Information Society Watch

2007, Yeuzhi Zhao, International Journal of Communication

This article explores the paradoxes in the ‘digital revolution’ that China has witnessed during the last decade or so. The author describes the enormous social and cultural tensions that have been engendered by the aggressive launching of a state-led, market oriented, and technologically-driven “digital revolution” in the context of regressive developments in the social domain. The resulting developmental framework of a single nation state has posed profound challenges in governance, and thus necessitated the state’s relentless efforts in maintaining social stability through a fortified regime of information and communication control. The paper then reviews the multi-faceted struggles that have been waged by various Chinese social forces, particularly industrial workers, farmers, and Falun Gong members, in rearticulating and reinserting a social agenda in the “digital revolution” and discusses the post-Jiang Chinese state’s reclaiming of the social in its developmental strategy (Adapted from author).

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