Speaker: Lynette Ong, Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Toronto; Director, China Governance Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

Digital technology facilitates information sharing among activists; however, it also affords autocrats new vectors of control, allowing them to surveil and subjugate dissenters. Yet, in China—the world’s most powerful autocratic state where most of the dissent takes place online before it spillovers to the street—we argue the state’s prowess in digital surveillance stems from the co-optation of market forces. In this book, we examine how the Chinese state manages, moderates, and represses online opinion. Drawing on public procurement documents, we study how the Chinese Party-state at national and subnational levels have intended to manage online expression of public opinion. Private corporations, along with for-profit arms of state-owned enterprises and public sector organizations, are extensively involved in surveillance of public opinion. This opens up a Pandora’s box of state‒business dynamics in China.

Lynette Ong is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto, and Director of the China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Chinese and Asian Politics. Her latest books, Outsourcing Surveillance: Online Opinion Management in China (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (Oxford University Press, 2022), examine the Chinese party-state’s capacity to mobilize nonstate actors to extend its reach into society. Her research has received multiple awards from APSA, ASA, ISA, CPSA, and SSHRC. Her academic publications have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, China Quarterly,  among others. Her opinion pieces and research have been featured in The Economist,  The New York Times (Editorial Opinion), The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post.