Since the nineteen nineties, and with state support, the ‘big tech’ companies in China swiftly have become the drivers behind the country’s dynamic and growing digital economy. At first they adapted products and business models from overseas but then started to make their own way. Millions of Chinese citizens were to discover new opportunities for ID design and exchange of ideas, whether via online discussion platforms, games or blogs. This level of enthusiasm for technology drowned out warning voices pointing to evidence of the destructive consequences of digitalisation and extensive misuse of data by the state. Around the time of the summer Olympics 2008, China’s leaders started to restrict the amount of international data flow, officially blocked Twitter and Facebook in their country, and systematically invested in their own digital technologies. This process picked up further speed under Xi Jinping and the so-called new ‘cold war’ with the United States. So who are today’s central players to be found on China’s digital route to the future? How dependent are they on the state? And what kind of potential lurks within the new technologies for internal dissemination and democratisation? China expert, Kristin Shi-Kupfer, shines light on the subject.

*China’s rise to become a digital superpower

*Baldu, Alibaba and Tendent: how the private Chinese digital giants cope with overweening state power

*The first comprehensive study of China’s IT engineers and software developers, activists and civil rights campaigners, bloggers and hackers