Yu Hong's book Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy is an important contribution to the increasing body of literature on Chinese digital media and communication. It provides a timely account of the history and political economy of major transformations in Chinese telecommunications, digital media and ICT manufacturing – core components of Hong's sweeping term “communications.” Based on extensive literature reviews from both English and Chinese sources, it is a much-needed critical account and analysis of China's engagement with ICTs, telecommunications and digital media in the context of the state's grand strategy to forge a network-based economy. It reinforces a new direction for academic research on Chinese digital media and communication, away from a focus on political control/censorship and online citizen activism/civil society (which are the spotlights of Western discourses) or the neo-technonationalist discourse on ICT for development within China, toward a political economy analysis of communications at the structural, systematic and transnational level. It paints a big picture without losing sight of nuances at the meso and micro levels. “Communications” is taken as comprising a wide range of hardware, software and services. It spans smartphone assembly lines, fibre-optic broadband infrastructure and 3 G ecosystems, smart home concepts, equipment and content, global internet and network governance, and cross-platform and cross-border public–private alliances and conflicts. Echoing Dan Schiller's position on global digital capitalism, Hong characterizes communications industries, networks and policies as interwoven with China's effort for economic restructuring. She highlights why and how communications is central to Chinese-style capitalism and a pillar of China's ambition to be a globally recognised power (not partial power) in its own right.

The book is well written and exemplary in research. It is neatly divided into six chapters according to the economic geography of communications, all focusing on the role of the state and capital in a communications-led economic restructuring that was a response to the 2008 global economic crisis. Chapters one and two address the ICT-dominant export-processing economic model and China's telecom infrastructure, showing how telecommunications (state-controlled institutions and resources) responded to the demands of such an economic model (such as shifting ICT production to the western regions of China and initiating telecom corporate reforms). Chapters three and four look at the role of broadband and mobile communications in networking China (as in the title of the book). In these chapters, Hong historicizes the networking theme by tracing the role of informatization in economic restructuring from the telecom reforms in the 1990s to the broadband strategy in the 2000s, and finally to the post-2008 mobile communications push as a technonationalist attempt to alter China's dependence on foreign capital, technology and standards. These chapters highlight the role of the state in negotiating with transnational commercial and political forces to help domestic corporate players. Measures included the initiative to exchange market access for technology in the 1980s, encouraging a web-based economy and nurturing national champions in network-equipment production, handset production and content development from the 1990s onward, and facilitating the ascent to dominance of Chinese proprietary gateways in the 2000s. Hong also points out the disjunction and constraints of the state-led, communications-focused developmental path and the contingent nature of state telecommunications policies, which are characterized by internal strife within the Party-state bureaucracies and diverging demands of state-owned corporatized stakeholders (such as China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom) and private companies (such as Huawei and ZTE).

Chapter five turns to digital TV as a case to illustrate the impact on the media system and cultural industry of the state-orchestrated twin strategies to go digital and go global. It addresses corporate reforms within the state media system in the 2000s, the rise of digital media champions, and the implications for the socialist state's commitment to public service and universal access. Together with other chapters, chapter five illustrates the contradictions and dilemmas in the elitist desire for digital economy and digital consumption as a solution to China's economic restructuring at the expense of local needs, particularly in rural areas. It also shows how fractional conflicts among state-owned enterprises and between the state and its corporate arms could hinder China's grant strategy to place digital economy and communications at the core of economic restructuring. The final chapter recaps key analyses of previous chapters and returns to the main argument that communications policies and industries are interwoven with Chinese-style digital capitalism, a Chinese answer to the global economic crisis and China's ambition to avert the trend of external dependence and internal imbalances. The book ends with a cautious note on China's capacity to overcome structural problems characteristic of global digital capitalism, such as industrial overcapacity, exploited labour, and unbalanced regional and sectional development. It calls for attention to grassroots responses and alternatives to this digital communicative ecosystem, a system that has been spearheaded by entrepreneurial bureaucrats, transnational capitalists and their representatives within and outside China, an outward-looking middle-class, and China's own digital champions.

It is important to point out that China's home-grown digital champions represented by the internet giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT) are at the forefront of developing a networked economy and digital nation. They have championed new initiatives in establishing multi-media, multi-platform and cross-border businesses that are market driven and at the same time in response to political imperatives. They often play a leading role in technological and policy innovation, while state-owned media corporations sometimes play a catching up game. The interplay between non-state digital champions and state-owned or state-controlled entities within and outside China, should be another area for further research.

Networking China is an indispensable book for scholars and students who desire a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of digital communications and the networked economy in China, particularly in the context of recent state initiatives such as “Internet Plus” and “Made in China 2025.” It is an important resource in the fields of new media studies, and communication studies, internet studies, policy analysis, political science and Chinese studies.