Digital Transformation of Party-state Governance in China. From Local Practices to a Global Export Model

The project addresses the following research questions:

1. How has the organisational and technological restructuring of Party-state governance unfolded at the central and local levels since Xi Jinping assumed office in 2012?
2. How are the operational logics of Party-state governance changing in the context of digital transformation?
3. What ambitions to provide a global model of digitally enabled governance can be identified?

The project addresses several limitations in the existing scholarship on digital governance in China. First, political science research on China often overstates the prospect of seamless digital surveillance while overlooking new forms of societal participation enabled by digital technologies. Second, sociological debates on cybernetic governance primarily focus on developments in liberal parliamentary democracies and rarely examine how algorithmic control shapes authoritarian governance practices. Third, scholarship in China studies rarely engages in sustained theoretical reflection on the operational logics and global implications of the digital transformation of Party-state governance.

The project addresses these gaps through three interrelated work packages. The first work package (WP1) examines the organizational and technological restructuring of Party-state governance since 2012. Special attention is given to the role of a new coordinating institution: the CCP Central Committee’s ‘Central Society Work Department’ (established in 2023). WP2 focuses on changing operational logics in Party-state governance, including tensions between technological optimisation and the Party’s claim to control. WP3 investigates China’s efforts to promote a global model of digitally enabled governance and assesses the implications for German and European foreign policy.