China’s Globalizing Internet

History, Power, and Governance

Yu Hong, Eric Harwit, Yu Hong, Eric Harwit

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032333373
• eBook ISBN: 9781000686081
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction – China’s globalizing internet: history, power, and governance
• 2 How to think about cyber sovereignty: the case of China
• 3 From “bringing-in” to “going-out”: transnationalizing China’s Internet capital through state policies
• 4 Exploring the roles of government involvement and institutional environments in the internationalization of Chinese Internet companies
• 5 Alibaba’s discourse for the digital Silk Road: the electronic World Trade Platform and ‘inclusive globalization’
• 6 China’s data localization
• 7 A history of Chinese global Internet governance and its relations with ITU and ICANN
• Index