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

In his dissertation, Ningjie Zhu explores the implications of the Chinese concept of 'Social Governance' to deepen the understanding of state-society relations in China under the leadership of the Xi administration. He argues that this shift in official Chinese discourse (from 'social management' to 'social governance') marks the beginning of a new phase in which innovative algorithmic solutions are widely deployed. The purpose of this is to strengthen the party-state's control over society and the internal "party apparatus" down to the grassroots level, which previously, after periods of reform and opening, threatened to slip away from the state.

• Infrastructures of Chinese Modernity and Their Global Constitutive Effects
• Infrastructures of Manipulation
• Comparative Covid Response: Crisis, Knowledge, Politics

Last updated: 14 December, 2022