New Books in Political Science Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital China" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Feb 11, 2026
Ting Luo, Associate Professor in Government and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Birmingham, studies platform politics, social credit, and AI governance in China. The conversation explains popular corporatism and how platforms, the state, and citizens are mutually shaping digital rules. It covers commercial social credit, limits of data integration, competition as a check on cooperation, and implications for AI governance.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Popular Corporatism Explains China's Model
- China balances state control with platform and citizen influence through a system the authors call "popular corporatism."
- Platforms mediate between party directives and user demand, creating bottom-up constraints on state power.
Social Credit Is Two Systems, Not One
- China has two social credit dimensions: political (local government) and commercial (platform scores like Sesame Credit).
- These systems currently function mostly for behavioral and financial compliance, not mass political repression.
Competition Limits Data Centralization
- Fears of a single merged national dataset are overstated because companies compete and resist full data sharing.
- That competition fragments credit data and limits centralized control.
