LAUSR

Networking China provides a nuanced introduction to the policy decisions and transnational economic forces, which have contributed to the emergence of China’s increasingly profitable digital economy. Yu Hong conducts this analysis using a traditional political economy approach, which allows her to provide a macro-account of China’s technological development in exacting detail. She draws on an impressive body of statistics and grey literature to emphasise the significance and extent of China’s transition. Hong also makes extensive use of Chinese language material, which means that the work functions as an important bridge between Western and Chinese scholarship. Subsequently, the reader is left with a comprehensive understanding of China’s information and communication technology (ICT) policies, contextualised in relation to global markets, regional disparities within the country and China’s own political history. Indeed, these broad themes stand as the major insights from Hong’s monograph. The monograph provides necessary local insight, allowing the reader to place transnational economic phenomena, such as the production of computer parts and the questionable labour practices involved in smartphone production, within a national context. Hong explains how the long-standing economic disparity between the global east coast and remote and rural western China maintains an ongoing influence on ICT policy. The state originally encouraged transnational companies to build factories across the west with the goal of boosting the economic potential of the region. However, Hong shows that such an approach relies on suppressed wages and cheap operating costs, with major companies unwilling to invest in high-level production in order to facilitate positive economic outcomes. While China has subsequently attempted to nationalise various elements of the supply chain in later policies, this has done little to change the economic position of the west. The work also provides an important counter to scholarly caricatures of China as an all-powerful state that embeds a dominant economic and social logic across its ICT policies. Hong’s analysis of China’s broadband policy reveals an incredibly conflicted Government with Councils and Ministries arguing among one another about the most appropriate roll-out strategy, bringing to mind the painful policy uncertainty around the National Broadband Network (NBN). In a later example, the state reorganises industrial policy to reduce their dependency on international supply chains. While this reform allows certain ‘national champions’ such as Huawei to emerge, these companies do not always follow state demands and have to negotiate between national policy goals and transnational market forces. The book offers a comprehensive account of the dance between the state and the market and does an excellent job of showing that while China continues to intervene in the market to shape outcomes, these outcomes are always contingent and subject to external pressures. Hong notes that such interventions support the growth of national industries and allow entire sectors to develop and change with some level of support. However, she also constantly reminds the reader that this approach has not reduced long-standing economic inequities and is ultimately embedded in broader transnational markets. This monograph is a must-read, offering the reader a complete guide to Chinese media policy.