Abstract: 

Despite state efforts to standardize language use, many Chinese—especially in peripheral regions—lack proficiency in the official language and primarily speak regional Chinese varieties or ethnic minority languages. I argue that China, in response to this complex linguistic landscape, deliberately deploys AI-driven speech recognition technology as a governance tool to both better comprehend citizen grievances and enforce language-based censorship. In this dual deployment, the state prioritizes the development of not only “high-resource” languages with abundant speakers and data but also “high-threat” languages perceived as politically sensitive over others. Consequently, certain voices are amplified while others are systematically suppressed—a dynamic I characterize as “selective digital citizenship.” Drawing on government documents, newspaper articles, and interviews, I offer a comparative analysis of three key venues: the 12345 government service hotline for vertical communication, social media platforms such as Douyin for horizontal communication, and, as a shadow case, voice-activated convenience tools for personal use. The findings have implications for state-society interactions under digital authoritarianism.

Bio: 

Jieun Kim is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at NYU Shanghai. Her research centers on authoritarian institutions and politics of language policies, with a regional focus on China. Her works have been published in Comparative Political Studies and Journal of Chinese Political Science, among others. She received her PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley in 2021. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania.