The essays in this volume explore the new power struggles created in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through information technology. The contributors analyze the interaction between the development of information technologies and social logic on the one hand and processes of unification and fragmentation on the other. They seek to highlight the strategies of public and private actors aimed at monopolizing the benefits created by the information society - whether for monetary gain or bureaucratic consolidation - as well as the new loci of power now emerging. The book is organized around two main themes: One exploring societal change and power relations, the second examining the restructuring of Greater China's space. In so doing, the book seeks to shed light on both the state formation process as well as international relations theory.

"Readers without knowledge in IT skill could familiarize themselves with the society of new information technology simply by reading through this book. The self-empowering potential bestowed by the text would upgrade the quality of their participation without doubt. The act of reading this book itself produces useful self-knowledge. The book enables the readers to transcend the geography of greater China."

• Chih-yu Shih, National Chair Professor, Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Taiwan University

"This is a well-balanced collection of timely and thought-provoking essays. The authors survey the manifold ramifications of the ongoing information revolution in the China region from diverse perspectives, including matters of international security, censorship and domestic surveillance, cross-border corporate-competitive strategies for survival in the new knowledge economy, changing patterns of regional economic and cultural integration, and the refashioning of national identities that can be seen to be occurring amidst the simultaneous processes of technological localization and globalization. This is one work whose informative text and illuminating footnotes you will want to move through with your computer switched on and connected to the Internet, so that you can not only read about China's IT revolution, but also see the sites."

• Vivienne Shue, Oxford University

Autorentext
FRANÇOISE MENGIN is a Researcher at the Center for International Studies and Research (CERI), Paris, France and Co-editor of Politics in China .

Inhalt
Introduction: China in the Age of Globalisation; F.Mengin PART I: NEW MEANS, A NEW POLITY? Speaker's Corner of Virtual Panopticon: Discursive Contruction of Chinese Identities Online; K.Giese Information Technologies and the Emerging Chinese Religious Landscape; D.Palmer The Changing Role of the State in Greater China in the Age of Information; F.Mengin PART II: COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL: SOVEREIGNTY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET Controlling the Internet Architecture within Greater China; C.R.Hughes The Internet and the Changing Beijing Taipei Relations: Towards Unification or Fragmentation?; C.Hung Government Online and Cross Straits Relations; P.Batto PART III: GLOBAL NETWORKING AND ECONONOMIC INTERACTIONS New Information Technologies and Economic Interactions Among China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; B.Naughton Cyber-Capitalism and the Remaking of Greater China; N.Sum Urban Assemblages: An Ecological Sense of the Knowledge Economy; A.Ong Global Networking and the New Division of Labor Across the Taiwan Straits; T.K.Leng