Outsourcing Repression to the Market: The Industry of Online Dissent Management in Authoritarian China

Repression is both governmental and nongovernmental regulatory action exercised against collective actors challenging the existing relations of power(Peterson&Wahlström, 2014). While previous literature highlights state repression, the plurality of the repression forms unfolding and beyond the state receives little attention. Much literature displays that repression by the state is the linchpin for understanding the state-society relation in authoritarian regimes, but little empirical study could answer the question about what role non-state actors play in authoritarian repression. Taking China as an typical authoritarian regime, this study is intended to display how Chinese governments use the market mechanism and cooperate with non-government actors to manage domestic dissent on the Internet. Through purchasing the Internet opinion surveillance system and other services which are based on technologies like data mining, sentiment analysis and cloud computing, Chinese governments conduct real-time surveillance on citizens’ Internet posts and make timely reaction to possible threats to social stability. This paper argues that through purchasing various forms of governance service from for-profit agencies, the Chinese state outsources certain types of dissent repression to the market. During this process, for-profit agencies not only develop various forms of service to monitor, analyze and guide citizens’ online posts, but also produce and spread the knowledge highlighting the necessity of monitoring online opinion by publishing textbooks and providing workshops for officials. The cooperation between the state and the market is transforming the repression of online dissent into a special form of commodity. This paper argues as that the commercialization of domestic governance is becoming increasingly popular in China and various form of commercialized repression still need more attention.