The survey, for which over 9,000 people were interviewed in August and September 2021, covers the topics user behaviour, digital competence, digital transformation of the workplace, e-government and artificial intelligence.

The survey found that more than 90 per cent of Germans over the age of 14 use the internet for private purposes. 21 per cent say they are online nearly all the time. There is, however, a digital divide in the country. For example, only 71 per cent of people over the age of 65 use the internet for private purposes and only 8 per cent are “always online”, in contrast to 41 per cent of those under the age of 30. Apart from younger people, men, highly educated people and high-income earners also use the internet and digital devices more frequently on average.

The respondents were asked to rank their digital competence using a self-assessment test. Overall, Germans scored an average of only 55 out of 100 points. A majority of Germans said they feel at least occasionally overwhelmed when using digital devices or the internet. Only 14 per cent of respondents said they were never overwhelmed. As with user behaviour, there is also a digital divide between different social groups.

Regarding the digital transformation of the workplace, the survey shows that more than a third of working Germans think that digitalisation receives too little attention in their professional environment. It is noteworthy that particularly small and medium-sized companies scored poorly. Overall, more than half of Germans think that not enough attention is being paid to digitalisation. All the same, a third of Germans said that the Covid-19 pandemic has positively changed their attitude towards the topic.

Read more in the January 2022 bidt-SZ-Digitalbarometer (in German).

A new digital security law came into force in Bangladesh on 1 October 2018. Restrictions on freedom of expression have increased since then in the country of 160 million inhabitants, the most densely populated of the world’s larger states. The law gives law enforcement agencies extensive powers and has become a tool for the government and its supporters to crack down on its critics. The mere sharing of a critical post on social media can now lead to arrest.

The U.S. dollar has been playing a central role in the global financial system for more than 70 years, making it one of the pillars of American world hegemony. The dollar remains the world’s most important reserve currency and the United States maintains great control over global payment rails, especially in the case of cross-border transactions. The Belgium-based organisation SWIFT, for example, has to comply with and implement U.S. sanctions, thus giving Washington the power to unilaterally exclude other countries from international payment rails.

With the launch of the digital yuan, China, the birthplace of paper money, is once again at the forefront of global monetary innovation. Unlike digital currencies like Bitcoin, the e-CNY is issued by a central bank which also guarantees its value. The authors of the Carnegie study analyse how China could use the digital yuan as part of its geopolitical strategy to challenge U.S. dominance over the financial world. To internationalise its currency, they argue, China needs to move away not only from the dollar but also from the payment rails it dominates. The best way to achieve both at the same time would be to introduce a new payment rail like central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). By introducing cross-border CBDC payments with allies like Russia, China could mitigate the threat of U.S. sanctions. Western central banks’ digital currency initiatives, meanwhile, are lagging behind and are unlikely to be serious competition for the digital yuan in the near future.

Read more in the paper “China’s Digital Yuan: An Alternative to the Dollar-Dominated Financial System” by Rajesh Banal and Somya Singh, published on 31 August 2021.