China Mobile's European Data Center Opening (2019) - The New Geopolitics of Data Sovereignty

China Mobile's European Data Center Opening (2019) - The New Geopolitics of Data Sovereignty

In December 2019, China Mobile, the largest telecommunications operator in China, opened the company's first data center in Europe. This was not just an infrastructure development, but a symbolic event that reflected the international situation at the time.

In the background, "data hegemony" was emerging at the forefront of national strategies. With the spread of cloud services and 5G communications, countries began to view data storage and processing methods as issues directly related to "national security. In the European Union (EU), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in 2018, strengthening the legal framework to protect personal and corporate data. In this context, for Chinese companies to locate in Europe was not only a way to penetrate the local market, but also a political message that they could handle data within European rules.

Furthermore, at the time, the battle for technological supremacy between the U.S. and China was intensifying, and the movement to eliminate 5G, particularly with regard to Huawei, was spreading in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. government repeatedly warned that Chinese companies' data centers and telecommunications facilities were at risk of being used for surveillance and espionage, and called for restrictions on their use by allied countries. European countries, on the other hand, had no choice but to rely on Chinese companies for cost and technology, and were torn between caution and cooperation.

For China, too, expansion into Europe had strategic significance. As part of its "One Belt, One Road" initiative, the country was aiming to expand its homegrown telecommunications and data infrastructure by deploying fiber-optic networks and data centers from Asia to Africa and Europe. Along with the port in Djibouti and telecommunication network investments in African countries, this European data center was also considered a symbol of "China building an information corridor.

These developments were the very trends of the era when "data is the oil of the 21st century. China Mobile's opening of a European center in 2019 was not just a business development, but a cross-section of the great power competition for "data sovereignty" and "international trust.