H. Christoph Steinhardt and Lukas Holzschuh (together with collaboration Andrew W. MacDonald, Duke University Kunshan) published the paper “Dreading big brother or dreading big profit? Privacy concerns toward the state and companies in China.”
H. Christoph Steinhardt and Lukas Holzschuh (together with collaboration Andrew W. MacDonald, Duke University Kunshan) published the paper “Dreading big brother or dreading big profit? Privacy concerns toward the state and companies in China” in the journal First Monday. The article is the first examination of privacy concerns towards the state in China, and among a few studies worldwide that systematically compare concerns towards state and company data collection as well as concerns over data combination. Drawing on an original online survey, the study provides three key findings:
1) It reveals that concerns by about data collection by government are low are low among Chinese Internet users, albeit modestly elevated among individuals who are ideologically not aligned with the state. These results are surprising in that they indicate low fear of state surveillance, and show that privacy concerns are, at best, moderately politicized.
2) By contrast, concerns over data collection by companies are both extensive and consensual across key socio-structural and ideological divides. Thus, the notion that Chinese citizens are not particularly worried about their privacy, is not valid. When it comes to companies, people are very concerned about personal information collection practices. This also suggest that the government’s reigning in of the country’s giant Internet companies can count on substantial popular support — in particular since it is justified with companies’ data collection activities.
3) Contrasting findings elsewhere, the combination of government and commercially collected personal information does not multiply concerns. Thus, the Chinese authoritarian information state is perceived as a safety device for, rather than a threat to, citizens’ personal information.
In contrast to the authoritarian surveillance literature that highlights the relative threat posed by the government versus corporations, the Chinese state seems to be successful in positioning itself as the guardian of citizens’ private information. This finding suggests that the state may be able to use its perception as a safeguard of private information as a basis for regime legitimation. Rather than privacy being an area of weakness for the authoritarian state, the Chinese state seems to have turned it into a point of strength. Whether that finding holds when citizens are more affected by government surveillance systems, and which factors make citizens so trusting of state information practices, remains to be seen.
Link to the paper: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/12679