Clay Shirky on tech and the internet in China

In this episode of Sinica, Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody who has written about the internet and its effects on society since the 1990s, joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of China's tech industry and the extraordinary advances the nation has made in the online world. The hour-long conversation delves into the details and big-picture phenomena driving the globe's largest internet market, and includes an analysis of Xiaomi's innovation, the struggles that successful Chinese companies face when taking their brands abroad and the nation's robust ecommerce offerings. Clay has written numerous books, including Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream in addition to the aforementioned Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He is also a Shanghai-based associate professor with New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the school's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Please take a listen and send feedback to [email protected], or leave a review on iTunes. Recommendations: Jeremy: Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont, and Modern China is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre by Ning Ken Clay: Internet Literature in China by Michel Hockx Kaiser: A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language by David Moser