Ningjie Zhu studied International Studies and Entrepreneurship & Innovation Management at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He then went to KU Leuven to study International Politics with a focus on cross-strait relations. Since April 2022 he is employed as a research fellow at the University of Bonn and together with Prof. Maximilian Mayer responsible for the subproject "Infrastructure of Manipulation".

Technopolitics | Social Control | Surveillance Studies | State-Society Relationships | Institutional Changes in Contemporary Chinese Studies | Political Mobilisation

The path from top-level design to implementation on the ground in the digital governing process in China has become a complex and trending issue in recent years. This doctoral project shall conceptualize China's digital governance as a form of algorithmic regulation. Through a comprehensive examination of both the digital platforms facilitating public service delivery and the platforms integral to internal governance mechanisms within bureaucratic structures at the Chinese city level, this research endeavors to elucidate how digital decision-making systems, oriented towards achieving pre-established top-down objectives, reshape the Chinese governing process.

• Infrastructures of Chinese Modernity and Their Global Constitutive Effects¹
• Infrastructures of Manipulation²
• Comparative Covid Response: Crisis, Knowledge, Politics³

• Utilizing WeChat as a research instrument: The interplay amongst censorship policies, self-censorship behaviors, and anti-censorship tactics on the WeChat platform. (2024). Blog scientifique de l’Institut Confucius, Université de Genève. Link⁴

Last updated: January, 2025