Rogier Creemers

Leiden University | LEI · Faculty of Law

Studies on digital Asia tend to cluster around certain interrelated core strands, which has led other topics to be largely overlooked, one of which is the state. Scholars neglect the state to their detriment. First, the article shows that the state is not a monolith but, rather, a venue for contesting and debating different concerns, in which vario...

Over the past 5 years, the People’s Republic of China has accelerated efforts to establish a legal architecture for data protection. With the promulgation of the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and the Data Security Law (DSL) in the summer of 2021, the first phase of these efforts have been concluded. These will have a significant impact...

For many years the prevailing view – at least in western liberal democracies – was that governments could not, and should not, regulate digital technologies. The origins of this philosophy lie in part in the ethos of the early internet, which was developed as a free and open global communication network. The fear was – and at an international level...

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two...

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two...

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two...

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two...

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two...

L’objectif de devenir une « cyber-puissance majeure » a été élevé au rang de priorité absolue par les autorités chinoises et est l’un des principes organisateurs de leur politique intérieure et étrangère dédiée au numérique depuis 2014. Mais comment cette cyber-puissance est-elle abordée par la Chine ? Comment perçoit et définit-elle la puissance d...

China and Russia have distinct views on the global order and the role of cyber therein, expressed in a conceptual vocabulary that has received little scholarly attention. This vocabulary is also used to frame their concerns and fears about cyber-borne threats. The approaches and policies of Russia and China are often married together under the head...

How does digital technology influence the Chinese state? This paper focuses on two elements that are rapidly transforming the modus operandi of governance. First, it argues that a strategic public-private nexus is forming at the heart of the Party-state, as an increasing symbiosis is developing between the huge private companies that dominate the C...

Freedom is to act as one’s real and true nature demands and so only the exercise of that choice which is of what is good can properly be called ‘free choice’. A choice for the better is therefore an act of freedom … Whereas a choice for the worse is not a choice as it is grounded in ignorance … it is then also not an exercise in freedom because fre...

The first two years of the Xi Jinping administration saw a thorough reconfiguration of Internet governance. This reconfiguration created a centralized and integrated institutional framework for information technologies, in support of an ambitious agenda to place digital technologies at the heart of propaganda, public opinion and social control work...

In 2013, a debate on constitutionalism erupted between liberals advocating better implementation of China's Constitution and anti-constitutionalist voices claiming that this would harm the political order and the reform project. The debate emerged against the background of a choppy political transition and proliferating social concerns, as well as...

In recent years, China has developed an increasingly ambitious public diplomacy program to enhance its soft power abroad. Although several scholars have sought to assess the effects of this program, little attention has been paid to the Chinese governmental conception of soft power and its use in propaganda. This article explores how the state's vi...

While many scholars have debated the question whether the Internet would change China, the question whether China would change the Internet has received less attention. However, the Internet's arrival in China meant it entered into a highly complex, historically formed political culture. This created a lens through which government has perceived th...

This essay analyses the official and media response to the WTO cases related to cultural products, which China lost. It aims to contextualize both the official discourse and the press discourse in terms of domestic politics and China's trade priorities. It concludes that in the official discourse, China and the US are working at cross purposes, as...