The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet
... We only need to look to Myanmar's northern border to see how authoritarian governments over time are mastering these tools to building their own cyberworlds. In the Chinese Splinternet, for example, an authoritarian metaverse is being created that is as tightly bound and defended as their physical territories (Griffiths 2019). ...
... Whereas China's Internet governance model is widely studied by political scientists and policymakers, less is written about Russia's digital information controls, despite the fact that elements of Russia's model have been reproduced in other countries (Barme & Ye, 1997;Griffiths, 2019;Krönke et al., 2018;Lam, 2013;MacKinnon, 2011, p. 44;Polyakova & Meserole, 2019). According to the 2019 Freedom House International's Freedom on the Net report, Russia's Freedom on the Net score of 31 (0 ¼ not free, 100 ¼ free) is still significantly freer than China's score of 10 (Shahbaz & Funk, 2019). ...
Digital authoritarianism threatens the privacy and rights of Internet users worldwide, yet scholarship on this topic remains limited in analytical power and case selection. In this article, we introduce a comprehensive analytical framework to the field of Internet governance and apply it first, briefly, to the well-known case of China and then, in more depth, to the still-understudied Russian case. We identify the extent and relative centralization of Internet governance as well as proactive versus reactive approaches to governance as notable differences between the cases, highlighting variation among digital authoritarians’ governance strategies. We conclude that Russia’s Internet governance model is less comprehensive and consistent than China’s, but its components may be more easily exported to other political systems. We then consider whether recent changes to Russia’s Internet governance suggest that it could converge with the Chinese model over time.
... As illustrated by the green arrow from innovation to censorship in figure 2, these kind of censorship technologies are fast evolving. While the censorship described by King et al. (2013King et al. ( , 2014 was still mostly a manual effort by thousands of Communist party and police workers, deep learning algorithms have since started to assist and sometimes already replace manual censorship, making censorship cheaper, more sophisticated, and less easy to recognize and evade (Dixon et al. 2016;Roberts 2018;Griffiths 2019;Tiffert 2019;Strittmatter 2020;Tai and Fu 2020;Gao et al. 2021). ...
The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. In this chapter, we examine how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the Chinese case, and find that -- ceteris paribus -- authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation. They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the United States and China.
... This neo-Marxist framework of analysis has by far been dominant in theorizing live-streaming in China. Live-streaming, a "broadcast video streaming service provided by web-based platforms and mobile applications that feature synchronous and cross-model (video, text, and image) interactivity" (Cunningham et al., 2019: 4), thrives in China's "parallel universe" (Cunningham et al., 2019) of digital media where international technology communication giants such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube are blocked by the "colossal censorship apparatus" (Griffiths, 2019: 32)-the Great FireWall (henceforth GFW). Though this alternative ecosystem has decided that Chinese livestreaming differs greatly from its international counterpart in content, style, and form (Lu et al., 2018), scholars agree that Chinese live-streaming is also extremely commercialized (Tan et al., 2020;Zhang et al., 2019;Zou, 2018). ...
This paper examines a nascent network of commercial DIY gay porn production by microcelebrities in China against the background of platformization, commodification, and illiberal cultural landscapes. Informed by queer Marxist theories, the paper looks at how the career trajectories of live-streamer-turned DIY gay porn actors/producers are shaped by the intertwining forces of platform capitalism, technological affordances, and state internet governance. Reflecting on the critical potential of these DIY porn production practices, it suggests that they paradoxically showcase both a willing submission to the ever-expanding logics of capitalism and means of creative negotiation with commodification and state censorship.
... China's significant financial and human resources allow its digital ecosystem to feed on huge resources allocated to the technology areas that the CPC Politburo deems most promising. The Chinese were the first in the world to create an autonomous area of the Internet, building the Great firewall of China (Griffiths, 2019). Whereas the Americans provide the world with trial versions of their products, the Chinese's competitiveness relies on the low cost of their products and co-financing of other states' advanced projects (berkley and letzing, 2019). ...
Technology has become one of the most important spheres in the race for power in the 21st century. The two main technology ecosystems—the American and the Chinese—have clearly taken shape by the beginning of the third decade of this century. A dilemma for Russia in this regard is whether to join one of the existing ecosystems or develop one of its own. The paper critically examines the impact of contemporary trends in the digital domain on international relations and state policies, weighs up Russia’s competitive advantages and the challenges in this domain, and charts a strategy that Moscow should follow in the modern world of digital competition.
... Where: Geography of Instantiation While blockchain solutions are largely treated as borderless in the popular imagination, state actors continue to exercise territorial (and extraterritorial) jurisdiction, even in cyberspace. As just two examples, the great firewall of China determines what internet content is accessible to people who access the internet from Chinese territory (Griffiths 2019), and ISPs in the USA distinguish between internet traffic between end-points that are both in the USA versus traffic where one of the end-points is outside of the USA (Gallagher and Moltke 2018;Goldberg 2017). ...
The application of multidisciplinary theoretical models in an emerging field of study like blockchain can improve both collaborative learning and solution design, especially by creating a valuable shared language for colleagues from different disciplinary areas. This tripartite paper traces a journey from theory to practice by outlining the origin and development of the theoretical ‘three layer trust model’ for blockchain technologies, discussing the pedagogical utility of this model within a virtual education setting, and describing a student’s application of the learned model in a technical blockchain product design setting. By providing a thorough grounding in the complex multidisciplinary balance involved in designing blockchain systems (and adding the autoethnographic reflections of participants in this multi-setting focal design application) the following paper supports the potential value of such theoretical models to establish shared language for complex concepts across disciplinary divides. Future research directions are suggested to establish greater validity for the concepts presented within this paper and dive deeper into the foundations of its many referenced disciplines.
... Where: Geography of Instantiation While blockchain solutions are largely treated as borderless in the popular imagination, state actors continue to exercise territorial (and extraterritorial) jurisdiction, even in cyberspace. As just two examples, the great firewall of China determines what internet content is accessible to people who access the internet from Chinese territory (Griffiths 2019), and ISPs in the USA distinguish between internet traffic between end-points that are both in the USA versus traffic where one of the end-points is outside of the USA (Gallagher and Moltke 2018;Goldberg 2017). ...
This volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars from diverse fields including computer science, engineering, archival science, law, business, psychology, economics, medicine and more to discuss the trade-offs between different “layers” in designing the use of blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for social trust, trust in data and records, and trust in systems.
Blockchain technology has emerged as a solution to the problem of trust in data and records, as well as trust in social, political and economic institutions, due to its profound potential as a digital trust infrastructure. Blockchain is a DLT in which confirmed and validated sets of transactions are stored in blocks that are chained together to make tampering more difficult and render records immutable.
This book is dedicated to exploring and disseminating the latest findings on the relationships between socio-political and economic data, record-keeping, and technical aspects of blockchain.
This article analyzes the approaches, challenges, and outcomes in developing and implementing national cybersecurity strategies, framing them through the concept of cyber power within neoclassical realism. Strengthening cyber power emerges as an independent variable, driven by the dynamics of the international system and presenting a persistent, shared external challenge across states. Each state crafts its response to this challenge based on intervening variables, with Japan serving as a critical case study to illustrate several key factors. The article asserts that Japan’s latest cybersecurity strategy, which ambitiously targets “active defense” and seeks parity with the United States, is unfeasible. Domestic political constraints fuel this impracticality. Political elites hesitate to independently and decisively enact essential legislation, while an entrenched reliance on the United States-termed Americentrism further complicates progress. Beyond Japan’s case, the analysis probes the risks of outsourcing a disproportionate share of national security responsibilities to external partners. Such delegation presents severe drawbacks: states forfeit technological sovereignty by favoring borrowed technologies over homegrown innovation, deepen their political dependence, expose regional security to threats, and gain little practical benefit from cooperative efforts. This conceptualization of cyber power and cybersecurity highlights a core principle: bolstering national cybersecurity demands each state’s independent initiative. The findings enrich debates about security in an emerging multipolar world and inform national security policies.
This article examines the construction of migrant worker masculinity in Chinese state media, introducing “cultural-moral governance” to analyze the state’s regulatory mechanisms in the Xi Jinping era. Through discourse analysis of newspapers and television performances (2004–2023), the study reveals how suzhi (human quality) functions as a discursive instrument aligning personal aspirations with national objectives within the Chinese Dream framework. Findings demonstrate a strategic shift from promoting consumption-oriented aspirations during economic growth to valorizing labor’s dignity during slowdown—operationalized through a “Desiring, Diligent, and Devoted” framework. The research uncovers a paradoxical “inclusive exclusion” strategy that simultaneously integrates and marginalizes migrant workers in national narratives. By examining the evolution of gendered suzhi discourse, this article illuminates the interplay between neoliberal desires and socialist collectivism in China’s development path, which combines market dynamics with authoritarian control through sophisticated mechanisms that naturalize inequalities while maintaining stability.
This study examines the implementation of mass digital surveillance systems in China, analyzing the relationship between technological sophistication and effective social control. The research explores how a government deployed artificial intelligence , facial recognition, and predictive analytics to monitor its population, investing heavily in what appeared to be a comprehensive digital surveillance apparatus. The study identifies a counterintuitive pattern wherein increased digital surveillance capabilities corresponded with decreased effectiveness in maintaining effective surveillance, like diseconomies of scale in markets. The research contributes to ongoing discussions about the efficacy of digital surveillance states and challenges assumptions about the relationship between technological capability and social control. These findings have significant implications for understanding authoritarian governance, privacy rights, and the limitations of artificial intelligence in social monitoring systems.
The rise of China as a global high-tech nation is challenging US hegemony. While US tech companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have expanded globally and have integrated most world regions into US-led digital capitalism, China has developed its own variety of digital capitalism. Shielded by the ‘Great Firewall’, Chinese corporations such as Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent have emerged as innovative high-tech companies. Instead of relying on a US-style liberal-internationalized mode of governance, China’s state-managed digital capitalism was domestic market-based. However, since the mid-2010s, Chinese tech companies have emerged as global competitors. In response, both Trump and Biden administrations enacted sanctions and investment controls to ban Chinese companies from the US market while pressuring their allies to follow suit. In this article, we argue that beyond the development of distinct US and Chinese varieties of digital capitalism, two separate digital technological spheres are emerging. After examining these distinct varieties of digital capitalism, it will be investigated how the US have weaponized institutional differences to sanction Chinese digital companies. In a third step, the emergence of a US and Chinese digital technological sphere will be analyzed, with a focus on 5G network equipment.
Sustainable development and green economy have become a big concern in the Chinese context. Since 2022, environmental credit evaluation has been disclosed as an important indicator to assess the enterprise social credit ranking. Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) integrates with enterprise environmental credit records and shares credit information on different platforms to impose environmental dishonesty. This chapter discusses the sustainability of SCS from different perspectives.
This chapter examines China's digital industrial policy in light of the import substitution industrialization approach. Specifically, it addresses the rationale for protecting domestic firms in the digital economy, whether China has taken protectionist measures, and the relationship between protectionist policies and domestic industry growth. The chapter argues that digital protectionism shares the same logic as import substitution industrialization, but the externality arises on the demand side. While regulations on foreign companies were relatively loose until the 2000s, there was a tightening of regulations in the 2010s, particularly in the search market and social networking services subject to censorship. The existence of competition among domestic firms and policies beyond government protection also contributed to the creation of pioneering services. However, the overseas expansion of Chinese IT firms has faced challenges, with only a few firms achieving success in foreign markets. Additionally, the unconventional VIE scheme poses unforeseen problems for Chinese firms. Overall, we point the incompleteness of the import substitution digitalization in China, and other emerging economies may struggle to replicate China's success in marrying protectionism with domestic industry growth.
This article examines the public response to mandatory location disclosure (MLD), a new surveillance technology implemented on China's Sina Weibo. Initially introduced to geo-tag posts related to the Ukraine War, the MLD eventually expanded to encompass all posts and comments on the platform. Drawing on a large-scale dataset comprising over 0.6 million posts and 24 million comments, this study uncovers political asymmetry observed during the initial implementation of MLD. Users with different political orientations were subjected to different levels of geo-tagging. Pro-Ukraine users were most frequently geo-tagged, followed by Pro-Russia and liberal-leaning users, while conservative-leaning users are least likely to be tagged. This selective surveillance approach, however, backfired among Pro-Ukraine and Pro-Russia users, pushing them to publish more war-related content, while its impact on liberal- and conservative-leaning users appeared to be minimal. When selective surveillance was replaced by universal surveillance, the backfire effects ceased to exist and people's interest in war-related topics declined. Furthermore, privacy cynicism prevails among commenters across opinion groups. Neither the introduction nor the expansion of MLD deterred audiences from engaging with the geo-tagged posts. These findings suggest that prolonged surveillance makes people less sensitive to privacy threats and more experienced in neutralizing surveillance's influence on themselves. Privacy cynicism, though widely considered toxic to democracy, can function as a source of resilience that shields people from the fear of coercion and undercuts the marginal utility of state surveillance in an authoritarian context.
In this paper, we present the first comprehensive study highlighting the evolving mobile app filtering within India. We study the recent mobile app blocking in India and describe in detail the mechanics involved. We analyzed 220 Chinese apps that were blocked due to official government orders. Our research reveals a novel “three-tiered” app filtering scheme, with each tier increasing the sophistication of filtering. After thoroughly analyzing the app blocking mechanisms, we present circumvention techniques to bypass the tiered app filtering. We were able to access all the blocked apps with the said techniques. We believe our analysis and findings from the case study of India will aid future research on mobile app filtering.
This chapter seeks to explicate cross-border journalism in China in regard to its production, dissemination, reception, and impact. China’s media system, as a form of networked authoritarianism, is a combination of advanced information technologies and traditional media under the strict control of the Chinese Communist Party. The effective blocking of news and information from outside China and the huge output of official news about itself by its propaganda machine have served to make it a case of unidirectional news flow. In the general absence of alternative information, the Chinese people’s understanding of the world is susceptible to the influence of nationalistic party-state propaganda policies. Meanwhile, the world’s media have to work extraordinarily hard in order to have a deeper understanding of China.
Although it is less talked about, and many people look the other way, there is a third way to regulate the internet, content moderation and censorship, in addition to the US’ immunity model and the European safe harbour model, and that is the Chinese (or Asian) model. Obviously, it is not possible to put all Asian countries in one basket and one regulatory model in terms of social, social or even political situation, but it is clear that, despite the differences, they have chosen a much stricter path than Europe or the United States of America when it comes to responsibility for Internet regulation and content governance. The Chinese solution is based on Internet sovereignty, namely the (near) perfection of the idea that countries around the world have the right to choose how they develop and regulate their Internet.
As television is embracing a new set of internet-related technologies, the medium is transitioning from broadcasting to streaming. With it, a new mode of distribution has emerged: the streaming platform. This research makes a three-pronged effort to assess their impact on the TV industry: it analyses the way platforms monetize content; it distinguishes types of streaming platforms based on a set of criteria that includes supply-chain arrangements and the way they structure commercial transactions among different sets of participants, and it considers the ownership of streaming services. This article contributes to media and communication studies by combining the platform literature with global value chain (GVC) theory in order to foster our understanding of streaming platforms. It contextualizes streaming platforms in the history of television and analyses how they are transforming the medium.
The metaverse is a virtual space based on the advanced development of the concept of social networks that opens up new opportunities for personal and mass interaction. Its key characteristics are decentralization, persistence, multi-variance, a focus on social interaction, three-dimensionality, the interpenetration of the online and offline worlds and the transferability of assets between its own internal virtual worlds. By virtue of the implementation of full immersion technologies, the metaverse presents new opportunities for actors wishing to undermine psychological security through the malicious use of AI. The following chapter is devoted to defining the main characteristics of metaverses, looking at the main actors and users operating in cyberspace and analyzing their motivations. AI technology subsets that are most suitable for use in the implementation of destructive information and psychological influence operations in the metaverse are also identified. In addition, a number of scenarios for the likely use of these technologies are identified and considered. The authors put a special focus on automated profiling which is the key component used in launching and waging informational-psychological attacks using AI in the metaverse. New types and classes of user information will appear in the metaverse and these will offer new opportunities for multimodal analysis. The metaverse will also lead to the further development of bots and the use of deepfakes which will reach new technological levels and in turn open up new chances for those wishing to carry out their malicious use.
Can short video-based social media platforms disrupt economic markets and upend government censorship? Short videos have become the vanguard of social media. This chapter examines how this modern information communication technology (ICT) disrupts government regulation and the market as a whole in China, using TikTok as an example. Specifically, it argues that a video social media platform with unlimited content and low usage thresholds, combined with citizen's lack of legal awareness, makes it easy to expose privacy, encounter fraud, and infringe upon intellectual property. These factors are exasperated by TikTok's video format since video-based content is more difficult to censor in a timely manner. Consequently, TikTok poses challenges for government regulation and disrupts government censorship. The chapter concludes by discussing policy implications. Specifically, it proposes the implementation of modernized laws and regulations to tackle the distinct challenges and risks presented by cutting-edge technologies.
O artigo consiste em uma investigação sistemática sobre a plataformização no sistema mundo. Avaliamos que o funcionamento dos ecossistemas de plataformas digitais reflete a orientação ideológica que permeia seus respectivos ciberespaços geográficos de atuação. Propomos, assim, a divisão do ciberespaço entre o que classificamos como o ciberespaço internacional estadunidense, orientado pelo neoliberalismo, e o ciberespaço nacional insulado chinês, orientado pelo projetamento. Concluímos que o fenômeno se alicerça na segunda onda de inovações da Era Digital e que não se manifesta na China somente como uma estrita regulação estatal sobre as práticas de corporações plataformizadas, mas também pela coordenação de grandes projetos pelo Estado com as plataformas nacionais.
This ground-breaking study explores transformations in the TV industry under the impact of globalizing forces and digital technologies. Chalaby investigates the making of a digital value chain and the distinct value-adding segments which form the new video ecosystem. He provides a full account of the industry's global shift from the development of TV formats and transnational networks to the emergence of tech giants and streaming platforms. The author takes a deep dive into the infrastructure (communication satellites, subsea cable networks, data centres) and technology (cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence) underpinning this ecosystem through the prism of global value chain theory. The book combines empirical data garnered over 20 years of researching the industry and offers unique insights from television and tech executives.
Despite extensive literature examining digital activism, there is limited geographical research exploring the spatialities of digitally centred contentious politics. This article makes use of recent literature examining territory, terrain, sovereignty and digital territorialization projects to produce a conceptual framework that can make sense of the complex geographies of digital activism in contemporary China. It then uses this conceptual framework to analyse the spatial effects of digital territorialization projects and the development of digital sovereignty on those practising contentious politics in China. To do this, it uses the case study of #BeijingSurgery#, a Beijing-centred hashtag and instant messaging project attempting to contest narratives around the eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017.
This article explores the role of censorship as a communication technology in shaping experiences of cosmopolitanization. Drawing on interviews with urban Chinese gay men who circumvent the country’s Great Firewall, the article studies how censorship shapes people’s media choices, practices, and social outlooks. It presents three findings. First, censorship produces a domesticated media ecology characterized by controlled exchanges with the outside world, constructing the perceived “localness” and “foreignness” of media artifacts. Second, censorship creates an exclusive “cosmopolitan digital class” that establishes a hierarchy of desirability based on people’s media practices. Third, censorship promotes a paradoxical intertwining of cosmopolitanization and encapsulation, popularizing a mindset that is at once open—willing to move across the Wall and access alternative information—and closed: subscribing to territorial understandings of selfhood. Based on these findings, the article proposes the concept of “walled cosmopolitanization” to describe the vulnerability of the cosmopolitan self in censored environments.
Social media corporations have become fixtures of daily life to the extent they are regularly compared to states in size and scope. These corporations and their platforms have become the dominant stakeholders of cyberspace, operating as state‐like cyber actors, or net states. Previous approaches have limited the net state to the online, framing their populations and agendas separate to the material reality of their everyday operations, overlooking the tangible overlap between sovereignty and cyberspace. In this article, we examine whether net states can be co‐opted into the apparatus of state in a manner comparable to client states. We examine the case of WeChat, the Chinese multipurpose messaging and social media app developed by Tencent in its operation as a client net state of the People's Republic of China. The interactions between these actors are mapped using a methodological framework incorporating actor‐network theory to demonstrate the existence of client net states, and how they may be deployed to expand a state's influence and cyber sovereignty beyond its physical borders.
Since the birth of modern media until Internet, communication has been profoundly transformed and through it culture, society, forms of power and the creation of economic wealth. This essay examines this long-lasting process by exploring the idea of mediatization. It is a historical movement of co-implication of symbolic forms, technologies, contexts and communicative frameworks that has altered communication practices, their scope and meanings through the introduction and reception of new technologies (mechanical, electrical, digital) and by institutions (publishers, media companies, propaganda and public relations bureaux, advertising, technological platforms). We argue that it is a non-linear process, with several stages, intensified in our days, with aspects very critical to freedom and democracy, but whose outcome is open.KeywordsPrint capitalismPublic spherePropagandaSubstantive and formal meanings of communicationProcess of mediatizationCommunicative contexts and framesDataficationDigital SurveillanceMetaverses
The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. This chapter examines how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the case of China, and find that—ceteris paribus—authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation. They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the USA and China.KeywordsArtificial intelligencePolitical institutionsBig dataSurveillanceInnovationChinaJEL:O25O31O38P16P51
Which functions do social media fill for non-state armed groups in countries with internal armed conflict? Building on conflict data, interviews and media monitoring, we have reviewed the use of social media by Myanmar’s nine most powerful armed groups. The first finding is that they act like states, using social media primarily to communicate with their constituents. Second, they also use social media as a tool of armed struggle, for command and control, intelligence, denunciation of traitors, and attacks against adversaries. Third, social media serves for national and international outreach. Like Myanmar’s national army, the armed groups have combined prudent official pages with an underworld of more reckless profiles and closed groups that often breach Facebook’s official community standards. In February 2019, when Facebook excluded four groups from its platform, they lost much of their ability to reach out and act like states. Yet they kept a capacity to communicate with their constituents through closed groups, individual profiles and sophisticated use of links and shares. Finally, the article affirms that the Facebook company, in the years 2018–2020,took upon itself a role as an arbiter within Myanmar’s internal conflicts, deciding what information was allowed and disallowed.
This chapter provides an overview of two broad sets of debates concerning contemporary work. First, the role of big tech companies like Google and Amazon within contemporary capitalism, including their deployment of labor and current proposals to better regulate and tax them. While we begin with a focus on the use of labor by big tech companies, we also consider how their effects ripple out to other sectors of the economy by virtue of the hardware and software foundations that they provide for virtually all businesses. The second set of debates that we canvas centers on the influence of automation on employment, emphasizing that automation does not merely replace labor, but also transforms it while reshaping its organization. Given the appetite of capital for technology (as a means to increase productivity and profit as well as secure competitive advantage), we explore in what areas humans currently, and perhaps always will, enjoy a comparative advantage over machines. Here we consider not only capabilities and cost, but also ethical questions surrounding the replacement of human labor with machines, especially in the domain of care work. Finally, in the conclusion, we consider the role of technology in ushering in a post-work society.KeywordsWorkAutomationArtificial intelligence (AI)Big techCare work
A governance perspective on China’s digital authoritarianism sheds light on the political logic and institutional landscape that characterises the country’s internet governance and policy. Tracing institutional development in the internet sector from early days of the Web in China through to the present, reveals both continuity and change in policy approach, especially from one generation of leaders to the next. This method exposes shifts in modes of governance that have had direct impacts on the content and effectiveness of China’s internet approach. As such, differing modes of governance from one era to the next, and their internet policy implications, is the dimension to be compared in this volume. This chapter introduces the key conceptual contribution of this study—party-centric governance (PCG)—which is used to explain the mode of governance that has emerged during President Xi’s leadership. PCG explains the more assertive, proactive, and ideological internet agenda in China that is evident today.KeywordsInternetChinaTech companiesAuthoritarianismParty-centric governance
Two distinct eras of digital authoritarianism in China are defined in this study according to their modes of governance. This chapter explores the first period, which corresponds to the Jiang and Hu leadership eras. During the Jiang era (1993–2003), the commercial internet was, of course, in its infancy. The basic foundations of China’s control-driven internet model and its focus on censorship were established during this time in the first internet regulations promulgated by the State Council. The 2000s saw the rapid growth and expansion of the internet, both at the global level and in China, which presented new opportunities and challenges. Hu’s internet approach was adequate to meet basic censorship goals but tended to be reactive to new developments rather than proactive. This was both reflected in and exacerbated by a decentralised and fragmented bureaucratic apparatus for internet governance, consistent with the fragmented authoritarianism (FA) perspective on policymaking and governance in China.KeywordsInternet governanceJiang ZeminHu JintaoCensorshipFragmented authoritarianism
The article outlines key regulatory and governing issues and actions in China's internet and digital media in the first decade under the leadership of Xi Jinping. It argues that both the domestic and global dimensions are equally crucial to understanding China's internet regulation and governance in the Xi era. It further argues that the two interrelated dimensions that emphasise the state's centrality and supremacy in internet-related regulatory issues and frameworks help strengthen China's existing political structure at home and promote China's digital power globally in the digital age.
This paper conceptualizes digital displacement as both a way through which the digital, dynamic and fragile spatialities of contentious politics can be examined and as a geographic critique of censorship. Digital displacement, understood here as the act of removing users from the digital places and spaces they wish to remain in and use, often through the act of deletion, is conceptualised through the digital displacement of two contentious political groups that attempted to contest the forced eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017; hashtag focused #BeijingSurgery# and instant messaging group using BeijingTogether. Explored through participant observation, interviews and playful digital exploration, this paper examines the spatialities that made multiple digital displacements possible and the activist spatialities that emerged during and post‐displacement. In exploring this I develop a flexible vocabulary around digital place, space, scale, territory and mobility to analyse the practices of digital displacement, to understand the socio‐spatial positionality of activists involved in digitally centred contentious politics and to contextualize their territorial positionality within Chinese digital territory and global digital territories. Through the examination of #BeijingSurgery# and BeijingTogether the article highlights: the importance of digital territorial positionality for both activists and the digital places and spaces used for contentious politics; that within systems of digital spatial governance deletion and displacement can be effective strategies of repressive governance with wide ranging displacement effects; and that while digital displacement is not necessarily the ending point of contentious politics the re‐production of activist spatialities is more difficult when the authority being protested against governs the digital territory used for protest.
As China's global footprint expands and Sino-American competition intensifies, it is apparent that one of the most important arenas for competition between Western Liberal norms and Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) authoritarian norms is going to come in competing technologies (Western/Korean/Taiwanese 5G/chips vs Huawei 5G/chips) and competing cyber-norms (Western cyber-libertarianism vs Chinese cyber-sovereignty). Inside China, China's technologies and its cyber-sovereign norms converge.Outside of China, while China champions the norm of cyber-sovereignty, Huawei itself may pose the greatest challenge to sovereign states' cyber-sovereignty where Huawei controls or otherwise participates significantly as a provider for telecommunications networks, given its relationship to the Chinese state. Is China sincere in advocating cyber-sovereignty as an international norm, or is this just something it is concerned about inside China?Are the laws of China and the technologies and practices of its own Huawei antithetical to China's own stated norms of cyber-sovereignty? Is cyber-sovereignty simply a stop-gap measure adopted by an insecure regime to justify draconian censorship and thought control at home while it seeks to use its growing presence in 5G telecommunications to expand its surveillance of foreign powers/actors worldwide? Finally, in keeping with the theme of this special issue, does digital orientalism explain the growing tension between China and some of the Western/Liberal powers as it regards competition in 5G? Is the US/West needlessly securitizing Huawei and its 5G, or is there something there worth securitizing? Clarity about these issues and the implications of the answers arrived at are important for nations around the world as China expands its technological reach via Huawei and other national champions.
This paper investigates Chinese gay men’s consumption of domestic pornography on international social network platforms following the country’s anti-porn campaigns targeting live streaming. Set against the backdrop of China’s illiberal digital landscape characterized by rapid platformization and evolving Internet governance, the paper draws on in-depth interviews with twenty-one Chinese young gay men to explore how they take advantage of digital platforms and algorithms to creatively and resiliently carve out a space for expressing same-sex desires in a precarious environment. It argues that, although these creative acts of sexual citizenship empower gay men in self-understanding and community-building, they are also critically limited by China’s intertwining neoliberal and illiberal cultures.
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) that 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 explores how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms aimed at centralising information in China. 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 are key components 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 organisations and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.
Datenschutz ist bislang entweder als rechtliches oder als technisches Problem verstanden worden. Politiktheoretisch kann jedoch gezeigt werden, dass erst ein komplexer Begriff von Datenschutz die fundamentale Frage politischer Machtteilung sichtbar werden lässt. Rechtliche, technische, politische, ökonomische und sozio-kulturelle Aspekte verweisen so auf eine notwendige Balance symbolischer Machtressourcen in ausdifferenzierten Gesellschaften, die durch digitale Verfügbarkeitstechnologie jedoch radikal in Frage gestellt wird. Die These des Beitrages lautet daher, dass die Überlegungstradition der Mischverfassungstheorien eine Antwort auf die neuen Machtprobleme der Digitalisierung zur Verfügung stellen kann. Dazu wird nach einer Neudefinition des mit dem Datenschutz verbundenen Problemhorizontes politiktheoretisch auf den Machtbegriff verwiesen, um dann im Anschluss eine Verbindung zur politischenVerfassungstheorie zu knüpfen. Durch diese Verbindung wird sichtbar, wie eine politiktheoretische Erweiterung des juridisch-technischen Datenschutzdiskurses aussehen könnte.
Data governance and the management of global digital data flows pose immense challenges for global governance. International digital data agreements must be embedded in revisions of the global “rules based” order that emerged out of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of World War II to manage global economic issues. In that spirit, the countries that value a rules-based global digital economy need to come together to enact new global data management rules. It is becoming more and more critical to treat data as the key driver of today’s global economy. Creating new rules will require policymakers to alter their current approaches, which have led to a stalemate in making progress on frameworks for the global internet. China should revise its restrictive approach so that it can play a more constructive role in debates and negotiations between like-minded countries. On China and internet rules, if the Chinese Government retains its restrictive approach to data, AI, and digital trade, it will increasingly find itself excluded or marginalized in global discussions on digital issues. Many other countries see the Chinese approach as far from the baseline of emerging global norms and as self-serving for China from a trade perspective.
Despite the positives of the digital revolution and the expanding public sphere there are various threats to liberal democracy and order in the internet era. On the one hand, liberal order is under severe threat by the rise of the surveillance state around the world. The second threat is related to the conduct of the political process and elections. Not only the digital order has reduced meaningful debate producing a dozen of parallel, sometimes contrasting opinion exchanges, but it has also strongly influenced citizens’ partisan beliefs. The third threat to liberal democracy and law and order is the risk hackers present to the digitalized world we live in. Individuals are targeted as well as companies, private or public. In this paper we first discuss the process of expanding of the public sphere with all its positive and negative aspects. Then we dwell upon the three main threats to liberal democracy and law and order before making concluding remarks.
This article examines three telecommunications cables to Iceland as material instantiations of sovereignty politics. Tracing the historical case of the island's first telegraph, then examining two contemporary efforts to lay subsea fiber‐optic cables, I show how each cable embodies a particular sovereignty project, which is complicated by the process of laying, operating, and maintaining the line. I develop the concept of mechanics of sovereignty in order to describe the everyday and ongoing work of tinkering with and tending to transnational connections. Contributing to recent efforts to theorize sovereignty as a process and practice (rather than a political abstraction), this research sheds fresh light on the specific relationship between information technology (IT) and the nation‐state: while IT is often imagined as either eroding or enhancing sovereignty, close attention to communications cables in Iceland shows they serve as conduits for both autonomy and interdependence. [sovereignty, infrastructure, mechanics, information technology, Iceland]
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.
In recent years, the use of the Internet and social media as sources of news has risen all over the world. Using data from “The Peoples’ Internet” project, this article provides insights into the ways in which people use the Internet to access news in seven countries with very different media systems, digital economies and cultures. We found that news consumption patterns differ at the country level between China, the United States and five European countries – Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the United Kingdom – especially when it comes to online news. However, the relationships between news usage and sociodemographic variables at the individual level are strikingly similar across these countries. Our results indicate that cultural influences as well as media systems play a decisive role in people’s news use.
Governance of blockchain technologies has not been historically prioritized beyond technological dimensions, and relatively little literature exists on the prescriptive governance of blockchain platforms. Existing governance frameworks, such as IT governance, may not be suitable or easily applied to the novel context of blockchain; instead, the authors of this chapter argue it may be more appropriate to adopt a grounded approach to the development of governance theory for blockchains. Situating their discussion of blockchain governance within existing, external power structures—legal, political, economic, environmental, and social—the authors outline an internal governance framework for the blockchain system itself. Taking an inclusive, question-led approach, this internal governance framework aims to ensure that areas of risk are identified, and determine how conflict and crisis related to blockchain technology—and blockchain-enabled forms of organization and interactions—can be handled.
Das Sozialkreditsystem ist ein im Test bzw. in den Anfängen befindliches Überwachungs-, Erfassungs- und Bewertungssystem zur Angleichung des Verhaltens der Bürger, Behörden und Firmen von China an die moralischen, sozialen, rechtlichen, wirtschaftlichen und politischen Anforderungen der Kommunistischen Partei (KP). Es findet, so der Plan, ein permanentes Rating und Scoring mit Blick auf die Lebenssituation, das Sozialverhalten oder Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsaktivitäten statt. Der vorliegende Beitrag skizziert die Diskussion über das Sozialkreditsystem in den westlichen Medien und zwischen den Experten in China. Ausgehend von Grundannahmen, die von der Planung und Projektierung abgeleitet sind, werden Überlegungen aus der Perspektive der Ethik angestellt, und zwar mit Blick auf die betroffenen Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Die Anwendung des Systems auf Unternehmen spielt im vorliegenden Beitrag keine Rolle. Der Befund ist, dass eine bestimmte Umsetzung des Sozialkreditsystems die Lebensqualität heben, aber auch die Persönlichkeitsrechte und die Menschenrechte verletzen kann.
To provide a more precise and fuller picture regarding the possibilities that the above-presented analysis of the international order brings, the next chapter is dedicated to a more in-depth analysis of selected cases that point at the issues raised. Similarly to the previous chapter, cases are divided between adaptation and interaction. They also follow the division of the world politics into three systems. In the first case, cases from all three worlds are analyzed. They are also divided along the lines of the three basic types of actors that are relevant for this study – violent non-state actor (Somali Al-Shabaab), state actor (People’s Republic of China), and nonviolent non-state actor (Facebook). Interactions are also presented along the three possible dyads of relations – Durable Disorder-Westphalian (EU-Russia), Durable Disorder-Chaotic Anarchy (EU-Sahel), and Westphalian-Chaotic Anarchy (Turkey-Syria).
Chapter Five describes some empirical research in both primary and secondary university teacher education. It considers how practices of teacher education impact on classroom practice by new teachers and thus shape the mathematics that takes place. The theme is explored through an extended discussion of how the conduct of mathematical teaching and learning is restricted by regulative educational policies that set the parameters of teacher education. Specifically, it considers the example of how mathematics is discursively produced by student teachers within an employment-based model of teacher education in England where there is a relatively low level of university input. It is argued that teacher reflections on mathematical learning and teaching within the course are patterned in line with formal curriculum framings, assessment requirements and the local demands of their placement school. Here, both teachers and students are subject to regulative discourses that shape their actions and, consequentially, this regulation influences the forms of mathematical activity that can take place and be recognised as such, but where this process restricts the presentational options for the mathematics in question. It is shown how university sessions can alternatively provide a critical platform from which to interrogate these restrictions and renegotiate them.
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