A surveillance system that was implemented in China to standardize each citizen’s social and economic reputation. A system that imitates the credit rating system in the advanced countries such as the U.S., each individual will be assigned a point on the basis of his/her past social, economic, and political behaviors. Individuals with lower ratings will be penalized for travel ban, difficulty in obtaining loan or mortgage, ostracism in society, etc.
Published in Chapter:
Will Microblogs Shape China's Civil Society Under President's Xi's Surveillance State?: The Case of Anti-Extradition Law Protests in Hong Kong
Kenneth C. C. Yang (The University of Texas at El Paso, USA) and Yowei Kang (National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 29
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-1791-8.ch007
Abstract
Western scholars have previously predicted Weibo and social media will provide Chinese netizens with an opportunity to foster its nascent civil society. However, the growing applications of surveillance technologies have challenged this rosy, yet deterministic prediction. This chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere is less likely to function properly, given the pervasive applications of surveillance technologies in China, which has fundamentally challenge its many assumptions. Using Habermas's analytical framework that is used to better comprehend the role of social media in Chinese politics, the authors argue that information technologies turn out to deteriorate the formation and maintenance of a public sphere for Chinese civil society. The authors employ a case study to examine the interrelations among social media, surveillance technologies, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China as demonstrated in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Protests.