00:00:02

Joanne Kuai

Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. I'm Joanne Kuai, your host for today. I'm a visiting Ph.D. student at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Joining me today to talk about her latest book, The Web of Meaning - The Internet and the Changing Chinese Society is Elaine Yuan, an Associate Professor and the director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Elaine, thank you so much for joining us here.

00:00:38

Elaine Yuan

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

00:00:41

Joanne Kuai

So shall we begin by a little bit of introduction of yourself? Can you tell us what have led you to your current research interests?

00:00:49

Elaine Yuan

Oh, yeah, sure. My current research interest focuses on social cultural implications of new media technologies because I guess my first job after my graduation from the college was working at the Audience Research Division of the China Central Television. So I was fascinated by the growing media industries ever since. So now, since the internet is one of the most important forms of media, so it's very natural for me to take on research projects, the subject of the internet.

00:01:27

Joanne Kuai

So your book is published this year. Congratulations. Can you tell us a little bit how you came to write the book?

00:01:35

Elaine Yuan

Oh, yeah, sure. As I said in the preface of the book that the Internet and China are probably among the most fascinating, dizzying developments in the world these days. So it's just very natural for me to think about along the lines like the role of the Internet in changing Chinese society. In the mainstream research of the Chinese internet, people mostly tend to focus on the political implications or economic implications of the Internet. My perspective is more to study the online population, what the users do online and what they talk about, what they debate about, how their actions and their symbolic activities may bear consequences on the changing society.

00:02:28

Joanne Kuai

So your book is titled The Web of Meaning. Why did you come up with this title? What do you want to convey through this title? What what does it mean by “the Web of Meaning”?

00:02:41

Elaine Yuan

Right! That's a good question. Actually, I borrow this phrase “the web of meaning” from the sociologist Max Weber, a German sociologist, who believed that humans make sense of the world wave their own web of meaning upon which all other practices are made, all other activities are understood and meanings originate from these that cultural symbolic activities that we, we self do. As I said, I'm interested in the cultural aspects of the Chinese internet to so and focus on what people make sense of changing society, what people make sense of their own changing positions in such a changing society through symbolic activities, through getting together to talk about their daily lives, their changing environment. So I borrow this term to reflect the culture aspect of the internet.

00:03:46

Joanne Kuai

The first chapter of your book touches on the Internet and the social changes in China, and you mentioned in your book that looking into the vernacular of the internet can offer us some clues to understand a fast-changing Chinese society. And you've mentioned a couple of words such as “杀马特” /shamate/ “smart” or 屌丝 /diaosi/“loser”, and very recently, you also see a new batch of words that's coming up, such as “involution”/ “内卷”or like “lying down”/ “躺平”. What kind of societal changes do you think this kind of new words reflect?

00:04:22

Yes. So these two words involution laying down are among a slew of most recent internet vernacular that people use these days. So that's a new examples of how the symbolic activities actually are most useful for us to observe and understand the Chinese society these days. So involution refers to the phenomena where people experience tough competition and without the prospect of growth or advancement. And lying down probably refers to people’s sense of hopeless, giving up. Some people argue that it may be a sign of a resistance, the weapon of the weak, if you will. So I guess this really reflects how the young Chinese online population feel or react to tough competition in education in their careers, and also reflects their complaints or anxiety over the exploitative work environment. I'm sure that you've also heard a term that appeared more or less about the same time, 996, refers to the long working hours which huge platform corporations such as Alibaba and Tencent. These new forms of economic development, based on new technologies based on technological developments, reflects the new economic models new forms of inequality. At the same time, because this is a very new phenomenon, so there there aren't any new social contract, accordingly. This sense of lack of job security, lack of social support, lack of social welfare programs such as limited educational resources, expensive housing market and so on, so forth. So it creates this tremendous sense of loss and sense of anxiety among younger generations. I would also argue that the popularity of these terms also reflects this kind of a lack of alternatives to the neoliberalist in the consumerist social imaginaries, because people pursuing bigger houses, bigger cars, better paid jobs and so on, so forth without the alternative imageries of a better society.

00:07:02

Joanne Kuai

Talking about inequality, there's actually still this huge digital divide in China, the gap between the urban and rural. You address a little bit in your book. Can you tell us what has the evolution been of this digital divide and what is the role of the Internet in bridging or widening this gap? And is there anything that can be done to eliminate this kind of inequality?

00:07:02

Elaine Yuan

Oh yes. I believe the Chinese model, if there is one, of technological and economic development, it's more or less motivated by nationalist, developmentalist and socialist goals, as well as the tensions between these goals. So the nationalist is more like we want to be independent. We don't want to be limited by foreign influences or foreign hegemony in light of the recent trade wars or recent sanctions by the United States on some tech firms in China. You can see this nationalist tendency sometimes plays in conflict with developmentalist approach, because to develop it, you need to integrate yourself into the global community, economic community. So you want to develop. But the same time, you are under the pressure of an outside hegemonic forces and the same time, inside, when you develop, you also have to keep up with the socialist, the legacy that is to make it in the more recent rhetoric, to make it more harmonious society. So these three different goals are always in tentions with each other. At the same time, technology also operates as a double-edged sword. I'll give you an example, nowadays, China almost has to become a cashless society. You go everywhere without having to pay with cash. But that creates issues with those who don't have access to mobile pay apps, especially the the poor and the elderly. At the same time, of course, one of the reasons this apps become so popular is because they do make daily life more convenient. So my point is that the Chinese government at the same time also put a lot of effort to promote the telecoms infrastructures as much as the effort put to promote to construct roads and high speed train systems. So telecommunications industries, especially the emerging e-commerce industry and the internet industries, are actively promoted by the Chinese government as a means to upgrade their industrial mode of development into a post industrial mode of community development and information mode of development.

00:10:13

I've got some the newest data from CNNIC, the official organization that publishes official data about statistics about the developments of the Chinese internet. According to the most recent CNNIC’s data, 90 percent of the poverty stricken villages, so a lot of the poor villages, are connected to the internet. More than 800 of them are covered by e-commerce services. Also, for instance, online education is also one of the focuses of governments at various levels. So, according to CNNIC, I see that the number of primary and secondary schools in China with internet connection has reached almost 99.7 percent. So almost all primary and secondary schools in China are online these days. So all these measures are means by the Chinese government to sort of eliminate or reduce poverty in China.

00:11:21

Joanne Kuai

In the book, there's a very interesting depiction about the Chinese interpretation of privacy. The Personal Data Protection Law is on the horizon. What would you think will be the impact of this law on the Chinese society? And actually, can we step back a little bit and just talk about what is the China's interpretation of privacy and how is it different from the Western perspective?

Elaine Yuan

I think the indigenous sense of privacy in China was a little bit different from what we understand, how it is understood in the Western perspective. Because in the West, privacy or the right to privacy are one of the fundamental principles in liberalism. It is where you draw the line between the individual, the self and the external forces. So it is first and foremost a way to curb the big government in the effort to limit the government power so that individuals can have freedom or free space to self actualize themselves, to realise their sense of purpose in life. And then you come to safety practices, how do individuals protect themselves against external forces. And I would argue that in China, we don't start from this fundamental sense of right. On the other hand, in practice, we do have this growing sense of individuality in Chinese society. So one of the purposes of this chapter in my book was to find a way to gauge how Chinese people understand privacy. So I went online and tried to observe and collect data from social media and observe how people talk about privacy and how people practice privacy. So as a result, after examining a large amount of social media data, I found there like many different dimensions when people use the word privacy in their daily lives. The largest realm is the private social realm, where people use the concept of privacy to sort of adjust to new emerging relational values, new social relations situated in changing Chinese society. For instance, they think about how they should treat each other, how much personal boundary or personal freedom, a personal space a person is allowed in relation to their mother, their spouses, their classmates and so on and so forth. So in that regard, it is sort of an organic response to changing socio economic environment. So this new law, it's comparable with GDPR, the European Union's version of personal data protection regulation and the Chinese state also asks individuals or organisations and businesses to respect and ask for users consent before they can collect, use, disseminate data. Although compared to GDPR, the Chinese version, in addition to individual rights, the Chinese version also puts emphasis on the national security goals. So in other words, we welcome this sort of regulations to protect individual rights to their data and to protect their their rights. But as I said, this law, it or this regulation, it operates within the field of information market. But then there are still social realm that does not exactly operate as a market. So the activities such as how you treat your spouse in terms of how much privacy you should give your husband or give your wife should not be regulated by laws regulations in the public sphere.

00:15:57

Joanne Kuai

So when we talk about the Chinese internet, there's one thing so hard not to address, which is to so-called Great Firewall of China. Salceda said there's a generational gap of the Chinese internet users between those who have experienced the early days of the free internet and those who grow up without, for example, access to Facebook or Instagram because of all this censorship and song even attributed, for example, the phenomenon of the “little pink”, the young patriots of China, to do this kind of censorship. So I'm just wondering, what is your take on that?

Elaine Yuan

Good questions. I agree, first of all, that censorship exists, exists in China, and nowadays we can observe very clearly that it is also existing in other parts of the world. But I think this metaphor the Great Firewall of China, it's a great exaggeration of how internet regulation works in China. And if the Great Firewall exists, it can only be worse since the surveillance technologies have become so advanced nowadays. So if it does exist, it probably operates in a much worse degree. And then secondly, I deeply doubt how effective this so-called firewall operates, because after all the little pinks, those those teenager girls, they made their names in activities outside the wall, in those high profile events all mostly took place on Facebook, which located outside the wall. For instance, these little pings, if you will, I personally very much don't like this label various reasons I don't want to elaborate here. So they organized… these teenager girls. Very boisterous, very vocal online. They are really good at the organizing themselves. And the reason for that is because most of these girls are avid fans of popular culture, popular idols. And so they usually organize themselves to support the pop culture idols, singers, pop stars. So that's how they get their tools,digital tools in those high profile online events in which they call their name. And then these popular culture operates in a global context. So their idols or from Japan, from Korea. So I would argue that they're not ignorant or isolated dopes, if you will. They're very much informed, very much skillful. In contrast, when you say that nowadays and versus earlier generations, I also want to quote some most recent data from CNNIC to show how much further integrated the internet in the chart in Chinese society.

00:19:27

Elaine Yuan

So the most recent figure of the Chinese online population is almost one billion, almost one in five of the world's users. And the proportions of these online population who are under 20 and above 50 years old of age have increased also significantly. In contrast to the early generation of online population who were mostly college students, younger generation or nowadays we have the majority or the largest portion of online population are middle school high school students. So in contrast to the so-called the little pinks, I'm more interested in these younger generation and less educated than earlier more elite generation of internet users. One interesting phenomenon is the 小镇青年, the youth from small towns. I'm more interested in a more drawn to their socio economic cultural lives than this more limited group of urban young girls who are very much part of the fan culture online. Since the small town use their use of the internet, how they live in in cyberspace and how they make sense of their lives, what kind of cultural expressions they have are much more interesting than little things in their nationalistic expression.

00:21:26

Joanne Kuai

Actually, last year was kind of a very turbulent and memorable year for all of us because of the COVID pandemic. I'm just wondering what would you say, how has COVID changed Chinese people's relationship with the internet?

00:21:48

Elaine Yuan

I think like the rest of the world, they the people relied on more the internet to in their daily lives. I also got data from CNNIC that the more than 80 million people going online in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. So that's a significant growth during the pandemic. So the same is true with the number of people who work remotely and who work online during the pandemic. But there are more people shopped online than people who use online education health care services during the pandemic. China has been the world's largest online retail market for the past six or seven years, and during the pandemic, the retail sales also jumped up by like 10 percent or so. And another trend is online broadcasting has become a new form of digital, a new part of a digital economy. Nearly more than 90 percent of all Chinese internet users watch online videos. It's even more than those who shop online. So online streaming. It has become so popular. So these are the trends during the pandemic. I guess similar trends can also be observed elsewhere in the world. And that's, you know, make the internet. A lot of industries and businesses suffered tremendously, but the internet industries definitely experienced tremendous growth during that period.

00:23:37

Joanne Kuai

And we're going to expect there to be more integrated into people's daily life, I imagine.

00:23:44

Elaine Yuan

Yes, I guess so, if if we cannot go completely, cannot go back to where we were before the pandemic and then probably will have to rely on.

00:24:02

Joanne Kuai

To adapt to the new reality. We’ve taken a lot of your time. I just have one last question for you. What are you working on right now? What are some of your current projects?

00:24:11

Elaine Yuan

Right. Yes. So it's time to start a new project. So I've been reading up on the history of the IT industries since the post-war era in the US, for instance, the California ideology in the sixties and seventies, and the development of the Silicon Valley, and then how the IT industries grow, the role of the state policies and so on and so forth. And it is part of an effort to understand the context of the global capitalism and the geopolitical context for the technological development in China. So I'm more interested and transitioning from the symbolic aspects of the internet to like political economy of the IT industries. And this is the area I'm currently working in.

00:25:14

Joanne Kuai

We look forward to seeing more of your research results. Then you can come back and share with us again.

00:25:20

Elaine Yuan

Yeah, I'd love to.

00:25:22

Joanne Kuai

Yes. So, Elanie, thank you so much for joining us today and to our listeners, Elainie’s book The Web of Meaning was published by the University of Toronto Press this year. And you can also connect with her on Twitter @ElaineYuan with me @JoanneKuai. Thank you for listening to the Nordic Asia Podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.