MIT action researcher in China
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MIT action researcher in China Yu‑Wen Chen1,2
© European Consortium for Political Research 2020
Book reviewed: The Other Digital China: Nonconfrontational Activism on the Social Web Jing Wang (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2019), 320 pp. ISBN: 978-0674980921 The Other Digital China: Nonconfrontational Activism on the Social Web is an unconventional book on the usage of digital tools to advance so-called nonconfrontational social activism in China. The reason it is unconventional is that its author, Jing Wang, Professor of Chinese Media and Cultural Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has unabashedly written a supposedly academic book on the basis of her civic engagements in China. As Wang admitted in her book, some scholarly colleagues have questioned the academic nature and value of her work. However, Wang has firmly believed in her project and advocated the need of her type of participatory action research (PAR) in the study of China. The ultimate aim of her academic-activist project is to transform and improve Chinese society in which she has deep ancestral roots and for which she apparently has a personal compassion. Her call to empower Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with rights digital tools to gather resources and advance their philanthropic ambition is unflinchingly personal and strong. Her method shows that it is possible to work nonconfrontationally vis-à-vis the authoritarian Chinese state, gathering the momentum of like-minded activists and ordinary people to transform Chinese society for the better. Wang is not the first scholar to have observed the massive potential of using nonconfrontational tactics to gather social momentum for reform and change in China. Many scholars have noted this potential and attempted to develop different terminologies and theories or borrow those from elsewhere (i.e. where there is also an authoritarian state and social activism) to analyse the case of China. However, Wang is one of the rare scholars based in the west to have actually led social activism in China and decided to make her activism part of her academic project. Because the * Yu‑Wen Chen [email protected] 1
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
2
Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
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Y.-W. Chen
nature of nonconfrontational tactics involves discretion, scholars frequently cannot pinpoint how these undercurrents change and expand their influences, despite having knowledge of their existence. Wang’s position as an insider has provided her advantages to gain perspectives and insights that other social or political scientists may not gain on this topic. In terms of structure, the book begins with a review of the concept of society in the Chinese context and discusses the crucial role of the state in legitimising the social space. The often western-bred bias in treating state and society as two separate entities contesting each other is not relevant here, and Wang clarifies that she wishes to move away from such a
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