Wing Ki Lee

NETWORK UNAVAILABLE: PLATFORM, PERFORMATIVITY, AND EVERYDAY LIFE DECISION- MAKING PROCESSES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE NETWORK CULTURE

Abstract

This paper problematizes assumptions of global all-pervading ‘available’ net- work culture by examining ‘network unavailability’ phenomenon in contemporary Chinese network culture through a post-colonial critique. The central argument of ‘network unavailable’ in is contextualized by the performativity of the and the Golden Shield Project, Chinese media artist Fei Jun’s net art project Interesting World (2019) in the Venice Biennale and network happenings during the 2019 Anti-extradition Law Amendment Bill protests in . Through these examples the author argues that network culture in China is political and geopolitical and the discussion of networks should go beyond mere structuralism and emphasize the everyday life, tactical, and microscopic decision-making process.

APRJA Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020 ISSN 2245-7755

CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’. Wing Ki Lee: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE

If modern colonialism has been initi- draws our attention to countries that are often ated and shaped by the West, then the called ‘technologically backward’ in terms of postcolonial enterprise is still operating technological development. The data also al- within the limits of colonial history and lows us to depart from an Eurocentric focus, has not yet gone beyond a parasitic to engage the major stakeholder of network form of critique… Globalization without users, and expand the demographics of net- deimperialization is simply a disguised work users to the ‘rest of the world’. What is reproduction of imperialist conquest. the experience of the network for 854 million (Chen, Asia as Method: Towards users in China in comparison to what Deimperialization 2) is commonly known through existing schol- arly research in network culture? China is not This paper seeks to unpack and problematize absent from academic literature recently in assumptions of omnipresence and totality network culture and media studies (for exam- of a global all-pervading ‘available’ network ple, Schneider 2018; Li 2019; Neves 2020), culture by examining ‘network unavailability’ but a critical perspective on the nature of its in contemporary Chinese network culture network culture will be helpful to contextual- through a post-colonial critique. ize thinking, expectations, opposite forces, The central research question of the and perhaps the future of network culture in paper is straightforward, that is, to under- China, as well as elsewhere. In this essay, as stand network culture in contemporary such, I take the unavailable network as the China, that in itself may reconcile, concede, starting point of my enquiry. and contradict the experience of global, In what follows, the notion of ‘network often ‘Eurocentric,’ available ‘World Wide unavailable’ is informed by two conceptual Web’ network culture. To begin with, one layers. The frst, the macroscopic layer, refers might ask why contemporary China in the to the network infrastructure and platform, discussion of networks from a postcolonial in this case the Great Firewall (GFW) and perspective? It is generally understood that the Golden Shield Project (GSP) of China. the USA and Europe are leading countries The Great Firewall of China, being a gate- in the development of information technology way and a self-contained network system, and the discourse of network culture, and yet in itself is conceived as a parallel universe China, interestingly, has the highest number to the Internet (Griffth 2019). This ‘wall’ is of Internet users in the world, and there are constructed not only to block and isolate other non-EuroAmerican countries that one itself from global information technology and may overlook. In 2019, China had approxi- its circulation, but to remain operational as mately 854 million Internet users reported by a network infrastructure within the cyber ter- the Internet World Stats that is three times ritory of China; whereas the Golden Shield that of the USA (293 million) and eleven times Project is the agent of the Great Firewall to that of Germany (79 millions). The top ten execute tasks, mainly through censorship, countries with the highest number of Internet blocking, and fltering of information from users are China (1st), India (2nd), Indonesia and approved by the Chinese state govern- (4th), Brazil (5th), Nigeria (6th), Russia (8th), ment and the . In Bangladesh (9th), and Mexico (10th).[1] a nutshell, both the GFW and GSP dem- The statistics tellingly shift our attention to onstrate the unwillingness to partake in the the discussion of network culture informed ‘EuroAmericentric’ thus ‘imperialistic’ Internet by the user-demographic perspective and model for political-economical-technological

131 APRJA Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020 reasons, and a withdrawal and resistance a model of information system and technol- to global information circulation and global ogy, and to debunk some of the dominant network culture. discourse in the discussion of network Secondly, the microscopic layer, the culture in a global context. The discussion notion of ‘network unavailable’ is addressed that I draw upon below aims to reveal how by artistic practices and a politics of every- non-EuroAmerican network culture produces day life that questions the taken-for-granted effects locally and on the global scale. availability and openness of what network A few more contextualizations on the culture once promised. I draw case studies notion of ‘network’ in contemporary China and experiences from contemporary artistic network culture are needed. Firstly, I would practice in China and the everyday experi- like to stress that the discussion is not merely ence, primarily the 2019 Anti-extradition Law framed by geographical or territorial defni- Amendment Bill protests in Hong Kong, and tions but is more a ‘stack’ of interacting lay- through these outline key characteristics of ers. Secondly, the discussion and defnition a ‘network unavailable’. These activities and of network here are not only descriptions of practices, I argue, could be formulated as a the age-old belief of ‘guanxi’, which in socio- provisional challenge, and/or resistance to logical terms is a personal social network and network culture in China. All in all, network its associate power in the Chinese context. culture in China is not merely a matter of ex- Rather, I see network culture in China as clusion and protectionism, a distinction of the multifaceted in how the political-economical- real and the counterfeit (or the performed), technological aspects contribute to shape but a dialectical operation to allow us to it. Network culture in China is informed by rethink the current state of global network ideas such as nationhood, cyber national- culture through its decolonization. ism, economic protectionism, and political Let me briefy defne the scope and hegemony, and practiced through informa- terms of postcolonial studies and decoloniz- tion and algorithmic-ideological control. It ing technology before the discussion pro- is further complicated by the sociopolitical ceeds. In “Digital Postcolonialism” (2015), relationship between China, Hong Kong, Jandrić and Kuzmanić follow Edward Said’s , (the Sinophone), and their relation- (1993) argument and establish the concept ships with the rest of the world. I would argue ‘digital postcolonialism’ that “should start the notion of ‘network’ in China network from… geographical thinking in the digital culture is a complicity that is established by worlds… [and] consists of the dialectic be- disconnection, unavailability, and withdrawal. tween an object and its representation, a It is imperative to discuss the confguration territory and its map” (Jandrić and Kuzmanić and infuence of China’s network culture and 38). The geopolitics of the digital has already practice and, through that, demonstrate how been demonstrated in the aforementioned network unavailable, instead of the common- Internet World Stats (2019) example. Along sensical ‘network available,’ provides a con- this line of thinking, the conceptualization of text for discussion. This discussion gradually the decolonizing technology, I argue, is to go extends to concepts and questions related beyond the established geographical/binary to such things as protectionism, censorship, oppositions of, for instance, the West/rest, transgression and resistance and through the global North/global South, the techno- online/offine networks. logical superior/inferior, and use the example In what ways should we understand of China, which is often not considered as China and the network unavailable culture as

132 Wing Ki Lee: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE such? First of all, the GFW offers a geopoliti- To continue this line of thought, the cal, infrastructural, and informational platform Great Firewall of China is hence constructed to identify cyber protectionism in China and through how the Chinese government in- in the global context. A network ‘gateway’ vents an information technology network that that started operations in 1998, it is consid- is built against the notion of openness and ered as an ‘alternative model’ or a ‘parallel liberation of information. The GFW withdraws universe’ to that of the Internet. Thus meta- and blocks globally recognized information phors used to describe the GFW of China is and services and in itself is a defense mech- a ‘wall,’ a ‘shield,’ a ‘sword’ and a ‘war’ in anism, and through that, to construct a state itself (Griffth, 2019). The aforementioned machine and algorithmic-ideological appa- analogy by James Griffth (2019) outlines the ratus that allows censorship of information. competitiveness, if not counterfeit nature, of For example, search engines in China flter the GFW of China. As an ‘alternative’ web anti-government and anti-CCP information in model, China has its own search engine the name of proper governance, civil or cyber (Baidu instead of ), social media and protectionism, and cyber nationalism. Such a messaging apps (Weibo and Wechat instead defense mechanism through censorship ex- of Facebook and WhatsApp), its own e- tends to social control. According to research commerce mobile platform (Alipay), its own by Repnikova and Fang (2018), netizens in Uber (Didi) and many more. These ‘com- China ‘co-produce’ political persuasion that mon’ websites and apps, such as Google, favours the communist regime in the online Facebook, Uber, and WhatsApp and more sphere through offcial state online media, recently Wikipedia (since April 2020) are also expansion of government Weibo and WeChat blocked in China. accounts, and through grassroots patriotic The parallel/alternative universe anal- bloggers in the name of civilizing information ogy is evident by how a Chinese version of management and as ‘authoritarian par- global networks is created, operated, and ticipatory digital persuasion 2.0’ (Repnikova functioned similar to an earlier Eurocentric and Fang, 2018). The incorporation, or model of information and . It shows precisely the détournement, of the state and that no matter how much a Chinese version authoritarian propaganda model and through wants to depart from the World Wide Web, it grassroots expression and disinformation inevitably sprung from there. At the beginning has its strong presence in the platform poli- of this essay, I cited a passage from Taiwanese tics of China. The practice of disinformation cultural studies scholar Chen Kuan-Hsing in in contemporary China will further illustrate Asia as Method: Towards Deimperialization. how network, platform, and censorship be- In this passage, Chen argues that the ‘post- come an algorithmic-ideological apparatus. colonial enterprise’ is always undermined by Fake news in China is either prohibited colonial history without critical examination, or censored by the Golden Shield Project which could can also relate be situated in the (also known as the National Public Security discussion of network culture studies (Chen Work Informational Project) or even created 2). The ‘alternative’ requires by the Project itself. The Internet meme of close and critical examination of why and Chinese leader and Winnie the how such network operativity is drawn on the Pooh which is banned in China without doubt very idea of disconnection from the global illustrates this idea. The WeChatSCOPE network, despite being heavily infuenced by (https://wechatscope.jmsc.hku.hk), an online it. database and research project developed by

133 APRJA Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020 the Journalism and Media Studies Centre ‘autonomous’ network model, that operates at the University of Hong Kong, monitors and counteracts. I am not praising the GFW, selected WeChat public accounts and nor am I advocating manipulation of disinfor- detects ‘removed’ contents.[2] A scholarly mation and state censorship of information database that allows citizen and researchers on a global scale. Rather, a different, if not to search and visualize censored content in an alternative and decolonized, information China, the WeChatSCOPE project, however, technology model should be recognized. A does experience ‘error’ and ‘failed to start’ previous non-Chinese model and its devel- messages from time to time. Is it a technical opment before the Internet, for instance the faulty or is it being blocked? The concept of French Minitel terminal project (1980-2012), ‘fake news’ in China further elaborates and which has largely been unacknowledged contests how the West considers ‘fake news’. in the discussion of network culture. The In China refers to ‘fake news’ points to news Minitel project not only provides a critical and disinformation that is neither approved example to supplement the history and by nor favorable to the Chinese government. knowledge of a nationalized and ‘pre-history’ Interestingly, fake news that is favorable to information technological platform, but also the CCP could be widely circulated, as state demonstrates how nationalism instructs and propaganda. Recently, how the Chinese infuences a network model (Mailland and government re-routes COVID-19 news is a Driscoll 2017). The Great Firewall of China vivid example. The prohibition of politically is not the only national network in the global sensitive content and economic protection- arena, other totalitarian regimes have their ism addresses the political economy of own, for instance, North Korea operates the network culture in China. Network availability Kwangmyong network, a national intranet and is a political-economical decision and ex- a browser, Naenara (http://naenara.com.kp) pression. I argue that the network culture of that can be accessed outside North Korea. withdrawal, exclusion, and blocking in China These are networks of political economy, reinforces layers of ‘network unavailability’ in economic protectionism, and cyber national- everyday life: assuming the network itself is ism: networks that are not made to make a utopia of the free circulation of information, information available to all, but to serve the however network culture in China is operated cause of national interest. Cyber nationalism through withdrawal, blocking, and exclusion operates on a language level; for instance, it of information under the state’s control and is not easily accessible to browse and search censorship. However, practice of alternative information from Japan or Russia if one does browsing and access to the Internet beyond not know Japanese or Russian. The univer- the Great Firewall does exist, for example sality of computational language (considered the infamous Fanqiang (to literally “go over to be English) needs to be questioned in the the wall”), despite being an illegal activity in discussion of network culture. Both the Great China. The practice of Fanqiang could be Firewall of China and the Kwangmyong net- seen as a tactic of resistance that further work are rather extreme illustrations of cyber problematizes nationalism and network cul- nationalism, yet they are also rather powerful ture in China. examples from the decolonization of technol- On a global scale, as a closed national ogy perspective. network system itself and operated in par- However, we should not reduce our allel to the Internet, the Great Firewall of understanding of Chinese network culture China demonstrates a decentralized and as being merely a closed network system

134 Wing Ki Lee: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE according to the notion of nation-state and is pervasive in contemporary China. There geographical/informational territories. As is an estimated that over 200 million surveil- Benjamin Bratton points out regarding the lance cameras have been installed in China Sino-Google conficts in the essay “The to aid in ‘policing’ the Social Credit system. Black Stack” (2014), China is also involved The curatorial title Ruizhi (intelligence) may in the global network infrastructure, for also describe China’s ambition to develop ar- example in the platform of the cloud as a tifcial intelligence, and technology in the arts stack (Bratton, 2014). Recently Chinese 5G and everyday life, as well as the formation, network equipment provider ’s pro- building and social-engineering of a smart posal to build mobile network infrastructure city. This artwork is a snapshot of the image is being repudiated and replaced in the UK, economy in China. Canada, and many other countries. This is Fei Jun’s work as an example of an for political-economic reasons rather than image surveillance environment, can be being solely a network-technological deci- explained as two conceptual layers: through sion. The cloud, the layer, the user, and the identifcation and through experiencing the network infrastructure are no longer defned system. A camera captures visitors who by geographical sovereignty and the nation- approach the lens media projections in real- state. The globality of network culture is evi- time. The artifcial intelligence programme dent when we look at the operational aspect identifed a handful of prescribed identities and the black box politics of such. And yet, of the visitors, in rather limited keywords the Great Firewall, Kwangmyong, the deep and categories (Fig. 1). I was identifed as a web, the dark web, all these microcosms ‘dancing-master’ because of my body move- outlines and questions the assumption, ment, even though I am not good at dancing. integration, and interconnectedness of one Two other ‘dancing masters’ were also identi- widely available network. The utopic vision fed. Identifcation is also performed through of interconnectedness of a network should a colour-coding system: an old man, a tourist, be called into question, as the commonly a Floridian, a couple as ‘kin,’ a shoulder bag known available network is only the tip of an and an evening bag. These categories could (network) iceberg. be understood precisely as context-specifc After this discussion of macrocosm keywords, with biennale visitors inevitably and the infrastructure, we now return to the falling into some of the categories based argument of ‘network unavailable’ to layers on prediction, rather than identifcation. of the experience at the microscopic level. The ‘identifcation’ was constantly mutat- Firstly, I am going to focus on an artistic ing and ever shifting. A moment afterwards practice from China to start the discussion. more categories were identifed: a guard, a At the China Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019, Japanese, an instigator, a gal, a grandfather, media artist Fei Jun’s interactive installa- a saunterer, and a clutch bag. tion Interesting World (2019) exhibits the Questions arise. Is Interesting World performativity of the network culture of China a functional and activated face recognition that could only be achieved by an offine system? Is it a live recording for image system. Interesting World is a set of media data mining? What was the database of projections operated by a presumably offine the prescribed identity and categories? and ‘faux’ face-recognition technology. The Are we, the visitors, being watched, data- installation brings visitors to a simulated im- mined, analysed, and archived? (Was there age surveillance environment mimicking that a consent form available to sign and agree

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Figure 1: Fei Jun’s Interesting World at the China artistic practice. Rather, Interesting World Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019. performs network culture in China as a mat- ter of image surveillance, body and gestural to before participating in this work?)[3] Or is it identifcation, and social monitoring and en- just an offine façade to demonstrate China’s gineering that are of national interest and world power in imaging technology, artifcial identity: therefore, it makes perfect sense intelligence, and state’s surveillance in a major to exhibit this work in a national pavilion in world visual arts exposition? Unlike the state a major contemporary art world exposition. surveillance system in China or any in other The work is a performance of cyber national- geopolitical confguration, visitors stand in front ism and the political economy of technology of and experience the two sides of image tech- in China rather than facilitating and execut- nology: the capturing, by a surveillance cam- ing performativity of net art. The unavailable era and the analytics, through the visualization network demonstrated here describes tech- (such as color-coding, keywords, categories, nological backwardness merely through dis- and identities). The experience is produced by playing rather than executing. Technological a choreographed and performative act of arti- backwardness, intriguingly, could be consid- fcial intelligence to demonstrate China’s place ered as a postcolonial tactic. Disconnecting in world power relations; and at the back end the network so as to perform and operate of the work, perhaps, there is no database, no similarly to a network are tactical tools to network, or network unavailable. contextualize this work in the discussion of Fei Jun’s Interesting World at the Venice network culture and contemporary arts in Biennale 2019 provides a critical narrative to China. It is a statement of ‘intelligence’ and examine the performativity aspect of net art. ambition, even though it may not be working Net art resides, substantiates, and exhibits on at all. or through the network. A presumably offine This essay will summarize the notion network may not give permission to constitute of unavailable network as it pertains to the how a network is created and responded in an political aspect of everyday life in Chinese

136 Wing Ki Lee: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE network culture. Let’s take Hong Kong 2019 when no public network is available. Elderly protest and the fow of information involved memes involving pro-democratic messages as an example. Protester’s communication to the Hong Kong’s government and Chinese and grassroots propaganda of the Hong Communist Party is sent through airdrop (via Kong 2019 protest relies heavily on network Bluetooth) that iPhone users can choose technology. We see, read, and produce to accept (or decline) in the public domain. pro-democratic persuasive statements, be Intriguingly, however, Android users seems to they textual, visual or temporal, on social be excluded from such an alternative network media. However, censorship of information model. Notwithstanding, the elderly meme by authoritarian government does occur as establishes the process of decentralization responses to the rise of digital activism. The of disseminating images and information. An censorship tactics here does not only refer to alternative ‘propagandist network’ is created the fltering and banning of online information because of the fear of unavailable network but an assumption to shut down the Internet (Fig. 2). silence public opinion and pro-democratic www.lihkg.com, a web-based Bulletin demand. For example, the messaging app Board System (BBS)/forum, which could Telegram has been widely used by citizens be considered a Hong Kong version of and protesters in Hong Kong to communicate, Reddit, is the platform of information dis- and yet the app and certain pro-democratic semination amongst the protesters during chat groups had also received massive cyber- the Anti-Extradition Bill Protest in Hong attacks during the yearlong protest. Citizens Kong. However, for many occasions during and protesters have also communicated via the 2019 protest many BBS platforms in a peer-to-peer network to avoid state surveil- Hong Kong were bombarded with Distributed lance from the government authority and an Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that tem- anticipated Internet shutdown. porarily terminated communication between A particular type of Internet meme is the protesters for a short period of time until created that is operated and circulated via the gateway and service could come back peer-to-peer network and targeted to reach online (Fig. 3). The fear of an inaccessible those who may spend their time mostly offine and unavailable network, that also implies and who perhaps are apolitical. For example, and associates to fundamental Expression the ‘elderly meme’, as the name suggests, of Freedom and amongst is a type of Internet meme that is popular Hong Kong’s citizen had been heightened. amongst senior citizens in the Chinese Livestream videos by photojournalists and context and originally may not be made and citizen photojournalists were broadcast via meant for political persuasion. Its image- social media platforms, such as Facebook stylistics, often involving the juxtaposition of and Instagram. However, the great number Buddhist symbols, icons, and text, character- of reactions by viewers such as ‘like,’ ‘love,’ izes itself as an image apparatus that discon- or ‘angry,’ for the broadcasted video would nects from the network and the discourse of experience a time lag because of information social and digital activism.[4] During Hong overloading. Viewers’ reactions can be made Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill Protest in 2019, with just a click of the button, bandwidth was the elderly meme becomes spreadable and often limited. The temporality of the network, popular. This kind of meme also highlights real-time viewing, and reaction are complex how the use of peer-to-peer network works in the sense that it is not a linear progres- in the public sphere at a critical moment sion but are many micro-networks per se.

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Figure. 2: The Elderly Meme in Hong Kong, frst generated and sent via Bluetooth then printed out and given post-digital existence.

Figure 3: The visualization of DDoS attack by the Digital Attack Map on the 1st July 2019.

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Overloaded bandwidth was also not unusual Hong Kong protests of 2019 is the opposite at the protest site. With a mass amount of way of thinking about networks; it is a tactical data traffc by protesters constantly checking way of network forming that is based on deci- chats, threads, maps, and video-streaming, sions made in-situ, and is often ephemeral. the public Wi-Fi and the mobile data network The network would be dissolved once the were so overloaded that it could not. What situation is resolved by certain decisions Hong Kong protesters experienced during made, and another network may evolve the yearlong protest are on the both edges as another situation arises. The reason to of the Internet: networks that bring people introduce the water metaphor to conclude an and pro-democratic demands together; net- essay on unavailable networks in China is works that may disappoint us because they explained through: (1) networks are political could not function as the way it promised. and geopolitical; (2) the advancement and The aforementioned examples of network universality of an available network could be behavior are linked to network unavailability a façade; and (3) the discussion of networks as a way to control information. This not only should go beyond mere structuralism and reveals the public fear of network unavail- emphasize the everyday life, tactical, and ability, but also the fatigue and fragility of any microscopic decision-making process. publicly available network. The aforementioned case studies, What is the lesson learned from the the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield, 2019 protests in Hong Kong that is related Interesting World, and the network hap- to network culture? It could be referred to penings in the Hong Kong 2019 protest, the naming of the protest itself: the water illustrates certain phenomena of network revolution. ‘Be water’ is a common saying unavailability such as provision, challenges, amongst the protesters in Hong Kong. It and resistance to the network culture in the originated from Bruce Lee’s catchphrase contemporary Chinese context. Will China “Be Water, My Friend” from the 1960s and become an alternative ‘democratic’ network 1970s Hong Kong that describes the capac- model as opposed to the Eurocentric and ity, volume, and strength of water in the dominating Internet? It is dangerous to as- Chinese Kung Fu manner. In 2019 the say- sert democracy is happening in the network ing stressed the importance of fuidity, which culture in China. In the essay, I illustrate, is the exact opposite of the 2014 umbrella and hence problematize what has been un- movement: solidity and occupying. Here, acknowledged in the discussion of network the water political metaphor is extended to culture by using China as an example. The describe the network. It aspires and advo- China model serves as model of dialectical cates a formless and fuid network that is reasoning to critically rethink and reexamine non-hierarchical by nature. Referencing the global network culture through a post-colonial recent anti-totalitarian regime protest glob- and technological decolonization gaze. ally, the formless and shapeless network is Throughout the 2019 Hong Kong pro- explained through street-smart, decentral- tests the Hong Kong government advocated ized, guerilla tactics. The notion of network, the imposition of the Emergency Regulations also, becomes a decision-making process Ordinance (ERO) that would exercise regula- rather than a social engineering structure. tion and control of information on the Internet A pre-empt network formation is often top- that would include regulating or banning the down structure that facilitates managerialism Telegram messaging app and shutting down and thus social control. What occurred in the pro-democratic web-based forums such as

139 APRJA Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020 www.lihkg.com. The Emergency Regulations inevitably connected. The utopic globalism Ordinance, if exercised in the future, could be of information (without borders) is in danger. seen as the extension of and rerouting to the Globalization was a promise to humankind in Great Firewall of China. The Ordinance itself the twentieth Century. Globalization without is controversial and yet it hints at the end of deimperialization is hypocritical, as Chen freedom of expression, speech, and the fow argues at the very beginning of the essay. of Information. The fake news incidents also What we are facing in the twenty-frst cen- suggest China’s position in controlling and tury, however, is a dialectics of disguise and manipulating public opinion and information reproduction. If China is the future, dare I ask, in the global arena. All this suggests a new would the China model otherwise have the China’s model of unavailable network that potential to infuence post-globalized infor- seems distant and yet it is happening. In the mation structure? Will ‘network unavailable’, course of writing, while the Sino-American state authoritarianism, and protectionism be relationship becomes more intense, the an inevitable network future? Chinese government has already taken ac- tion to introduce the National Security Law in Hong Kong that will immensely reshape Acknowledgement the global dynamic of politics, economy, and information structure and practice in Hong Kong and beyond. I would like to thank the anonymous In May 2020, following the Executive reviewer(s) and Sudipto Basu’s suggestion Order on Preventing Online Censorship by for academic literature in postcolonial the White House, social media tycoon Mark studies and network culture. Zuckerberg was ‘worried’ that the Chinese model would be infuence and replicated by ‘other’ countries, and he urged the Western countries to take the initiative and coopera- tion on Internet regulation “globally”.[5] In the Pan-Asia context, the ‘Remove China Apps’, an mobile application that identifes and helps removing apps of Chinese origin developed by OneTouch AppLabs, an India-based startup company, received more than one million download when it was frst launched in May 2020. The developmental trajectories of networks in the global arena is moving to- wards making networks unavailable, and the China example could be introduced as a rea- soning for this, or the reason itself. The rival over the control of networks and information technology prevents, and also establishes, the network unavailable phenomenon by and large: of China and the West, the replica and the original, the powerful and the other powerful. Nationalism and netionalism are

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Notes Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method: Towards Deimperialization. Duke University Press, 2010. [1] “Top 20 Countries with the Highest Number of Internet Users.” Internet World Griffth, James. The Great Firewall of China: Stats, 2019. https://www.internetworldstats. How to Build and Control an Alternative com/top20.htm/. Accessed 10 April 2020. Version of the Internet. Zed Books. 2019.

[2] “WeChatSCOPE: an insight to censor- Jandrić, Petar and Ana Kuzmanić. “Digital ship in China.” Journalism and Media Post-colonialism.” In IADIS International Studies Centre, The University of Hong Journal on WWW/Internet. Vol. 13. No. 2, Kong, 2018. https://wechatscope.jmsc.hku. 2015, pp. 34-51. hk. Accessed 10 April 2020 Li, Luzhou, Zoning China: Online Video, [3] The question seems unnecessary Popular Culture, and the Taste. The MIT but Shu-Lea Cheang, a media artist who Press, 2019. represents Taiwan in the Venice Biennale 2019, also has her take on surveillance Mailland, Julien and Kevin Driscoll. Minitel: and technology at Palazzo delle Prigioni, Welcome to the Internet. The MIT Press, a former Venetian prison. Before visitors 2017. walking into the site-specifc installation work, a privacy policy in accordance to the Neves, Joshua. Underglobalization: EU regulation with regard to the processing Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of personal data and on the free movement of Legitimacy. Duke University Press, 2020. of such data is shown to the visitor. Repnikova, Maria and Kecheng Fang. [4] Please refer to the Elderly Meme “Authoritarian Participatory Persuasion 2.0: Generator. http://fles.rei.idv.tw/thumb/older. Netizens as Thought Work Collaborators in html. Accessed 10 April 2020. China.” In Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 27, p. 113, 2018, pp. 763-779. [5] For details of the Executive Order from the White House, please see https://www. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/exec- Vintage Books, 1993. utive-order-preventing-online-censorship/. Accessed 5 June 2020. Schneider, Florian. China’s Digital Nationalism. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Works cited

Bratton, Benjamin. “The Black Stack.” e-fux journal #53. March 2014. https://www.e-fux. com/journal/53/59883/the-black-stack/ Accessed 10 April 2020.

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