Police Cloud: Functional modularity in China's cloud public security infrastructure

Abstract

AbstractGlobally, China's Ministry of Public Security has one of the largest appetites and regulatory scopes for new technology use in policing. Using the case study of Police Cloud—a cloud infrastructure project, this paper examines a national wave of cloud migration initiated in Shandong in 2013. Police Cloud began to tackle the deep‐rooted challenges of information sharing across all levels of government. The analysis draws upon a dual dataset of government documents (n = 10) and newspaper articles (n = 277), qualitatively triangulated with Chinese academic articles and grey literature. The findings show how the Ministry of Public Security's switch to platformization triggered an overall change in public security governance. Contrary to platform policing experiences in other parts of the world, the Ministry of Public Security adopted Police Cloud by aiming to retain autonomy and control over private providers. Police Cloud also began enabling functional modularity of surveillance elements of China's public security.