Min Jiang | University of North Carolina at Charlotte (original) (raw)

Conferences and Workshops by Min Jiang

Business & Human Rights Journal, 2016

The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese I... more The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) to be held in Edmonton, Canada on May 27-28, 2015. While following the CIRC tradition of welcoming a wide range of general submissions, this year’s conference will highlight the themes of “(un)civil society” and “Chinese internet or internet in China?”

Papers by Min Jiang

Communication and the Public, 2020

This article situates China’s social credit system (SCS) in a historical perspective by exploring... more This article situates China’s social credit system (SCS) in a historical perspective by exploring its antecedents. The historical roots of the SCS can be found in personnel archives for officials during imperial times, the Dang’an (personnel dossier) system under Communist rule, and the failed legislative proposal to establish “morality files” on Chinese citizens in the early 2010s. By recognizing their historical continuity and disjuncture, the article places the SCS in its unique sociocultural contexts and provides alternative narratives to the current dominant framing of the SCS.

CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity regulations in BRICS countries., 2020

This chapter maps China’s cybersecurity policies in the five areas of personal data protection, c... more This chapter maps China’s cybersecurity policies in the five areas of personal data protection, consumer protection, cybercrime, threats to public order, and cyberdefense.

CyberBRICS Publications, 2019

Global Media and China, 2020

With the 2020 US presidential race looming on the horizon, an impeachment survived by President T... more With the 2020 US presidential race looming on the horizon, an impeachment survived by President Trump who now presides over an economic recession induced by a global pandemic, and continued US entanglements around the world, especially with China, Russia, and the Middle East, it could not have been timelier to reflect upon the historical moment we are in, the deep crisis facing liberal democracy, and the complex interplay between media and politics from a global perspective. Global Media and Strategic Narrative of Contested Democracy, co-written by three Communication scholars Drs. Robert Hinck, Skye Cooley, and Randolph Kluver, presents an insightful, comprehensive, and well-timed study of how the world viewed the 2016 US presidential election specifically and US democracy more broadly. Drawing from the unique strength of each member, the team expertly provides an in-depth exploration of the political discourses surrounding the election from three regions that hold great geopolitical importance to the current global order: a rising China, a deeply unstable Middle East, and Russia under Putin's rule. Based on extensive analyses of 1578 news stories from 62 sources from the three media ecologies gathered during the 2016 presidential campaign and immediately afterward, the book serves up a rich account of how national and regional media construct the American democracy, how these regions interpret US foreign policies toward them, and how they situate themselves in the current global order. As a major scholarly endeavor to examine media coverage of 2016 US elections from a global perspective, this book distinguishes itself from other book-length projects in several important ways. First, the 2016 US presidential election-the book's subject-is itself a watershed moment in recent political history that mattered not only to the United States but also to the world at large. In contrast to other books that, for instance, captured the hope and optimism of the Obama era (e.g. Kenski et al., 2010), the 2016 election cycle exposed plainly the bankruptcy of unfettered global capitalism, the crushing despair of poverty and inequality in the heartland of liberal democracy , the sheer hypocrisy of elite politics, and the inevitable rise of populism worldwide (Zizek, 2017).

Internet & Policy, 2018

Chinese social media and big data represent an important share of the global Internet, but have r... more Chinese social media and big data represent an important share of the global Internet, but have received relatively less attention. This editorial examines three dominant discourses based on China's distinctive and complex political, economic and social realities: “Big Data” (technical focus), “Big Brother” (political focus), and “Big Profit” (economic focus). We argue that the prevailing discourse and practice of big data in China is largely technocentric, decontextualized and nonreflexive, and much less attuned to the social, political, cultural, epistemological, and ethical implications of big data that a humancentric approach would demand. Second, the authoritarian Chinese state poses incredible political challenges to big data research and practice. Third, the practice of Chinese social media and big data is imbued with a discourse of technological nationalism, driven by a handful of monopolistic “national champions.” Despite contention, the state and market players have formed a largely mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship to maximize their political and economic gains. We argue a comparative perspective to foster a global conversation on social media and big data is necessary in order to formulate collective responses to such challenges.

Communication Reports, 2016

Social media use has complicated the conduct of foreign affairs by producing unintended audiences... more Social media use has complicated the conduct of foreign affairs by producing unintended audiences and opinions. This study examines Chinese Sina Weibo users’ framing of the political discourse of the 2012 Democratic National Convention (DNC). We found influential independent users and alternative commercial media, rather than official media, dominate the framing of the DNC political discourse on Sina Weibo. Elite Chinese microbloggers have a good understanding of U.S. electoral politics, with the “social media contest” frame and issues related to China and Asia receiving particular attention. Our exploration suggests traditional framing research needs to consider a new form of “networked framing” that relies on the interactions between elite and nonelite users and algorithmic aggregations afforded by new digital platforms.

International Communication Gazette, 2018

Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to... more Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to expressions of extreme incivility that violate the etiquette and norms of interpersonal and online communication. Moving beyond definitions of civility (or incivility) based on democratic norms of deliberation and reciprocity, this article argues that civility should be reconceptualized as respect for others’ communicative rights, including the right to self-expression in pursuit of social justice. This theoretical modification affirms that civility differs from politeness and allows for contextualized and comparative studies of civility and incivility across regions and polities. In China’s authoritarian online spaces, the state tacitly encourages incivility as a divide-and-rule strategy while masking its uncivil purposes with “civil” appeals for rationality and order in a society characterized by pluralism, fragmentation, and visceral conflict. The result, as contributions to this Special Section illustrate, is a toxic uncivil society in which the space for respectful civil debate is narrowed, the influence of social groups and regime critics is diminished, and state power becomes more concentrated and resilient.

The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication, 2013

ABSTRACT We focus on two areas in our chapter: (a) qualitative approaches used in conflict resear... more ABSTRACT We focus on two areas in our chapter: (a) qualitative approaches used in conflict research (paradigms and methods including data gathering and analyzing); and (b) ways to build upon the unique contributions of qualitative communication inquiry for the study of conflict (contributions and agenda for future scholarship).

Online political satire is an important aspect of Chinese Internet culture and politics. Current ... more Online political satire is an important aspect of Chinese Internet culture and politics. Current scholarship focuses on its contents and views it primarily from the perspective of resistance. By reconceptualizing online political satire as a networked practice, this article shifts the focus of analysis from contents to practice. Five types of networked practices of online political satire are identified and analyzed. Practices which mainly fulfill social functions are referred to as ritual satire and distinguished from explicitly political practices. The article thus shows that online political satire has multiple meanings and uses. Its proliferation in Chinese digital spaces results from the complex and interlocked conditions of politics, technology, history, and culture.

The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, 2016

This paper extends Guobin Yang’s 2003 seminal article on the co-evolution of the Internet and civ... more This paper extends Guobin Yang’s 2003 seminal article on the co-evolution of the Internet and civil society in China. It argues the Internet has both facilitated the growth of civic spaces and empowered authoritarianism. Not only has the Internet amplified civic discourses and group formations, it also has augmented the influence of the authoritarian state as well as uncivil interactions online, leading to a greater degree of fragmentation and cynicism of public opinion. Although social media platforms such as the Twitter-like Sina Weibo can serve as a critical space for expressing and channeling public opinion, especially during times of crisis, they are unlikely to be the ultimate game changer.

Do search engines tend to drive Web traffic to well-established sites leading to a high degree of... more Do search engines tend to drive Web traffic to well-established sites leading to a high degree of search results concentration? Do search engines favor their own content while demoting others? How parochial or cosmopolitan are search engines in directing traffic to sites beyond a user’s national borders? This study explores these issues by empirically comparing search results of Baidu, Google and Jike from mainland China obtained in August 2011 and August 2012. It finds that search engines in China, particularly Baidu, tend to drive traffic to well-established sites. Baidu’s results also raise serious doubts over its impartiality. Rather than making users’ search experiences more cosmopolitan, tuned to the larger world around them, search engines rarely direct Chinese users to content beyond national borders.

Min Jiang was a speaker at the second edition of the Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam... more Min Jiang was a speaker at the second edition of the Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam, 7-8 November 2013. She participated in the session called 'Search Across the Border', where she spoke about borders on web search in China, expanding on her previous research on search results in China.

This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symboli... more This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symbolic, social and political implications of Jike, China’s national search engine. Through a case study of Jike, we explore the implications of national search engines and national web studies. We demonstrate that semiotic and political economic perspectives could critically inform our understanding of complex information intermediaries. Semiotic analysis of Jike shows how Jike tried to tap into popular nationalism to strategically brand itself as friendly, high tech, and patriotic. A political economic analysis of Jike reveals the mechanisms through which a changing mode of state digital propaganda production attempts to use the market to subsidize the Party press’s digital infrastructures and “thought work.” The article also raises awareness of Jike’s potential surveillance capabilities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of national search engines for Internet policies.

How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social conte... more How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social contention it is tasked to manage? This case study explores the extent to which government microblogging could serve as: 1) a battering ram to spearhead reforms; 2) a virus bringing unexpected consequences; and 3) a reinforcer of authorities’ existing power, i.e. politics as usual. After studying a Chinese municipal government weibo in depth from the perspective of local governance, we find that official microblogs do not in the short run lead to organizational change. Instead, Chinese local government microblogs function largely as ‘beta-institutions’ experimenting with ways to interact and negotiate with their microblog publics and microblog service providers aimed at improving social management and political legitimacy. Local governments are also evolving gradually from service providers to ‘service predictors’ with enhanced capabilities to deliver individualized services and institute state surveillance via commercial service providers. These developments warrant further studies of the long-term implications of microblogs as part of the government information ecology.

Assisting iterative, opportunistic and evolving visual sensemaking has been an important research... more Assisting iterative, opportunistic and evolving visual sensemaking has been an important research topic as information overload continues. Such exploratory systems (ESs) maximize users’ information gain through learning and have been widely used in scientific discovery and decision making contexts. Although many ESs have been developed recently, there is a lack of general guidance on how to evaluate such systems. Researchers are facing challenges such as understanding the underlying cognitive learning process of these systems. In this paper, we propose an evaluation framework designed specifically for ESs. The new framework is built based on cognitive load theory (CLT) and takes the user as well as the system as the focus of evaluation. With the thorough examination of users’ cognitive process, carefully designed procedures detangle the interwoven, interactive process of ESs as well as the variability that comes with human subjects. To demonstrate the usage of the framework, we present an evaluation conducted on Newdle, a clustering-based ES for large news documents. This study was a successful use case of the framework. It revealed how and why clustering-based ES benefited (or not) users in a variety of information seeking tasks. We also report the different information seeking strategies observed from the users and summarize leverage points for designing clustering-based ES.

This essay dissects the implications of China’s “Internet Sovereignty” policy in the wake of WCIT... more This essay dissects the implications of China’s “Internet Sovereignty” policy in the wake of WCIT-12. This policy was offered as an alternative vision to the U.S.’s “Internet freedom” agenda in a new Internet world no longer dominated by liberal democracies.

Despite growing interest in search engines in China, relatively few empirical studies have examin... more Despite growing interest in search engines in China, relatively few empirical studies have examined their sociopolitical implications. This study fills several research gaps by comparing query results (N=6,320) from China’s two leading search engines, Baidu and Google, focusing on accessibility, overlap, ranking, and bias patterns. Analysis of query results of 316 popular Chinese Internet events reveals: 1) after Google moved its servers from Mainland China to Hong Kong, Google’s results are equally if not more likely to be inaccessible than Baidu’s, and Baidu’s filtering is much subtler than the Great Firewall’s (GFW) wholesale blocking of Google’s results; 2) there is low overlap (6.8%) and little ranking similarity between Baidu’s and Google’s results, implying different search engines, different results and different social realities; and 3) Baidu rarely links to its competitors Hudong Baike or Chinese Wikipedia, while their presence in Google’s results is much more prominent, raising search bias concerns. These results suggest search engines can be architecturally altered to serve political regimes, arbitrary in rendering social realities, and biased toward self-interest.

Business & Human Rights Journal, 2016

The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese I... more The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) to be held in Edmonton, Canada on May 27-28, 2015. While following the CIRC tradition of welcoming a wide range of general submissions, this year’s conference will highlight the themes of “(un)civil society” and “Chinese internet or internet in China?”

Communication and the Public, 2020

This article situates China’s social credit system (SCS) in a historical perspective by exploring... more This article situates China’s social credit system (SCS) in a historical perspective by exploring its antecedents. The historical roots of the SCS can be found in personnel archives for officials during imperial times, the Dang’an (personnel dossier) system under Communist rule, and the failed legislative proposal to establish “morality files” on Chinese citizens in the early 2010s. By recognizing their historical continuity and disjuncture, the article places the SCS in its unique sociocultural contexts and provides alternative narratives to the current dominant framing of the SCS.

CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity regulations in BRICS countries., 2020

This chapter maps China’s cybersecurity policies in the five areas of personal data protection, c... more This chapter maps China’s cybersecurity policies in the five areas of personal data protection, consumer protection, cybercrime, threats to public order, and cyberdefense.

CyberBRICS Publications, 2019

Global Media and China, 2020

With the 2020 US presidential race looming on the horizon, an impeachment survived by President T... more With the 2020 US presidential race looming on the horizon, an impeachment survived by President Trump who now presides over an economic recession induced by a global pandemic, and continued US entanglements around the world, especially with China, Russia, and the Middle East, it could not have been timelier to reflect upon the historical moment we are in, the deep crisis facing liberal democracy, and the complex interplay between media and politics from a global perspective. Global Media and Strategic Narrative of Contested Democracy, co-written by three Communication scholars Drs. Robert Hinck, Skye Cooley, and Randolph Kluver, presents an insightful, comprehensive, and well-timed study of how the world viewed the 2016 US presidential election specifically and US democracy more broadly. Drawing from the unique strength of each member, the team expertly provides an in-depth exploration of the political discourses surrounding the election from three regions that hold great geopolitical importance to the current global order: a rising China, a deeply unstable Middle East, and Russia under Putin's rule. Based on extensive analyses of 1578 news stories from 62 sources from the three media ecologies gathered during the 2016 presidential campaign and immediately afterward, the book serves up a rich account of how national and regional media construct the American democracy, how these regions interpret US foreign policies toward them, and how they situate themselves in the current global order. As a major scholarly endeavor to examine media coverage of 2016 US elections from a global perspective, this book distinguishes itself from other book-length projects in several important ways. First, the 2016 US presidential election-the book's subject-is itself a watershed moment in recent political history that mattered not only to the United States but also to the world at large. In contrast to other books that, for instance, captured the hope and optimism of the Obama era (e.g. Kenski et al., 2010), the 2016 election cycle exposed plainly the bankruptcy of unfettered global capitalism, the crushing despair of poverty and inequality in the heartland of liberal democracy , the sheer hypocrisy of elite politics, and the inevitable rise of populism worldwide (Zizek, 2017).

Internet & Policy, 2018

Chinese social media and big data represent an important share of the global Internet, but have r... more Chinese social media and big data represent an important share of the global Internet, but have received relatively less attention. This editorial examines three dominant discourses based on China's distinctive and complex political, economic and social realities: “Big Data” (technical focus), “Big Brother” (political focus), and “Big Profit” (economic focus). We argue that the prevailing discourse and practice of big data in China is largely technocentric, decontextualized and nonreflexive, and much less attuned to the social, political, cultural, epistemological, and ethical implications of big data that a humancentric approach would demand. Second, the authoritarian Chinese state poses incredible political challenges to big data research and practice. Third, the practice of Chinese social media and big data is imbued with a discourse of technological nationalism, driven by a handful of monopolistic “national champions.” Despite contention, the state and market players have formed a largely mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship to maximize their political and economic gains. We argue a comparative perspective to foster a global conversation on social media and big data is necessary in order to formulate collective responses to such challenges.

Communication Reports, 2016

Social media use has complicated the conduct of foreign affairs by producing unintended audiences... more Social media use has complicated the conduct of foreign affairs by producing unintended audiences and opinions. This study examines Chinese Sina Weibo users’ framing of the political discourse of the 2012 Democratic National Convention (DNC). We found influential independent users and alternative commercial media, rather than official media, dominate the framing of the DNC political discourse on Sina Weibo. Elite Chinese microbloggers have a good understanding of U.S. electoral politics, with the “social media contest” frame and issues related to China and Asia receiving particular attention. Our exploration suggests traditional framing research needs to consider a new form of “networked framing” that relies on the interactions between elite and nonelite users and algorithmic aggregations afforded by new digital platforms.

International Communication Gazette, 2018

Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to... more Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to expressions of extreme incivility that violate the etiquette and norms of interpersonal and online communication. Moving beyond definitions of civility (or incivility) based on democratic norms of deliberation and reciprocity, this article argues that civility should be reconceptualized as respect for others’ communicative rights, including the right to self-expression in pursuit of social justice. This theoretical modification affirms that civility differs from politeness and allows for contextualized and comparative studies of civility and incivility across regions and polities. In China’s authoritarian online spaces, the state tacitly encourages incivility as a divide-and-rule strategy while masking its uncivil purposes with “civil” appeals for rationality and order in a society characterized by pluralism, fragmentation, and visceral conflict. The result, as contributions to this Special Section illustrate, is a toxic uncivil society in which the space for respectful civil debate is narrowed, the influence of social groups and regime critics is diminished, and state power becomes more concentrated and resilient.

The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication, 2013

ABSTRACT We focus on two areas in our chapter: (a) qualitative approaches used in conflict resear... more ABSTRACT We focus on two areas in our chapter: (a) qualitative approaches used in conflict research (paradigms and methods including data gathering and analyzing); and (b) ways to build upon the unique contributions of qualitative communication inquiry for the study of conflict (contributions and agenda for future scholarship).

Online political satire is an important aspect of Chinese Internet culture and politics. Current ... more Online political satire is an important aspect of Chinese Internet culture and politics. Current scholarship focuses on its contents and views it primarily from the perspective of resistance. By reconceptualizing online political satire as a networked practice, this article shifts the focus of analysis from contents to practice. Five types of networked practices of online political satire are identified and analyzed. Practices which mainly fulfill social functions are referred to as ritual satire and distinguished from explicitly political practices. The article thus shows that online political satire has multiple meanings and uses. Its proliferation in Chinese digital spaces results from the complex and interlocked conditions of politics, technology, history, and culture.

The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, 2016

This paper extends Guobin Yang’s 2003 seminal article on the co-evolution of the Internet and civ... more This paper extends Guobin Yang’s 2003 seminal article on the co-evolution of the Internet and civil society in China. It argues the Internet has both facilitated the growth of civic spaces and empowered authoritarianism. Not only has the Internet amplified civic discourses and group formations, it also has augmented the influence of the authoritarian state as well as uncivil interactions online, leading to a greater degree of fragmentation and cynicism of public opinion. Although social media platforms such as the Twitter-like Sina Weibo can serve as a critical space for expressing and channeling public opinion, especially during times of crisis, they are unlikely to be the ultimate game changer.

Do search engines tend to drive Web traffic to well-established sites leading to a high degree of... more Do search engines tend to drive Web traffic to well-established sites leading to a high degree of search results concentration? Do search engines favor their own content while demoting others? How parochial or cosmopolitan are search engines in directing traffic to sites beyond a user’s national borders? This study explores these issues by empirically comparing search results of Baidu, Google and Jike from mainland China obtained in August 2011 and August 2012. It finds that search engines in China, particularly Baidu, tend to drive traffic to well-established sites. Baidu’s results also raise serious doubts over its impartiality. Rather than making users’ search experiences more cosmopolitan, tuned to the larger world around them, search engines rarely direct Chinese users to content beyond national borders.

Min Jiang was a speaker at the second edition of the Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam... more Min Jiang was a speaker at the second edition of the Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam, 7-8 November 2013. She participated in the session called 'Search Across the Border', where she spoke about borders on web search in China, expanding on her previous research on search results in China.

This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symboli... more This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symbolic, social and political implications of Jike, China’s national search engine. Through a case study of Jike, we explore the implications of national search engines and national web studies. We demonstrate that semiotic and political economic perspectives could critically inform our understanding of complex information intermediaries. Semiotic analysis of Jike shows how Jike tried to tap into popular nationalism to strategically brand itself as friendly, high tech, and patriotic. A political economic analysis of Jike reveals the mechanisms through which a changing mode of state digital propaganda production attempts to use the market to subsidize the Party press’s digital infrastructures and “thought work.” The article also raises awareness of Jike’s potential surveillance capabilities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of national search engines for Internet policies.

How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social conte... more How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social contention it is tasked to manage? This case study explores the extent to which government microblogging could serve as: 1) a battering ram to spearhead reforms; 2) a virus bringing unexpected consequences; and 3) a reinforcer of authorities’ existing power, i.e. politics as usual. After studying a Chinese municipal government weibo in depth from the perspective of local governance, we find that official microblogs do not in the short run lead to organizational change. Instead, Chinese local government microblogs function largely as ‘beta-institutions’ experimenting with ways to interact and negotiate with their microblog publics and microblog service providers aimed at improving social management and political legitimacy. Local governments are also evolving gradually from service providers to ‘service predictors’ with enhanced capabilities to deliver individualized services and institute state surveillance via commercial service providers. These developments warrant further studies of the long-term implications of microblogs as part of the government information ecology.

Assisting iterative, opportunistic and evolving visual sensemaking has been an important research... more Assisting iterative, opportunistic and evolving visual sensemaking has been an important research topic as information overload continues. Such exploratory systems (ESs) maximize users’ information gain through learning and have been widely used in scientific discovery and decision making contexts. Although many ESs have been developed recently, there is a lack of general guidance on how to evaluate such systems. Researchers are facing challenges such as understanding the underlying cognitive learning process of these systems. In this paper, we propose an evaluation framework designed specifically for ESs. The new framework is built based on cognitive load theory (CLT) and takes the user as well as the system as the focus of evaluation. With the thorough examination of users’ cognitive process, carefully designed procedures detangle the interwoven, interactive process of ESs as well as the variability that comes with human subjects. To demonstrate the usage of the framework, we present an evaluation conducted on Newdle, a clustering-based ES for large news documents. This study was a successful use case of the framework. It revealed how and why clustering-based ES benefited (or not) users in a variety of information seeking tasks. We also report the different information seeking strategies observed from the users and summarize leverage points for designing clustering-based ES.

This essay dissects the implications of China’s “Internet Sovereignty” policy in the wake of WCIT... more This essay dissects the implications of China’s “Internet Sovereignty” policy in the wake of WCIT-12. This policy was offered as an alternative vision to the U.S.’s “Internet freedom” agenda in a new Internet world no longer dominated by liberal democracies.

Despite growing interest in search engines in China, relatively few empirical studies have examin... more Despite growing interest in search engines in China, relatively few empirical studies have examined their sociopolitical implications. This study fills several research gaps by comparing query results (N=6,320) from China’s two leading search engines, Baidu and Google, focusing on accessibility, overlap, ranking, and bias patterns. Analysis of query results of 316 popular Chinese Internet events reveals: 1) after Google moved its servers from Mainland China to Hong Kong, Google’s results are equally if not more likely to be inaccessible than Baidu’s, and Baidu’s filtering is much subtler than the Great Firewall’s (GFW) wholesale blocking of Google’s results; 2) there is low overlap (6.8%) and little ranking similarity between Baidu’s and Google’s results, implying different search engines, different results and different social realities; and 3) Baidu rarely links to its competitors Hudong Baike or Chinese Wikipedia, while their presence in Google’s results is much more prominent, raising search bias concerns. These results suggest search engines can be architecturally altered to serve political regimes, arbitrary in rendering social realities, and biased toward self-interest.

With over 500 million Internet users and 900 million mobile-phone subscribers by mid 2011, the Ch... more With over 500 million Internet users and 900 million mobile-phone subscribers by mid 2011, the Chinese Internet is an enormous market that has produced the spectacular rise of many Chinese Internet companies and attracted substantial foreign investment. This paper argues that, despite a great degree of liberalization of its market over the past 15 years, the Chinese Internet remains authoritarian in nature. Not only did the central government actively shape the infrastructure and rules of China's information superhighways, but recently it has also vigorously built state-controlled Internet companies, including a national search engine.

The paper starts with an overview of the landscape of the Chinese Internet industry, followed by a review of the developmental trajectories of three important search companies in China – Baidu, Google, and Jike (the national search engine), whose stories are illustrative of the experiences of domestic, foreign and state Internet firms operating in China. The paper then outlines the Chinese government's regulatory policies towards the Internet industry, which it is argued have undergone three stages: liberalization, regulation, and state capitalism.

It is recognized that the great prospect of the Chinese Internet is shadowed by, and often overshadowed by, the government's insistence on weaving a China Wide Web. Domestic and foreign Internet companies are invariably used, or restricted, for social control as the government painstakingly transplants its ideology into cyberspace. Such practice is not only morally degrading but also unsustainable in the long run. An assessment of Chinese government policy toward Internet firms operating in China is not merely an academic exercise; it raises ethical and policy concerns for foreign governments, international organizations, and investor communities in China's expanding Internet market.

The chapter discusses the concept of internet sovereignty and its implications in Chinese context.

Law, Borders, and Speech conference: Proceedings and materials, 2017

The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program ... more The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program at Stanford Law School and a part of the Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. CIS brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, innovation, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry. CIS strives to improve both technology and law, encouraging decision makers to design both as a means to further democratic values. CIS provides law students and the general public with educational resources and analyses of policy issues arising at the intersection of law, technology and the public interest. CIS also sponsors a range of public events including a speakers series, conferences and workshops. CIS was founded by Lawrence Lessig in 2000. Daphne Keller directs CIS's Intermediary Liability program.