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(Title of the Thesis)* OUTSOURCED AUTHORITARIANISM: THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF STATE CONTROL IN CHINESE MAYOR’S HOTLINES AND THE INTERNET-OPINION INDUSTRY by Rui Hou A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada August, 2020 Copyright ©Rui Hou, 2020 Abstract How is the market engaged in the grassroots governance of authoritarian China? My work addresses this question by exploring state-market collaborations in the industry of Internet control and the system of Mayor’s Hotline. Drawing on rich empirical evidence, including ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, document analysis, my work finds that market actors are actively engaged in state control and government outsourcing is a critical mechanism promoting the state-market collaboration. I develop the concept of outsourced authoritarianism to describe the phenomena that authoritarian regimes rely on government outsourcing to incorporate private actors into the institutions of state control. My work detailed shows, by outsourcing the frontline control to private sectors, the tentacles of state control have touched a wider range of the social population. This finding challenges the traditional wisdom that authoritarian domination is monopolized by state actors and suggests a networked and multi-leveled understanding of authoritarian power. However, even though government outsourcing promotes the coordination between private actors and governments in the institutions of state control, it does not mean the profit motive of the market has been smoothly integrated into the control apparatus of the state. My evidence further demonstrates that outsourced authoritarianism also brings new governance problems. In both cases, the engagement of private actors proceeds through the mode of government outsourcing, which creates a dual-pressure structure under which frontline operators need to handle pressures from both the state and the market. I argue that this dual-pressure structure represents a special form of state- market complex within which the conflicting rationalities between authoritarian control and market profiting lead to dilemmas of governance at the grassroots level. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for helping with this research project: All the research participants who took the time to answer my questions and who contributed so thoroughly through their further comments and emails. I would particularly like to thank those who agreed to be interviewed and helped me find more interviewees. Professor Sarita Srivastava, my supervisor, who guided me so positively and who always made me feel confident in the value of my work after talking with her. Professor Diana Fu, who helped me make the connection with a broader community of China studies researchers, without which I would still be bothered by the anxiety of academic abandonment. The surveillance studies community at Queen’s University, especially to Professor David Lyon and Professor David Murakami Wood, whose insight and knowledge into the subject matter steered me through this research. Jane, my editor and writing coach, who polished all my published articles. And my biggest thanks to my family for all the support you have shown me through the past 13 years of academic training. And for my wife Xiao, as I promised in my master’s dissertation, the last line of my acknowledgment is reserved for you. (I keep my word this time, but I guess you have to share this part with our son in my next acknowledgment.) Thanks for all your support, encouragement, and patience. iii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .............................................................................................................................................. vi Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research questions .............................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Main findings and argument ............................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Methodology and data ......................................................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Site A: the system of Mayor’s Hotline (MH) ............................................................................. 10 1.3.2 Site B: the industry of Internet opinion ...................................................................................... 12 1.4 Chapter outline .................................................................................................................................. 13 Chapter 2 Literature Review ....................................................................................................................... 15 2.1 China’s authoritarian toolkit and protest repression ......................................................................... 15 2.2 Economic privatization and authoritarian resilience ......................................................................... 20 2.3 Government outsourcing and neoliberal governance ........................................................................ 22 Chapter 3 The commercialization of Internet-opinion management .......................................................... 27 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 29 Literature review ..................................................................................................................................... 32 Methods .................................................................................................................................................. 34 Results ..................................................................................................................................................... 34 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 51 References ............................................................................................................................................... 55 Chapter 4 Neoliberal governance or digitalized autocracy? The rising market for online opinion surveillance in China. .................................................................................................................................. 59 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 61 Chinese internet control: From censoring information to managing online opinion .............................. 63 Neoliberal governance, data politics and online opinion surveillance .................................................... 68 References ............................................................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 5 Outsourced authoritarian governance: the privatization of Mayor’s Hotlines in China ............. 74 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 76 Theory ..................................................................................................................................................... 78 Case and Method..................................................................................................................................... 82 Governance Labour in the MH System................................................................................................... 85 iv Frontline Dilemmas ................................................................................................................................ 96 Conclusion：the privatization of authoritarian governance ................................................................. 100 References ............................................................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 6 The booming industry of Chinese state Internet control .......................................................... 108 State resilience ...................................................................................................................................... 110 Monitoring Internet opinion for social stability .................................................................................... 111 Controlling Internet using for-profit agencies ...................................................................................... 113 The commodification of Internet control .............................................................................................. 114 The market mechanism ........................................................................................................................
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