Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty

In Trafficking Data, Aynne Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish, and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fueled China's technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives.

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, the director of the UVA East Asia Center, and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ award-winning first book Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017) was based on work that was part of her UCLA PhD. She will be speaking about her second book Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, 2022).

This talk will also be livestreamed via Zoom webinar, please register for link here

Book is avaible for purchase here

Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies