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I am delighted to pass along a message from Professor Suisheng Zhao (赵穗生), and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China (JCC) announcing the publication of Volume 35, Issue 158, March 2026 issue of The Journal of Contemporary China (JCC) is now available online. If the library of your institution subscribes to the JCC, you can view the full text of the article and others online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjcc20/current.
Of particular interest to some may be the essays published around the issue's research focus: "China’s News Censorship and Surveillance in the Digital Era." The introduction, authored by Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Emilie Szwajnoch, Alexander Trauth-Goik, Ausma Bernot, Fan Liang & Ashley Poon, "Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics" sets out aims of the six essays that comprise this special focus:
Researching China’s sensitive topics, such as digital surveillance and censorship, exposes scholars to mounting challenges including difficult field and internet access to quality information, scrutiny and security of research participants and researchers, and positionality amidst geopolitical tensions. This article presents self-reflexive accounts from six scholars of diverse backgrounds, fields, and career stages who work through varied methods, positionalities, and epistemic approaches. We share our research journeys’ challenges and coping strategies to aid scholars, beyond China or digital surveillance and censorship. We propose that reflexivity is essential for scholarly work on contentious or opaque topics; that the China studies research community should organize knowledge sharing and cross-training; and that academia should create emotional support structures for researchers who encounter surveillance and restrictions.The full essay is open access. For your convenience, below is the Table of Contents of the March 2026 issue of The Journal of Contemporary China, and the essay "Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics".
Journal of Contemporary China
Volume 35, Issue 158, March 2026
China’s News Censorship and Surveillance in the Digital Era
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Emilie Szwajnoch, Alexander Trauth-Goik, Ausma Bernot, Fan Liang, and Ashley Poon
Pages 1285-1302
Jianbing Li, Jiakun, Jack Zhang, Duoji Jiang, and Weifeng Zhong
Pages 1303-1319
Jules Zhao Liu
Pages 1320-1336
Tianru Guan, and Xiaotong Chen
Pages 1337-1352
China’s Response to COVID-19 and Its International Implications (II)
Simon Xiaobin Zhao, Bo Yan, Yu Liu, and Chaofan Chen &Yutong Chen
Pages 1353-1374
Shuai Jin, and Yingnan Joseph Zhou
Pages 1375-1390
Dominik Mierzejewski, and Paulina Matera
Pages 1391-1412
China’s Relations with Periphery Countries: Security, Economy, and Authoritarianism (I)
Arif Saba, and Shahram Akbarzadeh
Pages 1413-1429
Hedging No More: Security Seeking and Japan’s Dual-Track China Policy
Lisha Chen, and Baohui Zhang
Pages 1430-1449
Research Article
Pages 1450-1465
Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics
- ABSTRACT
- Introduction
- Reflexive Accounts
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Additional information
- Footnote
- Full Article
- Figures & data
- Citations
- Metrics
- Licensing
- Reprints & Permissions
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- ABSTRACT
Researching China’s sensitive topics, such as digital surveillance and censorship, exposes scholars to mounting challenges including difficult field and internet access to quality information, scrutiny and security of research participants and researchers, and positionality amidst geopolitical tensions. This article presents self-reflexive accounts from six scholars of diverse backgrounds, fields, and career stages who work through varied methods, positionalities, and epistemic approaches. We share our research journeys’ challenges and coping strategies to aid scholars, beyond China or digital surveillance and censorship. We propose that reflexivity is essential for scholarly work on contentious or opaque topics; that the China studies research community should organize knowledge sharing and cross-training; and that academia should create emotional support structures for researchers who encounter surveillance and restrictions.
Introduction
Researching China has become increasingly challenging for scholars both within the country and abroad. The challenges are especially visible in the scholarship on more sensitive or politicized topics, including but not limited to digital surveillance and censorship practices. Several intertwined factors are changing how such topics are studied and by what means. During the COVID-19 pandemic, field work possibilities were tightly limited due to lockdowns and digital hurdles such as Health Codes.Footnote1 Yet even as China moved away from zero-COVID policies and reopened its borders, an increased focus on national security and the expansion of related regulations under the Xi administration is complicating the conduct of research on sensitive topics. For example, with their broad approach to the concepts of ‘state secret’ and ‘espionage’, regulations including the revised China’s Counter-Espionage LawFootnote2 and Law on Guarding State SecretsFootnote3 (effective from July 2023 and May 2024 respectively) leave ample room for interpretative leeway. Especially among scholars skirting the boundaries of what may be considered sensitive topics, these laws foster confusion and angst related to the boundaries of acceptable research activities in China.
Mounting geopolitical tensions and the development of pejorative attitudes towards the Chinese state in many Western countriesFootnote4 have meanwhile only compounded these challenges, heightening misinformation on the Chinese government’s plans and projects. For instance, the social credit systems have been erroneously depicted in foreign media as a high-tech unitary scoring system targeting every Chinese citizen,Footnote5 a crucial misnomer parroted by some of the early scholarly literature.Footnote6 Empirical research has since revealed a much more haphazard, fragmented, and oftentimes dysfunctional initiative, exerting more influence over businesses than individuals.Footnote7
Compounding the challenge of misinformation, geopolitical tensions have also fostered increasing scrutiny of Chinese research partners and topics, curtailing scholarly hiring, visits, and funding for China studies. The securitization of China research is seen in government policies implemented by several Western countries, including Canada’s Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern issued in early 2024,Footnote8 and the U.S. China InitiativeFootnote9 which officially ended in 2022 following considerable criticism, but is likely to be reinstated soon.Footnote10 In parallel, social science research in China has been securitized via the Party-state’s efforts in ‘authoritarian curation’ of information about the Party-state, stronger privacy protection laws, and suspicions that international scholarly collaborations may carry the potential for hostile foreign influence.Footnote11
Against this sobering backdrop, China researchers elaborate upon their dilemmas, frustrations, and uncertainties at conferences, in the media, and informal discussions.Footnote12 As they plan their fieldwork and analyze their data, they give voice to shared predicaments and potential strategies for resolving them. The objective of this article is to draw from the experiences of six China scholars who share the research challenges and the coping strategies they have devised to practically inform this problem space. In doing so, the article highlights key risk areas and means of accounting for these research risks to aid scholars working on sensitive topics––beyond China or digital surveillance and censorship. The contribution draws inspiration from recent efforts in the broader Asia studies community to improve knowledge sharing and discussion of best practices to promote rigorous, safe, and ethical research.Footnote13
The six self-reflexive accounts are organized as follows. Alexander Trauth-Goik, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna addresses the complex yet crucial choice of platform for remote qualitative research in the context of domestic and foreign telecommunication companies performing surveillance and censorship on behalf of Chinese authorities. He examines the safety of participants across platforms like WeChat, Skype, and a Hong Kong-based language exchange platform, assessing risks to participants. Ausma Bernot, a Lecturer in Technology and Crime at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University and co-founder of a student LGBTQIA+ society Diversity at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, discusses the increasing securitization of participatory and action research with LGBTQIA+ communities in China and explores the ethical and security implications for activist groups, organizations, and scholars who collaborate with them.
Fan Liang, an Assistant Professor of Media in the Division of Social Sciences at Duke Kunshan University examines three significant restrictions impeding data collection in China, stemming from state power, industry regulations, and participant self-censorship. He describes how these constraints, including laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law, cross-border data regulations, limited access to online data resources, survey item censorship, and participant wariness of foreign researchers, pose particular challenges for overseas scholars. Emilie Szwajnoch, a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland shares insights into methodological and epistemological challenges encountered when analyzing Chinese technology exports to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. This researcher reflects on how unreliable information regarding the presence and operability of surveillance equipment influenced the analysis and necessitated a balanced approach to interpreting the potential impact of the Chinese presence. Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, a Management Professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, describes her approach to preparing qualitative interviews on experimental and opaque surveillance practices, such as the social credit systems, amidst circulating misinformation and limited participant knowledge. She outlines her documentation process before and after robust scholarship clarified these practices, employing cautious questions to collaboratively assess participants’ understanding.
Lastly, Ashley Poon, a PhD student in Criminology at the University of Ottawa, recounts an incident involving a Chinese Canadian respondent who raised concerns about the researcher’s survey on perceptions of China’s social credit systems, questioning the influence of Western education on the survey. This PhD student describes how they navigated discussions around identity and openness to Chinese perspectives to build rapport with the participants.
Reflexive Accounts
Alexander Trauth-Goik. Shadows on the Web: Safeguarding Remote Qualitative Research in China
This contribution offers perspectives on the use of video call applications to conduct remote, qualitative research in the Chinese context. My interest using remote methods sprouted from a simple desire to remain engaged with Chinese people and culture after returning to my home country following a semester abroad. In 2019, also coincidentally the first year of my doctorate, I joined the online language learning and exchange platform Italki. On Italki, users can connect with both professional and informal teachers, along with fellow language learners from countries where their target language is spoken. Over the next several years, I participated in over 300 online conversations in Mandarin with people I met on the platform, becoming acquainted with around 50 people from different parts of mainland China. Some people I got to know quite well, others I only met once. As my doctorate progressed, I became interested in assessing public attitudes and experiences towards trends in quantified governance and surveillance, including the social credit systems in China via fieldwork methods. These plans were soon dashed against the rocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing shutdown of international borders. Stuck in a research quagmire, I recognized the potential for a series of remote interviews with the regionally diverse pool of contacts I had established through Italki. This method seemed fruitful, as previous qualitative studies in this space had suffered from an overrepresentation of participants from cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Shortly after, I began a lengthy review process with the human research ethics board at my then institution.Footnote14 The rest of this contribution will focus on the most pressing concern I wrangled with during this period––the potential for interview communications to be subject to censorship and surveillance by Chinese authorities.
Italki offers several video calling services through which users may engage with their interlocutors in China, namely through 1) WeChat; 2) Italki’s in-house video call service that became available in 2020; or 3) Skype. Devising a research strategy for remote interviews, I appraised the security of each of these services. Under China’s Cybersecurity Law, internet companies in China must prevent the dissemination of illegal content, including information that could endanger national security, disrupt social order, or infringe on the rights of individuals.Footnote15 Due to these requirements, there are significant incentives for companies to avoid potential liabilities by stringently patrolling (perceived) sensitive topics. WeChat, the leading instant messaging app in China, is increasingly used for remote qualitative research.Footnote16 The app provides many research advantages including fostering informal, real-time communication, snowball sampling, and asynchronous interactions. However, WeChat is also known to use server-side keyword filtering to block messages that contain specific blacklisted terms.Footnote17 A team member in Moffa and Di Gregorio’s study was banned from WeChat after submitting a draft question on the impact of COVID-19 on Italian migration in China.Footnote18 Citizen Lab has since revealed that documents and images delivered through WeChat are also scanned for sensitive text, and the latter is visually compared to a blacklist of known sensitive images.Footnote19 Nonetheless, the conveniences associated with WeChat, particularly the ease of participant access and recruitment, means it is still a preferred tool for qualitative research.
According to Italki’s privacy policy, while the company does not retain the content of communications shared between interlocutors on the platform, it does collect various forms of user data, including personal and usage information which may be stored in any country in which Italki or its subsidiaries operate.Footnote20 Since Italki operates in multiple jurisdictions, including mainland China, it is possible that Chinese authorities could request access to data if deemed necessary under local laws. Italki is a Hong Kong based company and while Hong Kong has its own data privacy laws (the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance), the evolving political situation between the mainland and Hong Kong in 2019 made me question whether the level of protection offered to user data would continue. Adding to my concerns, Italki had previously received substantial funding from Chinese benefactors, including US$3 million from Hujiang, China’s largest e-learning platform in 2016.Footnote21 Subsequently, I never engaged with my interlocutors in China through WeChat, and only seldom through Italki’s in-house tool when participants did not have access to Skype. I later discovered, however, that Skype had previously been complicit in surveillance and censorship on behalf of Chinese authorities.
Today, Skype is one of few foreign video call services to remain operating in China. In 2005, the company established a joint venture with Chinese firm TOM Online to provide instant messaging and internet phone calling services in the country. As early as 2006, Skype admitted to knowing that its partner company surveilled and filtered text messages to comply with domestic censorship laws.Footnote22 In November 2013, two years after Skype was acquired by Microsoft, the company forged a new partnership with Guangming Founder (GMF) that analysts claim lifted censorship and surveillance restrictions on the product in China.Footnote23 Yet tensions sparked again in 2017 when Skype was removed from Chinese app stores by regulators, entailing that Microsoft and Chinese authorities had not reached a ‘cooperation’ (i.e. data sharing) agreement. This checkered history aside, Skype has not been blocked outright and remains operable in China, likely because many users have abandoned the service for domestic platforms like WeChat.Footnote24 According to advocacy group GreatFire, since 2013 all user calls, chats and login information from Skype users in China have been encrypted and communicated directly to Microsoft via HTTPS.Footnote25 In addition, Microsoft has denied all law enforcement requests lodged by Chinese authorities since 2014.Footnote26 Hence, despite the service’s far from innocent history, Skype offers greater anonymity and a semi-secure way of discussing sensitive topics away from the eyes and ears of China’s security apparatus. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen how long Chinese authorities will permit this situation to last. In May 2023, some Skype users outside of the country reported being unable to call numbers in China.Footnote27 Microsoft attributed the issue to changes made by local telecom operators which blocked Skype calls.Footnote28
This contribution focused on the role played by domestic and foreign telecommunication companies in enacting surveillance and censorship on behalf of Chinese authorities and the implications for remote research. On the one hand, WeChat is widely adopted and offers unmatched convenience for both researchers and potential study participants. Yet its ties to the Chinese surveillance and censorship regime pose significant risks, especially when discussing sensitive topics. Researchers should adhere to a narrow band of topics and implement careful phrasing during WeChat conversations, while transitioning to more secure platforms for sensitive discussions. Skype is a safer option, particularly due to its encryption policies and the fact that it stores user data outside of China. However, its usage is limited in the country and the evolving regulatory landscape could mean that further restrictions are on the horizon. Other considerations also warrant researcher attention. For example, discerning the likelihood a potential research participant may belong to a target population group overseen by the Ministry of Public Security and thus subject to far greater surveillance than members of the general public (see Ausma Bernot, this contribution). In such a scenario, researchers should adopt more extensive strategies to safeguard participant privacy, such as combining the use of VPN and encrypted communication methods.
Ausma Bernot. A Decade of LGBTQIA+ and Civil Society Research
This reflection reviews the research methods and strategies used to work with Chinese LGBTQIA+ activist groups and organizations through Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) and action research from 2014 to date. At the time of writing in 2025, data collection and publication of LGBTQIA+ grassroots activists and groups are risky activities. I argue that this area of research, particularly research concerning LGBTQIA+ communities, has become increasingly securitized through both formal and informal measures. Other spaces of grassroots organizations and individuals in China now observe similar oppressive dynamics of many groups like Chinese workers, lawyers, journalists, and environmental and labor activists.Footnote29 From covert restrictive practices like shadow banningFootnote30 to overt surveillance, monitoring and control, including passport denialsFootnote31and even imprisonment,Footnote32 grassroots communities are increasingly restricted, contrary to the previous predictions of the climate for civil society thawing in the early 2010s.Footnote33 This section follows an autoethnographic reflective story beginning in 2014 to illustrate the dynamics of research securitization.
In 2014, I co-founded an LGBTQIA+ student society Diversity at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, which at the time of writing remains the only formally registered LGBTQIA+ student society in China. As the student society grew and engaged in social awareness activities, it also built a strong network with other queer groups in the region. Diversity members engaged in internationally recognized events, such as Purple Day, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), becoming a well-known cluster of activists in the region. Diversity members traveled to meet other groups in Zhejiang province and held joint events. As Diversity grew, members began research activities, starting with co-designed action research. Our first project conducted in 2016 brought together trans* activist communities from across China in one room for the very first time.Footnote34
The research highlighted the experiences of trans* people, revealing barriers within legal and social norms and shedding light on structural oppression. Mental health concerns were prominent among community organizers, prompting a call for research into the link between poor mental health outcomes and the legal and social pathologization of trans individuals. Discussions emphasized the urgent need for legal protections against unwelcoming educational institutions and employment discrimination and advocated for revisions to laws and policies related to trans*-specific health care, including lowering the requirements for gender affirmation surgery and removing pathologizing language from official documents.
Albeit a successful event, the summit also revealed that we had been watched by public security officers, who revealed their monitoring of us for the very first time on the evening before the summit took place. Public security officers reached out to a volunteer organizer requesting more details on the event. It was not a fluent interrogation: ‘Do you know anything about that … the transgender event’, the officer had mumbled, reportedly confused about the subject of his own inquiry. The interrogation was likely the first of its kind for both the local public security officers as well as us, the organizers. It was a wake-up call. It prompted us to shift the location of the event and change to an encrypted communications channel. We had spent two years working in a second-tier city unrestricted and not monitored by public security, at least not overtly. We knew that time had come to an end.
Starting in 2016, a suite of laws and regulations formalized the impossibility of legally running LGBTQIA+ groups, opening the groups to continuous surveillance, public and state security harassment. Three regulations had a particularly harsh impact on civil society: In 2016 the Charity Law entrenched the requirement for fundraising organizations to be formally registered, which in reality is not a possibility for LGBTQIA+ groups unless they obscure the scope of their work; the 2017 Law on Administration of Activities of Overseas NGOs limited the scope of international NGOs working in China.Footnote35 This Law directly touched our research work too. Just as we were preparing to launch our follow-up research report with trans* communities in 2018, posting the English version on Facebook, public security officers visited the office of our partner organizationAsia Catalyst and prohibited the report’s publication or launch in any language. In 2021, another official Notice further tightened monitoring to ensure that formally registered organizations only conduct the work that is noted in their scope. By proxy of these legal and regulatory developments, the researchers working with those groups were also subject to an increasing amount of surveillance.
With the securitization of research, research ethics must be given utmost consideration. Researcher reflexivity in practice must engage attentiveness to epistemology, boundaries, and relationships.Footnote36 LGBTQIA+ groups are likely to be actively monitored by assigned public security personnel, thus all communications should ideally take place via encrypted channels. Especially if found discussing their activities with international researchers, the activists can be blamed for being influenced by hostile foreign forces—reason enough to tighten surveillance. The minority of activists give into continued monitoring by surrendering themselves to surveillance, monitoring, and intimidation of their social networks, innumerable invitations to ‘drink tea’, and the frustrations of public security officers disrupting rental leases, jobs, and relationships with families. Most are affected by several tactics of surveillance and intimidation, reporting increased anxiety and other negative mental health outcomes.Footnote37
Careful consideration should be given to how data is stored when collected. All information collected should be deleted as soon as feasible for the research project, and thorough care taken to ensure that no re-identification is possible. Where research swerves towards extractivism, the actual benefits of the research should be considered in full before participants are placed at risk during the data collection processes. There will be cases where it’s not appropriate to conduct research. Additionally, a thought-out research positionality statement will reflect on how—considering the heightened research risks—the research can support the communities studied.
Fan Liang. Challenges and Risks of Digital Data Collection in China
This section addresses the challenges of collecting digital data in China. Drawing on my own research on China’s digital surveillance and political communication, and insights from other scholars in Chinese studies, I explore the current risks and obstacles associated with gathering various types of data, including social media posts, government policies, and surveys, for academic research. Since 2016, I have studied the political implications of emerging communication technologies in China. My research investigates how these technologies drive social and political change, while also examining how social and political forces influence the design and regulation of these technologies. My previous research on China has focused on two main areas of analysis: China’s social credit systems and the dynamics of China’s political communication. To explore these topics, I gathered different data, including policy documents, news articles, and social media posts, using both qualitative and computational methods for analysis.
Access to data has always been essential in social sciences, as scholars rely heavily on observable data to draw descriptive and causal inferences. However, both my experience and others’ observations suggest that data collection in China is becoming increasingly challenging, which further hinders researchers from obtaining high-quality data for their work.Footnote38 In this section, I discuss three key challenges: institutional restrictions, industry moderation, and self-censorship.
First, institutional restrictions refer to government-imposed limitations on access to both official and personal data. In recent years, the Chinese government has enacted a series of laws and policies, such as the Personal Information Protection Law and Provisions on Regulating and Promoting Cross-border Data Flows, aimed at protecting personal information and data security. However, these regulations may also limit overseas scholars’ opportunity to collect certain types of data for their research. For instance, I have observed that some agencies in China are reluctant to share data with foreign researchers due to concerns about violating data transfer regulations. This may have consequences for international collaborations. Recently, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has created Open Databases for China Studies Resource Guide, and these open resources could help scholars collect restricted data.
Furthermore, the government could alter the accessibility of online databases. For example, one of my current projects gathered data from China Judgments Online, a digital database that makes China’s court cases available to the public. The database has been accessible online for a decade, but China’s Supreme People’s Court indicated that all levels of courts should upload their judgments to a new national database by the end of 2023, and this new database will have restricted access to the public.Footnote39 In fact, a common observation is that online data resources have become more restricted and limited over time. Additionally, institutional restrictions extend to commercial data platforms as well. Since 2023, access to the Chinese corporate databases Qichacha and Tianyancha has been limited for overseas researchers. Qichacha offers detailed information about companies’ information and is often used by scholars to explore firms’ commercial credit evaluations and connections. Similarly, some financial and business databases like Wind Information, a Shanghai-based firm providing financial software and data, have become inaccessible to foreign IP addresses. To deal with the challenges, some researchers are beginning to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to create Chinese IP addresses to browse restricted databases.
The second type of restriction comes from industry moderation, which affects areas ranging from social media platforms to survey firms. Many scholars collect social media data to analyze public opinion and policy processes. However, censorship and content moderation have been viewed as key tools used by platforms to monitor and regulate online content. More recently, major platforms have limited data access through their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), making it increasingly difficult for scholars to download and collect large amounts of data from Chinese social media. While web scraping offers an alternative, this method may violate social media platforms’ policies and even China’s Data Security Law. Some scholars have developed solutions such as Weiboscope and WeChat scope, open-source platforms for collecting and visualizing data from Weibo and WeChat, respectively. Yet, these databases face challenges from both the platforms and China’s political environment. Moreover, industry moderation also involves the screening conducted by survey firms. For example, one of my research projects collected survey data to understand people’s attitudes toward official policies. My co-authors and I worked with a Chinese university and a large survey firm to conduct the online survey. In addition to the ethical board review at that university, our questionnaires were also screened by the survey firm and the Department of Industry and Information Technology. As a result, three questions were recommended for changes, as they focused on perceptions of trust in the central government. These questions were considered sensitive by the firm and the government, so my co-authors decided to remove them to launch the survey as soon as possible.Footnote40 This type of political screening has become a routine challenge for scholars conducting surveys in China, especially on politically sensitive topics.
While the first two groups of restrictions are related to state power and private sectors, the last one concerns individual self-censorship. This is especially significant for qualitative scholars who rely on in-depth interviews and observations for data collection, as discussed by my co-authors in this article. In my experience, some Chinese people may hide their true opinions or feelings during interviews, which can impact data quality. One possible explanation is that due to people’s fear of surveillance and censorship, they may use satire to express their perspectives.Footnote41 Scholars have developed tools to identify people’s true and implicit opinions.Footnote42 Moreover, self-censorship may be heightened by people’s anti-West attitudes, particularly when people interact with overseas researchers. As a result, these people are less willing to share their true thoughts with or provide fabricated stories to overseas researchers.
In summary, scholars researching China now face at least three major challenges in data collection. State actors may limit data accessibility and availability through regulations and institutional changes. Additionally, industries impose data monitoring and screening, while individual self-censorship presents further obstacles. To address these challenges and risks, scholars can seek open-source data from reputable institutions and explore alternative data collection methods. For example, in my previous research on China’s social credit systems at the local level,Footnote43 I encountered difficulty gathering field data, as local governments were reluctant to discuss the system. I instead collected policy data from local social credit systems websites to analyze system implementation. High-quality, reliable data are essential for scholars to conduct research, and these restrictions could undermine our ability to understand contemporary China better.
Emilie Szwajnoch. Study of the International Expansion of China’s Digital Surveillance: Balancing Between Bias and Leniency in the Lack of (Reliable) Data
China’s international digital surveillance initiatives increasingly draw scholarly and public attention worldwide, including in AustraliaFootnote44 and Central Asia.Footnote45 The results of China’s technology exports may vary from supporting Beijing’s commercial gains to strengthening the capabilities of non-democratic states to control their citizens.Footnote46 As a final-year PhD student and a Principal Investigator in a research grant, I was looking into the construction of Safe City in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. My study concentrated on Beijing’s participation in the Safe City project and its potential to strengthen the surveillance capabilities of Kyrgyz authorities. I was particularly interested in whether the Safe City could materialize as a network of cameras used not solely for improving traffic safety but also for political reasons, such as chasing protestors.
In posts published by the Bishkek City HallFootnote47 and in official documents,Footnote48 the Safe City is a project focused on increasing road safety. Its goal is to catch traffic violations or other offences and impose fines by installing cameras and improving infrastructure at major road crossings. The Safe City is currently a component of a broader initiative—Smart City.Footnote49 Among other parts of the initiative, the Safe City can be considered the component that is most focused on installing surveillance equipment in public spaces. Due to its surveillance potential and links to China, examining the Bishkek Safe City may contribute to the understanding of the potential ramifications of such initiatives for countries receiving Chinese technology and their populations. The need for such studies is exacerbated by the prevailing pejorative narrative on China in many Western countriesFootnote50 which often results in a dichotomous image of ‘good West’ and ‘bad China’ or other generalizations.Footnote51 As righteous as it is for liberal democracies to be critical of Chinese activities, such an approach may impair the attempts to correctly identify and characterize threats inherent in China’s technological presence abroad.
Having studied the Chinese social credit systems before,Footnote52 in my study of the Safe City I soon encountered a challenge that was not as nagging in my analysis of numerous publicly available social credit systems-related documents. The problem was the shortage of (reliable) sources, which hindered the balancing between Western bias and leniency towards the Chinese presence in Kyrgyzstan.
Lacking well-grounded information, a researcher’s task is to find enough reliable substitutes for the missing puzzle pieces. In the research on the Bishkek Safe City, this was a challenging task, with basic data missing, such as the number and types of cameras purchased from China. The purchase of cameras was part of broader contracts for Safe City development signed with various entities (predominantly foreign companies, most of which were not Chinese) at different times. Many of the contracts did not include any Chinese signatories (albeit their implementation likely involved the installation of China-produced equipment), and many were terminated before completion. Due to the form of the project implementation, it is challenging to find official tenders for the purchase of the cameras. Some basic data, however, could be gathered from a map published on a governmental website, which reveals where the Safe City cameras are deployed. A physical walk around these areas and taking pictures might be a decent coping strategy, allowing for determining the camera numbers or types.Footnote53 Still, this may not give us information about another missing puzzle piece—the (in)operability of the cameras—which seemed to be a considerable issue with this particular Safe City.Footnote54
In such situations, apart from physical checks, an analysis of official statements of the City Hall, relevant policy documents, and other materials available online and published by the municipality or state organs (e.g. Ministry of Justice) has to make up for the lack of exact numbers and other specific data. Some documents—e.g. reports from the city development program—discuss camera deployment and quantities. Unfortunately, they sometimes do so without specifying which project (and purpose) they should serve. However, the general documents may provide information about the role of particular state organs in projects developing surveillance equipment and their access to data. These may be important hints on what the discussed surveillance equipment might potentially be used for. A search for links between various projects and initiatives run by state organs may also be informative.Footnote55 Finally, the lack of data and details is a piece of information on its own and may imply that the project implementation is not efficient. This, in turn, may lead to searching for the potential reasons for the lackluster situation—may it be the economic or political factors within the recipient country—and a widening of the net of relevant sources.
The above are just some of the alternatives for addressing research questions while lacking precise data. The problem of data shortage goes beyond studying surveillance projects, and other alternatives might be more potent while studying different topics. Still, in the search for substitute sources, one must be wary of those that could push us into the dichotomous China-West narrative. For instance, data on China’s technological and political impact in foreign countries compiled and interpreted by analysts working for particular organizations may support causes that their institutions advocate for. Even if we consider their mission praiseworthy, before deciding to use their data, verifying their objectives, methodology or funding is essential.
The rigor in making up for the missing information is crucial for breaking away from the dichotomous stance. In the shortage of (reliable) data, it might be appealing to claim that the Bishkek Safe City exemplifies China exporting its governance style and—relatedly—evidently threatens personal freedoms. Superficially, this is not untrue. First, that a superpower intends to export its governance style or, at least, broaden influences seems self-evident. Second, in this case, surveillance equipment most likely produced by an authoritarian superpower is being installed in an autocratizing country.Footnote56 Third, various discussions indicate Kyrgyzstan’s technological and economic reliance on China. It is not unfounded to create a hypothesis that the Kyrgyz authorities may repeatedly use the Safe City cameras against minorities, as it happens in China. However, is this context sufficient proof to lean towards the claim that this threat is imminent?
Not necessarily. The above foregrounds Beijing’s intentions while overlooking Kyrgyzstan’s internal political, bureaucratic, economic, or societal factors that may limit the likelihood of developing a complex and operational surveillance camera system and considerably prevent the realization of the threat.Footnote57 Additionally, the above claim ignores the fact that Chinese exports of AI technology do not in themselves cause autocratization of the importing countries.Footnote58 This could also be true for surveillance camera equipment.
Unfortunately for those looking for a definite (in)validation of the hypothesis, adding the Kyrgyz factors and conducting rigorous, fact-informed scrutiny may not be enough for making an unequivocal conclusion on the threat caused by the Safe City project. Suppose the project is efficiently implemented and operable. In that case, the potential uses of the cameras can remain ambiguous, ranging from increasing street safety or tracking serious criminals to chasing protestors. This would remain far from a dichotomous image. Finally, breaking away from the inclination towards the prevailing narrative on China may lead to another trap: being too skeptical that the threat might be realized or exist in the first place.
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre. A Tough Nut to Crack: Interviewing on Opaque, in Flux, and Misinterpreted Surveillance Practices
Researching narratives and imaginaries about emergent practices is important because the assumptions and expectations embedded in these portrayals shape citizens’ and policy makers’ assessments of the practices and their actions around them (e.g. regulation, resistance).Footnote59 Yet, how do you research phenomena that are opaque, in flux, and prone to geopolitical misinterpretations? In 2018 and 2019, when I was preparing to conduct in-depth interviews on digital surveillance in China, I encountered two significant challenges.
First, much false information was circulating in Western media, framing the social credit systems as a Big BrotherFootnote60 or Black Mirror-likeFootnote61 labeling of all Chinese citizens with a unitary individual score bearing dire consequences.Footnote62 Such misinformation originated in part in the system’s experimental nature but was aggravated by an ‘othering’ of Chinese surveillance practices opposing an unfree Chinese Internet to a free Western Internet.Footnote63 The reality and scope of other surveillance practices, like facial recognition cameras to track children’s emotions and attention in schools,Footnote64 were also unclear.
Second, I expected most research participants would have little knowledge about what these newer practices encompassed, how they worked and with what consequences for people. Limited knowledge does not constitute a barrier to analyzing narratives and imaginaries, as participants still imbue meaning, assumptions, hopes and fears in these practices and their narratives matter for public acceptance and policy making.Footnote65 Yet, it complicates the interviews. I resorted to several courses of action that proved useful. Before the interviews, I documented what was known as thoroughly and diversely as possible, reading scholarly accounts,Footnote66 expert reports,Footnote67 journalistic accounts,Footnote68 and other well-recognized sources such as The Conversation.Footnote69 The unavailability of robustly grounded documentation of actual practices up until 2019 made me cautious in my interviewing, such that I introduced my questions and examples quite candidly, with prompts such as ‘Some reports mention that people who have low social credit scores might not be able to send their children to a private school, do you know about this?’ or ‘People talk about facial recognition cameras tracking children’s emotions and attention in schools; have you heard this?’ or ‘It’s not clear yet but it’s possible that … ’.
Did it work? Yes and no. On the one hand, the interview questions and follow-ups were a lot closer to the actual practices than what the Western media was describing. Moreover, these questions conveyed my position as a scholar whose objective was to understand how people made sense of surveillance practices; I did not pretend to know but rather was humbly hoping to learn from the participants. Since I was a foreigner, in a context of widespread propaganda on the humiliations of China by foreign nations, it was essential that I made clear I was not here to judge China or its citizens. My openness to being contradicted and enlightened helped to build trust: the participants and myself worked together to understand and assess unfolding practices.
On the other hand, as rightly noted by a co-author of this article in his superb book review of the book I published on this research,Footnote70 I did phrase my questions using the singular ‘social credit system’, whereas the plural ‘systems’ would have been more accurate. Moreover, some of my examples, albeit carefully presented as hypothetical, proved fictitious. Ironically, they came from Li Yingyun, the technology director of Sesame Credit (Alibaba)—the most well-known social credit systems pilot. He is cited by BBC News Beijing and The New Yorker as having said to Caixin, a Chinese magazine: ‘Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility’.Footnote71 I had assessed the source as credible, although in retrospect, this director may have felt pressure to give information to journalists before Alibaba had been able to design a complete pilot. Other sources were also difficult to identify as misleading: on a high-speed train from Chengdu to Mount Emei, an announcement explicitly let passengers know that misbehavior would be recorded in their ‘social credit file’. I assumed at the time that this meant misbehavior would reduce a person’s social credit score and penalize them in their ability to board high-speed trains and possibly beyond. I played the recording to a participant, who answered ‘Maybe they’re bluffing’. I later pondered that the recording may have referred to China Railway’s ‘no-ride’ blacklist rather than a reduction in score, and that this blacklist may not feed into the Supreme People’s Court largest blacklist and therefore may not trigger large scale repercussions. Thus, the train announcement may well have inflated consequences for misbehavior.
A third challenge surfaced between 2020 and 2023 when I analyzed the interview data and worked on several versions of my book.Footnote72 The social credit systems had both expanded (e.g. function creep during the pandemic) and become more regulated. Much more accurate analyses were being published, pointing out their limited scope, fragmentation, and mostly non-algorithmic nature.Footnote73 Yet, the interviews had been conducted already. Again, I cannot offer a magic bullet to address this challenge, but it has been crucial for me to keep reviewing the literature and expert reports, attending conferences and asking questions to my colleagues who were most current on surveillance while I was analyzing the data and writing. I added sections on the latest developments to the literature review and conclusion until final submission to the publisher, making clear that the interviews pre-dated these developments.
All in all, studying a phenomenon that is opaque, in flux, and crystallizing misinformation may have been the most challenging and humbling research project I have led so far. It is therefore rich in lessons learned: 1) document hard at all phases of the research, 2) question all sources including seemingly reliable expert sources, 3) share questions, doubts and information with colleagues, and 4) humbly and cautiously co-construct knowledge with research participants.
Ashley Poon. ‘You May Be Chinese, but you’re Also Western-educated’: Negotiating Insider-Outsider Positionality and Trust
This section reflects on the complexities of negotiating researcher positionality when engaging with transnational communities, illustrated through an encounter with a participant during my 2020 master’s research. A month after launching my survey, Mr. Hua,Footnote74 an older gentleman requested a conversation, where he shared his wariness over my survey and sought to clarify the study’s goals. I reassured him that I received ethics approval and emphasized that my Chinese background positioned me well for this research. He then questioned my interest in China and the social credit systems. After explaining my interest in surveillance stemmed from an undergraduate course, he asked what I learned, whether China was discussed, and what was said about the country.
He followed up by raising concerns about the narrative I intended to construct with the data. Assuming he was concerned about data protection, I explained the safeguards, but he interrupted to clarify that he was worried I might be pushing an anti-China narrative. Shocked, I assured him my goal was to include Chinese voices, not promote a particular narrative. When asked to elaborate, he immediately pointed out my affiliation with a Canadian university and added, ‘you may be Chinese, but you’re also Western-educated’.
This interaction reflects the complexities of negotiating researcher positionality and trust-building with participants, particularly when the researcher’s multiple identities are perceived as competing. Positionality shapes the research process and the knowledge produced, influencing the researcher’s focus, methodologies, and interpretations.Footnote75 It reflects their worldviews, shaped by factors like gender, race, age, education, and personal experiences, as well as the socio-political contexts informing the researcher-participant relationship, and how the researcher is perceived by, and in relation to, the participant.Footnote76 Positionality further affects a researcher’s insider-outsider positioning, with insiders presumed to have greater cultural understanding, access to participants, and enhanced rapport, while outsiders are presumed to possess greater objectivity due to their detachment.Footnote77 Recent perspectives have also emphasized the fluid, situational, multiple, and contextual nature of insider-outsider membership,Footnote78 recognizing that as positionality shifts over time and across different interactions, researchers may occupy positions as insiders, outsiders, both, or neither.Footnote79
As a second-generation Chinese Canadian, I perceived myself as an insider due to shared ethnic and immigrant backgrounds and assumed my participants would view me similarly. This was generally true except during my interaction with Mr. Hua, whose perception of my Western education and institutional affiliations complicated this dynamic, reflecting how issues of positionality can arise subtly and unpredictably.Footnote80 Since my research involved discussing China during a period of heightened geopolitical tensions, I expected his concerns to focus on data protection, given the sensitive nature of the topic. However, it became clear that his concerns centered on my positionality, specifically how my dual identity as both Chinese and Western-educated might shape the knowledge produced. Though wary of Western institutions, Mr. Hua also critiqued China’s increasing censorship under Xi, suggesting he was assessing how my education influenced my views and whether I maintained a balanced perspective. As such, I interpreted his comments about my institutional affiliation and educational background as contributing to his concerns. Additional factors like age, gender, and geopolitical context may have also shaped his perceptions of my positionality.
To demonstrate that I could represent Chinese perspectives without bias despite my education, I had to actively negotiate my positionality with Mr. Hua. This involved considering how his critical view of Western institutions might have informed his concerns about my research. For instance, he remarked that some survey response options—like concerns about human rights, privacy, and discrimination—seemed biased toward Western values. While I disagreed, I acknowledged the possibility of bias and sought to validate his concerns by sharing an inconsistency I observed between the survey and interview data: although many survey participants identified privacy as a main concern, this issue was not raised in the interviews until directly prompted. I explained that, while the response options may have reflected my personal biases and values, the study was designed to include interviews precisely to address any inconsistencies resulting from survey response bias and to capture the varied interpretations of concepts like privacy.
It also required recognizing my outsider status while demonstrating that I could remain attuned to insider perspectives. The turning point came when I stopped emphasizing our shared identity and explained that the impetus for this project stemmed from the disconnect between my views of the social credit systems and those of my grandfather. Articulating my motivations as an effort to reconcile my views of the social credit systems- shaped by Western media at the time- with other Chinese perspectives seemed to convince him of my genuine interest in engaging with diverse viewpoints rather than promoting a specific narrative, which helped establish my credibility.
This section reflected on the challenges I had negotiating researcher positionality when I was perceived to have distinct and competing identities. This interaction also highlighted that while negotiating insider-outsider status was important, it was only when I opened up and demonstrated greater transparency and honesty with Mr. Hua that I began to gain his trust. Given the ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the West and the growing securitization of China-related research, these dynamics may become more pronounced. Researchers may increasingly find themselves under greater scrutiny from their participants, making trust-building an even more central aspect of the research process. This in turn requires careful consideration of how relational ethics,Footnote81 alongside institutional ethics, can help shape these processes.
Discussion
Several common themes emerge from these reflexive accounts and point towards important research implications. While our research was centered on surveillance and censorship practices, these themes and implications may be extended to other research on sensitive topics, particularly when the researchers themselves are subject to scrutiny.
Shared Challenges
The first theme pertains to security of data collection and scholarly publication considering censorship, increasing scrutiny of civil society, surveillance, and questioning of research participants and scholars. Alexander Trauth-Goik addressed the necessary protection of research participants in remote, qualitative research in the context of China’s Cybersecurity Law and the censorship and surveillance of video call communications. Ausma Bernot retraced how barriers to LGBTQIA+ advocacy and research have been enacted, as well as the risks surrounding their work with trans* activist groups and organizations, particularly after these groups’ activities became quasi-impossible to conduct legally. The dangers the researchers and their participants may encounter raise serious ethical issues and call for protective methods on how (not) to reach out to participants and groups, interact with them, or store their contact details, in addition to ensuring they cannot be identified through publications.
The second theme addresses access to quality information and data. Emilie Szwajnoch and Ariane Ollier-Malaterre narrated how they were confronted with a lack of reliable information and participant knowledge about, respectively, the possible import of Chinese cameras in a Kyrgyzstan Safe City project, and the functioning of emerging surveillance practices such as the social credit systems and emotion-recognition facial cameras in China. Coping strategies include doubling down on documentation and the triangulation of data, broadening the scope of sources to both Chinese and foreign sources, as well as honest interactions with participants based on acknowledging current knowledge limitations and jointly delineating facts from misinformation. Moreover, Fan Liang analyzed three types of restrictions to collecting digital survey data in China, particularly for overseas scholars who face obstacles originating in state regulations, social media platforms, online data resources and survey firms’ restrictions, and participants’ self-censorship.
The third theme is researcher positionality. Ashley Poon detailed how she was confronted by a Chinese Canadian man who challenged her Chinese identity and ability to conduct rigorous research unbiased by her ‘Western education’. Meanwhile, researchers studying politically sensitive or culturally complex topics may find themselves pushed toward a reductive or biased interpretation, either consciously or unconsciously. Fan Liang’s experience reveals the delicate balancing act between avoiding leniency towards the subject of study and resisting the pressure to conform to broader, often negative, narratives about the context being studied. Ariane Ollier-Malaterre also points out that introducing her positionality as a foreigner intent on understanding and creating knowledge rather than judging allowed her to jointly assess surveillance practices with participants. These contributions underline how essential self-reflexivity—the practice of critically reflecting on one’s own role, biases, and influence throughout the research process—is at each stage of the research endeavor, particularly when it comes to how one may be perceived by research participants and ensuring research objectivity. Practical advice for handling these challenges includes actively negotiating one’s identity with participants. This means being upfront and transparent about one’s background and research objectives, while also acknowledging how participants’ perceptions might differ. Moreover, researchers should embrace open dialogue with colleagues and mentors, inviting feedback on any blind spots or biases they may inadvertently introduce into their work.
Although the six authors of these pieces have each chosen a particular angle to reflect on, discussions within the group have made clear that each of us have encountered not just one but several of the aforementioned challenges, to varying degrees. Many of us have struggled with our positionality as foreigner or perceived-as-foreigner identity. All of us have considered how to ethically protect our participants and ourselves. And we all ‘navigate the fog’ of misinformation, censorship and lack of participant knowledge.
Implications for China Research
Upon completing this collective journey, we identify three main implications for the China studies field, and by extension, colleagues in other domains grappling with contentious, disputed, or opaque topics.
First, reflexivity emerges as an indispensable component that should be embedded in every scholarly work, from dissertations to journal articles and books. No work can claim to be wholly exempt from the limitations we outline regarding access to the field, reliability of information, participant knowledge, survey censorship, the necessity to turn down some participants for security reasons, in addition to other hurdles that we have not discussed in this article. We believe that—no matter the research topic and scholarly field—publications should acknowledge as transparently as possible the obstacles researchers faced, how they coped, and the resulting limitations of the given research; if such critical examinations cannot be included in the main text of articles due to length limitations, they could appear in ‘Reflexivity appendices’. Of course, this implies that reviewers and editors appreciate such candid statements as useful and both practically and ethically feasible. Research notes on scholars’ experiences with field work and other aspects of China research would also prove highly instrumental in fostering shared awareness and know-how.Footnote82
Second, we identify pressing needs for knowledge sharing and cross-training among the community of China studies scholars. Reflexive publications offer insights, but they do not provide the real-time support or practical solutions that scholars often need while in the field. We call for China studies scholars to craft training opportunities for students and scholars at all stages of their career to jointly develop the strong skill set needed to identify traps, devise coping strategies, and protect participants and themselves. Workshops at conferences, such as those offered by the Berlin Contemporary China Network, are great models to follow.Footnote83 Along similar lines, the field would benefit from groups of scholars developing formalized ways to exchange information and collectively assess complex issues. For instance, scholars could set up networks or online platforms that allow for the rapid dissemination of timely information about emerging risks, such as travel safety concerns or new censorship laws. These channels would enable researchers to stay informed about issues that might affect their work, such as new surveillance technologies or sudden changes in Chinese legal requirements. Given that scholarly publications often appear in press long after they have been submitted, such institutionalized channels for knowledge sharing would be strategic in disseminating timely information to the scholars who need it.
Third, the emotional toll that such research can cause must be acknowledged and addressed. Many scholars shy away from recognizing the emotional work that they perform while conducting China research and coping with the obstacles, uncertainties and dangers highlighted above, in part because they are painfully aware that the toll and danger may be lesser for them than for their participants. However, as Jasmin Dall’Agnola notes, ‘post-fieldwork stress disorder (Pollard 2009)’ is a reality that many of us have experienced.Footnote84 To manage this toll more effectively, we advise the academic community to create support structures for researchers. This could include offering mental health resources, peer support networks, or even mentoring programs where experienced scholars help newer researchers navigate the emotional and psychological demands of their work. These structures would enable scholars to reflect on their experiences in a supportive environment, reducing the isolation that often accompanies research work in this space.
Conclusion
This collective effort by scholars from different backgrounds and epistemologies has offered insights into a range of methodological and ethical struggles for those who study digital surveillance and censorship practices and how to cope with them. Further research is needed to determine whether the volume of research on sensitive topics about China, particularly in journals outside of the country, is being influenced by some of the challenges we have raised in this article. Representing a first step towards implementing our recommendations on reflexivity and sharing lessons learned with the broader community, we hope this article will provide some support for scholars and participants who research sensitive topics and face scrutiny and surveillance in pursuing their work.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to David Lyon who connected Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Emilie Szwajnoch and to the organizers of the 2024 Surveillance Studies Network conference in Ljubljana where the six co-authors met in person and discussed the ideas for this article. We thank Josiane Lévesque for her research assistance formatting this article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data Availability Statement
This study does not involve generating or analyzing new data; thus, no datasets are available for sharing.
Additional information
Funding
We acknowledge funding by (1) the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through Ariane Ollier-Malaterre’s Canada Research Chair on Digital Regulation at Work and in Life, which has funded Emilie Szwajnoch’s internship at ESG-UQAM, (2) the National Science Centre, Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) through a research grant to Emilie Szwajnoch [no. 2020/37/N/HS5/02910] and (3) the European Research Council through Alexander Trauth-Goik’s project “Engineering a Trustworthy Society: The Evolution, Perception and Impact of China’s Social Credit System” [Grant ID: 101001964].Notes
1 Han Tao, Hailing Zhao, and Rachel Douglas-Jones, ‘Multimodal account of access to the restricted field China during COVID-19’ (2023) 5 Common Ethnography 7.
2 National People’s Congress. 中华人民共和国反间谍法 [Counter-espionage Law of the People’s Republic of China] (2023), article 4.
3 National People’s Congress. 中华人民共和国保守国家秘密法 [Law of the People’s Republic of China on Guarding State Secrets] (2024), article 13.
4 See, e.g. Akin Unver and Arhan S. Ertan, ‘Democratization, state capacity and developmental correlates of international artificial intelligence trade’ (2023) 31 Democratization 1018–1019; Christian Fuchs, ‘Baidu, Weibo and Renren: The global political economy of social media in China’ (2016) 26 Asian Journal of Communication 14.
5 Celia Hatton, ‘China “Social Credit”: Beijing Sets up Huge System’ BBC News (Beijing, 26 October 2015) <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186> accessed 7 January 2020; Matthew Carney, ‘Leave No Dark Corner’ ABC News (Beijing, 17 September 2018) <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278> Steven Mosher, ‘China’s “social Credit System” Straight out of Orwell’s “1984”’ New-York Post (New-York, 18 May 2019) <https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit-system-turns-orwells-1984-into-reality/> accessed 17 July 2020.
6 Saif Shahin and Pei Zheng, ‘Big Data and the Illusion of Choice: Comparing the Evolution of India’s Aadhaar and China’s Social Credit System as Technosocial Discourses’ (2018) 38 Social Science Computer Review 5.
7 Vincent Brussee, Social Credit. The Warring States of China’s Emerging Data Empire (Palgrave McMillan 2023); Severin Engelmann, Mo Chen, Lorenz Dang, and others ‘Blacklists and Redlists in the Chinese Social Credit System: Diversity, Flexibility, and Comprehensiveness’ ACM 2021 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3461702.3462535> accessed 7 August 2021; Haili Li and Genia Kostka, ‘Accepting but Not Engaging with It: Digital Participation in Local Government‐run Social Credit Systems in China’ (2022) 14 Policy & Internet 845.
8 Government of Canada, Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern (2024).
9 U.S. Department of Justice, ‘Information About the Department of Justice’s China Initiative and a Compilation of China-Related Prosecutions Since 2018’ (19 November 2021) <https://www.justice.gov/archives/nsd/information-about-department-justice-s-china-initiative-and-compilation-china-related> accessed 1 November 2024.
10 The new bill was passed by the House of Representatives in September 2024 (for updates follow the website): <https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1398/text>.
11 Ausma Bernot and Alexander Trauth-Goik, ‘Social Science Research Securitisation in China: Digital Methods and New Research Epistemics’ forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of Research Security
12 Chun Han Wong, ‘China Is Becoming Much Harder for Western Scholars to Study’ Wall Street Journal (Singapore, 8 September 2024) <https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-is-becoming-much-harder-for-western-scholars-to-study-c76a7b9e>.
13 Jasmin Dall’Agnola and Aijan Sharshenova, Researching Central Asia. Navigating Positionality in the Field (Springer Briefs in Political Science, Springer Cham 2024).
14 For further details see Alexander Trauth-Goik and Chuncheng Liu, ‘Black or Fifty Shades of Grey? The Power and Limits of the Social Credit Blacklist System in China’ (2022) 32 Journal of Contemporary China, 144.
15 Digi China, ‘Translation: Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China (Effective June 1, 2017)’ (DigiChina, 29 June 2018) <https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/translation-cybersecurity-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-effective-june-1-2017/> accessed 23 September 2024.
16 See for example, Liubov Skavronskaya and others, ‘Collecting Memorable Tourism Experiences: How Do “Wechat”?’ (2020) 16 Journal of China Tourism Research 424; Chuncheng Liu and Ross Graham, ‘Making Sense of Algorithms: Relational Perception of Contact Tracing and Risk Assessment during COVID-19’ (2021) Big Data & Society 8; Grazia Moffa and Marco Di Gregorio, ‘Exploring the Use of WeChat for Qualitative Social Research: The Case of Italian Digital Diaspora in Shanghai’ (2023) 8 Frontiers in Sociology 8.
17 Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey Knockel and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, ‘Censored Contagion: How Information on the Coronavirus is Managed on Chinese Social Media’ (Citizen Lab, 3 March 2020) <https://citizenlab.ca/2020/03/censored-contagion-how-information-on-the-coronavirus-is-managed-on-chinese-social-media/> accessed 22 September 2024.
18 Grazia Moffa and Marco Di Gregorio, ‘Exploring the Use of WeChat for Qualitative Social Research: The Case of Italian Digital Diaspora in Shanghai’ (2023) 8 Frontiers in Sociology 8.
19 Miles Kenyon, ‘WeChat Surveillance Explained’ (Citizen Lab, 7 May 2020) <https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/wechat-surveillance-explained/%22> accessed 22 September 2024.
20 Italki, ‘Privacy Policy’<https://www.italki.com/> accessed 24 September 2024.
21 Anirvan Ghosh, ‘China: Hujiang Invests $3 m in Ed-Tech Startup Italki’ (DealStreetAsia, 23 June 2016) <https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/45301-45301> accessed 23 September 2024.
22 Alison Maitland, ‘Skype Says Texts Are Censored by China’ Financial Times (London, 18 April 2006) <https://www.ft.com/content/875630d4-cef9-11da-925d-0000779e2340> accessed 21 September 2024; Jedidiah R Crandall and others, ‘Chat Program Censorship and Surveillance in China: Tracking TOM-Skype and Sina UC’ (2013) First Monday <https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4628> accessed 21 September 2024.
23 Jeffrey Knockel, ‘TOM-Skype Censorship Research’ (Jeffreyknockel.com, November 2013) <https://jeffreyknockel.com/tom-skype/> accessed 21 September 2024.
24 Yoko Kubota, ‘Skype Removed From Some App Stores in China’ (archive.ph, 21 November 2017) <https://archive.ph/l9iIT> accessed 21 September 2024.
25 Paul Carsten, ‘Microsoft Blocks Censorship of Skype in China: Advocacy Group—Reuters’ (Reuters, 28 November 2013) <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-censorship/microsoft-blocks-censorship-of-skype-in-china-advocacy-group-idUSBRE9AQ0Q520131127> accessed 1 April 2020.
26 Microsoft, ‘Law Enforcement Requests Report—Microsoft CSR’ (Microsoft, 2020) <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/lerr> accessed 9 May 2020.
27 Shen Lu, ‘Microsoft Works to Fix Problem With Skype Calls to China’ Wall Street Journal (17 May 2023) <https://archive.ph/kr8OA> accessed 21 September 2024.
28 Jim Snyder, ‘Overseas Skype Callers Lose Access to China’ Radio Free Asia (17 May 2023) <https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/internet-access-05172023164905.html> accessed 21 September 2024.
29 Diana Fu and Greg Distelhorst, ‘Grassroots Participation and Repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’ (2018) 79 The China Journal 100.
30 Baiyang Xiao, ‘Making the Private Public: Regulating Content Moderation under Chinese Law’ (2023) 51 Computer Law & Security Review.
31 Carole McGranahan, ‘Refusal as Political Practice’ (2018) 45 American Ethnologist 367.
32 Leta Hong Fincher, ‘China’s Feminist Five’ [2016] Dissent 84.
33 Xiaoling Zhang, The Transformation of Political Communication in China: From Propaganda to Hegemony (World Scientific 2011).
34 Ausma Bernotaite, Lukas Berredo and H.c Zhuo. ‘Chinese Trans Advocates Organize Nationally: A Conference Report’ (2018) 5 Transgender Studies Quarterly 473.
35 Mark Sidel, ‘China and Its Regulation of Overseas NGOs, Foundations, and Think Tanks: Four Years of Implementation of a New Securitised Policy and Legal Framework’ (2020) 26 Third Sector Review 129.
36 Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True, ‘Reflexivity in Practice: Power and Ethics in Feminist Research on International Relations’ (2008) 10 International Studies Review 693.
37 Ausma Bernot and Sara E. Davies, ‘The ‘Fish Tank’: Social Sorting of LGBTQ+ Activists in China’ (2024) 26 International Feminist Journal of Politics 351.
38 Dyani Lewis, ‘China’s souped-up data privacy laws deter researchers’ (Nature, 25 May 2023) <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01638-1>.
39 Zeyi Yang, ‘China’s judicial system is becoming even more secretive’. (MIT Technology Review, 20 December 2023) <https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/20/1085741/china-judgements-online-transparency-government/>.
40 Ping Xu, Brian Krueger, Fan Liang, Mingxin Zhang, Marc Hutchison, and Mingzhi Chang, ‘Media framing and public support for China’s social credit system: An experimental study.’ (2023), New Media & Society 1.
41 Siu-Yau Lee, ‘Surviving online censorship in China: Three satirical tactics and their impact’ (2016) 228 The China Quarterly 1061.
42 Haifeng Huang, Chanita Intawan, and Stephen P. Nicholson ‘In government we trust: Implicit political trust and regime support in China’ [2023] Perspectives on Politics 1357.
43 Fan Liang and Yuchen Chen, ‘The making of “good” citizens: China’s Social Credit Systems and infrastructures of social quantification.’ (2022) 14 Policy & Internet 114.
44 Ausma Bernot and Marcus Smith, ‘Understanding the risks of China-made CCTV surveillance cameras in Australia’ (2023) 77 Australian Journal of International Affairs 380.
45 Niva Yau, ‘Chinese Governance Export in Central Asia’ [2022] Security and Human Rights 28.
46 Matt Schrader, ‘Huawei’s Smart Cities and CCP Influence, At Home and Abroad’ [2018] China Brief.
47 See e.g. Bishkek City Hall, ‘Безопасный город: муниципалитет Бишкека приводит в порядок дорожную инфраструктуру перекрёстков’ [Safe City: Bishkek municipality improves road infrastructure at road crossings] (29 January 2019) <https://bishkek.gov.kg/ru/post/17892>.
48 See, e.g. the concept of Taza Koom. <https://www.gov.kg/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/kontseptsiya.docx>.
49 Which, itself, is one of the initiatives within the Kyrgyz national program for digital transformation ‘Taza Koom’.
50 See, e.g. Unver and Ertan (n.10) 1018–19.
51 e.g., that China exports its surveillance technology to help other countries ‘better suppress dissent and control their citizens’ (Charles Edel and David O. Shullman, ‘How China Exports Authoritarianism: Beijing’s Money and Technology Is Fueling Repression Worldwide’ (Foreign Affairs, 26 September 2021) <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-09-16/how-china-exports-authoritarianism>.
52 On social credit systems-related scholarship see e.g. Alexander Trauth-Goik and Chuncheng Liu, ‘Black or Fifty Shades of Grey? The Power and Limits of the Social Credit Blacklist System in China’ [2023] Journal of Contemporary China 1017; Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Living with Digital Surveillance in China: Citizens’ Narratives on Technology, Privacy, and Governance (Routledge, 2024); Fan Liang and others, ‘Constructing a data‐driven society: China’s social credit system as a state surveillance infrastructure’ [2018] Policy & Internet 415; Emilie Szwajnoch, ‘Regulatory capture of the Chinese social credit system: Bureaucratic self-interests in project implementation’ [2024]China Information 309
53 I, unfortunately, did not perform this task to a satisfying extent during my stay in Kyrgyzstan as I concluded too late (also thanks to exchanging experiences with colleagues who encounter similar problems) that this would have been the best strategy to follow.
54 According to my interviewees.
55 In the case of Kyrgyzstan, it was enabled by sources such as the Open Data portal (https://data.gov.kg/) and the Tunduk Catalog <https://catalog.tunduk.kg/>.
56 See e.g. V-Dem Institute, ‘Democracy report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot’<https://v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf>.
57 The trend of overlooking recipient countries is one also observed in other studies. See Unver and Ertan (n.10) 1021.
58 Ibid.
59 Cave, Stephen, and Kanta Dihal. ‘Hopes and Fears for Intelligent Machines in Fiction and Reality’. Nature Machine Intelligence 1, no. 2 (2019/02/01 2019): 74–78; Cave, and others ‘Introduction. Imagining Ai’ In Ai Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking About Intelligent Machines, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal and Sarah Dillon, 1–21 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
60 Rachel Botsman, ‘Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens’ (Wired, 21 October 2017) <http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion>.
61 Tara Francis Chan, ‘It looks like China is extending its Black Mirror-like “social credit system” to overseas companies’ (Business insider India, 3 July 2018) <https://www.businessinsider.in/it-looks-like-china-is-extending-its-black-mirror-like-social-credit-system-to-overseas-companies/articleshow/64837253.cms>.
62 Fan Liang and others (n. 56); Chuncheng Liu, ‘Who Supports Expanding Surveillance? Exploring Public Opinion of Chinese Social Credit Systems’ (2021) 37 International Sociology; Wen-Hsuan Tsai, Hsin-Hsien Wang and Ruihua Lin, ‘Hobbling Big Brother: Top-Level Design and Local Discretion in China’s Social Credit System’ (2021) 86 The China Journal 1; Vincent Brussee (n. 7).
63 Christian Fuchs, ‘Baidu, Weibo and Renren: The global political economy of social media in China’ (2016) 26 Asian Journal of Communication 14.
64 Louise Moon, ‘Pay attention at the back: Chinese school installs facial recognition cameras to keep an eye on pupils’ South China Morning Post (May 16) <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2146387/pay-attention-back-chinese-school-installs-facial-recognition>
65 Cave and Dihal; Cave, Dihal, and Dillon (n 58).
66 e.g., Rogier Creemers, ‘China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control’ [2018] Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network Research: Science & Technology Studies 1; Jeremy Daum, ‘China through a glass, darkly’ (China Law Translate, 24 December 2017) <https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-credit-through-a-glass-darkly/?lang=en> Fan Liang and others, (n. 56); Genia Kostka and Lukas Antoine, ‘Fostering Model Citizenship: Behavioral Responses to China’s Emerging Social Credit Systems’ (2019) 12 Policy & Internet 256.
67 e.g., Martin Chorzempa, Paul Triolo and Samm Sacks, ‘China’s Social Credit System: A Mark of Progress or a Threat to Privacy?’ (Policy Brief, June 2018) <https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/chinas-social-credit-system-mark-progress-or-threat-privacy> Marieke Ohlberg, Shazeda Ahmed and Bertram Lang’, Central planning, local experiments. The complex implementation of China’s Social Credit System’ (MERICS, 12 December 2017) <https://merics.org/en/report/central-planning-local-experiments>.
68 e.g., Simina Mistreanu, ‘What life is like inside China’s social credit laboratory—where people get points for being model citizens and lose points for misbehaving’ (Foreign Policy, 2 April 2018) <https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/> Nectar Gan, ‘The Complex Reality of China’s Soical Credit System: Hi-Tech Dystopian Plot or Low-Key Incentive Scheme?’ (South China Morning Post, 7 February 2019) <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2185303/hi-tech-dystopia-or-low-key-incentive-scheme-complex-reality>.
69 e.g., Meg Jing Zeng, ‘China’s Social Credit System puts its people under pressure to be model citizens’ (The Conversation, 23 January 2018) <https://theconversation.com/chinas-social-credit-system-puts-its-people-under-pressure-to-be-model-citizens-89963>.
70 See Alexander Trauth-Goik, ‘Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (2023) Living with Digital Surveillance in China: Citizens’ Narratives on Technology, Privacy, and Governance. Routledge Studies in Surveillance’ (2023) 5 Law, Technology and Humans, 2.
71 Celia Hatton, ‘China “social credit”: Beijing sets up huge system’ BBC News (Beijing, 26 October 2015)
72 Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, ‘Living with Digital Surveillance in China: Citizens’ Narratives on Technology, Privacy, and Governance’ (2023) Routledge Studies in Surveillance.
73 Katja Drinhausen and Vincent Brussee, ‘China’s Social Credit System in 2021: From fragmentation towards integration’ (MERICS China Monitor, 3 March 2021) <https://merics.org/en/report/chinas-social-credit-system-2021-fragmentation-towards-integration> Severin Engelmann and others, ‘Blacklists and Redlists in the Chinese Social Credit System: Diversity, Flexibility, and Comprehensiveness’ (Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society Conference AIES); Fan Liang and Y-P Chen, (n. 46); Vincent Brussee, (n. 7). Alexander Trauth-Goik, ‘Civilized cities or social credit? Overlap and tension between emergent governance infrastructures in China’ (2023) Global Media and China.
74 Mr. Hua is a pseudonym.
75 Sharan Merriam and others, ‘Power and positionality: Negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures’ (2001) 20 International Journal of Lifelong Education 405; Wendy Rowe, ‘Positionality’ in David Coghlan and Mary Brydon-Miller (eds), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research (SAGE Publications, 2014).
76 Rowe, (n. 78); Sun Yee Yip, ‘Positionality and reflexivity: Negotiating insider-outsider positions within and across cultures’ (2024) 47 International Journal of Research & Method in Education 222.
77 Amanda Couture, Arshia Zaidi, and Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale, ‘Reflexive Accounts: An Intersectional Approach to Exploring the Fluidity of Insider/Outsider Status and the Researcher’s Impact on Culturally Sensitive Post-Positivist Qualitative Research’ (2012) 1 Qualitative Sociology Review 86; Merriam and others, (n. 78).
78 Pat Thomson and Helen Gunter, ‘Inside, outside, upside down: the fluidity of academic researcher “identity” in working with/in school’ (2010) 34 International Journal of Research & Method in Education 17; Lizzi Milligan, ‘Insider-outsider-inbetweener? Researcher positioning, participative methods and cross-cultural educational research’ (2016) 46 Compare 235.
79 Arda Bilgen, Aftab Nasir, and Julia Schöneberg, ‘Why Positionalities Matter: reflections on power, hierarchy, and knowledges in “development” research’ (2021) 42 Canadian Journal of Development Studies 519; Sonya Corbin Dwyer and Jennifer L. Buckle, ‘Cultural insider-outsider: reflecting on positionality in shared and differing identities’ in Pranee Liamputtong (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Cross-Cultural Research Methods: A Social Science Perspective (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2022).
80 Merriam and others, (n. 78).
81 See e.g. Adam Poole, ‘Narrative inquiry and relational ethics: Negotiating the lived experiences of international school teachers in China’ (2020) 44 International Journal of Research & Method in Education 113.
82 See for instance Jasmin Dall’Agnola, ‘Fieldwork Under Surveillance: A Research Note’ (2023) 21 Surveillance & Society 229.
83 See for instance, ‘Studying Global China’ (7 November 2024) <https://berlincontemporarychinanetwork.org/events/detail/studying-global-china-workshop>.
84 Ibid
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