UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An award-winning researcher whose recent book addresses the ongoing digital battle between China and the United States, including the exploitation of personal data with implications on privacy, international trade and more, will discuss that book and her ongoing research during a free public lecture.

Aynne Kokas, the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, the director of the University of Virginia East Asia Center and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, will discuss "Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" at 4 p.m. Jan. 23 in Foster Auditorium of Paterno Library. The session is sponsored by the Pioneers Chair, the Department of Media Studies and the Center for Global Studies.

In “Trafficking Data” (Oxford University Press, October 2022), Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens. Kokas argues that U.S. government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fueled China's technological goldrush.

In turn, American complacency have yielded an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China and, by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on case studies from rapidly growing areas of global media investment like social media apps TikTok, WeChat and Grindr, as well as gaming platforms like Fortnite, the book explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus, of the data that defines the public and private lives of citizens in the U.S. and across the globe.

Kokas’ research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her award-winning first book, “Hollywood Made in China” (University of California Press, 2017), argues that Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of media conglomerates’ leverage of global commercial brands.

Kokas is a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her writing and commentary have appeared in over 50 countries and 16 languages.