Posted on 08/01/2025 6:54:55 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Executive Summary:
- The PRC is exporting an integrated system of smart devices, data infrastructure, and governance standards. Through industrial policy, state-backed overproduction, and strategic data asymmetry, Beijing is building a global IoT architecture designed to embed PRC standards, influence, and governance into the connected environments of other countries.
- By dominating core components like cellular IoT modules and steering global standards through initiatives like China Standards 2035, Beijing is creating long-term supply chain dependencies and rewriting the rules of digital interoperability.
- Devices manufactured by PRC firms often carry embedded risks: unpatched vulnerabilities, mandated government access under China’s Data Security Law, and use in cyber operations like Volt Typhoon and LapDogs.
- Expansion into emerging markets is fueled by Digital Silk Road diplomacy, subsidized financing, and turnkey infrastructure deals—seen in Huawei’s smart city platforms and Haier’s bundled appliance systems deployed across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
- Looking ahead, the global spread of China’s IoT platforms signals a deeper push to shape the foundations of digital infrastructure—where influence over connected devices gradually extends to norms, data flows, and governance models.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) dominates the smart home technologies sector, serving as a powerful illustration of its broader strategy to dominate the global Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Smart home devices—ranging from voice-activated assistants and connected appliances to security cameras and thermostats—have flooded international markets in recent years. Chinese manufacturers like Haier, TCL, and Hisense capturing significant market shares through aggressive pricing and rapid innovation (Telecom Review, April 12, 2024; ITIF, September 16, 2024). By the end of 2025, the PRC’s smart home market is projected to reach approximately $37 billion in value domestically, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11 percent through 2030 (Statista, 2025 [accessed July 21]). Meanwhile, exports from PRC firms may account for 20–30 percent of global shipments within the next three years (Omdia, November 18, 2024). This export surge is part trade phenomenon, part strategic maneuver, as domestic overproduction—fueled by subsidies—creates excess capacity that undercuts competitors abroad, raising concerns of dumping in markets like the United States and Europe (MERICS, April 1).
PRC companies’ market dominance in smart homes is underpinned by state-orchestrated policies that blend industrial upgrading with geopolitical ambitions. These include cascading industrial strategies that have poured resources into IoT components, domestic industry support that indirectly promotes exports through cost efficiencies, and nonreciprocal data flows and low margins that augment the more domestically-oriented policies and allow firms to dominate global supply chains and standards.
PRC Smart Home Devices Pose Security Risks
PRC smart home devices constitute an underappreciated risk. In foreign markets, these affordable products promise convenience but embed vulnerabilities, including backdoors for data exfiltration under laws like the Data Security Law, which mandates access for state security services (Hoover Institution, April 18, 2023). This nonreciprocal model allows Beijing to harvest user data for training artificial intelligence (AI) models, economic intelligence, or geopolitical leverage, while restricting outflows from the PRC.
Broader risks stemming from the PRC’s IoT dominance include economic coercion, cybersecurity threats, and geopolitical influence that could reshape global tech landscapes through leveraging connectivity. This is because devices generate real-time data on user behaviors, locations, and habits, potentially feeding into surveillance ecosystems or enabling state-engineered disruptions (House Select Committee on the CCP, August 8, 2023). Vulnerabilities like firmware backdoors in CIMs could facilitate espionage or sabotage in critical infrastructure (CGTN, September 12, 2024).
PRC-manufactured IoT devices are already serving as attack vectors infiltrating critical infrastructure across the United States, Europe, Japan, and allied nations (Council on Geostrategy, March 19, 2024; Chertoff Group, October 18, 2024). The “LapDogs” espionage campaign, identified by SecurityScorecard, hijacked over 1,000 routers and IoT devices across the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, turning them into operational relay boxes with custom backdoors like “ShortLeash” to maintain stealthy, persistent access and facilitate downstream infiltration into corporate networks (SecurityWeek, June 24). British intelligence officials have raised alarms over Chinese cellular IoT modules embedded in traffic systems, electric vehicles, financial terminals, and smart grids, warning that these modules could allow Beijing to freeze traffic lights, immobilize vehicles, or cut power remotely (Coalition on Securing Technology, March 2024; The Times, May 14). In the United States, Volt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and other PRC government-linked APT groups have leveraged unpatched IoT endpoints, successfully compromising networks like Massachusetts water utilities and Guam infrastructure, even if persistence was ultimately disrupted (Department of Justice, September 18, 2024; CISA, February 7; TechRadar, July 16).
Power in the IoT age will be increasingly “implied in the structures” of networks rather than just military might. (MERICS, June 24, 2021). By shaping those structures, the PRC envisions a future in which it enjoys both economic prosperity and strategic security, with the smart home and connected device boom serving as a crucial stepping stone toward those ends.....SNIP
It looks like China is planning the infrastructure to support a global “Social Credit System” that monitors everything you do and say.
Like the chiPhone?
It is important that home electrical power consuming devices (and EVs) coordinate so off-grid home solar is practical.
Interesting that they didn’t point out that China is a 100% electronic surveillance state. What follows is a fact: If you J-walk, your banking account will be debited with fine before to make it home in the evening. The government tracks every move you make, and has complete control over your banking account and your admittance to every building.
Bkmk
“PRC smart home devices constitute an underappreciated risk.”
Really? Devices that hear every conversation, record every square inch of every building in which they are installed, have access to every computer network they are attached to, and can control every device in every building in which they are installed might be a threat? If you can’t trust commies who can you trust?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.