“Nine dragons run the water”: Fragmented internet governance in China

Existing literature perceives China’s internet model as one in which the all-powerful authoritarian government is able to utilise the internet as technologies of surveillance and control. However, these studies focus on the use of the internet in sensitive areas - those vital to the legitimacy and survival of the regime. In contrast, little attention has been paid to Chinese internet governance in non-sensitive areas, such as promoting technology-driven economic development. In this chapter, we use the concept of “fragmented authoritarianism” to argue that in contrast to the Chinese government’s efforts to centralise the internet in overtly sensitive areas, fragmentation persists in other non-sensitive areas, such as online health content, the focus of the case study. Relying on interviews with government officials and product managers of internet companies, we select two online health scandals as our case studies. We find that in the non-sensitive areas fragmentation creates a regulatory vacuum and results in the situation of “Nine dragons run the water.” In the case of online health content, the regulatory vacuum gives rise to exaggerated claims of medical treatment or even fake medical information online, seriously affecting patients’ life choices.