ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of digitalization and social networking sites (SNSs) in China over the past twenty years. Compiling statistics on skyrocketing rates of social networking site use across China and the world, it shows how China is the most digitalized society on the planet and offers a poignant visualization of what a digital future will look like for modern society – as SNSs become the new frontier for everyday social and economic life. Introducing the significance of guanxi as a system of rules that organizes all social relations in China, this chapter outlines the main argument of the book: these rules have been what I call illiquid (hierarchical and constraining) but, for the first time in centuries, are now becoming liquid (non-hierarchical and fluid) with the rise of SNSs.
