In his insightful book, The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future, Jonathan E Hillman writes: “If history is written by the victors, so are fantasies of the future. Among the most alluring and dangerous of these tales, born in the blinding glow of Cold War victory, was the idea that communications technology would inevitably promote liberty.”

Hillman refers to former US president Ronald Reagan’s 1989 speech in London in which he proclaimed: “More than armies, more than diplomacy, more than the best intentions of democratic nations, the communications revolution will be the greatest force for the advancement of human freedom the world has ever seen.”..

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