Are you referring to surveillance/data processing technology specifically or technological advances in general? If it's general advances, I don't see how it's really relevant. To some extent, similar technologies are available to all countries at this point, so its down to governments and society wrt how productively these technologies are leveraged.

The classic example of this is how landline telephony is much less prevalent than cellular in much of Africa. Landline technology was effectively skipped. I don't think African governments and societies are benefitting at the expense of western cell phone businesses. It's not a zero-sum game in this respect.

"History is like a grandmother; it loves the younger grand-children. To the latecomers it gives not the bones but the marrow, while Western Europe has hurt her fingers badly in her attempts to break the bones."

Not really... Like US government even banned Intel from selling certain chips to China, and Chinese rocket scientists are somehow not able to attend any conference hosted by NASA (not sure about this one).