Need for a digital, trans-Pacific 'Belt and Road'

Rather than slowing down, globalization is morphing. As a recent report from McKinsey Global Institute, "Digital globalization: The new era of global flows", tells us, that digital flows are now more economically significant than trade in goods.

In an ever-more-connected world, cross-border bandwidth use has grown 45 times in the past decade. The fiber-optic cables that criss-cross the world today are the modern-day equivalent of the 19th century railway tracks that made it possible to populate and develop vast swathes of the five continents.

Nowadays, 90 percent of the Internet traffic circulates on these submarine cables that link up the five continents, modern highways that allow us to communicate almost in real time. Over the past 25 years, a vast network of these cables has been built across the oceans and along the coasts, with dramatic effects on the lives of people of all conditions.