingly conflicted international cyber order. It is unsurprising that they place their own developmental interests first and craft their engagement according to context and issue-specific outcomes. They are not looking to definitively “swing” to one side of the ideological divide, nor can they be cajoled to do so. They are agnostic about ideological commitments in some cases but assertive when it comes to reforming international rules that have favored private actors over citizens from the developing world.

Leading powers, in their attempt to propagate liberalism or craft technological “spheres of influence,” would do well to appreciate and understand these complex circumstances and forms of agency exercised by emerging powers. American officials, in particular, have a choice: Keep treating these countries as prizes to be won, or start engaging them as partners with legitimate interests. The most effective strategy focuses on practical cooperation in areas like supply chain security and technical standards rather than demanding ideological alignment.

This approach works because it aligns with what these countries actually want: development assistance without political strings attached. Policymakers should expand this framework by offering technology transfer partnerships, digital infrastructure investment, and capacity building programs that serve mutual interests rather than zero-sum competition.

The stakes are clear. Countries like India, Indonesia, and Brazil will shape global cyber rules whether Washington engages them effectively or not. The question is whether the United States will influence that process or watch from the sidelines as these emerging powers write the rules themselves.