Constructing China’s Independent Knowledge System in the Digital Era

Abstract

Since last year, the Metaverse concept has incredibly become a hot topic from both industrial and societal perspectives pushed by various parties and factors. Meanwhile, the phenomenal growth of information technologies such as Web3.0, DAO, StarLink, AIGC, etc. has also attracted great attention from both industry and academia. Although worth exploring, they are somewhat exacerbated by the hype of speculative capital. If we break free from the switching hot topics and calm our mind down, we will find a problem that China often lacks its own discourse system in spite of its arrival as a major tech power. We tend to “follow the crowd”. As a latecomer in information technology, the key to harnessing China’s “latecomer’s advantage” lies in getting rid of “path dependence” which is all about establishing an independent knowledge system and discourse system as well as setting up a “Chinese school” in the information field.