Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (13)
- Part of a Book (2)
- Book (1)
Language
- English (16)
Keywords
- China (16) (remove)
Contrary to conventional wisdom, even Xi Jinping, who is often depicted in the media and pundit world as having centralized control over nearly every dimension of Chinese governance, still must rely on powerful technology corporations to carry out his will in the increasingly important Internet sector. This suggests a model of political control significantly more nuanced than most observers realize. This chapter argues that Xi Jinping does not rule the Internet and more specifically social media via a tight command-and-control structure, which implies that he is the ultimate decision-maker and companies simply implement his policy decisions. Instead, the chapter demonstrates based on process-tracing that China’s governance of the Internet is best understood as a corporate management model, whereby the Chinese state engages in a partnership with technology companies. Xi Jinping assumes a leadership role enforced by state instruments of control and cooptation strategies. At the same time, the state remains dependent on companies due to their informational, organizational, and institutional resources.
Social media companies rely on user agreements as one means to manage content produced by users. While much has been written on user agreements and community standards of U.S.-based social media, surprisingly little is known about Chinese user agreements and their implications. We compare terms of services as well as privacy policies of WeChat and Weibo between 2014 and 2019 using their U.S. counterparts WhatsApp and Twitter as a benchmark. We find that Chinese user agreements reveal a territorial-based understanding of content management differentiating between PRC and non-PRC users based on language, IP address and country of citizenship. Second, Chinese social media companies are surprisingly transparent about what content can be published, which has implications for self-censorship among users. Third, changes in PRC user agreements reflect Xi Jinping’s tightening control of the Internet. Finally, U.S.-based platforms have moved towards content management that differs by region, thus becoming more similar to the Chinese approach over time.
This article examines a major change in campaigning through the means of mass media during the reform era. As the media commercialized and partially privatized, the state has tried increasingly to involve societal actors in the production of public service advertisements (PSAs) on television. Today, PSA campaigns are initiated by state and Party units, but their funding, production and broadcasting is made possible by a collaborative effort between broadcasters, advertising companies and commercial enterprises who voluntarily support their further development. I conducted 27 in-depth interviews with officials, broadcasters and producers in Beijing to tap into the policy rationale behind the use of public service advertisements in campaigning and the incentive structure facilitating collaboration between companies and state units. Interviews with judges of PSA competitions and content analysis of price-winning advertisements reveal the standards of the central government to employ public service advertising as a means of campaigning.
This article examines Chinese perspectives of, and support for propaganda, relying on television public service advertisements as a means of tapping into citizens’ beliefs. Through the analysis of data from focus groups conducted in Beijing and public opinion survey data from 30 cities, this study argues that Chinese people are generally supportive of state efforts to guide public attitudes through television advertisements, although levels of support vary by age, education and gender. The study suggests that considerable popular support for state propaganda contributes to the regime’s capacity to guide public opinion and helps to explain the persistence of popular support for authoritarian rule.
Public opinion polls show that political trust tends to be higher in authoritarian regimes compared to liberal democracies. Many scholars have argued that respondents may provide false answers out of fear about repercussions by the state, thereby skewing survey results in a positive direction. Using an unobtrusive measure based on affect transfer, we find that adult participants in experiments conducted in China transfer positive affect toward the state onto evaluations of television advertisements upon mere exposure to the name of a central party institution. Participants did not have incentives to lie because they did not associate the advertisements with the state. Furthermore, people who evaluated the ads more positively upon viewing the name of the state also reported more positive levels of trust in government. Together, these findings raise doubt that Chinese misrepresent political trust in surveys out of political fear.
While the Internet was created without much governmental oversight, states have gradually drawn territorial borders via Internet governance. China stands out as a promoter of such a territorial‐based approach. China's separate Web infrastructure shapes data when information technologies capture traces of human behavior. As a result, area expertise can contribute to the substantive, methodological, and ethical debates surrounding big data. This article discusses how a number of critical questions that have been raised about big data more generally apply to the Chinese context: How does big data change our understanding of China? What are the limitations of big data from China? What is the context in which big data is generated in China? Who has access to big data and who knows the tools? How can big data from China be used in an ethical way? These questions are intended to spark conversations about best practices for collaboration between data scientists and China experts.
In the existing literature there is general agreement that the effectiveness and efficiency of command and control instruments versus market-based instruments is highly context specific. A country's particular regulatory environment and state capacity, as well as the features of given environmental problems, play an important role in ascertaining what the “right” set of policy instruments for environmental management might be. This article examines how command and control instruments are used as an environmental enforcement mechanism in China's authoritarian state. Based on extensive fieldwork, this paper shows that the reliance on binding environmental targets as the main domestic policy instrument in China has generated numerous undesirable consequences. While China's target-based approach to implementation has incentivized local officials to strictly enforce environmental mandates, there are numerous shortcomings in the system. In particular, target rigidity, cyclical behaviour, poor data quality, and the absence of an independent monitoring agency have generated adverse effects and contribute to a yawning gap between regulatory goals and outcomes. The paper concludes that binding environmental targets as the main command–control instrument in China can be more accurately described as “command without control” as the target-setting central government does not exercise a high degree of control over implementation and monitoring processes. But command and control instruments can be suited for managing “first-generation” environmental problems and addressing environmental issues that have easily identifiable pollution sources and which are easy to verify.
Wind and Solar Power in Brazil and China: Interests, State-Business Relations, and Policy Outcomes
(2015)
This article examines developments in the renewable electricity sector in Brazil and China since 2000. The two countries share many interests with respect to solar and wind power, but institutional differences in state–business relations led to different outcomes. In China, in a context of corporatist state–business relations, state interventions were more far-reaching, with the state coordinating with state-owned banks, offering large financial and investment incentives to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. By contrast, in Brazil’s public–private partnerships, state support to promote renewable energies was shaped by a stronger preference for competitive auctions and stricter financing rules. The differences in state–business relations help explain the observed developmental trajectories in wind and solar power