Contesting Cyberspace in China

Contesting Cyberspace in China
Author: Rongbin Han
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231545657

The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. In Contesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world’s largest authoritarian regime in the digital age. Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the “fifty-cent army,” as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives, Contesting Cyberspace in China interrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.

China's Transition

China's Transition
Author: Andrew James Nathan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780231110235

With more than one billion people, China represents both an ocean of economic opportunity and a frustrating backwater of continuing brutal political repression. What are the prospects for democratic evolution in a nation with one of the world's poorest human rights records? How have other nations responded to China since the recent, dramatic opening of its economic system-and how should they respond in the future? These are some of the most important questions confronting both the United States and the international community. On democracy, human rights, and the move to integrate China into the international economy; on Mao Zedong's regime and the reform since his death; and on the Taiwan experiment and Hong Kong's reintegration with China, Nathan offers an accessible introduction to the intricate web of contemporary Chinese politics and China's changing place in the global system.

Freedom of the Press in China Hb

Freedom of the Press in China Hb
Author: GUO
Publisher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9789463726115

Western commentators have often criticized the state of press freedom in China, arguing that individual speech still suffers from arbitrary restrictions and that its mass media remains under an authoritarian mode. Yet the history of press freedom in the Chinese context has received little examination. Unlike conventional historical accounts which narrate the institutional development of censorship and people's resistance to arbitrary repression, this book is the first comprehensive study presenting the intellectual trajectory of press freedom. It sheds light on the transcultural transference and localization of the concept in modern Chinese history, spanning from its initial introduction in 1831 to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. By examining intellectuals' thoughts, common people's attitudes, and official opinions, along with the social-cultural factors that were involved in negotiating Chinese interpretations and practices in history, this book uncovers the dynamic and changing meanings of press freedom in modern China.

Communication Convergence in Contemporary China

Communication Convergence in Contemporary China
Author: Patrick Shaou-Whea Dodge
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-11-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1628954116

In a speech opening the nineteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a “New Era” characterized by new types of communication convergence between the government, Party, and state media. His speech signaled that the role of the media is now more important than ever in cultivating the Party’s image at home and disseminating it abroad. Indeed, communication technologies, people, and platforms are converging in new ways around the world, not just in China. This process raises important questions about information flows, control, and regulation that directly affect the future of US–China relations. Just a year before Xi proclaimed the New Era, scholars had convened in Beijing at a conference cohosted by the Communication University of China and the US-based National Communication Association to address these questions. How do China and the United States envision each other, and how do our interlinked imaginaries create both opportunities for and obstacles to greater understanding and strengthened relations? Would the convergence of new media technologies, Party control, and emerging notions of netizenship in China lead to a new age of opening and reform, greater Party domination, or perhaps some new and intriguing combination of repression and freedom? Communication Convergence in Contemporary China presents international perspectives on US–China relations in this New Era with case studies that offer readers informative snapshots of how these relations are changing on the ground, in the lived realities of our daily communication habits.

How Reform Worked in China

How Reform Worked in China
Author: Yingyi Qian
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2017-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026253424X

A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important. As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform. As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China's successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China's reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government. In this book, Qian offers a third perspective, taking certain elements from each school of thought but emphasizing not why reform worked but how it did. Economics is a science, but economic reform is applied science and engineering. To a practitioner, it is more useful to find a feasible reform path than the theoretically best way. The key to understanding how reform has worked in China, Qian argues, is to consider the way reform designs respond to initial historical conditions and contemporary constraints. Qian examines the role of “transitional institutions”—not “best practice institutions” but “incentive-compatible institutions”—in Chinese reform; the dual-track approach to market liberalization; the ownership of firms, viewed both theoretically and empirically; government decentralization, offering and testing hypotheses about its link to local economic development; and the specific historical conditions of China's regional-based central planning.

Engaging Social Media in China

Engaging Social Media in China
Author: Guobin Yang
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1611863910

Introducing the concept of state-sponsored platformization, this volume shows the complexity behind the central role the party-state plays in shaping social media platforms. The party-state increasingly penetrates commercial social media while aspiring to turn its own media agencies into platforms. Yet state-sponsored platformization does not necessarily produce the Chinese Communist Party’s desired outcomes. Citizens continue to appropriate social media for creative public engagement at the same time that more people are managing their online settings to reduce or refuse connection, inducing new forms of crafted resistance to hyper-social media connectivity. The wide-ranging essays presented here explore the mobile radio service Ximalaya.FM, Alibaba’s evolution into a multi-platform ecosystem, livestreaming platforms in the United States and China, the role of Twitter in Trump’s North Korea diplomacy, user-generated content in the news media, the emergence of new social agents mediating between state and society, social media art projects, Chinese and US scientists’ use of social media, and reluctance to engage with WeChat. Ultimately, readers will find that the ten chapters in this volume contribute significant new research and insights to the fast-growing scholarship on social media in China at a time when online communication is increasingly constrained by international struggles over political control and privacy issues.

Slow Boat to China and Other Stories

Slow Boat to China and Other Stories
Author: Kim Chew Ng
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 023154099X

"Dream and Swine and Aurora," "Deep in the Rubber Forest," "Fish Bones," "Allah's Will," "Monkey Butts, Fire, and Dangerous Things"—Ng Kim Chew's stories are raw, rural, and rich with the traditions of his native Malaysia. They are also full of humor and spirit, demonstrating a deep appreciation for human ingenuity in the face of poverty, oppression, and exile. Ng creatively captures the riot of cultures that roughly coexist on the Malay Peninsula and its surrounding archipelago. Their interplay is heightened by the encroaching forces of globalization, which bring new opportunities for cultural experimentation, but also an added dimension of alienation. In prose that is intimate and atmospheric, these sensitively crafted, resonant stories depict the struggles of individuals torn between their ancestral and adoptive homes, communities pressured by violence, and minority Malaysian Chinese in dynamic tension with the Islamic Malay majority. Told through relatable characters, Ng's tales show why he has become a leading Malaysian writer of Chinese fiction, representing in mood, voice, and rhythm the dislocation of a people and a country in transition.

Divorce in China

Divorce in China
Author: Xin He
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2022-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1479816736

""Divorce in China" explores institutional constraints and gendered outcomes of divorce in China"--

In China's Wake

In China's Wake
Author: Nicholas Jepson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231547595

In the early 2000s, Chinese demand for imported commodities ballooned as the country continued its breakneck economic growth. Simultaneously, global markets in metals and fuels experienced a boom of unprecedented extent and duration. Meanwhile, resource-rich states in the Global South from Argentina to Angola began to advance a range of new development strategies, breaking away from the economic orthodoxies to which they had long appeared tied. In China’s Wake reveals the surprising connections among these three phenomena. Nicholas Jepson shows how Chinese demand not only transformed commodity markets but also provided resource-rich states with the financial leeway to set their own policy agendas, insulated from the constraints and pressures of capital markets and multilateral creditors such as the International Monetary Fund. He combines analysis of China-led structural change with fine-grained detail on how the boom played out across fifteen different resource-rich countries. Jepson identifies five types of response to boom conditions among resource exporters, each one corresponding to a particular pattern of domestic social and political dynamics. Three of these represent fundamental breaks with dominant liberal orthodoxy—and would have been infeasible without spiraling Chinese demand. Jepson also examines the end of the boom and its consequences, as well as the possible implications of future China-driven upheavals. Combining a novel theoretical approach with detailed empirical analysis at national and global scales, In China’s Wake is an important contribution to global political economy and international development studies.

Green Innovation in China

Green Innovation in China
Author: Joanna I. Lewis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231153309

Just a decade ago, China maintained only a handful of operating wind turbines -- all imported from Europe and the United States.