China's information and communications technology revolution : social changes and state responses

In recent years, China has experienced a revolution in information and communications technology (ICT), in 2003 surpassing the USA as the world's largest telephone market, and as of February 2008, the number of Chinese Internet users has become the largest in the world. At the same time, China has overtaken the USA as the world's biggest supplier of information technology goods. However, this transformation has occurred against the backdrop of a resolutely authoritarian political system and strict censorship by the Party-state. This book examines China's ICT revolution, exploring the social, cultural and political implications of China's transition to a more information-rich and communication-intensive society. The pace of the development of ICT in China has precipitated much speculation about political change and democratisation. This book explores the reality of ICT in China, showing clearly that whilst China remains a one-party state, with an ever-present and sophisticated regime of censorship, substantial social and political changes have taken place. It considers the ICT revolution in all its aspects, outlining the dominant trends, the impact on other countries of China as an ICT exporter, strategies of government censorship and use of ICT for propaganda, the implications of censorship for Chinese governance, the political implications of internet culture and blogging, and the role of domestic and foreign NGOs. Overall, this book is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand a rapidly transforming China, both today and in the years to come.

• List of figures p. viii
• List of tables p. ix
• List of contributors p. x
• Acknowledgements p. xi
• Introduction p. 1 Yongnian Zheng and Xiaoling Zhang
• ICT development, state and society p. 2
• Digital civil society and digital governance p. 6
• Selective digital control and regime legitimacy p. 8
• The development of ICT in China and its implications for the world p. 11
• Whither China's digital control? p. 14
• 1 Historical imagination in the study of Chinese digital civil society p. 17 Guobin Yang
• The logic of complex interdependence and the origins of digital civil society p. 18
• Digital formations and Chinese digital civil society p. 19
• Periodization and the study of the Chinese Internet p. 20
• Two stages of digital civil society development p. 22
• Persistent dynamics of digital civil society p. 24
• New dynamics in the period of expansion p. 27
• Conclusion p. 29
• 2 Dancing thumbs: mobile telephony in contemporary China p. 34 Zhenzhi Guo and Mei Wu
• Introduction p. 34
• Mobile telephony and "combined modernization" p. 35
• From pre-industrial to mobile communication: the "great leap forward" in telephone development p. 38
• Social and cultural implications of mobile phone use: three cases p. 41
• Conclusion: the future use of the mobile phone p. 46
• 3 Regulating e gao: futile efforts of recentralization? p. 52 Bingchun Meng
• From parody to culture jamming p. 53
• Deconstructing authorship p. 55
• Decentralized production and distribution p. 58
• Carnival in the virtual space p. 60
• Conclusion p. 62
• 4 In the name of good governance: e-government, Internet pornography and political censorship in China p. 68 Guoguang Wu
• Web governance in China: institutions and discourses p. 70
• Big-government online with little service p. 73
• How and why web pornography prevails p. 76
• Political censorship, political reform and Internet hypocrisy p. 79
• Sophistications of censorship, failures of governance: conclusions p. 81
• 5 Chinese intellectuals and the Internet in the formation of a new collective memory p. 86 Junhua Zhang
• Introduction p. 86
• Collective memory and its functions p. 87
• The development of Chinese blogs p. 89
• China's memory policy p. 93
• The older generation of intellectuals and the official memory policy p. 95
• Findings from a content analysis of Chinese bloggers p. 96
• Conclusion p. 100
• 6 From "foreign propaganda" to "international communication": China's promotion of soft power in the age of information and communication technologies p. 103 Xiaoling Zhang
• Introduction p. 103
• From defensive to offensive - changing goals and strategies p. 103
• The expansion of ICT capacity p. 106
• CCTV-9 and China National Network p. 109
• Discussions p. 113
• 7 Web engineering in the Chinese context: "let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend" p. 121 Kieron O'Hara
• Introduction p. 121
• The history and architecture of the Web p. 121
• Properties of the WWW p. 127
• China and the WWW p. 131
• Conclusion: a dilemma p. 133
• 8 The Political cost of information control in China: the nation-state and governance p. 136 Yongnian Zheng
• Information distribution and nation-state building p. 137
• Information control and governance p. 144
• Conclusion p. 152
• Index p. 156