ABSTRACT
This is an edited volume about mobile phone use on Chinese soil, with an emphasis on Mainland China. The ‘China going cyber’ phenomenon is becoming impossible to ignore in the era of the information society. How do the Chinese live with cyber China? How does the mobile phone as an information and communication technology (ICT) device work on Chinese soil? The ‘living with’ and ‘working on’ here must be understood in a dynamic manner – people and technology are interplaying with one another. Such emphasis implies that we do not adopt the impact-response framework as an analysis of the process, which could mean Chinese society is a passive receiver of the ICT era. Instead, we believe that, when the technology meets the culture, a kind of structurating process (in Giddensian language) takes place and they both shape and reshape each other. The two theses of the book, ‘techno-social tension under a compressed modernity’ and ‘Chineseness of mobile phone use’, are attempts to show how the social dynamics of China are interacting with the technology. And in the process, the Chinese cultural elements are transformed into ICT practice in light of the rapid uplift caused by the ‘double juggernaut ride’ elaborated below. We term the whole phenomenon the ‘Great Mobile Revolution’ not only because the mobile phone itself signifies a kind of ‘fourth communication revolution’ (Fortunati in this volume, Chapter 4), but also because it is bringing in a new echelon of life experience for the Chinese in terms of interaction, aspiration and life-goal formulation. However, the path of this endeavour is not an easy one.
