The Convergence Table: Who's Building What
Interactive comparison: China vs. EU vs. India vs. US/UK — component by component. The infrastructure gap is closing.
The Convergence Index
mean 35The gap —
closing
Ten capability components, each scored 0–100 on a fixed rubric — capability · scale · absence of limit. Every cell carries its C·S·U grades; an amber corner tick means no enforced limit at all. Hover a score for its basis, click it to jump to the sourced evidence below. How it’s scored ↓
How the score is computed
score = (C + S + U) / 9 x 100 · equal thirds. Each cell is graded on three axes from its sourced evidence (hover any score for its grades + basis):
- C — Capability — is it fielded and operational? 0 none · 1 proposed/pilot · 2 operational-limited · 3 operational-routine
- S — Scale — how comprehensive? 0 negligible · 1 local/sectoral · 2 broad-incomplete · 3 nationwide/universal
- U — Unconstraint — absence of an enforced limit? 0 strong/enforced · 1 partial/eroding · 2 paper-only · 3 none
The 'Legal limits on access' row is not scored as its own component (that would double-count limits); its evidence sets each row's U axis. The index runs over the 10 capability components. Every cell's C/S/U and its source are the audit trail.
China built it first. The democracies built it next, with regulations attached. Then the regulations got carve-outs. Then the carve-outs got their own carve-outs.
The table below sorts the rollout by structural properties — does the capability exist, is there a legal limit, how comprehensive is the deployment — and ignores the cultural framing each jurisdiction uses to justify it. The framings differ. The infrastructure does not. Each cell sources to a primary document, a tracker, or a beat reporter who has earned the byline.
Where it appears in print: The Ratchet, Chapter 19 (“The Model”). The book narrates the table; this page maintains it as deployments evolve.
The Table
The Trajectory Line
China: Built first, most comprehensive, weakest limits. The reference implementation. (China Law Translate is the standing source for tracking what’s actually deployed vs. what’s announced.)
India: Building fastest in a democracy. Democratic checks slow speed but not direction. India Stack is the open-source export of the model — Aadhaar + UPI + Account Aggregator + DigiLocker. Other countries (Philippines, Sri Lanka, Brazil) are now importing it.
EU: Regulating most aggressively. Brussels Effect exports standards globally. But building the same infrastructure (eIDAS, DSA, TCR, AI Act) — the EU’s bet is that comprehensive regulation of the infrastructure prevents abuse. The bet has not been tested at scale.
US/UK: Most fragmented at the federal/national level. No unified system. But NSA / Five Eyes mass surveillance already operational. Dollar-denominated sanctions = de facto programmable money for non-US persons. Platform dominance = de facto global content governance. US fragmentation hides total reach.
Key Insight
The infrastructure gap between China and democracies is closing. The enforcement gap (judicial review, press freedom, civil society) remains — for now. The question is whether the enforcement gap narrows as fast as the infrastructure gap closes.
Primary signals to watch:
- Emergencies-Act-style invocations in democratic countries — see Canada 2022, and the Federal Court of Appeal’s 2026 ruling that the use was overreach. Judicial pushback is the friction democracies still have over China.
- Court rulings on biometric / data-protection limits — CJEU SCHUFA ruling C-634/21, K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (Indian Aadhaar judgment).
- Backdoor / encryption mandates — UK Online Safety Act Section 121, EU CSAM Regulation. The crack in end-to-end encryption is where infrastructure converges fastest.
Bridges
- ratchet-clicks — same 20 mechanisms, framed as country-by-country self-assessment
- revolving-door — the personnel network operating across these jurisdictions
- ai-governance-tracker — the AI-specific overlay on the infrastructure stack
Sources
Inline citations above carry the primary documents. Standing trackers that should be checked first when updating:
- Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker — most reliable single source for CBDC deployment state
- HRF CBDC Tracker — rights-focused complement to Atlantic Council
- Access Now KeepItOn — internet shutdown tracker
- Freedom House Freedom on the Net — annual cross-country comparison
- Comparitech facial-recognition + surveillance indices — most useful aggregator for facial-recognition deployment counts
- China Law Translate — Jeremy Daum’s authoritative China social-credit primary-source library
- Project Panoptic — India facial-recognition tracker (IFF)
Master research dossiers: the-ratchet/research-china-domestic.md, research-digital-id.md, research-cbdc.md, research-india-stack.md, research-deplatforming.md.