The Evolution of the Chinese Internet


Book Description

This book addresses digital cultural formation through four dominant technological platforms over the past two decades in China.




The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China


Book Description

The Internet and social media are pervasive and transformative forces in contemporary China. The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China explores the changing relationship between China's Internet and social media and its society, politics, legal system, and foreign relations.




The Evolution of the Chinese Internet


Book Description

Despite widespread consensus that China's digital revolution was sure to bring about massive democratic reforms, such changes have not come to pass. While scholars and policy makers alternate between predicting change and disparaging a stubbornly authoritarian regime, in this book Shaohua Guo demonstrates how this dichotomy misses the far more complex reality. The Evolution of the Chinese Internet traces the emergence and maturation of one of the most creative digital cultures in the world through four major technological platforms: the bulletin board system, the blog, the microblog, and WeChat. Guo transcends typical binaries of freedom and control, to argue that Chinese Internet culture displays a uniquely sophisticated interplay between multiple extremes, and that its vibrancy is dependent on these complex negotiations. In contrast to the flourishing of research findings on what is made invisible online, this book examines the driving mechanisms that grant visibility to particular kinds of user-generated content. Offering a systematic account of how and why an ingenious Internet culture has been able to thrive, Guo highlights the pivotal roles that media institutions, technological platforms, and creative practices of Chinese netizens have played in shaping culture on- and offline.




China’s Globalizing Internet


Book Description

This book considers the Chinese internet as an ensemble of ideas, ownership, policies, laws, and interests that intersect with pre-existing global elements and, increasingly, with deepening globalizing imperatives. It extends traditional inquiry about digital China and globalization and encourages closer attention to contestation, shifting international order, transformation of states, and new requirements of global digital capitalism. Across the three foci of history, power, and governance, this book considers the ways the Chinese internet is entangled with transnational capitals, ideas, and institutions, while at the same time manifests a strong globalizing drive. It begins with a historical political economy approach that emphasizes the dialectics between structural imperatives and historical contingency. As for governance, the Chinese state has set out to re-regulate the internet as the network becomes ubiquitous during the nation’s web-oriented digital transformation. Such a state-centric governance model, however, is likely to affect China’s global expansion, apart from the fact that the state is taking an active interest in global internet governance. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Communication Studies, Politics, Sociology, Economics, Cultural Studies, and Science and Technology Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Chinese Journal of Communication.




China and the Internet


Book Description

Two oversimplified narratives have long dominated news reports and academic studies of China’s Internet: one lauding its potentials to boost commerce, the other bemoaning state control and measures against the forces of political transformations. This bifurcation obscures the complexity of the dynamic forces operating on the Chinese Internet and the diversity of Internet-related phenomena. China and the Internet analyzes how Chinese activists, NGOs, and government offices have used the Internet to fight rural malnutrition, the digital divide, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other urgent problems affecting millions of people. It presents five theoretically informed case studies of how new media have been used in interventions for development and social change, including how activists battled against COVID-19. In addition, this book applies a Communication for Development approach to examine the use and impact of China’s Internet. Although it is widely used internationally in Internet studies, Communication for Development has not been rigorously applied in studies of China’s Internet. This approach offers a new perspective to examine the Internet and related phenomena in Chinese society.




China Internet Development Report 2020


Book Description

This book systematically summarizes the development process of China Internet in 2020, reveals the strong impact of Internet on China's economic development and social progress, and displays the course of the Chinese people's changes from beneficiary and participant to builder, contributor, and joint maintainer of cyberspace development and security during the Internet development; objectively reflects the development achievements, development status, and development trend of China Internet in 2020, systematically summarizes the main experience in the development of China Internet, and deeply analyzes China's strategic planning, policy actions, development results, practical level and future trend in information infrastructure, network information technology, digital economy, E-government, construction and management of network contents, network security, legal construction of cyberspace, international cyberspace governance, and other aspects; further improves the index system for the development of China Internet and makes an overall assessment of network security and informatization work in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) throughout China from 6 aspects, in the hope of reflecting the Internet development level throughout China and individual places comprehensively and accurately. With the important thoughts of General Secretary Xi Jinping on the national cyber development strategy as the main line running through the book, this book collects the latest research results in the domestic Internet field and utilizes the latest cases and authoritative data; featuring rich contents and highlights, this book helps the public readers to better comprehend the rich implications, spiritual essence, and practice requirements of the Internet governance concepts, thoughts, and opinions of General Secretary Xi Jinping and provides an important reference value for the employees in the Internet fields, such as government departments, Internet enterprises, scientific research institutions, colleges, and universities to fully understand and master the development of the China Internet.




China Internet Development Report 2019


Book Description

This book systematically summarizes China Internet development over the past 25 years, highlighting its strong impact on China’s economy and society, and discussing the Chinese people’s transition from beneficiaries and participants to builders, contributors and joint maintainers of cyberspace development. It describes the development achievements, status and development and trends in China Internet in 2019, systematically summarizes the main lessons learned during development, and analyzes China’s strategic planning and policy actions. Further, it discusses topics such as development outcomes, future trends in information infrastructure, network information technology, digital economy, e-government, construction and management of network contents, cyberspace security, the legal construction of cyberspace, and international cyberspace governance. In addition, the book suggests improvements to the index system for China Internet development and offers an overall assessment of cyberspace security and informatization work throughout China in order to comprehensively and accurately demonstrate the level of China Internet development.




Structural Change and Evolution of China’s Internet Society


Book Description

This title investigates China’s network society, both its online cyber society and offline real world society, by analyzing the trends and social foundations of society as network and the social challenges it poses, as well as structural changes in social space and social interaction. The first part of the book examines how network society in China forms and develops, analyzing the challenges and structural changes it poses. The author studies network power and uncertainties that lies in the supply, flow, and reception of a massive amount of information, revealing how this influences the government's administrative power as well as governance measures to stabilize social cohesion. The second part first discusses the social restructuring and characteristics of network social space in China. Based on case studies of several momentous social events, the spatial change characterized by an integration of absence and presence space and its influence on social interaction and experience is elucidated, including active absence interaction, mediated experience, spatial representation, and social identities of network aggregation. The book will be a crucial reference for scholars and students studying sociology, network sociology, and contemporary Chinese society.




The Evolution of Chinese Filiality


Book Description

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution. The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China’s earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis. With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.




The Great Firewall of China


Book Description

‘Readers will come away startled at just how fragile the online infrastructure we all depend on is and how much influence China wields – both technically and politically' – Jason Q. Ng, author of Blocked on Weibo 'An urgent and much needed reminder about how China's quest for cyber sovereignty is undermining global Internet freedom’ – Kristie Lu Stout, CNN ‘An important and incisive history of the Chinese internet that introduces us to the government officials, business leaders, and technology activists struggling over access to information within the Great Firewall’ – Adam M. Segal, author of The Hacked World Order Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. As the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent quashed, and attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself. Through years of investigation James Griffiths gained unprecedented access to the Great Firewall and the politicians, tech leaders, dissidents and hackers whose lives revolve around it. As distortion, post-truth and fake news become old news James Griffiths shows just how far the Great Firewall has spread. Now is the time for a radical new vision of online liberty.