Yu Hong's book Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy is an important contribution to the increasing body of literature on Chinese digital media and communication. It provides a timely account of the history and political economy of major transformations in Chinese telecommunications, digital media and ICT manufacturing ― core components of Hong's sweeping term "communications." Based on extensive literature reviews from both English and Chinese sources, it is a much-needed critical account and analysis of China's engagement with ICTs, telecommunications and digital media in the context of the state's grand strategy to forge a network-based economy. It reinforces a new direction for academic research on Chinese digital media and communication, away from a focus on political control/censorship and online citizen activism/civil society (which are the spotlights of Western discourses) or the neo-technonationalist discourse on ICT for development within China, toward a political economy analysis of communications at the structural, systematic and transnational level. It paints a big picture without losing sight of nuances at the meso and micro levels. "Communications" is taken as comprising a wide range of hardware, software and services. It spans smart-phone assembly lines, fibre-optic broadband infrastructure and 3 G ecosystems, smart home concepts, equipment and content, global internet and network governance, and cross-platform and cross-border public-private alliances and conflicts. Echoing Dan Schiller's position on global digital capitalism, Hong characterizes communications industries, networks and policies as interwoven with China's effort for economic restructuring. She highlights why and how communications is central to Chinese-style capitalism and a pillar of China's ambition to be a globally recognised power (not partial power) in its own right.
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