China | Digifesto

September 7, 2018

Note on Austin’s “Cyber Policy in China”: on the emphasis on ‘ethics’

I’ve had recommended to me Greg Austin’s “Cyber Policy in China” (2014) as a good, recent work. I am not sure what I was expecting–something about facts and numbers, how companies are being regulated, etc. Just looking at the preface, it looks like this book is about something else.

The preface frames the book in the discourse, beginning in the 20th century, about the “information society”. It explicitly mentions the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as a touchstone of international consensus about what the information society is, as society “where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge’ to ‘achieve their full potential’ in ‘improving their quality of life’. It is ‘people-centered’.

In Chinese, the word for information society is xinxi shehui (Please forgive me: I’ve got little to know understanding of the Chinese language and that includes not knowing how to put the appropriate diacritics into transliterations of Chinese terms.) It is related to a term “informatization” (xinxihua) that is compared to industrialization. It means the historical process by which information technology is fully used, information resources are developed and utilized, the exchange of information and knowledge sharing are promoted, the quality of economic growth is improved, and the transformation of economic and social development is promoted”. Austin’s interesting point is that this is “less people-centered than the UN vision and more in the mould of the materialist and technocratic traditions that Chinese Communists have preferred.”

This is an interesting statement on the difference between policy articulations by the United Nations and the CCP. It does not come as a surprise.

What did come as a surprise is how Austin chooses to orient his book.

On the assumption that outcomes in the information society are ethically determined, the analytical framework used in the book revolves around ideal policy values for achieving an advanced information society. This framework is derived from a study of ethics. Thus, the analysis is not presented as a work of social science (be that political science, industry policy or strategic studies). It is more an effort to situate the values of China’s leaders within an ethical framework implied by their acceptance of the ambition to become and advanced information society.

This comes as a surprise to me because what I was expected from a book titled “Cyber Policy in China” is really something more like industry policy or strategic studies. I was not ready for, and am frankly a bit disappointed by, the idea that this is really a work of applied philosophy.

Why? I do love philosophy as a discipline and have studied it carefully for many years. I’ve written and published about ethics and technological design. But my conclusion after so much study is that “the assumption that outcomes in the information society are ethically determined” is totally incorrect. I have been situated for some time in discussions of “technology ethics” and my main conclusion from them is that (a) “ethics” in this space are more often than not an attempt to universalize what are more narrow political and economic interests, and that (b) “ethics” are constantly getting compromised by economic motivations as well as the mundane difficulty of getting information technology to work as it is intended to in a narrow, functionally defined way. The real world is much bigger and more complex than any particular ethical lens can take in. Attempt to define technological change in terms of “ethics” are almost always a political maneuver, for good or for ill, of some kind that is reducing the real complexity of technological development into a soundbite. A true ethical analysis of cyber policy would need to address industrial policy and strategic aspects, as this is what drives the “cyber” part of it.

The irony is that there is something terribly un-emic about this approach. By Austin’s own admission, the CCP cyber policy is motivated by material concerns about the distribution of technology and economic growth. Austin could have approached China’s cyber policy in the technocratic terms they see themselves in. But instead Austin’s approach is “human-centered”, with a focus on leaders and their values. I already doubt the research on anthropological grounds because of the distance between the researcher and the subjects.

So I’m not sure what to do about this book. The preface makes it sound like it belongs to a genre of scholarship that reads well, and maybe does important ideological translation work, but does provide something like scientific knowledge of China’s cyber policy, which is what I’m most interested in. Perhaps I should move on, or take other recommendations for reading on this topic.

February 28, 2018

interesting article about business in China

I don’t know much about China, really, so I’m always fascinated to learn more.

This FT article, “Anbang arrests demonstrates hostility to business”, by Jamil Anderlini, provides some wonderful historical context to a story about the arrest of an insurance oligarch.

In ancient times, merchants were at the very bottom of the four official social classes, below warrior-scholars, farmers and artisans. Although some became very rich they were considered parasites in Chinese society.

Ever since the Han emperors established the state salt monopoly in the second century BCE (remnants of which remain to this day), large-scale business enterprises have been controlled by the state or completely reliant on the favour of the emperor and the bureaucrat class.

In the 20th century, the Communist emperor Mao Zedong effectively managed to stamp out all private enterprise for a while.

Until the party finally allowed “capitalists” to join its ranks in 2002, many of the business activities carried out by the resurgent merchant class were technically illegal.

China’s rich lists are populated by entrepreneurs operating in just a handful of industries — particularly real estate and the internet.

Tycoons like Mr Wu who emerge in state-dominated sectors are still exceedingly rare. They are almost always closely linked to one of the old revolutionary families exercising enormous power from the shadows.

Everything about this is interesting.

First, in Western scholarship we rarely give China credit for its history of bureaucracy in the absence of capitalism. In the well know Weberian account, bureaucracy is an institutional invention that provides regular rule of law so that capitalism can thrive. But China’s history is one that is statist “from ancient times”, but with effective bureaucracy from the beginning. A managerialist history, perhaps.

Which makes the second point so unusual: why, given this long history of bureaucratic rule, are Internet companies operating in a comparatively unregulated way? This seems like a massive concession of power, not unlike how (arguably) the government of the United States conceded a lot of power to Silicon Valley under the Obama administration.

The article dramatically foreshadows a potential power struggle between Xi Jinping’s consolidated state and the tech giant oligarchs:

Now that Chinese President Xi Jinping has abolished his own term limits, setting the stage for him to rule for life if he wants to, the system of state patronage and the punishment of independent oligarchs is likely to expand. Any company or billionaire who offends the emperor or his minions will be swiftly dealt with in the same way as Mr Wu.

There is one group of Chinese companies with charismatic — some would say arrogant — founders that enjoy immense economic power in China today. They would seem to be prime candidates if the assault on private enterprise is stepped up.

Internet giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu are not only hugely profitable, they control the data that is the lifeblood of the modern economy. That is why Alibaba founder Jack Ma has repeatedly said, including to the FT, that he would gladly hand his company over to the state if Beijing ever asked him to. Investors in BABA can only hope it never comes to that.

That is quite the expression of feudal fealty from Jack Ma. Truly, a totally different business culture from that of the United States.

July 27, 2015

the state and the household in Chinese antiquity

It’s worthwhile in comparison with Arendt’s discussion of Athenian democracy to consider the ancient Chinese alternative. In Alfred Huang’s commentary on the I Ching, we find this passage:

The ancient sages always applied the principle of managing a household to governing a country. In their view, a country was simply a big household. With the spirit of sincerity and mutual love, one is able to create a harmonious situation anywhere, in any circumstance. In his Analects, Confucius says,

From the loving example of one household,
A whole state becomes loving.
From the courteous manner of one household,
A whole state becomes courteous.

Comparing the history of Europe and the rise of capitalistic bureaucracy with the history of China, where bureaucracy is much older, is interesting. I have comparatively little knowledge of the latter, but it is often said that China does not have the same emphasis on individualism that you find in the West. Security is considered much more important than Freedom.

The reminder that the democratic values proposed by Arendt and Horkheimer are culturally situated is an important one, especially as Horkheimer claims that free burghers are capable of producing art that expresses universal needs.

Tag: China