The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor entered a new stage in 2025. Known as CPEC 2.0, the second phase represents a significant departure from the original model, which was dominated by roads, energy projects, ports and other large-scale physical infrastructure.
The new agenda places greater emphasis on industrial development, agriculture and digital integration. Of these three pillars, the digital component may prove the most strategically consequential.
Pakistan’s planned transformation now extends into artificial intelligence, cloud services, data centres, 5G connectivity, smart-energy systems, agricultural technologies and urban surveillance networks. This evolution offers Islamabad access to technologies that would otherwise require major domestic investment and years of development.
But it also raises a more difficult question: who will ultimately control the technological architecture on which Pakistan’s digital economy depends?
China’s wider Digital Silk Road strategy has long focused not only on exporting hardware but also on expanding Chinese technological standards, platforms and infrastructure abroad. Under this model, physical connectivity — fibre-optic cables, satellite links, servers, data centres and telecom equipment — becomes inseparable from questions of data governance, software ecosystems and long-term strategic influence.
For Pakistan, this creates both opportunity and risk.
Chinese technology companies, particularly Huawei, have become increasingly involved in Pakistan’s telecommunications, cloud-computing, smart-city and artificial-intelligence sectors. Training programmes have also been established for Pakistani students and young professionals in areas such as AI, cybersecurity and cloud technology.
On the surface, such initiatives strengthen Pakistan’s human capital and accelerate digital readiness. Yet critics argue that they can also create a form of technological lock-in.
If engineers, government agencies and private companies are trained primarily on proprietary Chinese systems, future switching costs rise considerably. Once a country’s databases, cloud infrastructure, telecom equipment and cybersecurity architecture are built around one technological ecosystem, diversification becomes both expensive and operationally difficult.
The result could be a progressively deeper dependence on Chinese platforms, expertise and technical standards.
The question of digital sovereignty
This dependence becomes especially sensitive when technology moves from the commercial sector into critical national infrastructure.
As Pakistan develops national databases, cybersecurity systems and digital-governance platforms in close cooperation with Chinese institutions and companies, it may also be adopting, implicitly or explicitly, Chinese technical norms and data-management standards.
That matters because technological sovereignty is not simply about owning computers, servers or fibre-optic cables. It is also about maintaining control over software, code, access permissions, encryption standards, data storage and the ability to replace one supplier with another.
A country that cannot easily alter its technological architecture without external assistance may possess digital infrastructure without enjoying full digital autonomy.
This is where the debate over what some analysts describe as “digital colonialism” begins.
The term is controversial, but it captures a real strategic concern: that dependency on a foreign technology provider can eventually influence policy choices, procurement decisions, data access and national security.
In Pakistan’s case, the concern is amplified by the scale of Chinese involvement.
Western pressure could expose Pakistan’s vulnerabilities
Heavy integration into Chinese technology supply chains could also complicate Pakistan’s relationship with Western markets.
The United States and several allied governments have tightened restrictions on Chinese technology companies over concerns related to cybersecurity, data protection and national security.
If further sanctions or export controls are imposed on components, software or services linked to Chinese digital platforms, Pakistani companies deeply integrated into those ecosystems could face indirect consequences.
This could affect everything from software compatibility and equipment upgrades to access to international cloud platforms, financial systems and Western technology partnerships.
The deeper Pakistan becomes embedded in one technological sphere, the greater the potential cost of geopolitical fragmentation between China and the West.
Surveillance and the legal vacuum
The most sensitive dimension of Pakistan’s digital transformation concerns surveillance.
Pakistan still lacks a fully developed and comprehensive framework for personal-data protection. At the same time, large-scale surveillance systems are expanding through projects such as Safe City, which combine cameras, monitoring systems, databases and digital policing technologies.
Human-rights organisations have warned that sophisticated surveillance tools operating without strong institutional safeguards can facilitate privacy violations, censorship and political monitoring.
This concern is particularly serious because Pakistan has already faced international criticism regarding internet restrictions, censorship and state surveillance.
The country’s evolving digital-control architecture has at times been described as a “Great Digital Firewall of Pakistan”, reflecting the increasing technological capacity to filter communications, monitor users and restrict online activity.
Research by Amnesty International has also highlighted the international nature of Pakistan’s surveillance ecosystem, which includes technology originating not only from China but also from companies based in Europe, the United Arab Emirates and North America.
Therefore, the problem cannot be reduced simply to Chinese involvement.
However, China remains central to the wider debate because of the scale and strategic depth of its technological partnership with Islamabad.
Modernisation without ownership
Pakistan faces a genuine structural problem.
Its limited fiscal capacity, recurring economic crises and shortage of domestic capital make it extremely difficult to finance next-generation infrastructure independently.
CPEC 2.0 therefore offers something highly attractive: rapid access to digital systems, capital, expertise and technology.
But speed can carry strategic costs.
Importing ready-made digital infrastructure is easier than building a domestic technological base. Yet over time, excessive dependence on imported systems can weaken incentives to develop indigenous alternatives.
If Pakistan’s most important AI platforms, data centres, telecom systems, cybersecurity architecture and surveillance technologies remain dependent on foreign vendors, the country may modernise without becoming technologically independent.
In that scenario, Pakistan would possess advanced infrastructure but remain dependent on external suppliers for upgrades, maintenance, security patches, technical standards and specialised expertise.
From physical infrastructure to data dependence
The first phase of CPEC was largely about physical assets: highways, energy plants, logistics corridors and connectivity.
CPEC 2.0 introduces something much more intangible — and potentially more consequential.
Data itself becomes a strategic resource.
Historically, colonial powers extracted raw materials and economic resources from territories under their control. Critics of modern technological dependency argue that data, algorithms and digital infrastructure can now create comparable asymmetries of power.
Pakistan is not a colony of China, and describing the relationship literally in colonial terms would oversimplify a complex strategic partnership.
Yet the analogy highlights an important concern.
If one side provides subsidised or preferential access to digital infrastructure while also supplying the software, technical standards, hardware and institutional architecture governing that infrastructure, dependence can become structural rather than temporary.
The key question is therefore not whether Pakistan should cooperate with China.
It is whether Pakistan can cooperate while preserving the ability to control, modify and ultimately replace the systems it adopts.
Pakistan needs safeguards
To protect its long-term strategic autonomy, Islamabad would need to accompany Chinese investment with stronger domestic safeguards.
That would include strict data-localisation rules, robust personal-data legislation, domestic access to source code where national-security systems are concerned, diversified suppliers and serious investment in indigenous research and development.
Pakistan would also need to avoid building critical infrastructure around a single technological ecosystem.
The objective should be interoperability rather than dependence.
CPEC 2.0 could undoubtedly accelerate Pakistan’s digital transformation. But technological progress should not be measured solely by how quickly infrastructure is deployed.
The more important question is who controls the system once it is built.
If Pakistan’s data, AI infrastructure and surveillance networks become inseparable from Chinese technological architecture, the country may find that the short-term benefits of rapid modernisation come with a long-term strategic price.
That would not necessarily amount to colonialism in the traditional sense.
But it could create something increasingly important in the 21st century: technological path dependence powerful enough to constrain national sovereignty.