National Identity, Ideological Apparatus, or Panopticon? A Case Study of Chinese National Search Engine Jike (Policy & Internet)

National Identity, Ideological Apparatus, or Panopticon?

A Case Study of the Chinese National Search

Engine Jike

Min Jiang and Kristen Okamoto

This article addresses a major gap in the Internet and policy literature by exploring the symbolic,

social, and political implications of Jike, China’s national search engine. Through a case study of

Jike, we demonstrate that semiotic and political economic perspectives could critically inform our

understanding of complex information intermediaries. Semiotic analysis shows how Jike tried to tap

into popular nationalism to brand itself strategically as friendly, “high tech,” and patriotic. A

political economic analysis of Jike reveals the mechanisms through which a changing mode of digital

propaganda production by the state attempts to use the market to subsidize the Party press’s digital

infrastructures and “thought work.” The article also raises awareness of Jike’s potential surveillance

capabilities, as the state advances its ambition for information control under the auspices of

economic development and modernization of Chinese society. It concludes with a discussion of the

implications of national search engines for Internet policies.

KEY WORDS: Jike, search engine, China, Internet, policy, information technology, semiotics, political

economy, panopticon, surveillance, privacy

Introduction

Over the last decade, search engines have become an indispensible part of

our digital lives. China is no exception. About 42 percent of China’s 1.3 billion

people are Internet users. Among the 591 million Chinese netizens, almost 80

percent reported using search engines, making Web search the second most

popular online activity (CNNIC, 2013). Party mouthpiece People’s Daily Online

(2011) calls search engines “China’s No.1 online tool.”

On June 20, 2010 at an elaborate ceremony in Beijing, the Chinese Communist

Party (CCP) proudly unveiled its latest invention—search engine Goso (Figure 1)

(People’s Daily Online, 2010). The announcement came 6 months after Google

made public its intention to pull out of Mainland China due to alleged security

breaches and cyber attacks. Goso was funded, created, and run by the Chinese

government, the first national search engine in the world. A year later, the

Policy & Internet, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2014

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1944-2866 # 2014 Policy Studies Organization

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.

traditional-looking Goso was renamed and rebranded as Jike (Figure 2). The new

search platform featured a hipper interface design and a name that sounds like

“geek” in English.1 On June 20, 2012, Jike changed its interface again (Figure 3)

and began commercial operation (Meng, 2012). In November 2013, due to

financial woes, Jike merged with another state-sponsored search engine, Panguso

(Sohu, 2013; see Figure 4).

China is not the first country in the world to entertain the concept of a

national search engine. The idea of regional search engines can be traced back to

2005 when a few European countries proposed a Euro-centric search engine to

rival Google and Yahoo! Former French President Jacques Chirac notably pledged

funds for Project Quaero to counter the perceived “threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural

imperialism” (Litterick, 2005). The project, however, never came to fruition when

Germany backed out in 2006. More recently, several other countries—Iran, Russia,

and Turkey—have toyed with the idea of a national search engine (Cullum, 2010).

In October 2013, Russia announced it planned to launch a state-backed search

engine in early 2014, named after Sputnik (Reuters, 2013). It is expected to be

Figure 1. Goso; Jike’s Predecessor (Released in June 2010).

Figure 2. Chinese National Search Engine—Jike 1.0 (Released in June 2011).

90 Policy & Internet, 6:1

used mainly by state agencies and is widely speculated to be doomed, given

Russia’s competitive search market dominated by Yandex and Google.

In an era of global networks, the obsolescence of the nation state has not quite

materialized as previously predicted. Instead, governments around the world

have sought to reassert their sovereignty by erecting virtual borders (Deibert,

Palfrey, Rohozinski, & Zittrain, 2010; Goldsmith & Wu, 2006; Price, 2002). In the

wake of the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal that exposed the U.S.

government’s mass surveillance of its own citizens and many abroad, the concern

to de-globalize and re-nationalize communication networks and technologies is

growing, exemplified by Brazil and Germany’s talks of a “national Internet”

(Deutsche Welle, 2013; Muggah, 2013). The need to explicate the symbolic,

economic, and political implications of information technologies thus has never

been greater. With “the return of the state” (Castells, 2000), Jike presents an

interesting case to examine the latest development of China’s Internet policies,

particularly the government’s role in not only regulating but also creating

information technology. In doing so, we extend national Web studies (Rogers,

Weltevrede, Borra, & Niederer, 2013) to capture the transition of the Web from a

“placeless” to a “bordered” cyberspace, and underscore the urgency for Internet

policy studies to confront the challenges posed by powerful nation states.

Unfortunately, state-sponsored search engines have received virtually no

scholarly attention. The majority of Web search studies focus on Western giants

like Google and Yahoo! neglecting crucial international players such as China’s

Baidu and Russia’s Yandex, and new entrants like Jike. Moreover, although

various disciplines from computer and information science to business, law, and

Figure 3. Chinese Search Engine—Jike 2.0 in 2012.

Figure 4. Jike, Merged With State Search Engine Panguso in 2013.

Jiang/Okamoto: A Case Study of Chinese National Search Engine Jike 91

communication have studied Web search (e.g., Spink & Zimmer, 2008), the focus

is on search technology (e.g., Brin & Page, 1998), search performance (e.g., Jansen

& Spink, 2006), user experience (e.g., Pan et al., 2007), and search business (Ghose

& Yang, 2009). A predominantly technical (e.g., search engine performance),

experimental (e.g., human–computer interaction), and survey-based (e.g., user

preferences and habits) research agenda tends to downplay critical modes of

inquiry that examine the broad political and economic implications of search

engines (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000; Jiang, 2014; Pariser, 2011).

This article presents a case study of Jike by probing its symbolic, political,

economic, and surveillance dimensions, and exploring its implications for

domestic and global Internet policies. Specifically, we examine the semiotic

resources invoked to legitimize Jike’s raison d’etre, Jike’s ownership structure and

production of dominant ideology, and its data surveillance potentials. By

directing our attention to these often overlooked aspects of search engines, this

study problematizes our experience with search engines, not only as one of

information transaction, but also one that is inherently symbolic, economic, and

political in nature.

From Goso to Jike: The Evolution of China’s National Search Engine

On January 12, 2010, Google, citing security breaches and cyber attacks,

announced it would stop censoring search results in Mainland China, ready for

an exit (Google, 2010).2 The news sent shockwaves throughout the world and

prompted U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton’s first “Internet freedom” speech

immediately afterward (Lum, Figliola, & Weed, 2012). In response, the Chinese

State Council Information Office (SCIO) issued its first white paper on the

Chinese Internet on June 8, 2010, claiming “Internet sovereignty” over its territory

(Jiang, 2010). Further, the SCIO created the State Internet Information Office

(SIIO) as a centralized authority to coordinate Internet regulation in China (China

Daily, 2011).3

On June 20, 2010, state search engine Goso was unveiled and People’s Daily

Online, Goso’s parent company, was incorporated to pave the way for its initial

public offering (IPO).4 Officials lauded these efforts to “spread the Party’s voice,

strengthen the mainstream media’s position, issue authoritative information, and

showcase the Party’s and the country’s image” (People’s Daily Online, 2010). Two

other state-sponsored search engines—Panguso (a joint venture between state-

owned Xinhua News Agency and China Mobile) and CCTV Search (part of

official Chinese TV behemoth CCTV) launched shortly afterward.5 On April 27,

2012, People’s Daily Online went public and raised 1.4 billion yuan (222 million

USD) on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (Wu, 2012), putting its market value ahead

of the New York Times at the time.

A state-owned enterprise (SOE), Goso was renamed Jike in 2011, disguised in

the form of a joint venture. Of its investment, 81 percent came from People’s Daily

(the official newspaper of the CCP) and the remaining 19 percent from People’s

Daily Online Co. (People’s Daily’s online arm), according to its prospectus (China


Securities Regulatory Commission, 2012). Other significant investors in People’s

Daily Online included Global Times (an international news tabloid under People’s

Daily) with a 12 percent share, Bank of China Group Investment Ltd (an

investment arm under China’s central bank) with 4 percent, and China Mobile (a

state-owned telecom giant) with 3 percent. Such an arrangement allows Jike to be

funded by state assets.

As China’s first national search engine, Goso was initially branded as

“People’s Search,” linked to its parent company People’s Daily Online. In 2011,

the more traditionally flavored Goso morphed into Jike, which functioned as a

stand-alone search engine, and was for a while the default search engine for

People’s Daily Online. In 2012, Jike underwent another facelift with the

introduction of an advertising program. Vowing initially not to rely on ads in

order to be “innovative, fair, and authoritative,” Jike had to adopt advertising to

cover its expenses (Sohu, 2013). Also taking a swipe at Baidu’s “paid ranking”

practice that ranks paid links higher in organic results, Jike announced its plan to

work with state agencies, banks, and industry associations to improve advertising

quality and ensure accuracy. A Chinese national survey of search behavior

(CNNIC, 2011) shows 44 percent of respondents objected to the prevalence of ads,

“garbage information” and fake information on Baidu. Reacting to such cues, Jike

launched two short-lived, user-oriented services—“Food Safety” and “News

Exposure”—to attract searchers apprehensive of food contamination sweeping

across the country and crowd-source reportage of poor products and services.

However, rumored to have spent 2 billion yuan (330 million USD) in 2.5 years

without gaining a fraction of China’s search market (Wu, 2013), Jike’s “star” CEO

Deng Yaping was berated in the media and forced to resign. Despite improved

rankings—in May 2013, Jike ranked 376th in China and 3,174th globally, up from

868th and 6,869th in June 2012—Jike’s market share was less than 0.0001 percent

in January 2013 (Wu, 2013). In November 2013, two of Jike’s programs “Food

Safety” and “News Exposure” disappeared from its homepage. Shortly afterward,

Jike and Panguso, two Party-backed search firms, merged (see Figure 4). Lacking

innovative products, relying on core search technology outsourced to its chief

scientist Liu’s own firm, and having no clearly defined market strategies (Sohu,

2013), Jike failed the market test. The merged company is expected to continue

search development and leverage Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily’s

resources to provide new media products. The setback of Jike, it seems, has not

put an end to the state’s experiment with national search engines.

Up until Jike, search engines were creations of the private sector. The political

impact of such commercial search giants as Baidu and Google has been largely

contained by the state through search engine ownership, licensing and filtering

(Jiang, 2012). Jike signals a significant state attempt at producing technologies to

shape values that deserves critical reflections, particularly when Snowden’s NSA

revelations suddenly afforded more legitimacy to government efforts to national-

ize information technologies and networks. An inquiry into Jike and People’s

Daily Online more broadly is a journey to the heart of China’s Internet politics

and policies.


National Search Engines as National Identity

Riding on a wave of state media rejuvenation, Jike was launched with much

patriotic fanfare. Deng Yaping, Jike’s CEO, stated: “Our aim is not to make

money but to fulfill national duties” (Cao, 2011). Jike symbolizes the Party’s

ambition to strengthen its cyber presence in the name of nationalism. Using social

semiotic analysis, we examine first the semiotic resources deployed by Jike to

justify its existence, aspirations, and state Internet policies.

National identity—a person’s identification with and a sense of belonging to a

nation—is socially and symbolically constructed. Anderson (1983) famously argued

that the nation is an “imagined community.” Such a construction is symbolic and

discursive as much as it is social and political. Media play a major role in creating

the nation by circulating it as a sign (Anderson, 1983). Billig (1995) also notes the

media’s role in embedding the nation in daily life, pervasively and imperceptibly.

In an age of globalization fueled by digitalization, national identity has not become

irrelevant, but is instead formed through new media (Poster, 1999).

While the Internet was initially thought to threaten national sovereignty by

facilitating a global marketplace and transnational activities, a post-territorial, post-

national system has not quite materialized. Instead, governments have found ways

to regulate the Internet via the market, law, norms, and code (Goldsmith & Wu,

2006; Lessig, 1999). Digital media have been used to strengthen national governance

(Perritt, 1998), foster “national intimacy” (Imre, 2009), and worse, manipulate its

citizenry (Morozov, 2011). Chinese nationalism, whether grassroots-driven or state-

orchestrated, is not only mediated in cyberspace (Wu, 2007), but also notoriously

through Web filtering, of which search engines are a part (Jiang, 2014).

Given the link between national identity and media, we employ social

semiotic analysis to show how Jike is symbolically tied to Chinese national

identity. As China gradually shifts from a manufacturing-based economy to a

service-centric one, its economy becomes increasingly semioticized (Lash & Urry,

1994), that is, more dependent on signs, symbolism, imagery, and design. To

borrow from Thurlow and Aiello (2007, p. 309), for Jike, “there is little apparent

materiality to the ‘products’ being sold; instead, what is the exchange of capital

hinges on the promotion of ideas, images, and lifestyles.” As search success is not

determined entirely by search quality, but also by factors such as politics and

user habits in China (Wu, 2013), materiality is increasingly given meaning via the

discourses surrounding it. Concerning itself with signification, cultural meaning

and historical contexts, social semiotics extends semiotic inquiry by situating

social actions in economic, political, and cultural practices with a special

sensitivity to power relations and the mechanisms of representation and ideology

(Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001). For a social semiotics analysis of Jike, we focus on

Jike’s interface design, its celebrity CEO Deng Yaping, and the discursive

construction of Jike as “the national team” in China’s search business.

Jike’s interface clearly had a 180-degree makeover since its initial launch. Its

original design, dubbed “Red Mountain Dragon,” (Figure 1) features Goso’s logo

in Chinese calligraphy in the abstract shape of a dragon, with a red seal


composed of four Chinese characters spelling out “People’s Search.” The design

invokes Chinese traditions through iconographs: a logo stylized in Chinese

calligraphy, a dragon (symbol of China), and the color red (symbol of good luck

and success). All these give the search engine a distinctly “traditional” and

“Chinese” flavor that is somewhat at odds with the search engine as a modern

technological achievement.

A year later, Jike 1.0 adopted an ultramodern design (Figure 2). Traces of

traditional Chinese culture were removed, replaced by what seems like an eclectic

assembling of abstract art. “Jike” is spelled out in Roman script, followed by its

Chinese name . Variations of Jike’s Chinese pronunciation can mean

“instant,” “geek,” and “hunger.” The design choices obscured Jike’s connection to

People’s Daily and branded “Chineseness” as modern. In 2012, Jike 2.0 adopted an

even simpler new logo to improve user recognition.

Besides interface transformations, Jike also hired celebrity Chinese athlete

Deng Yaping as its CEO. A winner of four Olympic gold medals in table tennis

(a Chinese national sport), Deng is a household name in China and a national

icon. After retiring, the “Queen of Ping Pong” was known for pursuing higher

education first at Tsinghua University and later earning a Ph.D. from Cambridge

University. To the Chinese, Deng stands for overcoming impossible odds in life

and achieving success through perseverance. Odd as it was for Deng to be at

Jike’s helm, the celebrity effect Deng brought to the national search engine and

the national pride her image could tap into was immeasurable. Fluent in English

and a spokeswoman for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, she was expected to

spearhead Jike’s internationalization efforts. The appointing of Deng as Jike’s

CEO was seen as a move based on principles of attraction.

Less well known is the fact that Deng became the Deputy Secretary of the

Communist Youth League of Beijing in 2009. The recruitment of Deng first as a

Party official and then as Jike’s CEO and Deputy Secretary of People’s Daily marks

the Party’s co-opting of social elites and the changing cultural meaning of Deng.

As a celebrity, Deng lends a respectable veneer to the Party’s new propaganda

business. As a sign herself, Deng is deployed to transform the public’s perception

of Jike. However, ignorant about search technology and inexperienced at business

management, Deng was seen as doomed to fail. Some remarked: “Deng Yaping’s

chance to succeed as a search firm CEO is about as big as Li Yanhong’s (Baidu

CEO) chance of winning Ping Pong world championships” (quoted in Wu, 2013).

Despite hiring search experts such as Liu Jun, former Assistant Dean of Google

China’s Engineering Research Institute as Jike’s chief scientist, the once 500-plus-

member “national team” floundered. While interface design, Deng’s stardom and

the “national team” rhetoric raised Jike’s profile, they could not turn around its

technological and business deficits.

National Search Engines as Ideological Apparatus

A semiotic perspective helps reveal Jike’s ambivalence in articulating itself as

a sign of the Chinese national identity, but it says relatively little about how Jike’s


ownership and control convey power dynamics. To gauge Jike’s political and

economic implications, we evoke Louis Althusser’s (1971) concept “Ideological

State Apparatus” (ISA) for a political economic analysis of the national search

engine. Attention is given to how the “business” of ideological management has

been extended to information technologies in China’s changing media landscape.

Extending classic Marxist theory of the state from political economy to the

cultural realm, Althusser (1971) distinguishes Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)

from ISA, foreshadowing Foucault’s disciplinary institutions. While RSAs such as

the police and prisons work primarily via violence, ISAs function largely by

ideology via such institutions as religion, education and the press. Ideology,

Althusser (1971, p. 158) writes: “is a system of ideas and representations that

dominates the mind of a man or a social group.” The purpose of ISAs is to

proliferate a dominant ideology to reproduce existing social relations of production

and solidify the ruling class. “No class,” Althusser asserts (1971, p. 146), “can

hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its

hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatus.”

For Althusser (1971, p. 155), in contemporary capitalist societies, ISAs exist to

instill in every “citizen” a “‘highly-developed,’ ‘professional,’ ‘ethical,’ ‘civic,’

‘national,’ and a-apolitical consciousness.” Media, Althusser maintains (1971,

p. 154), “[cram] every ‘citizen’ with daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism,

liberalism, moralism, etc., by means of the press, the radio and television.” As

such, media are seen as conduits through which individuals could be made

subjects of the dominant ideology. However, ideology is not imposed on the

dominated simply, but is actively reproduced, inseparable from its various

vehicles and open to rupture. Jike makes for a unique Althusserian analysis of

how the Party intends its ideology to be reproduced via the latest technologies.

Not only is the ISA—search engines—a different type, the ideology supposed to

proliferate through the medium is also of a curious kind. What ideology does Jike

reproduce? To what extent is the national search engine an ideological apparatus?

Despite its current failure, what does the Jike phenomenon inform us about

changing state media?

As a one party-state, the CCP is the ruling party that dominates state

governance and affairs. Party ideology is promoted as the default state ideology,

a unique combination of authoritarianism, capitalism, and Confucianism (Jiang,

2010). The Party holds no general elections. Its legitimacy derives not so much

from an outworn communist ideology, but economic growth, nationalism,

governance efficiency, and cultural heritage to ensure popular faith in the Party

as the only viable political option. Although the Internet was introduced to boost

China’s economy and a more open space for public discussions online is allowed

to deflate social tension, the CCP entertains no fundamental challenges to its rule.

Besides centralized, national filtering infrastructures like the Great Firewall,

censorship is also outsourced to Internet firms including search engines.

To what extent is the national search engine an ideological apparatus in the

Althusserian sense? First, Bandurski’s research (2013) shows that while searches

for such sensitive keywords as “separation of powers” and “Liu Xiaobo” (Chinese


Nobel Peace laureate imprisoned for “inciting subversion of state power”) do

turn up results, Jike’s results have been rigged to argue why “separation of

power” is a terrible idea for China and how the Nobel Committee interfered in

China’s internal affairs by awarding Liu, a convicted criminal, a prominent prize.

Fish (2013) noted that blank pages were returned for the query “Bo Xilai,” former

Mayor of Chongqing and a Politburo Standing Committee member hopeful before

his downfall.

In addition, the first author used the top 20 public events in 2010 (Table 1) as

queries and collected data from Jike in China in August 2011 and August 2012.

These high-profile events included Foxconn employees’ suicide jumps and

Google’s exit from China. The top 10 textual links were archived, producing 400

links. The 2011 data set shows the state news agency—Xinhua News Agency—

topping the frequency chart with 13 links out of a total of 200, compared to none

from Baidu, 12 from Tencent, 11 from Sohu, and 9 from Sina; four highly popular

Chinese sites. In the 2012 data set, however, Jike reduced its blatant biases:

Xinhua (with 9 links) trails Tencent (21), Sina (20), and Sohu (13). Although

highly “sensitive” keywords were excluded from this state-sanctioned event list,

a closer look at Jike’s results for the query “Google’s exit from China” reveals the

Party’s “guiding hand”: the first search result links to the state’s official statement

regarding the incident, whereas Google’s announcement was ranked third, and

was inaccessible from Mainland China. These results suggest that CCP’s

ideological management has been extended not only to “regulate” but also to

“create” information technologies to its liking.

To the extent that the state can comprehensively present search results—not

so different in nature from selectively publishing newspaper stories or broadcast-

ing TV programs—Althusser’s critique of state media as a State Ideological

Apparatus can be applied to national search engines. Further, while an

Althusserian approach focuses on how media reproduce prevailing ideologies, it

does not assume the coherence or unquestioned consumption of state media. Jike’s

failure in fact reveals the paradox of China’s capitalist–authoritarian economy

where the state’s capacity to shape ideology is significantly curtailed in the

marketplace (Zhao, 2008) and the intended desire to enhance Party image and

legitimacy may not be easily achieved. The Party could not order Baidu users to

convert to Jike. Nor is it in its interest to freeze the growth of China’s information

technology sector with regulations too draconian, as the Party’s legitimacy

depends on continued economic and technological innovations. Jike’s dive into the

market thus also reflects the capitalistic logic of China’s Internet economy today.

A decade ago, Lee (2000, pp. 5–6) observed, “Within the PRC, the party press

at various levels is politically central but commercially peripheral, while the

evening and mass-appeal press is politically peripheral but commercial central.”

Over the past two decades, members of the “party press family”—People’s Daily,

Xinhua News Agency, CCTV—have become more financially viable and political-

ly relevant. Further, online extensions of the Party press now include People’s

Daily Online, Xinhua Net, and China Network Television. Despite Jike’s poor

performance, its parent company People’s Daily Online has seen its Web traffic


Table

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ierwhocalled

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becam

eChinese

Internet

celebrity

forseek

ingmarriag

eable

men

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ents

(e.g.,deg

reefrom

China’seliteuniversities,

tall,good-looking,etc.)

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g’s

son’s

drunken

hit

runkills

studen

toncampus

Drunkdriver

22-year-old

LiQim

inghitan

dranin

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arrested

,hesh

outed:“G

oah

ead,su

emeif

youdare.

Mydad

isLiGan

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dep

uty

police

chief.Itsp

arked

national

outrag

e5

Foxconnem

ployeessu

icides

jumpingfrom

dorm

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Foxconn(contractman

ufacturerforApple,Dell,etc.)em

ployeesattemptedsu

icidewith14

deaths

6Yuan

Ten

gfeiremarkssp

ark

controversy

Yuan

Ten

gfei,“themost

awesomehistory

teacher

inChina,”was

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out

Chinesehistory

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andmed

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exposedforfrau

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ildren

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14Authen

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ildren

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Zhao

Zuohai’s

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Innocentman

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,andjailed

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fter

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is“v

ictim”reap

peared.Z

hao

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released

17Wan

gjialingcoalmineacciden

trescueefforts

Wan

gjialingcoalmineflooded

,35

dead

18Google

exitfrom

China

Google

stopped

censoringsearch

resu

ltsin

MainlandChinacitingcyber

attacksan

dsecu

rity

breaches

19Tan

gFuzh

enself-immolation

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en’s

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ainst

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olitioncrew

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thorities

20Worker

strikes

insomeareas

FollowingFoxconnsu

icides,workersat

foreign-owned

compan

iesorgan

ized

protests

Source:2010

ChineseOnlinePublicOpinionAnalysisRep

ort

(Peo

ple’s

Net,2010).


rank rise to sixteenth in China in November 2013 from thirty-fifth in August 2012

(Alexa, 2013). Its stock price also rose from 20 to 80 RMB. Jike is undoubtedly a

setback for the Party press’s balance sheets, but does not spell its demise.

National Search Engines as Panoptic Controllers

Borrowing Foucault’s (1975) concept of the panopticon and Lessig’s theory

“code is law” (1999), we argue that Jike’s significance should also be understood

in terms of the panoptic power it desires to achieve and the technological

architecture that could enable it. If widely adopted, a state search engine could

become the government’s eyes and ears to the extent that “[the] Party is like God.

He is everywhere. You just can’t see him” (McGregor 2010, p. 1). In the following,

we briefly trace the theorization of the panopticon, followed by a discussion of

how search engines could track user data and desires, and the complexity of

business and state surveillance through search, in light of the recent NSA scandal.

The idea of the panopticon was introduced by Bentham (1995) in 1791 to

describe a type of institution (such as a prison) where a guard could watch all

inmates without them being able to tell whether or not they are being observed.

Extending the metaphor to such institutions as hospitals and schools, Foucault

(1975) sees modern society as “disciplinary,” its “inspecting gaze” directed at the

subject. Drawing on Foucault’s work, Lyon (1994) shows the pervasiveness of the

panopticon within a “surveillance society” where technology is extensively and

routinely used to track and record human activities. In Foucault in Cyberspace,

Boyle (1997, p. 204) extends the notion of the panopticon to cyberspace,

cautioning that information freedom often entails “an intensification of the

mechanisms of surveillance, public and private, to which we are currently

subjected.” Lessig’s idea that “code is law” (1999) further argues that software

and hardware, the architecture of the Internet, can constrain and enable certain

types of individual behaviors. An architecture that allows for the tracking of user

behavior patterns, which are then utilized or monetized by those who own the

technologies that capture the data, essentially sanctions cyber surveillance.

As crucial information gateways to the Internet, search engines are one of the

most pervasive forms of panopticon, second only perhaps to social networking

sites. “The perfect search engine,” as Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin puts it,

“would be like the mind of God” (quoted in Ferguson, 2007). To achieve such

perfection, search engines have to collect as much information and user data as

possible to deliver the most relevant results (Zimmer, 2008).

While firms like Google and Baidu sell user data for advertising dollars, Jike

embodies both authoritarian and capitalistic impulses. Prior to Jike, state online

surveillance had been carried out through both centralized and decentralized

means. Centralized systems include large-scale state projects such as the Great

Firewall and the second-generation national ID card widely used in Chinese

people’s everyday lives from transportation to health (Brown, 2008). On the other

hand, the state also outsources surveillance to Internet firms through licensing

and legal regulations so that “harmful” content cannot be found in the first place.


A successful national search engine could further centralize data surveillance by

providing authorities with easy access to user behaviors in real time. Although

Jike failed in the market, it did not fail because of user rejection of its surveillance

potentials, but largely because of its technological inferiority, poor user experi-

ence, inadequate market strategies, management deficiency, and over-reliance on

state funding (Hu, 2013). Average Chinese users, who may distrust Party media,

are largely unaware of how surveillance via search is accomplished. Some even

suggest that Jike should exist to balance the market abuse exhibited by Baidu’s

monopoly (ChinaZ.com, 2011). Further, Chinese users are disadvantaged by the

limited privacy protection afforded in a legal system that routinely places state

“security” above individual rights (Lv, 2005).

Corporate collection of personal data initially dominated privacy concerns in

liberal democracies, while the specter of the state looms large in authoritarian

countries like China (Tsui, 2003). Snowden’s revelations demonstrated, however,

that state surveillance is not confined to authoritarian societies. The U.S. and

European Union countries in fact had a long history of extensive data surveillance

through programs like Echelon and ENFOPOL (Bannister, 2005). However, the

press and legal systems in these countries are such that state and corporate

excesses can be exposed and recourse of sorts, however limited, is possible through

public pressure and court resolutions.6 China’s censorship rules, however, are

state-sanctioned prerequisites. Without legal protection for free press and expres-

sions, it is much harder to challenge state surveillance in authoritarian countries.

Thus, one can surmise that Chinese state search engine will adopt technolo-

gies similar to commercial firms’ to track user data. On its website, Jike states that

it collects user information such as uniform resource locator (URL), Internet

Protocol (IP) address, browser type, visit date and time, but provides no

explanation of how such data may be used. What personally identifiable

information will be retained and for how long? How extensively will user

information be shared with third parities including government agencies? What

legal protection is in place for users, especially during data leaks? Jike’s vague

policies protect its own interests, not those of users.

Discussion

Instead of succumbing to the digital revolution and losing its grip on power,

the Chinese state has adapted. From e-government efforts (Jiang & Xu, 2009) to

the development of Web applications (e.g., online forums and microblogging)

and state digital enterprises, the Party has invested in technological capabilities,

emulated commercial operations and adopted a form of bureaucratic capitalism

to ensure the dominance of the “main melody,” or official ideology, in an age of

information abundance. In this sense, Jike is a new material manifestation of the

desire of the Chinese authorities to control information, enhance legitimacy and

achieve cyber power through both technological regulation and creation. This

case study expands the research on national search engines and national Web

studies.


First, Jike tried to tap into a popular reservoir of national pride, identity, and

sovereignty. The social semiotic analysis focuses on Jike’s interface design, its

celebrity CEO Deng Yaping, and Jike’s discursive construction of “the national

team.” As a semioticized object, Jike communicates not only through its

algorithms, but also symbols and narratives. Jike has been strategically branded

as friendly, high-tech, and patriotic to appeal to national pride, competition, and

trust.

Second, from a political economic perspective, the mode of propaganda

production is evolving. Instead of acting as an independent regulator, the Party

created national search engines hoping to extend its reach and let market forces

subsidize propaganda work and “thought management.” People’s Daily Online’s

IPO and anticipated IPOs of other Party press organs normalize and commercial-

ize digital propaganda work. As a new type of ISA, Jike not only tries to

reproduce Party ideology through its filtering algorithms, but also expects to

profit from it, despite having failed the technological and market tests.

Third, the surveillance capabilities of search engines like Jike should not be

overlooked. Unlike surveillance work carried out by commercial entities, which

Castells dubs “little sisters” (2000), the return of the state means “big brother” is

here to stay. Besides benefiting the state financially, a successful national search

engine could also provide authorities with real-time user information. State search

engine development in China and elsewhere continues.

Jike raises many questions for Internet policies with regard to the roles of

governments, Internet business, users, and global Internet governance. First,

unlike its commercial counterparts, Jike’s emergence signals a notable move on

the part of a strong authoritarian state to further nationalize the Internet and

expand its information control in the form of an “information government.”

While e-government represents the first wave of state online efforts, the Chinese

government’s latest endeavors have spread into more technological (e.g., search)

and social quarters of the Web (e.g., microblogging). National search engines

represent an evolution of state functions away from e-government toward

“information government” (Mayer-Schonberger & Lazer, 2007), with growing

emphasis on information flow, manipulation, and surveillance. As information

about governments, citizens, companies and other entities is increasingly viewed

by the state as a fundamental source of power, assertions of “information

sovereignty” (Price, 2002) and “Internet sovereignty” (Jiang, 2010) have grown

more audible, creating considerable challenges for global Internet governance.

National Web studies (Rogers et al., 2013) rightly recognizes that the Web has

moved steadily away from a “placeless” cyberspace to an increasingly “bordered”

place. Indeed, the significance of Chinese national search engines should be

interpreted within the context of growing re-nationalization of cyberspace.

Through law, markets, social norms, and code (Lessig, 1999), state interventions

in cyberspace in both authoritarian and democratic countries have grown

expansive, with tactics ranging from blunt suppression to opaque surveillance.

National search engines, in this sense, are new expressions of the state in a global

network.


The need for Internet policy research to document and challenge state abuses

has never been greater. It is critical to recognize that liberal democracies like the

United States which has championed “Internet freedom” around the world is

also inconveniently the world’s largest supplier of digital tools used to suppress

free speech and dissent (MacKinnon, 2012). The U.S. surveillance technology

industry poses serious challenges to Internet freedom that require much more

concrete implementations of the Global Online Freedom Act. Moreover, while

both commercial entities and nation states can abridge personal privacy,

powerful governments in authoritarian and liberal societies have far more legal

and financial resources to coerce search firms to comply with state mandates. In

such contexts, a “common cause” alliance between citizens and Internet

companies may be useful to better protect user rights from the state (MacKinnon,

2011).

Second, Jike’s evolution points not only to a new style of market-based

propaganda, but also the limits of state influence in the marketplace. Over the last

30 years, gross domestic product has replaced the communist ideology as the

CCP’s primary source of legitimacy. A market economy that is much more

independent of the state has emerged. Consequently, SOEs including Jike have to

conform to market rules to a great extent. State media control has also assumed a

“velvet touch,” marked by what Brady (2011, p. 1) calls “market-friendly,

scientific, high-tech, and politics-lite” management.

However, while Jike assumes the appearance of a modern enterprise, it

remains propagandist. The Party continues to appoint top-level personnel of

SOEs to direct their ideological leanings, and expects them to turn a profit

(McGregor, 2010; Zhao, 2008). Previous state media success (e.g., CCTV) has been

achieved primarily through state privilege and is by no means guaranteed. Jike’s

failure indicates the limits to state influence in the marketplace. In addition, the

dual identity of state media as both the Party’s ideological cheerleader and cash

generator obliges them to be a media regulator and competitor simultaneously.

The conflicting role creates distortions and discontents. Although it is possible to

pursue actions through the World Trade Organization (WTO) by treating

censorship as an unfair trade barrier (Jiang, 2010), it is much harder, in the

aftermath of the NSA revelations, to alter existing WTO agreements that

acknowledge that: “Nothing in this Agreement shall be constructed to require

any contracting party to furnish any information the disclosure of which it

considers contrary to its essential security interest” (WTO, 1986, p. 38).

Third, users, who are the object of state and corporate data surveillance, are

not completely powerless, even in China. Previously, the vocal refusal by Chinese

netizens to adopt the Green Dam Youth Escort surveillance software, ordered to

be preinstalled on all computers sold in China in 2009, resulted in a victory for

Internet users. Users’ nonadoption of Jike practically put the national search

engine out of business. Moreover, while Baidu remains the dominant player after

Google’s departure from Mainland China, users’ quick adoption of new search

entrant 360 Search (www.so.com) has raised its market share to 17 percent within

a year since its August 2012 launch (Sina, 2013). User choices of, and alliance


http://www.so.com/

with, Internet firms can be effective under certain circumstances. User knowledge

of search surveillance may also go a long way to protect their digital rights.

Last, national search engines also pose curious challenges for global Internet

policies. As several authoritarian countries—China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey—start

tinkering with the idea of a national search engine, the Orwellian nightmares

stoked by the NSA may entertain new variations. Although Jike performed poorly,

the prospect of deploying national search engines in the name of national security

(e.g., Russia’s Sputnik) and exporting search technologies to other authoritarian

countries remains. Snowden’s revelations ironically precipitated some existing

tendencies to nationalize the Internet even further. Strong authoritarian states like

Russia and China have become more vocal in pushing for a model of Internet

governance based on nation states, away from the multi-stakeholder model

championed by ICANN, W3C, and other international Internet governance bodies.

More democratic countries like Germany and Brazil have also openly condemned

the U.S. government and vowed to build their “national Internets.” Worldwide, a

movement to challenge the centrality of the United States to Internet infrastructure

and traffic is well under way, with ICANN and W3C, for instance, calling for the

globalization of the Internet’s underlying framework and a shift from its U.S. roots

(Hesseldahl, 2013). While it is desirable for many to make the Internet less U.S.-

centric, it is much less certain if self-governance of the Internet by civil society and

the private sector will emerge from the ongoing negotiations (Mueller, 2010). These

dilemmas challenge global Internet policies to strike a better balance between

liberty and security, transparency and confidentiality, and foster tolerance and

civility through community norms and education.

Conclusion

This study pioneers the analysis of national search engines by drawing from

semiotic and critical political economy perspectives to examine the symbolic,

political economic, and panoptic functions of Jike. As man-made assemblages,

search engines may influence our informational tastes and choices as well as

reinforce existing economic and political power. National search engines are

particularly problematic when viewed by authorities as profitable extensions of

state ideology and influence; the Chinese government undoubtedly harbors

ambitions for a digital propaganda empire, of which Jike is a part. As Price (2002,

p. 26) asserts, “It is less expensive to assert sovereignty comfortably through an

emphasis on imagery than through an emphasis on force, and it may be cheaper

to build loyalties than to rely on terror.” Constructed on the basis of patriotism

and sovereignty, national search engines do not bode well for the future of the

Web.

It is indeed ironic that the very technological architecture expected to extend

human freedom into cyberspace also embody panoptic capabilities to render

users objects of control, or turn individuals into “‘dividuals,’ and masses, samples,

data, markets, or ‘banks”’ (Deleuze 1992, p. 5, italicized in original). Expose of

expansive corporate and state surveillance of users and citizens, often in


collusion, can reveal the limitations of popular rhetoric of “liberation by markets”

and “liberation by technology.” As nation states embark on their quest for

information control, markets, and power, national Web studies—including

inquiries into national search engine experiments in China, Russia and

elsewhere—should command more research attention.

Min Jiang is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University

of North Carolina, Charlotte.Kristen Okamoto is a Ph.D. student in Communication at Ohio University.

Notes

1. Jike’s predecessor, Goso was branded as “People’s Search,” where “go search” combines “go” inEnglish and “so” mimicking “search” in Chinese. Goso was previously accessible at http://www.goso.com. Jike, like Baidu, uses Chinese spelling. It means “immediate” or “instant” in Chinese. Jikeis accessible at http://www.jike.com.

2. Google eventually relocated its servers from Mainland China to Hong Kong, a special administra-tive area that recognizes free speech and is known as China’s “free speech zone.”

3. Created as a SCIO subsidiary in May 2011, the SIIO is tasked to regulate a wide range of Internetcontent. Besides regulating online news, gaming, video and e-publication, the SIIO also coordinatesgovernment publicity work, domain name registration, IP address distribution, website registration,and Internet access. The Internet tsar’s office coordinates its activities with the Ministry of Industryand Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security.

4. Otherwise known as People’s Net, People’s Daily Online is accessible at http://people.com.cn.5. Panguso (http://www.panguso.com), officially launched in February 2011, is a stand-alone search

engine, expected to be pre-installed on cell phones sold in China that are affiliated with ChinaMobile. CCTV Search (http://search.cctv.com) is part of China Central Television (CCTV), whoseonline presence is China Network Television (http://www.cntv.cn).

6. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, 2013) filed a lawsuit in September 2008 inJewel v. NSA seeking to stop wireless tapping and again in July 2013 through First Unitarian v. NSA.

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