Please check out this ICT&Health interview with Genia Kostka: “Inside China’s digital leap – from governance to medicine“
Category Archives: Allgemein
“Chatbot Adoption: From Virtual Assistants to Intimate Partners” – Kostka and Zhou (4 December)
Genia Kostka and Hui Zhou present their ongoing research on chatbot adoption: Against the backdrop of the current AI revolution, AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek are gaining increasing popularity and importance. Despite the plethora of chatbots on the market, the questions of which chatbot a user adopts and why some users develop stronger emotional attachments to chatbots than others remain understudied. Capitalizing on a large-scale survey with over 8,000 responses collected from Germany, the United States, China, and South Africa, this study scrutinises chatbot acceptance and emotional attachment in the context of ChatGPT and Deep Seek.
BCCN Lecture Series on AI Governance in China
Hosted by the Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN), the China Competence Training Center (CCTC) and SCRIPTS, the 2025/26 winter term BCCN lecture series is conceptualized by Prof. Dr. Genia Kostka and Anton Bogs from Freie Universität Berlin. See for further information HERE.
November 3, 12:15–13:45 CET (in person at Freie Universität Berlin and online)
Jinghan Zeng: Security Dilemma and the US–China Generative AI Race
December 4, 14:15–15:45 CET (online)
Hui Zhou and Genia Kostka: From Virtual Assistants to Intimate Partners: Factors Driving Chatbot Adoption and How Users Develop Emotional Attachment to Chatbots
December 11, 18:15–19:45 CET (online)
Angela Huyue Zhang: The Promise and Perils of China’s Regulation of Artificial Intelligence
December 18, 2025, 14:15 – 15:45 CET (online)
Eddie Yang (Purdue University): Propaganda is Already Influencing Large Language Models: Evidence from Training Data, Audits, and Real-world Usage
January 15, 2026, 14:15 – 15:45 CET (online)
Jeffrey Ding (George Washington University): Reputation Collectives: How International Industry Associations Influence China’s Safety Standards in High-Risk Technologies
January 22, 2026, 14:15 – 15:45 CET (online)
David Y. Yang (Harvard University): Government as Venture Capitalists in AI
APSA annual meeting 2025
Hui Zhou will present a working paper – Rules for Thee but Not for Me: Selective Privacy Enforcement in Chinese Court Judgments – on China’s privacy litigation at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), scheduled for September 11–14, 2025 in Vancouver, Canada. As part of the VW-funded Privacy China project, the paper examines how the Chinese judiciary addresses privacy disputes, drawing on 6,370 court judgments. The findings reveal selective privacy enforcement in China: plaintiffs are more likely to win a case when suing a private entity than when the defendant is connected to the public sector. The 2021 Personal Information Protection Law has improved plaintiffs’ prospects in civil lawsuits and has also had implications for criminal charges. The paper indicates that privacy laws can serve as an important tool for safeguarding citizens’ right to privacy, though their effectiveness may be constrained in authoritarian contexts. The manuscript is under review.
BCCN Talk: Rules for Thee but not for Me (Hui Zhou)
Hui Zhou presented his ongoing research on Chinese litigation; Miguel de Figueiredo commented.
Abstract: Against the backdrop of digital transformation, many countries have enacted privacy laws to safeguard personal information. However, few studies have examined the effectiveness of such legislation in protecting privacy. This article addresses the gap by analyzing 6,370 Chinese court judgments across civil and criminal cases. We argue that in authoritarian legal systems, privacy laws may enable plaintiffs to prevail against individuals or private entities, but serve primarily as window dressing when the public sector infringes on privacy. Using original data collected from China Judgments Online, we find evidence supporting this theory. Plaintiffs are significantly more likely to win civil cases against private entities than against public organizations. The 2021 Personal Information Protection Law substantially improves their win rate in cases involving private defendants, but it fails to produce a significant effect when privacy offenders are affiliated with the public sector. Public actors also appear to hold a slight advantage in criminal cases, and the privacy protection law does not appear to have a meaningful impact in this setting. This study underscores the importance of privacy laws in protecting personal privacy on the one hand, and it highlights the limitations of such laws within authoritarian contexts on the other.
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From Virtual Assistants to Intimate Partners (Hui Zhou)
Hui Zhou presented an ongoing project on chatbot usage and emotional attachment on July 15, 2025 at the FU Berlin – Hertie Workshop on Al Governance in China, which was organized by Joanna Bryson and Genia Kostka. The project evaluates how product features, user characteristics, and usage behavior correlate with emotional attachment, paving the way for further studies on privacy perceptions in the context of chatbots. All these chatbot-related projects will draw on an original large-scale survey conducted in Germany, the United States, China, and South Africa. The data collection is nearing completion, and a full manuscript will be available soon.
PRIVACY China Workshop – Room change
Due to high interest in the workshop, we have moved it to a larger room. It will now take place in the Pavilion Room on the fourth floor of the Gateway Building at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
If you would like to attend, please send an email to lena.wesemann[at]fu-berlin.de.
PRIVACY China Workshop Programme
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
To facilitate planning and logistics, we kindly ask you to register in advance (until 23 June). Please do so by sending an email to Lena Wesemann at lena.wesemann[at]fu-berlin.de, including your name, affiliation, and a brief note on your interest in the workshop. Registration is free but required for participation. Since places are limited, we encourage early registration to avoid disappointment.