Maria Faust

Technische Universität Chemnitz · Department of Sociology

The global order in a post-pandemic world is increasingly dominated by geo-political and economic tensions between the West and the Non-Western world, especially with regards to China. The digitalization of all life-spheres aside post-pandemic challenges bear both opportunities and challenges for the world order to come in the next decades. For example, China is usually ascribed a ‘Soft Power’ strategy in dealing with the rest of the world whereas the West sees its core competencies in promoting its cultural values such as strengthening of democratic values. In this context, it remains essential to establish nuanced, balanced, and moderate theoretical and empirical approaches to counteract discourses that fall in line with so-called novel Cold-War-narratives between China and its allies and the West. In this network and in various sub-research-projects, we seek to overcome dichotomous approaches and diversify the perspectives in order to promote inter-, trans- and cultural understanding between China and the West. Moreover, we aim to strengthen ambiguity tolerance in an increasingly pluralistic and poly-centric world order to address sustainable, long-term oriented and viable exchange and solutions between the different global powers. In an ideal setting, mutual respect, based on various levels of analytic research enquiry and policy-making, will contribute to tackling the prosperous co-existence of both China and the Western World.

Research applying indigenous Chinese concepts and theories

The aim is to investigate regulatory practices and legal regulations of facial recognition technology in China and Germany.