Yu Hong
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040917
- eISBN:
- 9780252099434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040917.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
To explicate the ascent of the internet into a primary site of economic restructuring, this chapter historicizes broadband internet in China, focusing on the evolving political economy of networks ...
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To explicate the ascent of the internet into a primary site of economic restructuring, this chapter historicizes broadband internet in China, focusing on the evolving political economy of networks after the neoliberal reform. It argues that the take-up of broadband took place when China’s outward-looking economy has become full blown and crisis-ridden. In this new context and especially after 2008, broadband is interwoven into the state’s manifold thrusts of constructing for an alternative commanding-height economy. However, new contradictions, which the broadband China program fell short of addressing, including labor discontent, excessive competition in the urban access market, and corporate disincentives to expanding networks in the countryside, continue to hamper broadband from becoming the strategic public infrastructure that state leaders hope to make it.Less
To explicate the ascent of the internet into a primary site of economic restructuring, this chapter historicizes broadband internet in China, focusing on the evolving political economy of networks after the neoliberal reform. It argues that the take-up of broadband took place when China’s outward-looking economy has become full blown and crisis-ridden. In this new context and especially after 2008, broadband is interwoven into the state’s manifold thrusts of constructing for an alternative commanding-height economy. However, new contradictions, which the broadband China program fell short of addressing, including labor discontent, excessive competition in the urban access market, and corporate disincentives to expanding networks in the countryside, continue to hamper broadband from becoming the strategic public infrastructure that state leaders hope to make it.
