China Perspective Issues
Séverine Arsène
Online Discussions in China: The Collaborative Development of Specific Norms for Individual Expression
The numerous conversations and debates that take place on the Chinese Web confirm the Internet as a legitimate platform for public expression. Through their participation, Internet users collectively elaborate a specific normative framework that partly differs from the theoretical model of deliberation. Some interviews with users clarify the role they attribute to online expression.
Book Reviews (PDF version)
Greg Austin, Cyber Policy in China
Editorial
Internet Domain Names in China: Articulating Local Control with Global Connectivity
ABSTRACT: This article aims at documenting the implementation of the Domain Name System in China, in coordination and in tension with the global Domain Name System since the end of the 1980s with the Chinese country-code top-level domain “.cn,” and more recently with the creation of Chinese-language domain names such as “.中国” and “.中文网.” It puts into perspective the notion of “digital sovereignty” by analysing the role of the DNS in the “localisation” of online content as part of the censorship system. It further shows that although Chinese representatives have always been very critical of the existing architecture and management of the DNS on the global stage, their attitude has evolved from de facto, bottom-up participation and protection of their interests to a more confident and assertive behaviour, as the growth of the Chinese Internet has put them in a more dominant position. KEYWORDS: China, Internet, Domain name system, CNNIC, ICANN, digital sovereignty, localisation, Great Firewall.
Global Internet Governance in Chinese Academic Literature: Rebalancing a Hegemonic World Order?
ABSTRACT: This article explores the apparently ambivalent foundations of the notion of cybersovereignty as seen from China, through some of the most recent Chinese academic literature on global Internet governance. It shows that the sampled authors conceive of the current Internet order as an anarchic or disorderly space where global hegemons reproduce their domination over the world in the digital age. In the rather dichotomous world that this portrays, most of the authors concentrate their attention on the position and strategy of the United States, with a view to underlining the contradictions in American discourse through the PRISM scandal or the status of ICANN. In this context, most scholars studied here see the current situation, where Internet governance is increasingly debated, as an opportunity to rebalance the global Internet order and advance the strategic interests of China through the establishment of an intergovernmental Internet governance framework in the long term, and through active participation in the current status quo in the short term. KEYWORDS: Internet governance, China, cybersovereignty, China-US relations, hegemony.