ABSTRACT
The advent of the Internet and social media has decentralised authority over networking, and national government faces not only the challenge of the vast volume of communication flows but also the increasing decision-making and governance power over the Internet by private companies and civil society organisations, which constitute a new locus of authority. How has national government in contemporary China engaged with those non-state actors in Internet governance? This chapter explores this question by incorporating the network governance concept in examining the patterns of private–state–civil collaboration in governance of the Internet in China in the Xi Jinping era. The Internet governance in this era demonstrates both the continuity of the past, for instance, the lack of independent non-state actors, and the new trend of the future such as recognising the contribution of non-profit organisations and private actors and seeking their collaboration in order to improve the overall governance competence.
Such new change could increase the number of policy agenda-setting actors and enable them to exert impact on the policy and governance behaviours, and promoting the pluralisation of policy-making and governance. Meanwhile, the network governance approach – characterised by its encouragement of consultation and coordination as a way of pre-empting conflicts or to solve problems and of binding unofficial and organic social actors together not through legal procedures but through social ties – is utilised in this chapter to conceptualise and operationalise the private–state–civil collaboration in China’s Internet governance.
Analytically, this chapter treats the ‘The Beijing District Joint Anti Online Rumour Platform (BJARP)’ governance network as the unit of analysis and as a positive mechanism of coordination in response to societal and technological progress with the failures of the market, and the failure of hierarchical coordination to refute rumours. It concludes that in order to have a better and impartial understanding of the complex relationships between the state and society in Internet governance in contemporary China, researchers not only need to examine the roles of state and party and their policies and regulations, but they also need to conduct empirical research about the roles of social organisations and private actors in the processes of governance and policy-making. This chapter has made significant efforts towards filling this gap and contributing to a better understanding of the continuity and new trends of Internet governance in China with its empirical research and critical analysis.
