Table Of ContentDigital Transactions in Asia
This book presents a comprehensive overview of transactional forms of
the digital across Asia by studying the platforms and infrastructures that
shape the digital experience. It provides a definitive account of the core
features of the ways the digital economy in Asia is transforming every-
day lives.
Transactional relations between digital media platforms and new
forms of sociability are remediating social relationships for the digital
age. In capturing the digital revolution through case studies from across
the larger Asian region, the book offers a richly contextualised and com-
parative account that firmly situates the frontiers of the digital within
the Asian experience.
The book will be a key reference point for scholars and students of
Asian studies and media studies, and of particular value to the range of
interdisciplinary courses now emerging on digital and social change with
an international focus. The increasing internationalisation of debates on
the digital will also make this book essential reading for researchers and
students more widely in mass communications, development studies,
business studies, sociology and economics.
Adrian Athique is an Associate Professor in cultural studies in the Insti-
tute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland.
Emma Baulch is an Associate Professor of communication and media
studies at Monash University Malaysia.
Routledge Research in Digital Media and Culture in Asia
Edited by Dal Yong Jin, Simon Fraser University
Chinese Social Media
Social, Cultural, and Political Implications
Edited by Mike Kent, Katie Ellis, and Jian Xu
Digital Media and Risk Culture in China’s Financial Markets
Zhifei Mao
Mediatized Religion in Asia
Studies on Digital Media and Religion
Edited by Kerstin Radde-Antweiler and Xenia Zeiler
Digital Transactions in Asia
Economic, Informational, and Social Exchanges
Edited by Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch
Digital Transactions in Asia
Economic, Informational, and Social
Exchanges
Edited by Adrian Athique and
Emma Baulch
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Athique, Adrian, editor. | Baulch, Emma, 1968– editor.
Title: Digital transactions in Asia : economic, informational, and
social exchanges / edited by Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Routledge research in digital media and culture in Asia |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018058036 (print) |
LCCN 2018059936 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Information society—Asia. | Digital media—
Economic aspects—Asia. | Digital media—Social aspects—Asia. |
Information technology—Economic aspects—Asia. | Information
technology—Social aspects—Asia.
Classification: LCC HN655.2.I56 (ebook) |
LCC HN655.2.I56 D545 2019 (print) | DDC 302.23/1095—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058036
ISBN: 978-1-138-35396-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42511-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Digital Transactions in Asia 1
ADRIAN ATHIQUE
PART 1
Platforms, Infrastructure and Regulation 23
2 Zhejiang’s Digital Dream 25
MICHAEL KEANE AND HUAN WU
3 Infrastructure and Platform Anxieties in India 44
PRADIP THOMAS
4 Recalibrating China in a Time of Platforms 63
TOM O’REgAN AND LUzHOU LI
5 Demonetization: India’s Year of Living Digitally 83
ADRIAN ATHIQUE
6 Another Dimension of Digital: 3D Printing and
Intellectual Property in Asia 104
ANgELA DALY, JIAJIE LU AND LUKE HEEMSBERgEN
7 Digital Rights in Asia: Rethinking Regional and
International Agendas 119
gERARD gOggIN, MICHELE FORD, FIONA MARTIN, ADELE
WEBB, ARIADNE VROMEN, AND KIMBERLEE WEATHERALL
vi Contents
PART 2
Financial, Social and Cultural Transactions 137
8 Embedding Digital Money amongst Chinese
Migrant Factory Workers 139
TOM MCDONALD
9 The Digital State: A Tale of Tweets and Foods in
Contemporary India 156
RAJIV K. MISHRA
10 ‘Skill-Makers’ in the Platform Economy: Transacting
Digital Labour 172
CHERYLL RUTH R. SORIANO AND JOY HANNAH C. PANALIgAN
11 The Enterprising Self: Disability and Digital
Entrepreneurship in China 192
HAIQINg YU
12 Resilient Love: Intimacy, Social Media Surveillance and
(Dis)Trust in Metro Manila 209
JOzON A. LORENzANA
13 Chinese Transcreators, Webtoons and the Korean
Digital Wave 224
BRIAN YECIES, AEgYUNg SHIM AND JACK YANg
14 Insurrectionary Tendencies: The Viral
Fever Comedies and Indian Media 242
AKSHAYA KUMAR
15 Hijabers on Instagram: Visualising the
Ideal Muslim Woman 260
EMMA BAULCH AND ALILA PRAMIYANTI
List of Contributors 285
Index 291
Acknowledgements
This first collection on Digital Transactions in Asia emerges from a sub-
stantial collective effort, involving all our contributors here, along with
many others who deserve acknowledgement for their support. Terry
Flew, Jean Burgess and Mandy Thomas provided us with fantastic sup-
port for our first Digital Transactions event in Brisbane in August 2017.
We would also like to thank our keynote and invited speakers at that
event: gerard goggin, Yu Hong, Michael Keane, John Postill, Vibodh
Parthasarathi, Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano and Ravi Sundaram. Thanks are
also due to Shishir Jha and Vibodh, once again, for their academic in-
sight, empirical expertise and logistical support for Social Transactions
in Digital India held at IIT Bombay in December 2017. For our second
Digital Transactions in Asia event at De La Salle Manila, which is taking
place as this book goes to press, we would like to thank Professor Merlin
Teodosia Suarez, Professor Raymond Tan, Professor Caridad Tarroja
and Professor Jazmin Llana for institutional and intellectual contribu-
tions of great value. We would like to thank our keynote speakers in
Manila: Rich Ling, Raul Pertierra and Jack Qiu. Across all three events
so far, we would like to recognise the generosity and sheer effort of our
organising teams, including Terry Flew, Shishir Jha, Luzhuo Nina Li,
Sun Sun Lim, Jozon A. Lorenzana, Vibodh Parthasarathi and Cheryll
Ruth R. Soriano. We would also like to thank Peter Harrison, Narelle
Jones and Masako Suzoki at the University of Queensland for making a
series of complex transactions in support of our collective efforts. With-
out the enthusiasm, academic expertise and collaborative spirit of all
these people, initiatives like this don’t happen. In terms of institutional
support, we will remain very grateful to the Institute for Advanced Stud-
ies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, the Digital Media
Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology, the Shailash
J. Mehta School of Management at IIT Bombay and the Social Devel-
opment Research Centre and Department of Communication at De La
Salle University.
1 Digital Transactions in Asia
Adrian Athique
Asia in the Digital Age
The number of internet users in Asia is now equivalent to those in the
rest of the world combined (at two billion) (Internet World Stats 2017).
given their effective convergence over the past decade, the same dy-
namic carries over into the mobile domain, with phone subscribers in
Asia marking more than half of the global total of 4.8 billion. There is
more to come– just under half of the population of China, two thirds of
India and a third of Indonesia and the Philippines are yet to come online
(ITU 2018). given that that uptake continues to increase and the major-
ity of the global population lives in the Asian region, it is clear that we
have passed the tipping point towards a digital system where Asia will
be predominant. From where we are now, we can already discern some
of the substantive changes that digital technologies have brought to the
political, economic and social domains within, and between, the Asian
states. In the global context, both the connections and disconnections of
Digital Asia serve to demonstrate that the old binaries of the West-and-
rest digital divide are being superseded by the dynamics of the region
itself. Large-scale investments in digital infrastructure from North to
South are reshaping the economic and social geography of Asia. After
many decades of developing manufacturing chains and operating labour
markets within the global digital economy, we now stand at a junc-
ture where the regional potentials of these technologies have become
paramount.
Critical mass in the scale of Digital Asia should not obscure the di-
versity, disparity and disjunctures across this vast region. User numbers
alone do not explicate the deeper meanings that situate everyday us-
age and experience of the digital in and across Asian cultures. South
Korea is an epicentre of the global digital economy, while North Korea
is one of the few truly black spots in terms of both digital culture and
infrastructure. Even as Singapore establishes its position as a warehouse
and financial hub for the cloud economy, the digital infrastructure in
Afghanistan is primarily a matrix for murder. India’s digital agenda gives
