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In this book, author Min Tang examines the political economy of the China-based leading global Internet giant, Tencent. Tracing the historical context and shaping forces, the book illuminates Tencent's emergence as a joint creation of the Chinese state and transnational financial capital. Tencent reveals interweaving axes of power on different levels, particularly interactions between the global digital industry and contemporary China. The expansion strategies Tencent has employed--horizontal and vertical integration, diversification and transnationalization--speak to the intrinsic trends of capitalist reproduction and the consistent features of the political economy of communications. The book also pinpoints two emerging and entangling trends-- transnationalization and financialization--as unfolding trajectories of the global political economy. Understanding Tencent's dynamics of growth helps to clarify the complex nature of China's contemporary transformation and the multifaceted characteristics of its increasingly globalized Internet industry. This short and highly topical research volume is perfect for students and scholars of of global media, political economy, and Chinese business, media and communication, and society.

The interlinks of ICT industries between the United States and the People's Republic of China reveal the complexity of the U.S.–China decoupling rhetoric, seen here from a critical political economy approach. The highly interdependent and symbiotic value chain between these two countries throughout hardware production, software provision, and capital investments may pose challenges to the decoupling motif. Also proposed is the concept of financialization of ICTs as a foundational mode of reproduction in the contemporary global political economy, where the United States and China are the two most active and engaged actors. Whereas decoupling is neither inevitable nor foreordained, complexity and uncertainty persist in terms of how both nations respond to crises.

The U.S. government's recent indictment on Huawei—the Chinese telecom giant—can be used as a case study to unpack the increasing complexity in global Internet governance. By delineating the history of Huawei's development and encounters in the United States, this article addresses the questions: In what ways and to what extent is the U.S. government using trade sanctions over a Chinese corporation to shape the future of 5G technology? The nature of this case is not much about bilateral trade disputes but, rather, the intensification of the geopolitics surrounding exterritorial Internet infrastructure. Connecting the Huawei case to the historical struggles in global communication order, the study explores implications for the debates in Internet governance concerning the "multistakeholderism" and the role of nation-states.

'Transnational human rights networks' has become a hot research topic for international human rights studies in recent years. It mainly documents and theorizes the transnationalization or internationalization of human rights norms and practices during the last several decades. It began as a distinctive field of research scholarship and has grown to challenge the traditional approaches to international studies. This review introduces the major tenets of this field and, without downplaying their contribution to international studies, it also tries to point out several problems in the conceptualization, theorization and methodology of the current studies on human rights networks. This critical analysis is followed by some suggestions for future studies.