This paper outlines common but contested ties between states and the internet, especially the return of states and sovereignty to the realm of internet governance during the post-2008 crisis of the American-led liberal global order. Using “post-American era” as a heuristic framework for uncovering alternative proposals and emergent arrangements, this paper argus that, the Chinese internet research should conceptualize, on the one hand, the internet as a socio-technical assemblage, and on the other, the state as co-constituting with social forces, in order to contest the binary constructs between material and virtual, state and market, liberal and authoritarian, national and international, and, ultimately, Chinese and global. In the case of China, this paper suggests that the cyber sovereignty model is predicated on an inclusive yet interventionist relationship with the networks of nonstate stakeholders. Looking forward, it proposes using Marxian theories to further develop open sovereignty and bottom-up multilateralism in global internet governance, which would balance the indispensable role of states, on the one hand, and learning and participatory processes that involve nonstate stakeholders, on the other.