Rediscovering Social Norms: A Economic Sociological Perspective of Cyberlaw in China

China has accelerated building up its system of Cyberlaw, with a view to addressing the country’s complex and ever-changing Internet governance problems through increasing the supply of formal institutions. The economic sociology of Cyberlaw has long reminded us, however, that beyond laws and other formal institutions there are important but often overlooked regulatory forces, in particular social norms, that may be instrumental to Internet governance. To rediscover the right place for social norms in Cyberlaw studies is to frame such regulatory force as a useful theoretical perspective that illuminates researchers’ understanding of and helpfully structures scholarly discourses on such critically important questions as why Cyberlaw expands, what ensues from such expansion, how Cyberlaw actually regulates, how platforms govern and are governed, and what Cyberlaw are to become.