← The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:01]
A
Your film is now ready to be shown. Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish news, analysis and perspectives on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. We've tried on this podcast to occasionally cover China's approach to tech policy and to get beyond the superficial narratives that dominate Western coverage. But the reality of how digital governance actually works in China remains elusive and it's something I'm always keen to learn more about. A new book from Cambridge University Press titled Governing Digital China offers crucial insights into China's governance ecosystem. The book reveals a more complex reality than simple top down control. Rather, it's one where massive tech companies like Tencent and Alibaba have become crucial to the state, forming partnerships that blend corporate and government power, and where citizens still demonstrate a bottom up form of power shaping how platforms in the state respond to their needs. The result is what the authors call popular corporatism, a form of digital authoritarianism that operates quite differently than you might imagine. Let's hear from the authors directly.
- [01:12]
B
I'm Dani Stockman, I'm professor for Digital Governance at the Hrdy School in Berlin and I'm also the Director of the center for Digital Governance.
- [01:21]
C
I'm Ting Luo, I'm currently an Associate professor in Artificial Intelligence and Government at the University of Birmingham.
- [01:29]
A
And you are both the authors of this new tome, Governing Digital China, which we're going to talk about today. First, I just want to ask a little bit about how this book came together. How did the two of you come together on this project?
- [01:41]
B
Ting was introduced to me by a former colleague, Meiling Bernay, and she spoke only in the highest terms about Ting. She told me, Ting just gets things. And then as soon as we met I realized, yeah, that's true. And so over the years, we've been working together now for over 10 years and I think we've developed a very constructive, insightful way of working together. And we've kind of realized, and I really want to hear what you think about this thing too, but I, I realized that we are a really great match because I have the outside perspective, having been grown up in Germany and then studied in the United States on China while China by Ting grew up in China and then went abroad to the LSE to get her PhD. And so we kind of matched this internal and external perspective.
- [02:33]
C
Yeah, I just want to sort of quickly add to this. I totally agree with what Danny just said, but I also want to add it's not entirely, I mean, Danny's perspective, although we put it on Our acknowledgement that, you know, we both sort of bring the, you know, I bring the insider perspective, Danny bring the outsider perspective. But actually, because we both have our PhD or education outside of our own country. So I did my PhD at London School of Economics and Danny did her PhD at University of Michigan. So I think somehow we also bring in these exposure outside of our own home country into this book.
- [03:08]
A
I want to ask you first just about the acknowledgments at the beginning of the book. You note that the situation with regard to scholarly discourse on China is becoming increasingly politicized. You talk about these polarizing camps, the quote unquote panda huggers and the dragon slayers. Of course, I sit in the United States. All the talk here is about China as bogeyman, as one single threat to American supremacy. When it comes to tech, China is only seen as a kind of strategic adversary at best and an enemy at worst. How do these politics affect the two of you in writing this book?
- [03:50]
B
I would say, and Ting, please also jump in. But like in my intuitive answer is, as we were writing the book, it's become really, really difficult to collect data on China, which is also why we end the book with a few remarks on the post Covid situation. But really we were already collecting data in 2016 and earlier, up until Covid, and it has become increasingly difficult to do the kind of social science research we do, which really requires to go to China, see what's happening, talk to people. But then also we collected this huge nationally representative survey, a face to face survey inside China, which is in itself it's a big challenge because obviously it's a huge, huge country. But then it also included lots of questions about political trust, about political discussion online and the social credit system. And this type of work is now no longer possible in China. There are still surveys being run, but they're mostly online and they can't ask any political questions anymore. And so in constraining access and also the ability for us to collect fieldwork, we of course also lack knowledge to talk about China in a meaningful way, to provide empirical evidence. And so the discussion about China, I feel, has increasingly become very much, very emotional, very stereotypical based on people guessing what intentions and motivations could would be. And so that's very difficult to break through. And Ting, of course, you know, you are also a Chinese living abroad. I mean, you probably also experience that every day.
- [05:35]
C
I think, along the process of writing this book and also doing the fieldwork in China. I think we started our fieldwork in 2015 as it was much earlier. We feel fortunate to have started our field work much earlier because it would be much more difficult nowadays to ask the same question, to be honest. And also throughout the years because we've done the fieldwork several times starting from 2015. And over the time you start to feel like that something that was not sensitive before become sensitive and you can see the sort of what can be asked in a survey or what can be asked in an interview, the definition of sensitivity shifting and also changing. And you don't really. It's a lot of. I think the emotional part that Danny mentioned is something that we also observe in those discussions as well. Something that in the past people might not feel emotional about, might be because of what is covered in the media or might be because of this tension between us, China. Then it become far more sensitive and people might become more emotional about it. I think these part of my observation.
- [06:35]
A
One of the things that I feel like we've tried to discuss on this podcast with folks like Angela Zhang and with Graham Webster from Stanford, from the Digichina Project, there is how flat our perception of how things work in China is often, especially from the United States, I think we have this had a very simplistic view that there's this command and control totalitarian structure, you know, where Xi Jinping issues dictate and that's just how things work. You talk about this a little bit about the idea that that understanding essentially gives too much credit to the Chinese state. Do you encounter that as a problem, as just in terms of, I don't know, trying to get across even the beginnings of why this book is important.
- [07:23]
B
Increasingly in the. In the discussion about the effects of digital technology in the world, there has been a shift from seeing digital technology as promoting democracy and collective action and trust in political systems, towards it being seen much in much more critical terms as a means to destabilize political systems to, you know, increase fake information, online polarization, you name it. And so in this discussion, China is oftentimes mentioned as the negative example in the in liberal democracies, both in the US and also in Europe, but also in other countries where China has become this image or this vision of a digital governance system that is very state driven, manipulative and sort of top down and everything that Europe and perhaps also the United States doesn't want to be. But then of course, you know, the more you look into what is actually happening in practice based on empirical evidence, the more we found that this what we call command and control structure, right? We also we term it the Big Brother type of thinking. You know, there's this big Brother somehow the Chinese Communist Party is just manipulating everything and both inside China, but also through its tech companies abroad. And we found that in practice this actually cannot work because it doesn't help the Chinese government to both promote digital, the digital economy and to remain politically stable.
- [08:58]
C
Yeah, I think I would only add briefly to what Danny said. I think also based on my research, I mean, also part of our collaboration, the command and control system doesn't really work in China because the government, the Chinese government also similar to, you know, we all know it's a common sense outside of China that government does not know how to run technology. To be honest. Right. They don't know, they, they doesn't know how to run a company. And for technology to thrive, sometime you will have to use a different mindset and government does not have that kind of mindset. And I think that's also part of the reason why we think that the story in China is much more complex, is not just a command and control system. There must be some sort of collaboration or partnership between the Chinese government and the company.
- [09:43]
A
So you introduced this idea of popular corporatism. Tell us what that is. What does that term mean?
- [09:49]
C
I try to simplify the story. So what exactly is popular corporatism? You can see it as, you know, a running car, that the Chinese government is sitting in the driver's seat and as the passenger, you have the company, you have the citizen. But then they are not just passengers sitting there not knowing where to go, but they also provide feedback. Company provide service. They also have some bargaining power based on their expertise, their data, their reach of their technology. And then citizens, through their use of the service to some extent also provide, voluntarily contribute their data and also provide some feedback through the company. To this day, I think that's part of our story. That's what we call popular copicism. So there is, in addition to what you usually see in a command and control system, you have a totem, control directly from the government to the company and also then channel to citizen. You also have the other way around, bottom up influence from company as well as from the citizens.
- [10:44]
A
So I think this is one of the surprising things, perhaps for some listeners in the book, that you do highlight effectively the power that citizens have in this dynamic. I don't know, Danny, is there anything you'd add there about, you know, how citizens are essentially projecting power, perhaps upwards into this triangle between the state, between the companies and themselves.
- [11:11]
B
What was really surprising to Us as well, when you looked into the data was that of course, when you look into the relationship between users, Internet users or platform users, social credit system users, and, and the platforms, of course there are network effects. So there's of course also this dependency that we also know, and we experience this outside all the time, that it's difficult if you want to move from out of WhatsApp into another platform. Of course all your friends are on that platform and that kind of ties you to WhatsApp, even though you want to go somewhere else. And so there is this dependency in China as well. But then at the same time, we discovered that Chinese users have what we call in the book the bottom line. Actually, this term originally comes from Liu Lijia, who wrote a book between the Party line and the Bottom Line before regarding traditional media in China. And so we discovered this bottom line amongst Chinese Internet users as well. And there's, there's a bit of a liberal bias in China where really Chinese Internet users, and here we are really talking about, you know, the average Internet user actually prefers less censorship, prefers to be able to talk about political topics. Maybe not to the extent that an American user is used to, but there's definitely the preference for more, more freedom of expression on the Internet. And we also, contrasting to some stereotypes about Chinese users, we do find that the average Chinese Internet user really cares about privacy. And we discovered this by asking people, what do you do in a survey? You know, what do you do on your smartphones, on platforms? And, and then we, we asked them specifically about certain ways in which you can protect your privacy. And we discovered that a very, very significant part, percentage of users are actually, in terms of their behavior, trying to protect their privacy. And so even though, you know, we can have a separate discussion whether in practice this privacy is implemented or can be implemented in this Chinese digital governance system. But the point here is that if users feel that the platforms are becoming too censored, too controlling, that their privacy is not enough protected, that they're really being surveyed, there is a certain bottom line where people, users start to look for alternatives. And then of course, another factor is the extent to which you do have alternatives. Because of course on some, in terms of some platforms, like for example social credit system, some platforms especially Alibaba has, so Alipay through Alipay, Sesame Credit is included in, in, in Alipay in China in an E commerce platform. And here Alibaba has an almost a monopoly in China, although it does now have a major competitor through Tencent Pay. But of course when we look at social media platforms, there are many, many more opportunities to talk about politics. You don't have to remain on, you know, WeChat, which is, you know, 99% of Internet users in China are on WeChat. But there are also other opportunities going into, you know, video streaming platforms and other smaller, less censored lens, less content, moderated spaces. And so people do start to, to move. And, and the, in what we discover in the book is that the companies also react and anticipate those movements. Of course they may, they may or may not decide to react to them selectively, similar to U.S. companies. I mean, you know, there have been many users moving out of Twitter after it became X, you know, going into blue sky, LinkedIn and so forth. And then the platform may not react to the threat. But, but in some instances Chinese platforms do. And I think, you know, we, we, we can, in the book, we, we are able to demonstrate empirically some of.
- [15:30]
A
That resistance kind of point of, or interstices I think you query that I find very interesting is obviously between the corporations in this state. And again I think looking at this through headlines in the US you often think it's very one unidirectional. You know, the state tells the companies what to do and all of the companies are 100% dyed in the wool agents of the state, etc. But you seem to, you know, find that that's not necessarily the case, that the companies are exerting influence on the state, maybe through different channels than perhaps might happen in democracies, but also that there's this dependency that's emerging and I assume probably growing in the age of artificial intelligence. I know when I read policy documents in the US these days, one thing I always look for is how is this relationship between tech and the government being characterized. And a lot of the time lately it feels like, you know, it's almost like a client relationship. Like the government acknowledges there are things that it can't do without the tech firms and increasingly things it can't do include securing the state. They include maintaining economic competitiveness. They include generally maintaining military advantage. I assume a similar thing is emerging in China and it looks like we've got a handful of companies that are better positioned in that environment in a similar way that we do here in.
- [17:01]
B
The U.S. yeah, so I would say that the core of the partnership is really the shift of governments or governmental and state units in China becoming clients to big tech firms. And there is also on, on the points that you mentioned, there's also academic Research showing this, showing the dependency of American political parties on the marketing support Strategy support by e.g. google, but also Meta. And we of course in China there are no elections. And so, so then the government doesn't turn to the tech companies for support of marketing for elections, but they do turn to, for example Sinovo or also Tencent in order to get some feedback on how do we achieve the goal of presenting or pointing out the accomplishments of the CCP in Fujian province. Or you know, how it's basically getting insights on how do we do this online. And then of course in giving advice on how to best do this online on certain platforms, the company staff then shapes the outcomes themselves. And certainly without that expertise, but also the underlying data that is being used, the governments themselves wouldn't have those ideas. They wouldn't know how to go about these strategies. And then there's another element that goes beyond sort of public, what in China it's called public opinion guidance, this aspect. But there's also another element which is much more about infrastructure and kind of using digital infrastructure in order to help or increase the capacity to deliver to audiences. And so we see the social credit system to play an important part in this thing. Do you want to talk a little bit more about the social credit system or also because Justin mentioned the AI and your recent work is much more on the role of AI.
- [19:08]
C
Yeah, I think I want to first add to what Danny just mentioned. I totally agree with what Danny just said. So it's actually to some extent you can see quite similar when it comes to public opinion guidance. This company provide feedback on how, what's going on with public opinion. So whether people like us, whether people like the government or are there any area we can improve? And not just providing feedback to the government, but also for example Tencent or WeChat, they also help to do PR work for the government as well. So on that regard, I think it's not much different to Western democracy like in the us you do put your campaign on Facebook for particular party to targeting advertising. I think it's rather similar or not exactly the same, but quite similar. So it's not just providing advice, but also implement those PR work for the state. And on social credit system is also in addition to provide feedback. I think part of the problem with the Chinese financial system is in the past citizens mainly use, you know, cash for their daily transaction. And not many, especially if we look at 10 or 20 years ago, not many have a bank account. And also all these banks, they have a very fragmented system. They don't share data. So for a lot of, you know, a large population of, you know, Chinese, large population, they don't have either don't have a bank account or they don't use, they mainly use cash in their daily transaction. And I think this is a typical problem in developing countries. How are we going to understand those people? How are we going to, if they want to get loan, we don't have any credit history, how are we going to do it? So that's where especially Alibaba came in. And also then Tencent later came in as well with WeChat because people, you can use those transactions or use their financial contacts on those paying apps to have some sort of credit assessment of, you know, ordinary citizen and you'll be able to give them a loan, et cetera. So I think that's also what we mean by they also provide some sort of infrastructure support to the state. Yeah, I think for the AI, this is something also very interesting. When we were writing the book, we were so worried that when the book came out it become outdated because, you know, we are no longer talking about digital government, we are no longer talking about Internet. But we start with this question to understand how Internet is governed in China. But then we see, even though the topic has changed, we are talking about AI nowadays, AI race between us and China. But then interestingly, we saw a parallel development in China. If you look at what happened now to AI, it's actually almost exactly the same compared to what happened to the Internet. For example, we have the same when we have Internet, let's say about 10 or I think decade ago, we have Internet investment fund. The state basically pumped some fund into this investment fund to support company, to hand pick company that's gonna, they're gonna become the big Internet company. And nowadays we have what we call AI funds in China as well. And you also see a lot of winner, handpicked winner in this area. You see Huawei, right? And you also see, for example, I think we have TikTok as well. TikTok have some, I think it's called, I can't remember the name of the AI product they launched. But we also have several sort of big winner in this area. So I think in that sense you will see this also similar partnership between company and state when it can come to AI development. And I think you can see all this as a sort of dependency. Company depend on state to provide support and privilege access to investment, to resources, to data, while the state require on this company to help them at least win. I mean from their perspective to win this AI race.
- [22:48]
A
So what emerges from this is this kind of picture of the state always trying to keep a balance between control on the one hand, and then almost using tech as a kind of, I mean, obviously an extension of its interests, but as a kind of feedback mechanism as well for how it needs to change and how it needs to change its approach. Is that fair to say?
- [23:11]
B
Absolutely. I think this balancing between liberalization and control is exactly. This is. This is also the very tricky part, because if you have too much liberalization, then all these liberalizing forces, you know, all these millions, billions of people, 1.3, potentially 1.3 billion of people, start to criticize, you know, local governments online. There's a lot of push, again, potential push against the political system. So that's where I think the Chinese government, over time, and also different leaderships, they have struggled with, you know, how much of this partial. What's the degree of liberalization that is required, but also how much control is required is also a constant discussion inside the leadership. And, and what I have noted over time is that it used to be under Hujin, it really used to shift much more between these periods of loosening and periods of tightening, while under Xi Jinping, we still see these shifts, but not to the same levels or degrees. So it's much more centering around a certain level, I would say. And. And so that's. That's a new development. But it doesn't change the fact that this balancing is a constant, constant means through which digital governance in China works.
- [24:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, from the outside, most of the assessments that I read around what's happening in China at the moment, you get a sense of a malaise that's driven in part by the idea that maybe the economic promise isn't delivering. And that seems to be affecting all parts of society, but in particular, the kind of middle. And. Yeah, generally, I mean, and you point this out, know, in the book in a couple of different ways, that the era of Xi Jinping, which you compare to Huinta in particular, but we're seeing a tightening when it comes to Internet freedom. The scores from groups like Freedom House, which you cite, just keep getting worse. I don't know what. What does that tell you about the trajectory of this dynamic? Where do you think things are. Are headed?
- [25:20]
B
I mean, I think it's always difficult to predict the future of China because you can only get b. Wrong. You know, I predicted at some point in 2008 or shortly before 2008, my prediction was if China was ever gonna face A major crisis, it would really test the system. And then in 2008 there was a, there was the Sichuan earthquake, you may remember, and no, the system remained stable. And you know, here we are 2026 and we still have a functioning People's Republic of China. So I mean, I'm, I'm hesitant to predict China's future, but I do. It can see, I can sort of see different outcomes. And one potential outcome is that the current political leadership realizes that consistent with the past, usually if you wanted to really promote economic growth and digital innovation and also which involves of course digital, the digital economy, but is broader also about economic growth more broadly and it was usually associated with more opening and this is also at least what I note. Ting, you may disagree with me, but what I see currently is a little bit more of this opening taking place in response to these pressures. But then at the same time I can also see China potentially developing into a, a society where the current leadership becomes very insecure about its pot to keep the political system stable. And then of course there's a potential to move into this command and control Big Brother type of system and then rule a population that would be largely unhappy with that system, but potentially still remain a unified country in that sense until there is a situation like after the end of the Berlin or shortly before it where you have, you know, suddenly there's a spark and a big revolution. But I think China's future is open and it's very much subject to how this discussion about how much balance and when to balance, partial liberalization, how that plays out. Ting, do you have any thoughts about this?
- [27:41]
C
Yeah, I think at least as a political scientist we don't really want to predict because like what Danny said, it's going to be wrong. But I think I'm going to only add one perspective given what's going on recently. I don't know whether people have been following up news about Meta's 2 million deal to buy Chinese AI startup Menace AI and what happened with these new development is something that made me think about what's going to go happen after this. Now if you look at Manus AI, I remember in our first book launch last September, then if you remember the slide I used menus AI as an example of how China is growing as an AI power. But then now it's about, I think it's about a year later now we see that manners AI have moved to Singapore, have this Singapore washing, that's what they call unroof everything from China and then sell it to meta 2 billion new. And this story is tricky because you don't know where you're going to go. From Chinese perspective, Manners Aid sent a message to all those startup in China. The best route for you is to have a startup in China because you don't have the kind of data regulation as you have in Europe and you have a much better environment, you have local support, local government all want to help with those AI company because they want to win the AI race with the us. So this is your way you can have a startup in China, benefit from whatever in that context and then when you have those products, when you have something, the next step is maybe to unroot yourself from China, move to Singapore and sell it to whoever can pay the biggest bill. And that's a worrying story because from Chinese government's perspective it might trigger the insecurity like what Danny mentioned earlier. They might feel like I feel so insecurity about what happened and maybe they might then maybe tighten up control. So I will not allow you to move. I may have some more strict export control rules and I think this will be a worry instead. But we don't know whether this is going to happen. But at least we know that there's a review of the deal now by the Chinese government. That's the current. We don't know what's going to happen with this review but I think it does show a worrying message and I'm a bit concerned about what's going to go next because I would suspect the Chinese government, it does make them insecure about what's going on with the AI strategy.
- [30:00]
A
Do you see that also in what's happened with TikTok of late? We still don't quite know exactly how that's going to resolve.
- [30:07]
C
Yeah, that's interesting. I think I haven't really. It's quite unclear about what's going on with TikTok, but it doesn't seem to have the same problem as TikTok. I wonder because maybe TikTok have, you know, separate the company into two, right? One outside of China and one inside China. So for them they might not be just sort of similar issue like Manus AI, because I would see TikTok as something like in our book is a bigger company and they have separate operation inside outside of China. But managed AI basically now become completely outside of China has nothing to do with China anymore as far as I see from the news.
- [30:43]
B
I mean there's always this question, right, do Chinese tech companies, when they operate abroad, to what extent are they actually still Chinese? For example I was invited at the. There was a TikTok summit in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. And so TikTok talks about this as their trust issue that, you know, outside of China, people consider them to be a Chinese company. While they very firmly state, you know, we are actually registered in Singapore, you know, we have no. They, you know, they try to really argue against this very, very strongly. And so one of the criteria that I have always used in order to decide, you know, to what extent is there a connection to China would be whether there is the firm behind it has a headquarter in China inside the Chinese mainland. And so, Ting, do you still think that's a good criteria?
- [31:42]
C
Yeah, I think this is a good criteria. I think that's the difference between TikTok and Menace AI, because Menace AI, I think they. They had closed their headquarter in China and they become now completely a new company in Singapore with headquarters in Singapore.
- [31:56]
A
I wanted to ask also about, you know, China's influence just in its own neighborhood. I mean, there's a lot of work from groups like Article 19 on the extent to which China is exporting its digital governance model and exporting, even in some cases, you know, infrastructure and the rest of those things. How does that play into the way that digital governance works, even perhaps domestically in China? I mean, how does that goal to kind of spread the Chinese way of doing things seem to feed back, or does it make sense?
- [32:29]
B
It doesn't make sense. And because this Chinese model has been so it. This Chinese model, digital governance model has been looked at as an example by other countries like Russia, Iran and so forth, independently. But then in addition to that, under Xi Jinping was the Digital Silk Road initiative was launched, where a lot of funding and also government strategies was put into promoting tech champions and their success abroad in order to promote China's image abroad, but also in order to expand its influence. And so, of course, there is an ongoing discussion as to, you know, what the effects of this may be. And I guess for us in the book, we are less examining empirically the effects of the Chinese model outside of China, because the book is really focused on what's happening inside the Chinese mainland. But we are, we are more interested in providing an analytical framework which we call popular corporatism, in order to help understand how any tech company be a Chinese or US or Russian or originating anywhere in the world, how those companies would engage with authoritarian states. What we have found was that this Chinese model is actually only replicable under one condition, which is as a government, it's very expensive because you have to have a lot of funding and resources available that you can use in order to provide incentives for companies to pay them to make, give them an incentive for profit making so that you become a client to them. Right. It's expensive. And you of course you also have to have a certain degree of like a state development approach towards economic growth. Not all countries in the world have that. I mean, I think in the United States for example, it's very common to believe that the absence of the state would promote economic development. While you know, in Asia, amongst the Asian tigers, there's a lot more support for the idea that states should actually invest in the economy in order to promote economic growth. So we've so far we've looked a little bit into Vietnam and a little bit into Singapore. And in those contexts there are some governments that follow that Chinese approach where they provide these, what we call co optation. So it's, it's exactly, essentially providing financial incentives in exchange for certain, for certain services in outside of China. But we, we are, we haven't found much evidence of the actual implementation of this Chinese model somewhere else, despite the fact that China is promoting software and so forth in other contexts.
- [35:36]
A
You know, you've mentioned Big Brother and the Big Brother frame. Another frame that you talk about is Brave New World. You contrast those frames as sometimes useful, sometimes not useful, sometimes promoting misunderstanding perhaps of, of China. For the listener who may have one or more of those metaphors in their mind when they think about China. I don't know what would you tell them as they continue to read articles in Western media and continue to consume the unavoidable propaganda about China and its approach to technology from Western governments. How should we be thinking about those metaphors?
- [36:18]
B
I would say that both Big Brother and also Brave New World are totalitarian understandings of political systems, but also the way that technology is being used. And it's more, in my view these understandings of China do not really conform to the empirical evidence. I mean there's always some because there are these, you know, top down structures. Of course you can always find some evidence for the existence of these top down structures. But if you really want to understand China, you have to look beyond just the top down aspects and you have to start looking for, for empirical evidence that also shows the opposite kind of the impact of tech firms on policies. But also, you know, how users use technology platforms in China and what kind of incentives that those provide and it requires you to. When I read the news, at least I now I really try to differentiate between expressions of emotions and fears of this sort of totalitarian paradigm versus, you know, what I, as a. Someone who's truly interested in understanding China, of what I. What is actually happening. And of course this becomes. It's very challenging even for me, because if I wanted to know in the past, I would go to China. Right. And now, of course, you can travel to China as a tourist, but you oftentimes, you know, the most interesting questions you won't get answers to. And so I, I guess for me, I hope that in the future we're gonna have a world again where lots more people like Ting and me, but also journalists can provide more empirical evidence about China that conforms more to reality and so that information about China is less influenced by, By. By the fear of what China could be.
- [38:27]
C
Yeah, I think, I would say, I think we, we, if there's a message for the readers or for people who is going to read the book or want to understand China, I would say we have to go beyond these dichotomy between, you know, democracy or, and totalitarianism or authoritarianism. Although in academia we have called for this for like four years. But I think in reality, people always put on what we call a color glass before they look at stuff. They look at China, the first thing come to their mind is, you know, totalitarian regime, you know, top down, and you have a big brother there. And I think what we want the reader to read when they read their book, I want them to put this color glass down first and then just focus on the evidence and make their own decision about, you know, what do they know about China? Are they, do they think China is an authoritarian regime? Do they really think. And also on the other hand, you know, do they really think US or uk Are they still democracy? Maybe they are not on some aspects. Right. So I think this is the question or the kind of our message for the reader. And also I think if you look at what's going on nowadays in our environment, you know, we are in a polarized world. You know, people always come with the narrative and when they go with it, when they tell their story, they always come with their ideology precision first and then they show the evidence. And we want the other way around, want to show you the evidence first. And we're not going to tell you what we think or what's our view or values. And we want the reader to, to have their own values based on the evidence they have from our book.
- [39:51]
A
You end the book with a brief look back on democracies and I take your point that. Well, I think we can fairly characterize China as an authoritarian government. The question over the health of democracy, the trajectory of democracy, even in some cases the existence of democracy in certain parts of the west is an open one. But you look particularly at Europe, for instance, what can looking at the Chinese model tell us about Europe's ambitious approach on digital governance? I kind of want to just put that to you to conclude, what can we learn about this approach versus what we see in China? What is the study of this question and in particular this relationship between the state, citizens, corporations, what does it tell us about the European approach?
- [40:44]
B
Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned that. Now nowadays the discussion about China is very much influenced by either people who look at China very critically. We call them the dragon slayers. And then there's another group of people who we call, oftentimes in the China field, we call them the panda huggers who want to promote the positive aspects of the Chinese system. And so what we are trying in the book is to stand in the middle and try to, you know, take a critical thought perspective, but at the same time do not glance over certain aspects that could also have positive effect. And so we then end the book with, with the question, you know, is there anything that we can learn or that outside of China we can learn from China about liberal democracy? And over the last few years, I've become very much involved in the European debate about, you know, how, how can Europe set up a new form of digital governance that promotes democracy on digital technology platforms? And even though there, you know, now there is, there are tons of digital policies, including Digital Services act, digital markets at the AI act, you know, gdpr, you name it, coming out of Brussels. It's a whole, it's a huge package, right. I still feel that this sort of European answer towards, you know, how do we make sure that platforms can remain innovative and grow the digital economy while also stabilizing political systems lacks a vision. I don't see the vision. You know, I see the advantages of all these regulations, but I, I don't see where, where, how would this digital governance structure actually work and where are we heading with it? What kind of, what kind of democracy do we want? And that's where China is really strong. It's not a democratic, liberal, democratic vision. But China or the Chinese Communist Party is able to provide a very clear vision to its citizens, but also towards outsiders in terms of we want to have a very highly developed, digitally advanced system. China dream is about, you know, you being able to fill whatever China dream is as long as the. As China remains politically stable, even though it's not democratic and it's China within that sort of broad China Dream framework there, you know, there you can be, there's a lot of space politically, you can be a bit more, can be more liberal, you can be more conservative. But it's definitely one overarching frame. And it's more of a centralized frame too. I mean, it's definitely, you know, the Chinese Communist Party is of course, within that vision for China. And what I see, I mean, I've become very interested in how now in liberal democracies, what alternative visions exist for positive visions for a democratic future. And I've discovered that most of these visions actually have a decentralized structure. I was at the German French Digital Sovereignty Summit a few weeks ago, also hosted here in Berlin, and Euro sky was launched, which promotes a framework for complete interoperability between Blue sky and Mastodon and a number of other smaller platforms. But it's also interesting, it's interesting, it's also similar to China because it's also digital sovereignty in the sense that that's built something that's different and territorially distinct from the United States, for example. And so I don't know whether the second part of the vision, you know, which leads to greater fragmentation of the Internet, whether I would, I would want to promote that in a positive way. That's, I think, yet another aspect of this discussion. But I do think there is, underneath it, there is this vision that, you know, decentralization, maybe having a network of smaller platforms that are connected to each other in a meaningful way is, is part of a, an alternative vision that would promote more, a more decentralized digital governance system compatible with democracy.
- [45:13]
A
Ping, this leads the final word to you. I don't know. You've lived in both contexts. You've got a perspective that, you know, perhaps is a little more tactile in that way. I don't know. What do you, what do you make of, of this final kind of question? What should folks in Europe or generally in the quote unquote west be thinking about?
- [45:36]
C
I actually have been asked the same question a few months ago about what what UK can learn from China. So what we've done in our book, and I didn't have a very good answer at the time because I feel like it's a very tricky question because I been in the UK myself for such a long time now and also have experienced what happened to the uk. We were part of the Europe before Breaston and we are no longer part of it, but we still want to be part of it. So this is very confusing. If you look at the policy landscape in the UK and if we look at the policy document as well, you can see, I think the kind of confusion or a lot of vision that Danny mentioned is even worse in the uk And I think perhaps for the uk, the next step will probably, if we can, if there's anything we can learn from China is basically to find your position in the world. I mean, where do you want to be? Do you want to be like us, or do you want to be like Europe? Or who is your partner, who is your friends? And I think the same with digital government. So are you going to go for the more commercialized version of the us Give commercial company more power, give them more freedom to innovate? Or you want to go with the European style where you have a lot more regulation? Maybe you want to be the future leader in, you know, setting the rule and regulation for digital development? Or you want to be like China? Of course. I mean, we're not talking about political system, we are talking about, you know, how you're going to govern or promote digital development. And I think if we're talking about what UK can learn from China, definitely the kind of clear vision or your position in the work, especially in the world of digital development.
- [47:08]
A
Well, I'm very grateful to the two of you for speaking to me about this book and I want to recommend it to Tech Policy Press listeners and readers. It's called Governing Digital China. And where, where can folks find this book? Where's the easiest place to get hold of it?
- [47:23]
B
You can find it on all major bookstores online, but if you want to have a discount, you may go to the Cambridge University Press website and then you have a discount code, which is GDC 2025, valid until September 30, 2026. We would be so delighted to have you as a reader. Thank you, Justin, for taking the time to read the book and it's been a great discussion. Great fun to be with Tech Policy Press today.
- [47:55]
C
Thank you.
- [47:57]
A
That's the first time we've ever offered a discount code on the book podcast and I'm pleased to provide that value in this. I wish you both the best for the new year and hope to talk to you again soon about this issue or others.
- [48:11]
B
Thank you, Justin. Take care.
- [48:24]
A
That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback.
- [48:27]
C
Good.
- [48:27]
A
Write to me at Justin at TechPolicy Press. Thanks to my guests. Thanks to my co founder Brian Jones. And thank you for listening.
- [48:43]
C
Tech policy press.