Author: An Xiao Mina

An Xiao Mina is a design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder in the Pearl River Delta. She uses technology to build and empower communities through design and artistic expression.

The missing context that plagues tech reporting about China

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An Xiao Mina writes in the Columbia Journalism Review:

One problem I see is that many journalists reporting on Chinese technology have limited experience reporting within and about China. They might not fully understand the economic and media aims of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese language, or the underlying logic of global capitalism. China has a population of…

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What Lies Behind The Great Firewall: A Vast Great Shopping Mall Internet Complete With Mall Cops Moderators

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An Xiao Mina and Xiaowei Wang write in the Knight First Amendment Institute blog:

In the West, we’ve become accustomed to reports of censorship in China as the result of a menacing authoritarian regime that threatens the core tenets of free expression. While a convenient construction, this centers authoritarianism as…

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The coming cold war of internets between China and the US in 2038

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By 2038, there won’t just be one internet — there will be many, split along national lines in the midst of a tech cold war between China and the U.S. That’s the prediction of writer and technologist An Xiao Mina, who joined Intelligencer’s new podcast 2038 this week.

Click/tap above to listen to the episode,…

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Shenzhen: A city of where heartbreak and high hopes intermingle and intertwine

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Editor’s note: Part two of our favorite Instagram fieldnotes by An Xiao Mina from her latest trip to Shenzhen. This one focuses on the global flow of goods. You can read part one here.


Three views of a corner, Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen.

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Shenzhen gothic not so gothic

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Editor’s note: This post includes some of our favorite Instagram fieldnotes by An Xiao Mina from her latest trip to Shenzhen. This is part one, which focuses on the aesthetics of the city.

Shenzhen at night. The urban aesthetic of China’s major cities includes a…

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Ethnography of Tech

Chinese tech globalizing like the US, with drones and bikeshares leading the way

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Photo of bike share in front of the Eiffel Tower

Dockless bikeshares in Europe predated the arrival of Chinese companies like Ofo and Mobike, at least in Berlin, but it was a recent trip in Shenzhen and Beijing that I saw their potential at scale. I am used to seeing Chinese tech phenomena remain just that, ie, limited to China. But the near omnipresence of these bikes in major cities — I…

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China Meme Report

From rice bunnies to grass mud horses, an interview with An Xiao Mina

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In this Refinery 29 podcast, host Elisa Kreisinger speaks with An Xiao Mina about how internet memes and social movements are intertwined in China.

Topics cover include:

  • How the #MeToo movement tripped up trying to cross the Great Firewall only to emerge as a series of cute homonymic emojis: 🍚🐰 (rice bunny)
  • How An’s…

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Photo Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen

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Editor’s note: Below is a select excerpt of An Xiao Mina’s Instagram posts from her recent trip to China.

Shenzhen, world epicenter of fidget spinners

At the world epicenter of fidget spinners. I see them in my head, spinning spinning spinning in Berlin, New York, Manila, suddenly viral, suddenly memetic.

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