190
Milton L. Mueller
both necessary and justifi ed to “ manage ” the information environment and control
political activity, it makes sense that it would use cyber espionage to its fullest capacity
to survey its international and domestic environment.
Ongoing Tensions between China ’ s Sovereigntism and the Internet
To decode the paradox of the Chinese Internet we need to return to the dialogue
within the international communist movement about the future of socialism. By the
1950s it was clear that true, thoroughgoing socialism — an economy devoid of private
property, a price system, or markets — had failed economically and was simply unworkable. Leftist intellectuals contemplated two ways forward, one known as reform and
the other as transformation. Reform did not mean, as many Westerners assume it does,
a liberalization of economy and society that leads to convergence with the West. The
communists referred to that path as transformation — the abandonment of communism
and a move toward liberal democracy. A reformed communism would make socialism
economically viable by permitting the existence of enough market forces and trade to
deliver growth, while retaining the Leninist approach to centralized political control
associated with classical communism. This is clearly the path that China has chosen.
The whole point of China ’ s reform process is to benefi t from Western technology and
from trade with the global market economy without converging into the West ’ s liberal
democratic governance model. Its opening and reform process was and is intended to
deliver continued economic development without fundamental political change. Continued economic growth, they believe, makes political transformation unnecessary.
At least since the early 1990s, China ’ s approach to information and communication
technology has played a signifi cant role in facilitating the achievement of these reform
objectives. An early discourse among Chinese intellectuals about “ informatization ”
set the stage for this. The CCP viewed information technology as the best way to scale
up the control capabilities of the state to keep pace with its growth and greater wealth.
In a typically pragmatic Chinese style, which has been described as “ touching the
stones to cross the river, ” the Chinese Communist Party has gone through repeated
cycles of loosening control to foster development and growth, and then tightening
restrictions to ensure that the party stays in control. The fi rst step releases suppressed
economic energy and generates growth; the second phase prunes the development so
that it conforms to the parameters of the SME and does not threaten the stability and
security of the political system.
An observation by the former Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times dispels
any notion that the economic development based on these reforms is inherently
incompatible with party control:
If you benchmark the Chinese Communist Party against a defi nitional checklist authored by
Robert Service, the veteran historian of the Soviet Union, the similarities are remarkable. As with
Milton L. Mueller
both necessary and justifi ed to “ manage ” the information environment and control
political activity, it makes sense that it would use cyber espionage to its fullest capacity
to survey its international and domestic environment.
Ongoing Tensions between China ’ s Sovereigntism and the Internet
To decode the paradox of the Chinese Internet we need to return to the dialogue
within the international communist movement about the future of socialism. By the
1950s it was clear that true, thoroughgoing socialism — an economy devoid of private
property, a price system, or markets — had failed economically and was simply unworkable. Leftist intellectuals contemplated two ways forward, one known as reform and
the other as transformation. Reform did not mean, as many Westerners assume it does,
a liberalization of economy and society that leads to convergence with the West. The
communists referred to that path as transformation — the abandonment of communism
and a move toward liberal democracy. A reformed communism would make socialism
economically viable by permitting the existence of enough market forces and trade to
deliver growth, while retaining the Leninist approach to centralized political control
associated with classical communism. This is clearly the path that China has chosen.
The whole point of China ’ s reform process is to benefi t from Western technology and
from trade with the global market economy without converging into the West ’ s liberal
democratic governance model. Its opening and reform process was and is intended to
deliver continued economic development without fundamental political change. Continued economic growth, they believe, makes political transformation unnecessary.
At least since the early 1990s, China ’ s approach to information and communication
technology has played a signifi cant role in facilitating the achievement of these reform
objectives. An early discourse among Chinese intellectuals about “ informatization ”
set the stage for this. The CCP viewed information technology as the best way to scale
up the control capabilities of the state to keep pace with its growth and greater wealth.
In a typically pragmatic Chinese style, which has been described as “ touching the
stones to cross the river, ” the Chinese Communist Party has gone through repeated
cycles of loosening control to foster development and growth, and then tightening
restrictions to ensure that the party stays in control. The fi rst step releases suppressed
economic energy and generates growth; the second phase prunes the development so
that it conforms to the parameters of the SME and does not threaten the stability and
security of the political system.
An observation by the former Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times dispels
any notion that the economic development based on these reforms is inherently
incompatible with party control:
If you benchmark the Chinese Communist Party against a defi nitional checklist authored by
Robert Service, the veteran historian of the Soviet Union, the similarities are remarkable. As with