How to Write about China as a Network Nation (original) (raw)
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Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy A political economy of China's new digital capitalism In recent years, China’s leaders have taken decisive action to transform information, communications, and technology (ICT) into the nation's next pillar industry. In Networking China, Yu Hong offers an overdue examination of that burgeoning sector's political economy. Hong focuses on how the state, in conjunction with market forces and class interests, is constructing and realigning its digitalized sector. State planners intend to build a more competitive ICT sector by modernizing the network infrastructure, corporatizing media-and-entertainment institutions, and by using ICT as a crosscutting catalyst for innovation, industrial modernization, and export upgrades. The goal: to end China's industrial and technological dependence upon foreign corporations while transforming itself into a global ICT leader. The project, though bright with possibilities, unleashes implications rife with contradiction and surprise. Hong analyzes the central role of information, communications, and culture in Chinese-style capitalism. She also argues that the state and elites have failed to challenge entrenched interests or redistribute power and resources, as promised. Instead, they prioritize information, communications, and culture as technological fixes to make pragmatic tradeoffs between economic growth and social justice. "In great detail and with the careful reflection of a seasoned scholar, Yu Hong describes the astounding growth of digital technology in China and its complex and powerful ramifications at home and abroad."--Vincent Mosco, author of To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World "Yu Hong's book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the role China's cutting-edge information technology sector has played in the nation's unprecedentedly rapid economic development. She provides excellent insight into the nuances of state policies on key communications systems, and does so with a keen, discerning eye for the vital issues affecting the present and future course of China's networked economy."--Eric Harwit, author of China's Telecommunications Revolution http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/78hhc2pr9780252040917.html
The Internet in China’s state– society relations: Will Goliath prevail in the chiaroscuro?
This article explores how state and society relations have been affected by the development of information technology in China over the past 20 years. It argues that despite all the transformative changes that such technology has helped bring about, ‘benefits’ have to be weighed in terms of both empowerment of society and strengthening of state capacity. Ultimately, the digital challenge has not translated into a weakening of the authoritarian state, and this can be explained by the very nature of the party-state in China and how it has managed to make use of communication tools that prove to be both constructive and divisive.
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In this article, we use the example of e-commerce giant Alibaba and its outbound activities in the Asia-Pacific to illustrate how China’s digital platforms have become part of a “digital empire in the making.” The article examines how this emergent digital empire is a manifestation of “going out,” a term used by the Chinese government to rally the private sector (particularly platform capitalists) to internationalize, and how digital champions such as Alibaba have responded to and embraced an outward-bound strategy. Though the Asia-Pacific represents an important region for Chinese economic security, especially when one considers the established business interests there, extension of Chinese influence to central Asia conjures up a different kind of weida fuxing (great rejuvenation), one that evokes a great historical past—namely, the Chinese empire. Accordingly, we speculate on how digital technologies, platforms, and business mergers will facilitate Chinese influence along the di...
The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society
Critical Asian Studies, 2007
Research on the Internet in China typically focuses on questions of censorship, the blocking of websites, the democratizing effects of the medium, and the use of the Internet by dissident groups. In much of this research, a deterministic view of technology prevails: the inherent features of the Internet such as ubiquitous access and the fact that "everybody can easily become his or her own publisher and participate in many-to-many communications" are assumed to be leading automatically to specific societal and political developments. These developments are seen as taking place along a fixed line only dependent on technological innovations, a characteristic of an earlier view of modernization that was also found in Marxist and Leninist perspectives. 1 This simplistic view is inadequate for two reasons. First, it portrays the Chinese Internet user as fundamentally different from his/her Western counterpart. Second, it ignores the rise of urban and consumerist lifestyles, which have changed Chinese society during recent decades and resulted in less interest in conventional politics, more fragmentation, and a stronger focus on identity politics.