Abstract

This seminar, based on the book, Governing China’s Digital Transformation: Industrial Policy, Regulatory Governance, and Innovation, examines China’s digital transformation and its policy landscape, offering insights into how the world’s second-largest economy navigates the challenges of governing its rapidly evolving digital sector. Through detailed analysis, it reveals the intricate relationship between technological innovation and policy implementation in contemporary China. The seminar will explore themes including digital industrial policies, competition policy, data governance, and artificial intelligence development. The seminar also introduces two dynamics: the “digital amplification of fragmentation,” which explains how digital technologies intensify existing governance challenges, and the “technology-policy recursive loop,” which describes the interaction between technological advancement and regulatory responses. The seminar covers the book’s use of diverse data sources and covering developments such as China’s 2020–2021 regulatory crackdown of major technology firms like Alibaba and Tencent, to provide a comprehensive examination of China’s unique approach to digital governance. Special attention is paid to pressing issues such as data security, cross-border data flows, and technological self-reliance.

About the Speaker

Qian Jiwei is Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. His research interests include innovation policy, social policy and digital economy. His recent book, Governing China’s Digital Transformation: Industrial Policy, Regulatory Governance, and Innovation (Routledge, 2026), explores the critical policy landscape of China’s digital economy, including industrial and regulatory policy issues. Previously, he authored The Political Economy of Making and Implementing Social Policy in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and co-edited Innovation and China’s Global Emergence (NUS Press, 2021). He has published widely in leading academic journals, including China Quarterly, Cities, Health Policy and Planning, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Social Policy, Policy and Society, Policy Studies Journal, Public Choice, Social Policy & Administration, and Social Science & Medicine, among others.