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This course will introduce students to the digital transformation of China. The phrase “digital transformation” refers to an array of changes in infrastructures, devices, practices and cultures brought by technologies including but not limited to mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and other computers; websites, online games, virtual worlds, social network sites, apps, and blogs; and governments, corporations, nonprofits, activists, users, makers, hackers, players, and friends.  

This course is designed to give you ideas, methods, and experience in understanding how these digital technologies in China change people’s lives, career, the future of humanity in the broadest sense. You will explore different facets of digital China: e-commerce innovation, online civil society, virtual arts, platform labour, and geopolitics. A choice of readings will provide opportunities to discuss various methods used to “feel” digital, from ethnographic observation and interviews to digital humanities. 

1. Introduction: Digital Transformation and the Chinese Experience
2. Understanding the Digital
3. Infrastructure Policy and the Creation of the Chinese Digital Landscape
4. E-commerce, Innovation, and Development
5. Love, Intimacy, and Family in Digital China
6. Platforms and Labour
7. So Hot Right Now: Digital Culture in China
8. The Digitalization of Power
9. Public Sphere and Civic Engagement in Digital China
10. Dreaming of Money in Digital China
11. Literature, Film, and Art in Digital China
12. Technonationalism and Globalization
13. Fieldtrip