Rethinking Surveillance From China: Territoriality, Digital Governance and State‐Platform Power

ABSTRACT

This article rethinks digital surveillance from China by examining how established territorial institutions are connected with contemporary data infrastructures and platform governance. Synthesising research on the hukou system, smart‐city surveillance, community grid management, the Social Credit System and digital platforms, it develops an analytical framework organised around the dynamic relations among territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. The article argues that digitalisation has not displaced territorial governance in China. Instead, population registration and grassroots administration provide durable spatial and institutional anchors through which identities are classified, mobility is regulated and data‐based decisions are translated into consequences in everyday life. At the same time, platforms, biometric systems and interdepartmental databases enable data and classifications to circulate across institutional and geographical boundaries before being re‐embedded in particular administrative and spatial contexts. These processes produce a state‐led but locally adaptive configuration in which political authority, commercial platforms and multilevel governance interact across different institutional and spatial scales. The article further examines how Chinese surveillance infrastructures, technical standards and governance expertise circulate internationally, and how they may be re‐embedded within recipient countries through local infrastructures, institutions and technological systems. This article views China as a field for theoretical reconstruction, thereby advancing a more geographically and institutionally situated understanding of contemporary surveillance.