ABSTRACT
How do information and communication technologies (ICTs), which seemingly bring people to a boundless world, contribute to the reproduction of the imagined community of a nation? Challenging the conventional approach that sees ICTs as merely the channel through which nationalism or activism is expressed or mobilised, this article draws on anthropological and historical studies of technology to develop a conceptual mapping of the important factors that configure specific nation-bounded, ICT-centric socio-technical imaginaries. Taking as the entry point technological nationalism in the context of the Sino-American trade war in recent years and based on long-term fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta region, this ethnographic study explores how ICTs have become the lens through which educated professionals imagine China’s transition from sweat-shop modernity toward techno-modernity. This socio-technical imaginary is shaped by larger forces including the state discourse, political economy, material culture, and the platformised lifestyle, and mediated through work experience and consumer choices. Nationalism driven by this ICT-centric imaginary is subjected to state manipulation for the reproduction of political legitimacy. This study sheds light on larger conceptual questions on how ordinary citizens experience and make sense of ICTs and how such meaning-making processes sustain, challenge and reconfigure political processes.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to Toby Carroll, Yi Kang, Minhua Ling, Yu Luo and Gonçalo Santos for their careful reading of and comments on various drafts and to the participants in the workshop organised by the Journal of Contemporary Asia in 2019 for their feedback on the earliest draft. Many thanks to the journal’s editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See https://wap.peopleapp.com/living/4188901?from=groupmessage, accessed June 22, 2020.
2. In line with many scholars’ discussion of “nationalism” from a bottom-up perspective this article uses “nationalism” to refer to a nationalist sentiment that some may prefer to call “patriotism” (see, for example, Ohnuki-Tierney Citation2002; Fong Citation2004; Guo Citation2004; Zhou Citation2005a).
3. For an alternative, critical analysis of the democratising potential of ICTs that takes into account legal control, corporate interests and infrastructural arrangements, see Rodan (Citation1998).
4. For more detailed elaboration on how technoscience had been incorporated into the nation-building project from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, see Andreas (Citation2009); Greenhalgh and Zhang (Citation2019).
5. For the details about these official narratives, see Guo (Citation2004); Callahan (Citation2010); Leibold (Citation2010); Hung (Citation2011).
6. Scholars have documented that Internet cafes provided the online experience for many lower-income youth in the 2000s, leaving the impression that Internet access was a middle-class privilege (see, for example, Qiu Citation2009; Wallis Citation2013). Yet limited access to the Internet was in fact quite common even among middle-class families.
7. Tencent’s competitor, Alibaba, has a similar strategy built around its online shopping platform Taobao and its payment system Alipay. But the lack of the socialising functions makes it a less “sticky” platform than WeChat.
8. It is beyond the scope of this article to determine which force is more decisive than others, or how each of the forces counter or reinforce each other in shaping technological nationalism. But they are important issues for future research.