This chapter opens the book with a puzzle. It starts by delineating two tales about the Chinese internet – one emphasizing state control and the other digital innovation and the rapid growth of China’s tech industry. To make sense of these two seemingly contradictory stories of greater openness to support digitalization while also increasing political control – also referred to as digital dilemma – the chapter introduces the core elements of popular corporatism and looks at how it differs from the more familiar command and control that builds on strong hierarchically organized state-centered logics. It considers existing work on digital dilemma and posits that its digital governance approach to the Chinese model is based on the dynamic relationship between the state, platform firms, and citizens. Because voluntary participation of citizens is important for the state to obtain feedback about their policies as well as for the companies to develop their organizational and informational resources in the state–company partnership, it focuses on two examples of digital participatory spaces in this book – social media platforms and the social credit system (SCS) – to illustrate the Chinese model during Hu and Xi’s leaderships.

This chapter delves into the implications of citizen participation in commercial SCS for their support of the state’s digital policies. Unlike the focus on general political trust in Chapter 5, the attention here now turns to assessing support for a specific digital policy. This chapter finds that citizens are highly supportive of state, compared to company, involvement in managing the SCS. It explores potential explanations such as media exposure, social interaction, and potential network effects. However, high levels of state support can only be fully understood once how people experience policy implementation on the ground is taken into account. When these experiences are mostly financial in nature, individuals are more likely to believe that the chances of their data being used for political purposes is low. Therefore, they become more supportive of the state’s involvement in the SCS overall. For most citizens, a primarily financially oriented SCS is acceptable, but its use as a political tool is not.

This chapter defines the analytical framework of the book by examining the concept of the “Party-state” and positioning it as a unique institutional structure in which the Party (CCP) operates both inside and outside the state apparatus. The chapter outlines two central themes: the Party’s control over decision-making within state institutions and the structural roots of corruption, particularly judicial corruption. It emphasizes the opacity and institutional complexity of the Party, whose internal disciplinary and normative systems have expanded significantly but remain understudied in the English-language scholarship. The author highlights the analytical value of formal Party norms, especially in regulating elite politics and disciplining political behavior. By investigating corruption—understood not as isolated deviance but as a routine institutionalized practice—the book seeks to uncover causal mechanisms embedded in Party-state governance that can explain both rule-abiding and rule-evading conduct. Methodologically, the chapter previews an approach that combines historical institutionalism, normative analysis, and case-based empirical inquiry. It also outlines the book’s structure: Part I focuses on judicial corruption as an entry point to understanding Party-state governance, while Part II explores the Party’s disciplinary and normative architecture as instruments of the Party's self-governance.