China's economic and social progress toward modernization is one of the defining features of the last quarter of the 20th century. The emergence of China coincides with another development of equally important international implications—the revolution in information and telecommunication technology. But how compatible are the new China and the information age? The Chinese Communist Party intends to embrace market-oriented economic development while maintaining centralized control over politics, culture, and public discourse. The contradictions and tensions of this goal are especially acute in telecommunication and information technology markets, where the rest of the world is moving rapidly toward liberalization and globalization. Will China's economic reforms allow it to join the information revolution, or will its unique political structure keep it insulated from the main currents of global economic development? This volume is the first detailed examination of how China's reform process is playing out in the realm of information and telecommunications.
Dr. Milton Mueller is Professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. A passionate advocate of Internet freedom and transnational governance for the Internet, his research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries.
As one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, Mueller helped create an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. His book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of ICANN. His new book about Internet governance, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance (MIT Press, 2010), examines the Internet as a site of institutional innovation that transcends the nation state but also serves as the situs of conflict between national and global forms of regulation and control. Currently, he is doing research on the ISP intermediary responsibility, IP addressing policy, the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of ISPs.
Mueller has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing civil society in ICANN and in the Internet Governance Forum. He was a founder of the Noncommercial Users Constituency in ICANN and served as its chair for several terms. He has served as an elected member of ICANN's GNSO Council and has worked on various task forces related to new top level domains, Whois/privacy, and the .org reassignment. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry (.org).
Mueller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He did his undergraduate work at various institutions in Chicago, specializing in Animation, Filmmaking and so-called "new media" technologies in the mid-1970s, ultimately receiving the B.A. from Columbia College in 1976.From January 2008 to December 2010 he held the XS4All Chair devoted to the "security and privacy of Internet users" at the Technology University of Delft, Netherlands.
