Hackerspaces and the Internet of Things in China: How makers are reinventing industrial production, innovation, and the self

This article discusses the visions and practices of DIY (do-it-yourself) maker culture in China. It analyses how the ideals held by DIY makers, such as openness, peer production, and individual empowerment, are formulated in relation to China's project of building a creative society and economy. To demonstrate, this article draws from long-term ethnographic research, including the setting up of China's first hackerspace, the proliferation of making, and partnerships between makers and manufacturers. China's makers are driven to reinvent what creativity, innovation, industrial production and citizenship mean today, simultaneously exploiting and challenging political rhetoric. By setting up hackerspaces, designing open technologies and starting up businesses, they craft alternative subject positions, for themselves and others. The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it fills a gap in current research by providing an account of a culture of technology production. Second, it proposes the analytical lens of 'making subjectivities' to open up the concept of the netizen, illustrating the importance for Chinese Internet research to consider not only technology use, but also the culture and materials of its production. Third, it demonstrates that maker culture is better understood as a parasitic culture rather than a counter culture, altering the system from within, contributing to our understanding of the relationship between technology use, production, society, activism and the state.