Michael Keane
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Digital Silk Roads: a model for a community of shared future
The Belt and Road Initiative (or BRI), describes the overland corridors that connect Western China with Europe via Central and South Asia. Initiated in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the BRI idea also includes the maritime routes that link China’s southern provinces to Southeast Asia and beyond. The symbolic legacy of this ‘initiative’ is… Continue reading
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Chinese culture and the power of digital platforms
Michael Keane/Haiqing Yu (originally published in Pearls and Irritations) Despite massive investment in soft power by the Chinese Party-state over the past decade, the influence of China’s culture in Southeast Asia and Australia remains relatively weak. These are some of the findings of an Australian Research Council funded study, called Digital China: from Cultural Presence… Continue reading
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Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World
By Joshua Kurlantzick: Oxford University Press, 2022. Joshua Kurlantzick works at the Council for Foreign Relations, which according to its mission statement is a thinktank dedicated to international questions facing the United States. The book fits neatly into the ever-expanding China threat genre. These works have proliferated in the past decade, usually written by staunch… Continue reading
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Digital Civilization in the Making (part 3)
The culture-technology imaginary in China In the global imagination the idea of China is reflected in various ways. Outside the PRC, many see a rising economic superpower, a threat to western democracy. Others see a land of exquisite culture and art, traditional practices like kung fu, acupuncture and Tai Chi. Chinese products can be found… Continue reading
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Digital Civilisation in the Making (Part 2)
The Future of the Creative Industries or the Creative Industries of the Future? The digital revolution is changing the way people communicate. More significantly, the algorithmic curation of peoples’ decisions to consume and view content raises important questions about the future of the creative industries. In the past policy makers were primarily concerned with the… Continue reading
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Soft power, confirmation bias and illusions of grandeur
The term soft power is common in international relations but hardly familiar in suburbia, where it is easily confused with washing powder. Like one’s washing, soft power can fade. While the term has appeared in an enormous number of journal articles, book chapters and op-eds over the past three decades, mostly celebrating and comparing nations,… Continue reading
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The Two Cultures
The two cultures: what have we learned so far? In 1959, an English writer CP Snow instigated a fierce academic debate by arguing that scientists in the UK would benefit from a closer understanding of the work of their colleagues in the humanities, and vice versa. Snow believed that the technological age was dawning and… Continue reading
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Digital Civilisation in the Making (Part 1)
Digital China In our ever-changing digital age, people make use of intelligent technologies: smart phones, smart cars, and smart cities. Governments invest in innovation. Artificial intelligence is the roadmap of the future. Increasingly, intelligent machines free people from mundane tasks, allowing us to interact with distant others, share ideas, and build collaborative networks. The sedimentation… Continue reading
About Me
I am an independent scholar with a background in Chinese media and culture. I have authored or edited 20 books since 2001. These are listed under research.
Michael Keane 