Conclusion

The concluding chapter of China’s Digital Nationalism retraces the central findings and arguments of the book. It first summarizes how digital discourses are managed in China today, and it then asks what implications digital nationalism has for the PRC and its regional relations. Following this discussion on East Asia, the chapter turns to more general findings about imagined communities and networked societies, and it summarizes how nationalism changes in a time of ubiquitous digital media use. Finally, the chapter concludes with a personal, normative assessment, which is that without serious rethinking on the part of policy-makers, information gate-keepers, tech innovators, and information and communication technology users, the twenty-first century is bound to again be a century of nations and nationalism, now filtered through the networks of neoliberal digital capitalism. Without intervention, this will be a parochial world, ultimately ill-equipped to handle the daunting challenges humanity faces today.