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Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the People’s Republic of China Decentralise Manage and Service Reforms

June 2021

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Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By applying a case study analytical approach, this paper canvasses how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms of centralising information. Combining the joint knowledge of surveillance and China studies scholarship this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance streamlining China’s fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David Murakami Wood’s 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public access to information is a key component of the Party-state’s regulatory governance strategy incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisation and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.

The State-surveillance Relationship in the PRC

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Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the

People’s Republic of China: Decentralise, Manage and Service Reforms

Alexander Trauth-Goik

Ausma Bernotaite

PhD Candidate

University of Wollongong

School of Humanities and Social Inquiry

aptg993@uowmail.edu.au

PhD Candidate

Griffith University

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

ausma.b@gmail.com

Abstract

Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was

accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China

(PRC) which have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015,

the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu

放管服 (decentralise, manage and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market

regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By

applying a case study analytical approach, this paper canvasses how advancements in big data

contributed to these reforms of centralising information. Combining the joint knowledge of

surveillance and China studies scholarship this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance

streamlining China’s fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David

Murakami Wood’s 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that

decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public

access to information is a key component of the Party-state’s regulatory governance strategy

incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have

implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisation and

surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese

technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.

Key words: Chinese surveillance; big data surveillance; polyarchy; Chinese State Council;

Xi Jinping; social management; big data governance; Internet Plus

Introduction

This study illustrates how decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of access

to information undercuts recent changes in national governance strategies in the People’s

Republic of China (PRC). In this study, we carry out a case study of fang guan fu 放管服

(decentralise, manage and service (DMS)) market and governance reforms launched by the

Chinese State Council in May 2015. These reforms are an expansion of “Internet Plus”, a

concept advanced by the State Council earlier in March 2015 and a catchcry for the integration

of mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and Internet of Things technologies with

traditional industries as a means of transforming the Chinese economy (State Council 2015a;

2015b). Within the broader scope of Internet Plus which has upgraded the hardware and

network infrastructure, DMS reforms seek to evolve three functions of the Chinese government:

(1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management, and (3) public service provision. In the

DMS plan, market regulation refers to the goods and services market in China, with the aim to

grow emerging industries, e-commerce, online banking and financial services, as well as help

Chinese companies increase their international presence (State Council 2015a). The

supervision and management side of reform has connected credit scores to rulemaking in

governance, such as deciding which industries or companies can get preferential loans

according to their credit rating or score (European Chamber & Sinolytics, 2019). For example,

as a response to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the State Council has

encouraged banks to grant exclusive loans and postpone the submission of required application

materials for trustworthy companies with good credit ratings (Credit China, 2020a). The final

pillar of the DMS reforms is concerned with upgrading the provision of public services, making

these processes easier, more transparent, and accessible online. For example, in Zhejiang

province, most of the administrative processes (e.g., reporting and filing annual tax) can now

be completed on a government app online. Despite territorial resistance from provincial leaders

against inter-governmental information sharing (Chen, et al. 2020), these “lean government”

initiatives have been promoted by Premier Li Keqiang (State Council 2015d) and pushed to

implementation by the State Council through the creation of reporting items (2020a).

Ultimately, DMS reforms provide a unique scenario to observe how big data surveillance

systems in China are bolstering citizen-to-state transparency while simultaneously creating a

leaner government bureaucracy, a new environment of regulatory opportunities and restrictions

for businesses, as well as streamlined public services for individuals.

We apply the insights derived from an interdisciplinary review of literature to contextualise the

three primary components of DMS reforms: market regulation; new supervision and

management systems; and service provision. Contextualising these developments within David

Murakami Wood’s (2017) outline for a systematic political theory of surveillance, we argue

that the contemporary Chinese state ought to be conceived as a “panoptic polyarchy” namely,

a managed state (2017, 361-2), because it increasingly relies on self-governance of citizens and

organizations, civil society input, and public participation in matters of governance, albeit

under close supervision. The paper proceeds as follows: first we review the governance context

in which DMS reforms were introduced, explain the content and timeline of the reforms, and

provide recent evidence of policy progress, experimentation and challenges associated with

implementation. We then introduce literature from the surveillance studies stream to

conceptualise historic trends in data centralisation/decentralisation and examine the state-

surveillance relationship in the PRC by employing the political theory of surveillance advanced

by David Murakami Wood (2017). The third section turns to China studies scholarship to

describe how the Chinese Party-state, in line with its social management prerogatives, has

pursued efforts aimed at public deliberation and consultation to justify an extensive

informatisation and surveillance drive. We conclude by highlighting the need for future

research into trends in data centralisation and decentralisation in other nation-states where

Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.

‘Decentralise, Manage and Service’ Reforms

DMS reforms were officially introduced by the Chinese State Council in May 2015. The

reforms represent a recent phase in administrative transformation which aims to decentralise

decision making among government agencies and market actors, simplify administration,

integrate and innovate management and supervisory methods, promote fair market competition,

and optimise service delivery (China Government Network 2015). Although the national goal

of decentralized governance and centralized management was put forth in the 1970s, the

administrative attempts had since fallen short on achieving that (Mertha 2005), and the

application of Internet Plus in governance provided a new opportunity. The broad premise of

DMS is supporting economic growth of the country with technological modernisation. At a

national level, DMS reforms were introduced to tackle the “new era” challenge of big data

governance, shifting from unified data input towards unifying the system in which data can be

easily shared and used. DMS constitutes the seventh national scale administrative reform, and

a new era period of taking reformist market action (Li 2018), well aligned with the broad

national ideology of “Xi Jinping Thought” discussed in the literature review below. In the

words of Li Keqiang: “The essence of DMS reforms is the self-revolution of government,

reduction of power in the hands of central authority, departmental cost-savings and benefit, and

to encourage actors to “cut their own meat/drop their own weight” (割自己的肉) by assuming

responsibility for the effective management of their own departments” (Development and

Reform Commission 2016). In line with the past four decades of market reform, this latest State

Council initiative aspires to adapt the functions of government to new technical capacities,

moving from “microscopic, direct management” ( 微观管理、直接管理) towards

“macroscopic, supervisory management” (宏观管理、监督管理) (Chinese State Council

2017) of both market and society. DMS reforms are targeted at government departments at

every level, and thus Li Keqiang has used the phrase “turning the knife inwards” (刀刃向内)

(Chinese State Council 2017) to describe what these efforts aspire to achieve, the slimming

down of bureaucracy, cutting of red tape, innovative use of new supervisory methods enabled

by surveillance, and the gathering of big data to enhance service delivery. Government

departments from all levels and regions have been granted generous space to actively

experiment with measures enabling the implementation of reforms and are encouraged to

monitor and engage with both corporate and public opinion (China Government Network

2017b). Trends of centralisation and decentralisation are exemplified in the development of

DMS reforms: data collection is now increasingly decentralized, data processing hierarchies

simplified or even eliminated where possible, and data storage — centralized. By clearly

assigning reporting goals and making the initiative mandatory on a national scale, the reforms

proceeded despite some pushback from local officials against inter-agency data sharing (Chen

et al. 2020). DMS offer a particularly salient example of the evolving social management

prerogatives of the Party-state as well as the innovative use of new surveillance measures

deployed to alleviate bureaucratic burdens; all while managing gargantuan amounts of data

efficiently. In this section, we detail the three primary components of DMS reforms: new forms

of market regulation, supervision and management systems, and service provision processes.

We also review the governance context in response to which reforms were introduced, explain

the content and timeline of the reforms, and, lastly, provide recent evidence of progress,

experimentation and implementation challenges.

Evolving Market Regulation

The GDP slump to 7.4 percent in 2014 prompted the government into action to fuel a “second

spring” of economic growth. In July 2015, the State Council proposed a plan to integrate

Internet Plus with traditional industries, proposing to create the technological and regulatory

infrastructure for Internet Plus, provide financial support to Internet Plus entrepreneurs in the

form of preferential loans and tax reductions, and support Internet companies aiming to sell

globally through the One Belt One Road Initiative (State Council 2015c). With these initiatives,

the State Council advanced nascent technological network infrastructure on a national scale

(e.g., 5G), engaged entrepreneurial innovation, and combined international economic and

political relationships to promote Chinese start-ups. At a provincial level, the State Council

pushed departmental bureaucracies to innovate according to local circumstances. Premier Li

Keqiang asserted government departments supporting Chinese businesses had not reacted

adequately to the changing landscape of the Chinese economy, describing their operations as

“strict evaluation, light supervision, weak service” (Chinese State Council 2017). The market

regulation side of DMS reforms therefore serve two functions: 1) they allow for the cutting of

administrative red tape, the slimming of the bureaucracy, and considerable government cost-

savings; and 2) they make it easier for all kinds of businesses to access financial resources by

reducing time spent on lengthy accreditation processes, and decreasing the need for close

government contact (i.e., financing applications can be filed and processed online).

In 2016 the State Council cut down on the processes previously needed to approve new

business projects and financing. For example, the government reduced the rate of investment

projects needed to be examined and approved by the central government by 90 percent, thus

delegating regulatory power to provincial government agencies (Development and Reform

Commission 2016). These changes have impacted administrative and investment evaluations,

industry qualifications, high schools and research institutes, and the commercial trading system

(China Government Network 2016). A recent example from a Southern Guiyang city

municipality demonstrates the effects of the DMS reforms on a concrete level: the city

authorities implemented inter-governmental information sharing between different

departments, which has allowed businesses to register their government requests on one inter-

governmental platform, and reduced business request processing times to one working day

(Xiaoxiang Morning News 2021). The municipality also connected market supervision and

regulation processes by reducing the number of inspections for businesses that had good credit

ratings and maintained frequent auditing inspections only for businesses with low credit ratings.

In 2017, reforms were concentrated on alleviating financial burdens for market actors via the

implementation of structural tax cut policies and reductions in corporate fees (China

Government Network 2017b). This included axing restrictions on investment, especially kinds

of restrictions that prevented private investment at the level of the individual. Licence

requirements for the industrial production of goods were scaled back, including those covering

safety and environmental standards (China Government Network 2017b). Central authorities

are confident that through enactment of comprehensive supervision before, during, and after

the production process, the quality and safety of products can be guaranteed, meaning most

production licences, previously regulated by the government, can be uniformly cancelled

(China Government Network 2017b). These changes are hoped to make the government

administration lighter, more efficient, and responsive. Under the old system, government

employees were criticised for waiting until they received a request and handling matters in a

passive and unresponsive manner, a practice dubbed “worshipping the temple door” (拜庙门)

within the state bureaucracy apparatus (Chinese State Council 2017). Li Keqiang emphasises

that these changes to market regulation entail “reductions and limitations on government

powers in exchange for the vigour of the market and the freeing up society’s creative energy”

(Development and Reform Commission 2016). In line with DMS reforms and the tenant of

decentralised decision-making, both government and market actors are being granted more

space and autonomy to pursue their respective objectives, but now more so than ever before,

they are more closely scrutinised to not overstep acceptable behavioural parameters set by the

Party-state.

Strengthening Management Through Enhanced Supervision

The second pillar of DMS reforms aims to “promote social fairness and justice” (促进社会公

平正义) by normalizing and legitimizing surveillance and data sharing to strengthen

government management and oversight of the Chinese market and society (China Government

Network 2016). This ideological groundwork has allowed the State Council to integrate

reputational based decision-making underpinned by big data surveillance into all aspects of

governance. Social management discussed in the review of literature below, is the fundamental

stratagem the Party-state relies on to maintain social stability. Big data governance has

introduced a datafied system based on carrot-and-stick principles to effectively transform social

management into a project of social engineering. DMS reforms closely overlap with the

experimentation, development and rollout of a second project initiated by the Chinese State

Council in 2014: The “Social Trust System” (STS) (社会信用体系) otherwise known as the

“Social Credit System” (Trauth-Goik 2019). The STS has a variety of functions, however, the

four primary are that: 1) the system grants the government enhanced supervisory control over

businesses operating in China in the face of market liberalisation; 2) it strengthens the Party’s

own self-governance, and makes national agencies, provincial and local governments more

accountable to the Party 3) it allows for the intensified collection of data and monitoring of

government departments, private companies and individual persons on a day-to-day basis; and

4) it streamlines or restricts movement, professional, social, and commercial participation

based on the target’s rule adherence via the use of automated rewards and sanctions (Trauth-

Goik 2019). In line with these imperatives, the term “social credit” has gradually expanded to

encompass efforts in both market regulation and social governance (Chen & Cheung 2017).

Today the STS exists as the technical engine powering Party-state efforts to construct a

gamified society (Ramadan 2018) under the auspices of “a culture of honesty and integrity”

(诚信文化) (Trauth-Goik 2019). On a macrolevel the STS can be divided into two main

components. The corporate STS is presently the main focus of government efforts. It targets

all businesses operating in China and ensures their compliance with government regulations

via enhanced supervision and requirements for businesses to submit data to centralised

government databases (European Chamber & Sinolytics 2019). The personal STS targets

individual citizens and is in an earlier stage of development. In its present form, the personal

STS comprises an ecosystem of pilot local government and commercial projects which rate the

behaviour of individuals and automatically dispense rewards or punishments (Creemers 2018;

Trauth-Goik 2019: Liu 2019).

The key DMS trends of decentralising data collection points and centralising access to

information are a fundamental component of the STS. Since 2015, the National Development

and Reform Commission (NDRC) has been overseeing the development of a National Credit

Information Sharing Platform (NCISP) (全国信用信息共享平台) fed by data streams from

commercial and government agencies. Data stored within the NCISP consists of two main

categories. The first comprises general identity information such as personal ID numbers,

social security registration, and unified social credit codes

. The second draws from records

which agencies are already generating through their routine operations and provision of public

services, such as licenses, permits, court judgments, and administrative punishment decisions

(Chen & Cheung 2017: 16; Daum 2019). In November 2017 this platform connected 42 State

Council departments, such as the NDRC, People’s Bank of China, Ministry of Transport, and

Ministry of Commerce, all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, and 50 private

market actors in their data sharing efforts, with Alibaba and Baidu being two key commercial

contributors (Xinhua 2017a). The list of State Council agencies submitting data to the NCISP

had grown to 46 as of August 2019 demonstrating that more actors are being brought on board

as the database develops (Trivium China 2019). Information is becoming increasingly

centralised in China through the development of such master databases and they are

underpinned by rules of collecting data through different surveillance assemblages managed

by respective state and extra-state actors. In other words, the STS is comprised of independent

platforms owned by various private and government entities however these platforms rely on

information from centralised databases in order to apply judgements about trustworthy or

untrustworthy behaviour to their particular targets (Liang et al., 2018).

Since June 2018 every company with a business licence in China as well as government-backed public institutions, social

organisations, foundations, private non-enterprise units, grassroots self-governing mass organisations and trade unions, have

been designated an 18-digit ‘unified social credit code’ which forms the basis of their social credit record (Hoffman, 2018)

Cooperation between different government agencies granted access to the NCISP is facilitated

through the “Joint Rewards and Sanctions mechanism” (联合奖惩). The mechanism is built

upon a series of Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) that ensure agencies enforce each

other’s blacklists (Trivium China 2019: 17). When an agency includes an actor to one of their

specific blacklists, this information is attached to the target’s social credit file and shared with

all other government agencies via the NCISP. Respective agencies then proceed to use their

own institutional powers to reward or punish the actor in question, resulting in a cascade of

benefits or restrictions (Trivium China 2019: 17)

. P rivate companies such as Alibaba are

meanwhile required to assist authorities in the application of blacklist judgements by

preventing individuals from making certain purchases through their platforms (Creemers, 2018;

Trivium China, 2019). Alibaba is also required to forward non-compliance of payment

obligations to master STS databases (Mac Síthigh & Siems 2019: 18). In July 2015, Ant, a

subsidiary company of Alibaba, signed an unprecedented MOU with the Supreme People’s

Court promising enhanced one-way sharing of data. The document specified that the Court

would provide data on individuals who had defaulted on their court orders to Ant’s commercial

credit system Sesame Credit for disclosure on the platform (Chen et al., 2018: 24). Although

far from being a reciprocal exchange, commercial credit systems do receive credit data from

government agencies. Sesame Credit is known to collect some of its data from government

sources including legal financial institutes, the Public Security Ministry, and the Taxation

Office for analysis and credit scoring (Chong, 2019: 295).

Information accrued in centralised databases such as the NCISP is available not only to

participating private and government actors, but also individual persons. In the “Planning

Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)” released in June 2014 the

State Council stressed that social credit information, evaluation assessments, progress reports,

and blacklist and redlist (rewards) judgements, be made accessible to the public (China

State Information Centre and Baidu to co-design and launch the “Credit China Platform” (中

国信用网站) (Creemers 2018: 21). Credit China is the front-end website of the NCISP.

According to the “About Us” section of the website, the platform operates as "the official

window for praising honesty and integrity and punishing the untrustworthy" and is "mainly

responsible for publishing credit information and announcements" (Credit China 2017). An

estimated 75% of all datasets transferred to the NCISP are ear-marked as “open to the public”

and appear on Credit China (Trivium China 2019). Example uses of Credit China would be a

company accessing the platform to evaluate the trustworthiness of a potential business partner,

or an individual checking to see whether a private tourism company had been blacklisted for

fraud prior to traveling. In accordance with DMS reforms, the development of such master

databases for the STS therefore demonstrate how centralisation of information is facilitating

decentralised decision-making, albeit decision-making constrained within acceptable

behavioural parameters set by the Party-state.

Administrative Service Provision

DMS reforms aim to enhance service provision in China through efforts aimed at database

integration and streamlined access to government services. As discussed in the literature review

below, making governance more efficient and less opaque to citizens is an administrative goal

that stems back to the 1990’s. Considering the complexity and number of red tapes within the

For a brilliant visual depiction that can provide greater clarity to this process see: Trivium China 2019, Understanding

China’s Social Credit System, Trivium, <http://socialcredit.triviumchina.com/what-is-social-credit/>.

Chinese administrative bureaucracy, it is obvious why further reforms remain necessary. The

State Council is seeking to simplify how the average citizen handles life matters by doing away

with unnecessary, circular and duplicate government accreditation processes. It wants to

improve the supply of water, electricity, gas, heat and other public utilities and ensure all

enterprises, work units, banks and other service providers deliver the most effective and highest

quality of service (China Government Network 2017b). Pre-approval processes and restrictions

covering health care services for seniors, medical rehabilitation, technical training, culture and

sports activities, among other social service industries provided by the market are being

comprehensively repealed (Xinhua 2017). Greater ease and convenience associated with public

access to government services is meanwhile being pursued via the integration of databases and

efforts aimed at connecting “Information Islands” (信息孤岛) (Xinhua 2017). DMS reforms

therefore promise to streamline service delivery of all kinds for individual citizens and residents.

DMS reforms are making government services easier to access, more intuitive, and centralised.

By applying new technological solutions, the reforms are extending some of the reformist ideas

from the 1970s and 1980s. For instance, in the 1980s, the Party-state conceptualized the

reformist concept of unifying (一体化) governance and market processes (Huang 1986; Li

1989). The DMS reforms have furthered that idea by introducing a “National Unified

Government Service Platform” (全国一体化政务服务平台) which is currently in pilot phase

and aims to promote a government objective called “service anywhere through one platform”

(一网通办，异地可办) (General Office of the Chinese State Council 2020). The National

Unified Government Service Platform currently connects 31 provinces, 40 State Council

departments and government service platforms, provides access to local departments and more

than 3,000,000 government service items, and handles a large volume of important public

services (General Office of the Chinese State Council 2020). Using the platform, businesses

and members of the public can receive government service from local authorities and

departments across the country in real-time. In 2018, the Ministry of Public Security developed

and implemented streamlined application and service processes in line with DMS reforms.

These included new online service functions, reducing the amount of materials needed for all

kinds of applications, granting access to a combination of services using only one means of

proof, optimising self-service and encouraging autonomous internet service (Xinhua 2018). In

2018, 36 large cities had taken the lead in implementing DMS reforms and the Transportation

Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security had encouraged other localities to

implement the lessons these city authorities had learned through experimentation (Xinhua

2018). One of the authors personally lived through these transitions in an Eastern city of

Ningbo: previously working at a professional capacity in the area of international business, the

author would frequently need to visit the local government offices for the purposes of obtaining

exports documents and annually renewing residence permits, frequently requiring travel to

more remote suburbs of the city. In 2018, the local government departments transitioned most

of those processes online, saving days of travel and queueing. Beijing Public Housing Fund is

currently advancing DMS reforms by optimising the delivery process for personal housing

loans and reducing the amount of required materials for housing loan application to

convenience borrowers (Credit China 2020b). In 2016 in Anhui province, 11 out of 16

prefecture-level cities had reportedly reduced manual inter-government administration tasks

(行政权力事项) by over 50% and citizen-facing administration tasks (行政审批项目) by 40%,

while making a recommendation for provincial-level development commissions to create a

standardized, unified and interconnected e-government approval network system (Yao 2016).

Some early adopters of DMS have reported difficulties with the implementation of the reforms.

For example, government departments in Shandong province struggled to attract users to the

new network platforms, reported difficulties of transient information sharing barriers between

departments, and compatibility of online service platforms (Gao & Li 2016). In Henan, reforms

have been implemented with success, but issues of delegating power efficiently, lack of

supervision and approval services have stalled the speed of implementation (Qin 2019).

Nationally, similar issues have been reported: a lack of trained officers responsible for

implementation of new policies and insufficient information and guidance (Cui & Li 2019). In

July 2020, the State Council commanded that departments from all levels of government start

systematically combing through existing mechanisms for freedom of information requests (信

息公开), their regulations, and standardise documents. By the end of 2020, departments were

expected to have unified information from external databases, dynamically updated services,

and resolved key systemic issues as part of this drive (Credit China 2020c). As the following

sections demonstrate, progressive unification of databases in China supports the Party-state

ambitions to rule over the algorithm and make society legible. Figure 1.0 below provides a

visual description of DMS reforms and highlights the emerging big data surveillance

architecture in China.

Figure 1.0: DMS reforms and trends in big data surveillance in China

Digital Panoptic Polyarchy: Governing with Data

Chinese governmentality has placed science and technology at the heart of social and political

developments since the beginning of reforms in the 1970s. Current Chairman of the CCP Xi

Jinping’s style of governance has relied heavily on the incorporation of surveillance

technologies and technocratic political strategies. Striving to cultivate a feeling of digital

freedom amongst the general population and constructing a vision of reclaimed national glories

underpinned by advanced technology (Jiang & Fu 2018), the Party-state has employed

surveillance mechanisms for increased monitoring and control of knowledge, behavior and

movement of populations. This section draws from surveillance studies literature to detail the

processes behind datafied state governance and positions Chinese governance rationality

within David Murakami Wood’s (2017) political theory of surveillance.

Surveillance studies scholars have long observed the complex interplay between trends of

centralisation and decentralisation when considering the disembodied and datafied character of

contemporary surveillance practices. As far back as the 1960’s, Alan Westin (1967) warned of

the profound way in which data processing by computers was altering the ability of government

authorities and private agencies to use, in an efficient and coordinated fashion, the mountains

of information they had stored to manage individuals and control social processes. Roger

Clarke (1988: 499) coined the term “dataveillance” to further emphasise the centrality of

computer processing systems within the operation of emerging surveillance practices, defining

it as “the systematic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the

actions or communications of one or more persons”. Where traditional surveillance monitored

select individuals for a specific purpose, dataveillance entails the continuous tracking of the

masses for reasons that are unstated and predetermined (Van Dijck 2014: 205). Via the

automated collection and scrutiny of personal data, computers have now been assigned the role

of ever wakeful and attentive watcher, replacing the need for a physical human to monitor the

routine operation of surveillance. Gary Marx (2004) has noted that within this model of “new

surveillance,” data collection is typically mediated through remote means and is stored in

locations far removed from the point of extraction. Information created through such processes

is available in real-time to government and private collectors and can offer insight into past,

present and future events (the latter being achieved through data mining and statistical

modelling) (Gandy 2006; Andrejevic 2019; Zuboff 2019). In contrast to the panoptic model of

surveillance predicated on a centralised authority, dataveillance is characterised by

decentralisation and has been made into a shared responsibility of multiple actors (Romein &

Schuilenberg 2008: 341) for purposes that range from security and law enforcement (Monahan

2012; Haggerty 2012; Kroener & Neyland 2012; Linder 2019) to mobilising voters and shaping

their choices (Howard et al. 2005; Andrejevic 2007; Howard & Kreiss 2010; Bennett 2015)

and predictive commerce (Lace 2005; Turow 2006; Andrejevic 2010; 2012; Zuboff 2015;

2019).

The importance of decentralisation to the dynamics of dataveillance dovetails neatly with

Haggerty and Ericson’s (2000) concept of the surveillant assemblage. Drawing on Felix

Guattari and Gilles Deleuze’s (1989) conceptualisation of interconnected multiplicities as the

botanical rhizome, Haggerty and Ericson (2000) advanced the idea of the “surveillant

assemblage” to describe the classificatory transformation inherent to the operation of

computer-based surveillance systems. The theorisation of surveillant assemblages signposts

hierarchical re-organisation of networked data: through dual processes of levelling and

solidifying surveillance hierarchies, surveillance practices result in increased social control

(Hier 2002). Across multiple contexts and situations, surveillant assemblages operate to extract

information from human bodies by condensing behaviour into quantifiable data flows. These

data streams feed into diverse and decentralised centres of calculation that reassemble personal

information to create a virtual ‘data double’ of selves. A variety of institutional actors appraise

these data doubles in the development of their own strategies of governance, commerce, care

and control, which they deploy to influence and shape behaviour of the original physical being

from which data was extracted (Haggerty & Ericson 2000: 605). Government and corporate

actors are able to harness specific surveillance efforts, promote the use of new technologies

and cooperate together to integrate information flows. These institutions therefore continue to

occupy a key position within the rhizomatic ordering of surveillance (Ericson & Haggerty

2006). To serve their respective purposes, public and private agencies work to connect the roots

of different surveillance systems together and encourage the growth of new shoots, establishing

the rules of networked data sharing.

Decentralisation accurately captures the automated, dispersed, and datafied aspects of

contemporary surveillance practices, yet it occurs alongside a dual trend of centralisation. As

heralded by David Lyon (1994: 51):

What seems to be happening in many countries is that both greater

centralisation and increased decentralisation is occurring. Surveillance

is indeed more dispersed, but the same technical systems make it easier

for individuals to be traced by central institutions such as government

administrative departments or the police.

The new organisation of surveillance systems allows for individuals to become more

transparent by securing access to data flows through new disciplinary orders incorporating

elements of both coercion and consent (Shearing & Stenning 1985). Clarke (2007)

characterises centralisation as an approach towards “meta-surveillance”. Achieved through the

integration of different assemblages, meta-surveillance is defined as “an architecture intended

from the outset to develop a set of feeds into a single ‘master’, with all of the subsidiary

surveillance processes serving the centrally-determined objectives” (Clarke 2007). Trends of

decentralisation and centralisation intrinsic to the development of surveillance remain highly

respondent to the encapsulating socio-political environment. The nature of political

organisation within any one context determines the extent of governmental objectives and

therefore mediates the relationship between centralised versus dispersed strategies of data

collection, particularly those actions and strategies taken on the basis of the information

gathered.

Recognising the importance of political context, David Murakami Wood (2017) sketched the

outlines of a political theory of surveillance which aspired to explicate the relationships

between surveillance, democracy, authoritarianism, colonialism and capitalism. Murakami

Wood (2017) observed that much of the theorising concentrated on the development of

surveillance within western liberal democracies extenuating Anthony Giddens’ assertion that

“all surveillance tends towards totalitarianism, in other words that state surveillance itself is a

marker for a drift to a totalitarian state” (Murakami Wood 2017: 358). However, Murakami

Wood (2017) notes that little academic exploration connecting the concepts of political

authority and surveillance exists, leaving a gap in the scholarship of political theory of

surveillance. Following in the footsteps of William Robinson (1996) and Robert Dahl (1971),

Murakami Wood (2017: 360) asserts that the political reality in contemporary democratic

nation-states more closely resembles “polyarchy”, or “situations in which a mixed form of rule

occurs, somewhere between democracy and authoritarianism.” He subsequently advocates for

a model of state-surveillance that can demonstrate the relationship between the traditional state-

type in question (e.g., anarchy, democracy, polyarchy, or autocracy) and extent of surveillance

(e.g. high, moderate, or low). Murakami Wood highlights that a “panoptic autocracy” most

closely resembles a totalitarian society, a context within which “there are no limits on what the

state can know about the citizen… There is no accountability or openness from the state.

Further, what constitutes ‘knowledge’ in the totalitarian state is determined by the state itself”

(Murakami Wood 2017: 362). Evidently, in China today surveillance is highly sophisticated

and extensively applied across both online and offline spaces, thus we can characterise the level

of surveillance in China as “high”. A state high in surveillance though a degree less politically

rigid than a panoptic autocracy is described by Wood (2017) as a “panoptic polyarchy”. This

surveillance state form “has some democratic features, but these are controlled forms of

representation. The state is dependent on information for governing, yet at the same time makes

only limited information available and mostly in a propagandist form. Such states tend to be

based in formal and often constitutional law, but the law is skewed strongly in favour of the

state’s priorities” (Murakami Wood 2017: 362). In light of the case study examined above, we

proceed by interrogating the surveillance state form which is most applicable to the

contemporary Chinese Party-state.

Enhancing Social Management Through Surveillance

In 1992, Kenneth Lieberthal (1992: 39) coined the term “fragmented authoritarianism” to

demarcate the shift from Maoist era governance in China. Lierberthal posited that fragmented

authoritarianism was organised along the lines of the tiao-kuai matrix: tiao referring to vertical

functional organisations, such as ministries, and kuai outlining geographical denominators

(Lieberthal 1992). This division of responsibility ensures that central power is maintained while

governance goals and responsibilities are horizontally assigned across jurisdictions. The

incorporation and growth of big data surveillance in China since 2015 has further embedded

this trend of fragmented authoritarianism. The Chinese Party-state’s willingness to deliberate

with market, civil society and public actors and grant them greater operational freedoms has

meanwhile accompanied its embrace of digital technologies. Since 2013, when Xi Jinping

assumed leadership of the CCP, this shift has been gradually accommodated in the broad

ideological vision of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” otherwise simply

known as “Xi Jinping Thought”. By advancing the CCP’s “socialist rule of law,” the Party-

state has simultaneously allowed space for digital technologies to freely reshape Chinese

society and through rule by law, outlined clear social and political boundaries that those

freedoms should contain. This section demarcates the changing modes of public deliberation

and consultation in China and explains how those changes have been incorporated under the

basic tenets of Xi Jinping Thought.

Rebecca MacKinnon (2011) has demonstrated how previously rigid bars of the government

bureaucracy have progressively been replaced by the controlled development and selective

application of less-invasive digital technologies. MacKinnon (2011) described how the CCP

has come to embrace digital technologies as inevitable and shape them in ways congenial to

the imperatives of single party rule by co-opting the private actors responsible for their design

and maintenance. James Pieke (2016) later coined the term “neo-socialism,” pointing to

China’s extensive market liberalisation and the emergence of a vibrant society and relatively

autonomous civil society, to describe elements of political reality in contemporary China which

contradict classical ideas associated with a strictly authoritarian Party-state. Others have

echoed these sentiments, contending that to view the contemporary Chinese political system

purely through the lens of authoritarianism focuses attention on the Chinese state’s repressive

characteristics to the exclusion of its growing ideological and hegemonic capacity (Wright

2010; MacKinnon 2011; Jessica 2013; Hui 2017; Xing 2017). The intention of the Party-state

in actively incorporating digital technologies under the ideological umbrellas of

informatisation and modernisation is to take full advantage of science and technology as a

means to advance the nation, but to do so in a politically, socially and legally controlled manner.

This idea is not new: in explaining the development of the Internet in China, James Griffiths

(2019) outlined how the Internet first started on a small scale available only for a select group

of researchers, continued to incorporate the Great Firewall of China that censors unwanted

content, and eventually outcompeted international suppliers of hard and soft technology by

relying on home-grown companies compliant with the rules set by the Party-state. A similar

adoption strategy is now being employed with big data applications. The Party-state is allowing

for a change in public discourse and consultation in lieu of its embrace of the new big data era,

but doing so on its own terms.

The Chinese Party-state cares greatly about expanding its capacity to rule through the consent

of the masses as demonstrated through its subscription to “social management” (社会管理), a

technique of state security which aims to integrate and automate responses to internal and

external security threats. Samantha Hoffman (2017a) has traced the origins of social

management within Party rhetoric to approximately 1949. However, it was noted that the

current iteration of the term, conceived as a functional process, grew in prominence during the

1970s and early 1980s (Hoffman 2017a: 17). Xi Jinping further reshaped the concept in 2013

after the CCP Central Committee’s Third Plenum when the term “social governance” was

introduced to replace social management (Steinhardt & Zhao 2014). While the two concepts

may be used interchangeably, the term social governance expanded to include self-governance

and service functions that mirror the role of DMS reforms in the social structuring vision of the

Party-state. Social management embodies a Leninist, scientific method of “shaping, managing,

and responding” (Hoffman 2017b), which guides the Party leadership’s governance of both the

Party machination and wider Chinese society. The CCP has proven that authoritarian socialism

can be compatible with the development of a capitalist economy, with the two forces now tied

together in an increasingly symbiotic relationship (Wright 2010; Pieke, 2012). As a

consequence, the Party has been forced to evolve its attitude of pluralistic accommodation

away from a narrow focus on socialist ideology and towards the inclusion of different actors

within the administration and supervision of Chinese society (Tsang 2009; MacKinnon 2011;

He & Warren 2011; Xing 2017; Kornreich 2019; Meixi 2020). This has not, however,

necessitated the diffusion of power from central Party control into the hands of civil society.

Instead, social management should be conceived of as a top-down attempt at refining the

Party’s political control over Chinese society in the face of pluralisation (Shi 2017). The

diffusion of tasks and responsibilities of restructuring social governance have been allocated

within the tiao-kuai matrix (vertical functional organisations within geographical

denominators). This strategy of leadership ensures the continued relevancy of the Party as

China’s transition toward a market economy intensifies and the country experiences

unprecedented technological and societal change.

Subscription to the idea of social management by successive Party leaders demonstrates their

recognition that managing the complex development of modern Chinese society cannot be

achieved through government intervention and control alone. In this regard, social management

techniques facilitate processes of social self-governance pursued by private business, non-

governmental organisations (NGO) and wider civil society while they simultaneously

strengthen Party legitimacy by reinforcing the laws, rules and regulations which serve to steer

and standardise these processes (Hoffman 2017c; Guo & Jiang 2017). At every stage, the

underlying goal is to improve governmental capacity to shape, manage, and respond to social

demands (Hoffman 2017b). Within this hierarchal system constructed around the scientific

principles of observation, propagation and revision, the CCP exists as the leading class. It

regards itself as the “vanguard of the people,” the Leninist idea that a scientifically educated

few can lead the people in the direction of social prosperity (Tsang 2009; Hoffman 2017c).

This belief has been further developed ideologically by Xi Jinping in propagating socialist rule

of law and the Party-state as the central figure of leadership in Socialism with Chinese

Characteristics for a New Era.

The core principles set to manage the changing means of social management are both

ideological and legal—they politicise morals and moralise politics (Lin 2017). In 2017, Xi

Jinping Thought was added to the Party’s constitution during the 19th National Congress of the

CCP. Michael Peters (2017: 1300) argues that the changing political landscape has introduced

a “new ‘development philosophy’ that…turns its gaze to structural market reforms as well as

an enhanced governance with a system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics

based on ‘consultative democracy’.” Participatory tenants of social management have been

recently demonstrated in the Party-state’s approach towards internet communication and the

regulation of public discourse on Chinese social media. Contrary to previous assumptions, in

their highly influential paper King and associates (2013) demonstrated that the primary

function of the Party-state’s censorship program is not to censor negative criticisms of the state

or its policies. Instead, through their analysis of over 1,400 social media platforms in China,

these researchers argued that censorship in China operates to “forestall collective activities that

are occurring now or may occur in the future” (King, et al. 2013: 326). Thus, despite enhanced

government crackdowns on Internet regulation beginning in 2013 (Tong 2015: 342; Liu, et al.

2019), a degree of criticism on social media aimed at government ineptitude and administrative

reforms is still permitted (Yang 2013; Tong 2015; Nip & Fu 2016; Kornreich 2019) though

this discludes criticism intended for the Party leadership. Communications scholar Angela Ke

Li (2015) characterises this as a dual strategy of censoring critical information and proactively

guiding public opinion on the Internet. Through analysing crowdsourced lists of filtered words

on the Sina Weibo microblog, Vuori and Paltemaa (2015: 409) discovered that censorship

efforts were concentrated primarily on “controlling public debates on the Party and its leading

personages” rather than strictly eliminating critique of the government apparatus. Others have

affirmed these findings, highlighting how controlled participation in online forums and polling

is encouraged by the Party-state as a means of developing policy which is responsive to public

opinion and interest group expertise (Kornreich 2019). These trends demonstrate how Chinese

authorities “use freedom as a technique of autocratic government” (Vuori & Paltemaa 2015:

419) in order to secure continued ruling legitimacy.

The willingness of the Party-state to adopt an instrumental approach towards new modes of

governing as well as ways of engaging with the Chinese public has resulted in experimentation,

albeit selective and tightly controlled, with tools of governance reflective of, rather than strictly

inimical to, democratic processes. This mirrors David Murakami Wood’s proposed concept of

panoptic polyarchy defined by some existing democratic features as controlled forms of

representation. Although some outside commentators deride the inclusion of “freedom” and

“democracy” as part of China’s Core Socialist Values, their inclusion by the Party-state ought

to be appraised as an actual interpretation of democratic values. In line with the Leninist

concept of democratic centralism, across recent years Chinese authorities have exhibited a

higher degree of responsiveness to public opinion concerning a range of political, economic

and social issues, delegated more power to market actors, and largened the scope of individual

freedoms; conditions albeit tied to acceptance of the single-party status quo (Tsang 2009; Gow

2017; Kornreich 2019). Social management reasoning helps to illuminate why this has been

the case, particularly when it comes to the development of new governance strategies

incorporating the use of big data in China today such as those being pursued via DMS reforms.

Ruling the Algorithm: The Making of Legible Society

The surveillance studies stream adds greater depth to the line of social management inquiry by

demonstrating how decentralisation strategies in China have divided responsibility of

information system management, while simultaneously securing Party-state access to more

data. The Chinese scholarly literature complements these insights by showcasing China’s

fragmented authoritarianism and highlighting the development of varied civil society input

channels for the purposes of fine-tuning governance under single-party rule. This section

explains how the Chinese Party-state has incorporated new technology to national-level

planning processes since the 1990’s, allowing it to plan, support, and govern new technologies.

Progressive incorporation of surveillance technologies in particular have culminated in a high

degree of individual-to-state transparency, making Chinese society transparent and legible.

Unlike its North American or European counterparts, the Chinese leadership has not been

guided by the algorithm, but rather allowed for the creation of the algorithm under government

supervision.

Xi Jinping’s leadership has introduced significant changes to the means of social management.

Upon assuming his position as paramount leader, Xi Jinping established the Central Leading

Group for Cybersecurity and Informatisation (CLGCI). Xi appointed himself as chairman and

assigned deputy manager positions to Premier Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan, the latter of who

is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee as well as the Director of the Central

Propaganda Department (Segal 2014). The group started work in 2014 and was quick to

drastically change the process of information management in relation to national security. By

tightening legal and regulatory measures, the group reassigned national security responsibility

to private Information Communications Technology (ICT) operators and introduced regulatory

penalties for non-compliance, thus virtually reorganising the apparatus of China’s Internet

governance (Creemers 2017: 95). In the words of Chinese law and governance scholar Rogier

Creemers (2017: 95), the CLGCI has “made the society legible”. Creating a transparent, or

visible, society has been the overarching vision of shifting processes to big data social

management. Creemers (2017) iterates that this goal was furthered by consolidating ICT

provision in the hands of a few large companies (e.g., Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) that are united

with the broader national goals of internet governance (Creemers 2017). Indeed, this is

reflected in Xi Jinping’s “Six Thoughts on the Internet” that are guided by the core principles

of decentralisation, openness and participation under the slogan of: “My thoughts benefit the

People, and the thoughts of the people help me” (我思献人人、人人助我思) (Ye 2014). This

new approach embodies Lyon’s (1994: 51) observations on two data processes blending:

decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of access to information. As the

DMS case study advanced in this paper demonstrates, these processes manifest themselves in

comprehensive efforts aimed at market regulation, strengthening supervision and management

systems, and enhancing service provision.

The Party-state has not allowed the possibilities afforded by new technologies to dictate

political revolution in China. On the contrary, Hoffman (2017a) has demonstrated how

complex systems management theories buttressing the design of computational technologies

have been incorporated into the Party-state’s stratagem of social management. In line with the

Party-state’s application of such theories for political system design, the ideological umbrella

of informatisation has long carved out a space to introduce and finance new national-scale

development initiatives. Informatisation has been a strategy of national development promoted

in China since the 1990’s with the First National Informatisation Work Conference. The first

large-scale informatisation reform was the “Twelve Golden Projects” (十二金工程), also

known as e-governance reforms, introduced to modernise government operations of the

country, anywhere from administrative operations to policing. According to Ma and associates

(2005: 20) the:

Chinese e-government initiatives can be best understood as vehicles

intended to support economic development through an increasingly

transparent and decentralized administration while at the same time

providing the central government the information and ability to

efficiently monitor and potentially steer economic activity.

With the dawn of big data, new opportunities for social governance emerged. In 2015 during

the Two Sessions

, Li Keqiang introduced the new concept of “Internet Plus”, examined at the

beginning of this paper, which sought to apply new Internet technologies to traditional

industries as a means of modernisation. The informatisation plan that is laid out in the current

13th Five Year Plan promotes the development of Internet Plus, that entails a modernisation

project of government communications called “Internet+ Government Services” (互联网+政

务服务). The Internet+ Government project aims to modernise and ease government

information sharing and was set to be implemented in the 2016-2020 Five Year Plan (China

Government Network 2017a). By building the infrastructural basis, this project informs the

new shift in data governance in China and assists in the development of new surveillance

systems and governance strategies. This shift is characterised not only by enhanced political

control of the Chinese Party-state, but as this paper has illustrated, the emergence of a

regulatory environment where private capitalism can flourish alongside a leaner and more

accountable government bureaucracy. Figure 2.0 below contrasts the panoptic polyarchy model,

Xi Jinping Thought, and aspects of the big data surveillance architecture described above to

conceptualise the state-surveillance relationship in the PRC.

Figure 2:0: The State-surveillance Relationship in the PRC

Conclusion

This paper has introduced a case study of State Council DMS reforms to highlight how the

Chinese Party-state has harnessed big data surveillance to increase the legibility, and thus

control, of society. DMS reforms represent an obvious shift towards a more expert means of

sharing, utilising and managing big data that paradoxically may be leading to a more invasive

but less “hands-on” Party-state. The reforms have taken shape within the governance space that

has been in planning since the 1970s and fits within the Xi Jinping administration goals of

The Two Sessions refers to an annual meeting between the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese

People's Political Consultative Conference.

comprehensive governance: while presented as processes that increase government

transparency, they only achieve transparency on a superficial level of administrative operations.

The reforms are packaged as a radical change of the governance apparatus by “turning the knife

inwards” to reduce the number of red tapes and enhance transparency (Chinese State Council

2017). And indeed, DMS reforms are eliminating administrative hierarchies, superfluous

reporting processes and modernising the bureaucracy apparatus in three core areas of market

restructuring, management and supervision, and service provision. Concurrently, the Party-

state has employed an ideological toolset to brand the DMS reforms as means to increase the

legibility of society. These changes assist both self-governance and service provision within

the ideological framework of Xi Jinping’s social governance for the New Era (Steinhardt &

Zhao 2014). Simultaneously, the DMS reforms are creating a leaner and more transparent

government bureaucracy capable of facilitating an environment of regulatory opportunities and

restrictions for businesses as well as streamlined public services for individuals. In this paper,

we therefore present an analysis of the reforms that considers the positive aspects of creating

new economic growth and building more accountable governance by harnessing the welfare

maximising potential of digital surveillance. Utilising Wood’s (2017) surveillance model of

state forms, we have classified the contemporary Chinese Party-state as a “Panoptic Polyarchy”

namely, a managed state. This classification is justified by virtue of the fact that the PRC: 1)

has some democratic features, but these are controlled forms of representation; 2) the state is

dependent on information for governing, yet at the same time makes only limited information

available and mostly in a propagandist form; and 3) is based in formal, constitutional law, but

the law is skewed strongly in favour of the Party-state’s priorities. As evidenced by DMS

reforms, lower levels of government and market actors are being granted more discretionary

power and space to pursue their respective objectives due to central authorities’ reliance on

new supervisory techniques enabled by big data.

Elements of this model are now being exported abroad. Within four decades since the

enactment of the Open-Door Policy, China has established itself as a global leader in ICT

research and manufacture. According to the WTO, China’s share of global ICT exports was

22.5%, USD 300.4 billion, in the period of 2011-2013 (WTO 2020). The country has

aggressively supported national technology development initiatives, such as the strategic “Next

Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan”, to achieve a position of global

leadership over technology supply by providing new, more comprehensive technological

solutions cheaper (Yu 2017; Cave, et al. 2019; Zhang 2019). Before the COVID-19 pandemic,

multiple countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) including Saudi Arabia,

the Czech Republic, and Thailand had begun cooperating with China to establish central

databases for credit sharing, both nationwide and at the city level (European Chamber &

Sinolytics 2019: 31). Chinese telecommunication company ZTE operates in more than fifty of

the sixty-four countries included in the BRI, while its competitor Huawei supplies equipment

for two-thirds of the commercially launched 5G networks outside of China (Segal 2020). A

MERICS research team has meanwhile found that since 2013 Chinese entities have provided

more than USD 17 billion for Digital Silk Road projects comprised of “at least USD 7 billion

in loans and FDI for fibre-optic cable and telecommunication network projects… USD 10

billion for e-commerce and mobile payment deals,” at least several hundred million for smart

and safe city-related projects, and an unspecified amount for data and research centres (Eder,

et al. 2019). In other contexts where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and

adapted, directing attention towards trends in centralisation/decentralisation could illuminate

whether China’s particular model of big data governance is being comprehensively replicated,

and if not, whether divergent evolutions in state-surveillance based on unique data collection

and sharing dynamics are possible.

In this paper, we employ the Chinese DMS reforms to offer an empirical application of

Murakami-Woods emergent political theory of surveillance in a non-western liberal context.

The DMS reforms in China offered the country a new impetus of economic development by

applying internet-based technologies to government processes, to identify and remove

administrative red tape, and enhance the self-governance of individuals and businesses. While

increasing citizen-to-state legibility through data and, thus, social control, the Chinese State

Council has simultaneously created government processes that are leaner, more transparent and

less hierarchical. Driven by the objective of invigorating economic growth and innovation, new

technological industries have been created and grown. For example, nascent during the time of

Internet Plus and the DMS reform introduction, 5G technologies in China have now become

the technological backbone of technological governance and created internationally

competitive products of network infrastructure (Segal 2020). Furthermore, five years after the

application of Internet Plus, the infrastructure of lean and inter-connected government services

has been re-modelled and applied for a suite of other purposes, such as managing medical care

amidst the COVID-19 pandemic (State Council 2021a), national security (State Council 2021b),

tourism and directing consumer trends (State Council 2019; State Council 2020), among others.

In the theorizing of surveillance, these insights complicate popular appraisals of the Chinese

surveillance state as a controlling Big Brother and posit the idea that the Chinese authorities

are concerned with upkeeping economic growth and state legitimacy, while automating the

coercive aspects of government surveillance.

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Mar 2019

Mark Andrejevic

This article considers the changing logics of surveillance in the era of automated data collection and processing. It argues that automation results in the emergence of post-disciplinary forms of monitoring that no longer rely on the subject’s internalization of the monitoring gaze. Such forms of monitoring do not displace other forms of surveillance but represent a new development made possible by the promise that comprehensive data collection will allow prediction and pre-emption to replace deterrence. In the context of predictive analytics, simulated futures serve as the basis for ongoing processes of intervention that take place in the present. The parsimony of the panopticon, which traded on the uncertainty provided by its partial gaze, is replaced by the tendency toward comprehensive monitoring associated with the proliferation of distributed, embedded, always-on sensing networks. The resulting forms of automated surveillance are characterized by post-representational logics that I describe in terms of operationalism, environmentality, and framelessness.

Knowing China: A Twenty-First Century Guide

Book

Jul 2016

Frank N. Pieke

Contemporary China appears both deceptively familiar and inexplicably different. China is a cauldron of forms of entrepreneurship, social organization, ways of life and governance that are at once new and unique, recognizably Chinese and generically modern. In analyzing and interpreting these developments, Frank N. Pieke adopts a China-centric perspective to move beyond western preoccupations, desires, or fears. Each chapter starts with a key question about China, showing that such questions and assumptions are often based on a misunderstanding or misconstruction of what China is today. Pieke explores twenty-first-century China as a unique kind of neo-socialist society, combining features of state socialism, neoliberal governance, capitalism and rapid globalization. Understanding this society not only helps us to know China better, but takes us beyond the old dichotomies of West versus East, developed versus developing, tradition versus modernity, democracy versus dictatorship, and capitalism versus socialism.

The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet

Book

Jan 2019

James Griffiths

Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony

Book

Aug 1996

William I Robinson

Promoting Polyarchy is an exciting, detailed, and controversial work on the apparent change in US foreign policy from supporting dictatorships to an 'open' promotion of 'democratic' regimes. William I. Robinson argues that behind the façade of 'democracy promotion', the policy is designed more to retain the elite-based and undemocratic status quo of Third World countries than to encourage mass aspirations for democratization. He supports this challenging argument with a wealth of information garnered from field work and hitherto unpublished government documents, and assembled in case studies of the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, South Africa, and the former Soviet Bloc. With its combination of theoretical and historical analysis, empirical argument, and bold claims, Promoting Polyarchy is an essential book for anyone concerned with democracy, globalization and international affairs.

The Chinese Social Credit System: A Model for Other Countries?

Article

Sep 2019

Many countries know financial consumer credit ratings, and recent years have also seen a proliferation of rating systems in relation to online platforms and in the ‘sharing economy’, such as eBay, Uber and Airbnb. In the view of many Western observers, however, the emerging Chinese Social Credit System indicates a paradigm shift compared to these former rating systems as it aims for a comprehensive and uniform social rating based on penalty and award mechanisms. By contrast, this article suggests that the evolving forms of the Chinese system should be seen as a specific instance of a wider phenomenon. Thus, it develops a framework that compares different rating systems by reference to their drafters, users, aims, scoring systems, application, use of algorithms, enforcement and accountability; it identifies shortcomings of both low and high interventionist rating systems; and it discusses a range of regulatory approaches and emerging issues that law makers should consider.

Cashless China: Securitization of everyday life through Alipay’s social credit system—Sesame Credit

Article

Mar 2019

Gladys Pak Lei Chong

This study on Alipay’s social credit system, Sesame Credit, examines the governmental practices that have evolved in the platform economy. Credit has grown exponentially in importance in post-socialist, consumption-driven China. Sesame Credit’s unique and massive consumer database is used to evaluate users’ credit trustworthiness. The social credit system formulated by Alipay aligns with the state’s long tradition of guiding and monitoring the population’s behavior. Diverging from earlier communist-style posters and banners as well as propaganda-style slogans, Alipay adapts, appropriates, and transforms technological trends by appealing to subjects’ self-interest. Alipay de-politicizes the system through gamified features and a loyalty-rewards program of rules, rewards, and penalties. Combining ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with 39 young Chinese people in Beijing, this study examines the users’ perspectives, which have been significantly overlooked in examinations of corporate and state surveillance in the Chinese context. This article argues that market actors, such as Alibaba and Ant Financial, create interests, needs, and dependency among user–subjects by both responding to the pre-existing socio-economic desires for security, trust, and good government, and by navigating the socio-cultural and political conditions of privacy and surveillance practices in contemporary China.

Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the People’s Republic of China Decentralise Manage and Service Reforms

Abstract and Figures

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