PREFACE
1. We had computer classes, but the computers on the Changping campus were not connected to the Internet. We learned typing and programming in those classes.
2. Guobin Yang, “Contention in Cyberspace,” in Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 135.
3. “The Trial of Xu Zhiyong: A New Citizen,” Economist, no. 8871 (2014): 52.
4. Some Smth administrators moved their user data off campus and with these data established NewSmth.
1. INTRODUCTION: PLURALISM AND CYBERPOLITICS IN CHINA
1. See Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce, and Danah Boyd, “The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 1375–1405; Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media,” Foreign Affairs 90, no.1 (2011): 28–41; Mohamed Zayani, Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Nahed Eltantawy and Julie B. Wiest, “Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 1207–24; Ethan Zuckerman, “The First Twitter Revolution?” Foreign Policy, January 15, 2011.
2. See Ian Johnson, “Activists Call for a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in China,” New York Times, February 24, 2011.
3. James Fallows, “Arab Spring, Chinese Winter,” Atlantic, September 2011; Tania Branigan, “China’s Jasmine Revolution: Police but No Protesters Line Streets of Beijing,” Guardian, February 27, 2011; Jeremy Page, “Call for Protests Unnerves Beijing,” Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2011; Austin Ramzy, “State Stamps Out Small ‘Jasmine’ Protests in China,” Time, February 21, 2011, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2052860,00.html.
4. Lisa Anderson, “Demystifying the Arab Spring,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (2011): 2–7.
6. Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17; David L Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
7. See Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kevin J. O’Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Yongshun Cai, Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); Jianrong Yu, Kangzhengxing Zhengzhi: Zhongguo Zhengzhi Shehuixue Jiben Wenti (Contentious Politics: Basic Questions of Chinese Political Sociology) (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2010).
8. Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010); Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48, no. 5 (2008): 752–72.
9. Barbara Demick, “Protests in China Over Local Grievances Surge, and Get a Hearing,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/08/world/la-fg-china-protests-20111009. The report suggests that Chinese demonstrators “have a narrow agenda and concrete demands: Farmers want a stop to confiscations of their land or to get better compensation for lost property. Homeowners want to stop demolitions. People want cleaner air and water and safer food. Truckers and taxi drivers want relief from soaring fuel prices.”
10. Sheri Berman, “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” World Politics 49, no. 3 (1997): 401–29.
11. Taylor C. Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web: The Control of Internet Use in Nondemocratic Regimes,” in How Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution: National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology, ed. John Zysman and Abraham Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2006), 365.
12. Zeynep Tufekci and Deen Freelon, “Introduction to the Special Issue on New Media and Social Unrest,” American Behavioral Scientist 57, no. 7 (2013): 843.
13. Philip N. Howard, Aiden Duffy, Deen Freelon, Muzammil M. Hussain, Will Mari, and Marwa Maziad, “Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring?” SSRN (2011), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2595096, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2595096; W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, The Logic of Connective Action Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Zeynep Tufekci, “Social Movements and Governments in the Digital Age: Evaluating a Complex Landscape,” Journal of International Affairs 68, no. 1 (2014): 1–18; Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson, “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations from Tahrir Square,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2 (April 2012): 363–79; Emily Parker, Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
14. Howard et al., “Opening Closed Regimes.”
15. Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave?
16. Guobin Yang, “The Internet and the Rise of a Transnational Chinese Cultural Sphere,” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2003): 469–90; Guobin Yang and Craig Calhoun, “Media, Civil Society, and the Rise of a Green Public Sphere in China,” China Information 21, no. 2 (2007): 211–36; Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online; Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007); Yong Hu, Zhongsheng Xuanhua: Wangluo Shidai de Geren Biaoda Yu Gonggong Taolun (The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008). Xu Wu also argues that the Internet has nurtured cyber-nationalism by creating a public sphere beyond state control. See Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007).
17. Esarey and Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere”; Qiang Xiao, “The Battle for the Chinese Internet,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 2 (2011): 47–61; Yang, The Power of the Internet in China.
18. Guobin Yang, “The Co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China,” Asian Survey 43, no. 3 (2003): 124–41; Guobin Yang, “The Internet and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment,” Journal of Contemporary China 12, no. 36 (2003): 453–75; Guobin Yang, “How Do Chinese Civic Associations Respond to the Internet? Findings from a Survey,” The China Quarterly, no. 189 (2007): 122–43; Zixue Tai, The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society (London: Routledge, 2006).
19. Zheng, Technological Empowerment; Yongnian Zheng and Guoguang Wu, “Information Technology, Public Space, and Collective Action in China,” Comparative Political Studies 38, no. 5 (2005): 507–36; Patricia Thornton, “Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China: Boomerang, Backfire or Spectacle?” in Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 179–204; Chin-Fu Hung, “Citizen Journalism and Cyberactivism in China’s Anti-PX Plant in Xiamen, 2007–2009,” China: An International Journal 11, no. 1 (2013): 40–54; Chin-Fu Hung, “The Politics of Cyber Participation in the PRC: The Implications of Contingency for the Awareness of Citizens’ Rights,” Issues and Studies 42, no. 4 (2006): 137–73; Li Gao and James Stanyer, “Hunting Corrupt Officials Online: The Human Flesh Search Engine and the Search for Justice in China,” Information, Communication, & Society 17, no. 7 (2014): 814–29; Michael S. Chase and James C. Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's Counter-Strategies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002).
20. Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
21. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China; Yonggang Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang: Wangluo Shidai de Biaoda Yu Jianguan (Our Great Firewall: Expression and Governance in the Era of the Internet) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009); Eric Harwit and Duncan Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control Over Network Infrastructure and Content,” Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2001): 377–408; Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
22. He Qinglian, The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China (New York: Human Rights in China, 2008); Chase and Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent; Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, “Internet Filtering in China,” IEEE Internet Computing, 2003, 70–77; Greg Walton, “China’s Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People’s Republic of China” (Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 2001), accessed April 20, 2012, http://www.dd-rd.ca/site/_PDF/publications/globalization/CGS_ENG.PDF; Lena L. Zhang, “Behind the ‘Great Firewall’: Decoding China’s Internet Media Policies from the Inside,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12, no. 3 (2006): 271–91; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation,” Science 345, no. 6199 (2014): 1–10; Lokman Tsui, “An Inadequate Metaphor: The Great Firewall and Chinese Internet Censorship,” Global Dialogue 9, no. 1/2 (2007): 60–68.
23. See Walton, “China’s Golden Shield”; Tsui, “An Inadequate Metaphor.” It is worth noting that the Great Firewall is not equivalent to the Golden Shield Project started by the Ministry of Public Security. The latter, attempting to “informatize” the ministry’s workflow, is “better described as an effort to network the police, rather than police the network.” See Dave Lyons, “China’s Golden Shield Project: Myths, Realities and Context” (paper presented at the 7th Chinese Internet Research Conference, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, May 27–29, 2009).
24. Andrew Jacobs, “China Requires Censorship Software on New PCs,” New York Times, June 8, 2009.
25. See Jens Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society,” Critical Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2007): 273–94.
26. Guobin Yang, “Technology and Its Contents: Issues in the Study of the Chinese Internet,” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1043–50; Bingchun Meng, “Moving Beyond Democratization: A Thought Piece on the China Internet Research Agenda,” International Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 501–8; Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society.”
27. Yang, “Technology and Its Contents,” 1044.
28. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Chapter 5 and p. 122.
29. Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s ‘Networked Authoritarianism,’ ” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 2 (2011): 32–46; Chin-Fu Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age: Internet Commentators and the Weng’an Incident,” Issues & Studies 46, no. 4 (2010): 149–81.
30. Johan Lagerkvist, “Internet Ideotainment in the PRC: National Responses to Cultural Globalization,” Journal of Contemporary China 17, no. 54 (2008): 121–40.
31. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China.
32. Paola Voci, China on Video: Smaller-Screen Realities (New York: Routledge, 2010); Meng, “Moving Beyond Democratization.”
33. Zheng, Technological Empowerment.
34. Jonathan Hassid, “Safety Valve or Pressure Cooker? Blogs in Chinese Political Life,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2 (2012): 212–30.
35. Among the few studies on intermediary actors, none has examined the role of forum managers who directly interact with netizens. See Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0: How Companies Censor Bloggers,” First Monday 14, no. 2 (2009), http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2378/2089; Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere, 166–76; Ethan Zuckerman, “Intermediary Censorship,” in Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace, ed. Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 71–85.
36. Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust in Rural China,” Modern China 30, no. 2 (2004): 228–58; Andrew Mertha, “ ‘Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” The China Quarterly, no. 200 (2009): 995–1012.
37. See Cass R. Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009); Cass R. Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Matthew Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, “Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities,” in Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary Communities, ed. Barry Wellman (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 331–66; Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes, Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Lincoln Dahlberg, “The Internet and Democratic Discourse: Exploring the Prospects of Online Deliberative Forums Extending the Public Sphere,” Information, Communication & Society 4, no. 4 (2001): 615–33; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Rethinking the Fragmentation of the Cyberpublic: From Consensus to Contestation,” New Media & Society 9, no. 5 (2007): 827–47; Anthony G. Wilhelm, “Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative Is Online Political Discussion?” Information, Communication & Society 1, no. 3 (1998): 313–38; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Computer-Mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 7, no. 1 (2001): 0, doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00137.x.
38. Yang, “Technology and Its Contents,” 1048.
39. In 2012, all top twenty BBS sites had at least nine hundred simultaneous users online at their peak hours. For eighteen of them, the number exceeded one thousand, and the largest (NewSmth) had over thirty thousand. See “BBS Zhandian Liebiao Qian Ershiqiang (2012 Nian 03 Yue)” (“Top 20 BBS Sites”), Newsmth, March 2012, http://www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=BBSView&gid=45334.
40. See Guobin Yang, ed., China’s Contested Internet (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2015).
41. James Leibold, “Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1023–41.
42. For instance, “NewExpress@NewSmth,” “Maoyan@Kdnet,” “Military@Mitbbs,” “Triangle@Bdwm,” and “Free@Tianya” are all among the most popular discussion boards of these forums. Qianguo Luntan is primarily a political forum.
44. Kevin J. O’Brien, “Neither Transgressive nor Contained: Boundary-Spanning Contention in China,” Mobilization 8, no. 1 (2003): 51–64.
45. Ron Deibert, “Cyberspace Under Siege,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 3 (2015): 64–78; Florian Toepfl, “Managing Public Outrage: Power, Scandal, and New Media in Contemporary Russia,” New Media & Society 13, no. 8 (2011): 1301–19; Carolina Vendil Pallin, “Internet Control Through Ownership: The Case of Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 2016, 1–18; Luca Anceschi, “The Persistence of Media Control Under Consolidated Authoritarianism: Containing Kazakhstan’s Digital Media,” Demokratizatsiya 23, no. 3 (2015): 277–95; Çağri Yalkin, Finola Kerrigan, and Dirk vom Lehn, “(Il)Legitimisation of the Role of the Nation State: Understanding of and Reactions to Internet Censorship in Turkey,” New Media & Society 16, no. 2 (2013): 271–89.
46. For instance, see Calum MacLeod, “Media Controls Leave Most Chinese Unaware of Activist Chen,” USA Today, May 5, 2012, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-05-04/China-media-blackout/54773020/1. Authoritarian regimes may only pursue sufficient control for their political, economic, and social goals, rather than perfect control that would prevent even tech-savvy individuals from gaining unfettered access to the Internet. See Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web.”
47. For a discussion of rights consciousness in China, see Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China,” Modern China 27, no. 4 (2001): 407–35; Lianjiang Li, “Rights Consciousness and Rules Consciousness in Contemporary China,” The China Journal, no. 64 (2010): 47–68; Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of Rights: From Mencius to Mao—and Now,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 1 (2008): 37–50.
48. See Henrik Serup Christensen, “Political Activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or Political Participation by Other Means?” First Monday 16, no. 2 (2011), http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3336/2767; Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism,” Foreign Policy, May 19, 2009.
49. King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression”; Peter Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship,” American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 2 (2014): 402–14.
50. Manuel Castells, “A Network Theory of Power,” International Journal of Communication 5, no. 1 (2011): 779.
51. Evan Osnos, “Angry Youth: The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists,” New Yorker, July 28, 2008, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos. Also see Li Guang, “ ‘Siyue Qingnian’: Wangluo Minzu Zhuyi Xin Shili” (“ ‘April Youth’: The New Force of Cyber Nationalism”), Fenghuang Zhoukan (Phoenix Weekly) 434, no. 13 (May 2012): 24–31; Wang Jiajun, “Cong Caogen dao Jingying–Dalun Wangluo Minzu Zhuyi Liubian” (“From Grassroots to Elitism: The Transformation of Mainland Cyber Nationalism”), Fenghuang Zhoukan (Phoenix Weekly) 434, no. 13 (May 2012): 36–38.
52. In fact, Chinese netizens are the most likely in Asia Pacific to post and share negative reviews of products. See “Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage.”
53. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 362.
54. In the 2012 Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands dispute with Japan, several local Chinese media outlets cropped a picture in their reports to conceal the flag of the Taiwan-Based Republic of China, whereas national news agencies such as Xinhua News Agency and Global Times (Huanqiu Shibao, 环球时报) used the original picture. Clearly, local censors imposed tougher constraints to avoid political risks. See Ding Li and Zheng Lingyu, “Diaoyudao Qingtian Bairi Qi, Zhongguo Meiti Nanti, Zaojiazhe Aipi Daoqian” (“The Flag of the Republic of China Over Diaoyu Islands Poses a Dilemma for Chinese Media, and Forgers Apologized After Being Criticized”), VOA Chinese, August 20, 2012, www.voachinese.com/content/hk_newspaper_20120820/1491305.html. For a good analysis of different rationales behind the central and local authorities in their responses to collective action, see Cai, Collective Resistance in China, 4–8.
55. For more on the safety-valve function of online expression, see Hassid, “Safety Valve or Pressure Cooker?” For more on the backfire effects of the state’s censorship and opinion manipulation, see Michael Wines, “China’s Censors Misfire in Abuse-of-Power Case,” New York Times, November 17, 2010.
56. Li, “Political Trust in Rural China”; Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside,” Comparative Politics 40, no. 2 (2008): 209–26.
57. Lagerkvist, The Internet in China.
58. Yang, “Technology and Its Contents,” 1044.
59. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak : Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).
60. See Yanqi Tong and Shaohua Lei, “War of Position and Microblogging in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 80 (2013): 292–311; Esarey and Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere”; He Qinglian, “ ‘Renmin Luntan’ Diaocha Cuihuile Beijing de Zhidu Zixin” (“People’s Forum Survey Defeats Beijing’s Confidence in System”), VOA Chinese, April 15, 2013, www.voachinese.com/content/public-opinion-survey-20130415/1641814.html.
61. Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society”; Leibold, “Blogging Alone.”
63. “Wang Dan zai Fating Chengren: Shoudao Chen Shui-Bian de 40 Wan Meiyuan” (“Wang Dan Confesses in Court: He Received US$400,000 from Chen Shui-Bian”), Mitbbs, April 15, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/35644205.html (link expired); “Wang Adan Na le Chen A-bian 40 Wan Meijin” (“Wang A-Dan Took US$400,000 from Chen A-Bian”), Mitbbs, April 15, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/35642545.html (link expired).
64. Political ambition carries negative implications among netizens because it implies that the struggle is not between the citizenry and the repressive state, but instead between political power contenders who are concerned only with their own interests rather than public welfare.
65. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 39.
66. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 8.
67. Zheng, Technological Empowerment.
68. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 1.
70. See Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). Alexis de Tocqueville viewed civic associations as the key to American democracy and defined egoism as “a passionate and exaggerated love of oneself,” which “blights the germ of all virtue,” including that of public life. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume 2 (New York: Vintage, 1840), 98–99.
71. Netizens label experts (zhuanjia, 专家) as “brick owners” (zhuanjia, 砖家, “charlatans”), professors (jiaoshou, 教授) as “shouting beasts” (jiaoshou 叫兽), and journalists (jizhe, 记者) as “prostitutes” or “jorkalists” (jizhe, 妓者). Even “public intellectuals” (gonggong zhishi fenzi, 公共知识分子) are popularly denigrated among netizens. See Rongbin Han, “Withering Gongzhi: Cyber Criticism of Chinese Public Intellectuals,” International Journal of Communication (forthcoming).
72. For a brief review and critique of the democratic consolidation literature, see Andreas Schedler, “What Is Democratic Consolidation?” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 2 (1998): 91–107. For a collection of discussions on the quality of democracy, see Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, Assessing the Quality of Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
73. Guobin Yang, “The Internet and the Rise of a Transnational Chinese Cultural Sphere,” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2003): 471.
74. See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
75. The representativeness of online expression is a potential problem because, besides everything else, not all citizens are online, and not all netizens are equally active. But the term representative is used here in a narrow sense, referring only to the degree to which online voices are included in this study.
76. They both offer telnet access, a defining technical feature of many early campus forums.
77. For example, Admin5.com, which targets developers and managers of small and medium-size websites.
78. For example, NewSmth’s “BBSview Board,” which attracts campus BBS managers.
79. QQ is an instant messenger service platform. QQ chat groups are similar to online chat rooms.
2. HARMONIZING THE INTERNET
1. Ronda Hauben, Jay Hauben, Werner Zorn, and Anders Ekeland, “The Origin and Early Development of the Internet and of the Netizen: Their Impact on Science and Society,” in Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society, ed. Wesley Shrum, Keith Benson, Wiebe Bijker, and Klaus Brunnstein (Boston: Springer, 2007), 47–62; Werner Zorn, “How China Was Connected to the International Computer Networks,” The Amateur Computerist Newsletter 15, no. 2 (2007): 72–98.
2. Rongbin Han, “Cyberactivism in China: Empowerment, Control, and Beyond,” in The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, ed. Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen (New York: Routledge, 2016), 268–80.
3. Jesper Schlæger and Min Jiang, “Official Microblogging and Social Management by Local Governments in China,” China Information 28, no. 2 (2014): 189–213; Ashley Esarey, “Winning Hearts and Minds? Cadres as Microbloggers in China,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 69–103.
4. Johan Lagerkvist, “Internet Ideotainment in the PRC: National Responses to Cultural Globalization,” Journal of Contemporary China 17, no. 54 (2008): 121–40.
5. Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Lena L. Zhang, “Behind the ‘Great Firewall’: Decoding China’s Internet Media Policies from the Inside,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies 12, no. 3 (2006): 271–91.
6. Zheng, Technological Empowerment, 50–53.
7. Min Jiang, “Authoritarian Informationalism: China’s Approach to Internet Sovereignty,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 30, no. 2 (2010): 71–89.
8. See, for instance, Zheng, Technological Empowerment; Yongnian Zheng and Guoguang Wu, “Information Technology, Public Space, and Collective Action in China,” Comparative Political Studies 38, no. 5 (2005): 507–36; Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Patricia Thornton, “Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China: Boomerang, Backfire or Spectacle?” in Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 179–204; Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Susan Shirk, ed., Changing Media, Changing China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48, no. 5 (2008): 752–72; Guobin Yang, “The Internet and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment,” Journal of Contemporary China 12, no. 36 (2003): 453–75; Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007).
9. Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
10. Eric Harwit and Duncan Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control Over Network Infrastructure and Content,” Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2001): 377–408.
11. He Qinglian, The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China (New York: Human Rights in China, 2008); Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, “Internet Filtering in China,” IEEE Internet Computing, 2003, 70–77; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation,” Science 345, no. 6199 (2014): 1–10; Michael S. Chase and James C. Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's Counter-Strategies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002); Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media,” Freedom House, April 1, 2009, https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom%20OnThe%20Net_Full%20Report.pdf.
12. Edward Wong, “Xinjiang, Tense Chinese Region, Adopts Strict Internet Controls,” New York Times, December 11, 2016.
13. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology responded promptly to popular criticism, claiming that the software does not monitor users’ online activities and can be uninstalled. See Bao Ying, “Xin Diannao Xuzhuang Guolü Shangwang Ruanjian” (“Filtering Software to Be Installed on New Computers”), Xin Jingbao (Beijing News), June 10, 2009.
14. King Wa Fu, Chung Hong Chan, and Michael Chau, “Assessing Censorship on Microblogs in China: Discriminatory Keyword Analysis and the Real-Name Registration Policy,” IEEE Internet Computing 17, no. 3 (2013): 42–50; Johan Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector? The Party-State and Industry Real-Name Registration Waltz,” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 2628–46; Tamara Renee Shie, “The Tangled Web: Does the Internet Offer Promise or Peril for the Chinese Communist Party?” Journal of Contemporary China 13, no. 40 (2004): 523–40.
15. Zheng, Technological Empowerment.
16. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 47–51.
17. Yonggang Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang: Wangluo Shidai de Biaoda Yu Jianguan (Our Great Firewall: Expression and Governance in the Era of the Internet) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009), 117–26. Yang and Li differ in their assessment of when the third stage started. Yang believes the third stage began in 2003 and was marked by the power transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. Li argues that the third stage began in 2004, when the state concluded its policy learning process with the release of important documents such as Opinions on Further Strengthening the Administration of the Internet.
18. Zheng, Technological Empowerment, xviii.
19. See Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,” Administrative Science Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1972): 1–25.
20. Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang, 117–26.
21. There are agencies peripherally involved in Internet control. For instance, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce joined seven other ministries to launch a campaign to restrict the presence of undesirable information online in 2002. See Zheng, Technological Empowerment, 55. Also, as the Internet has become an increasingly important channel for publicity, many state agencies have established their own information services or Internet offices.
22. The term may also refer to censoring agencies as a whole.
23. See David Shambaugh, “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy,” China Journal, no. 57 (2007): 25–58. The Fifth Bureau of the State Council Information Office (i.e., the Internet Bureau) has been delegated the power to supervise and approve Internet news information services and to intervene in the dissemination of routine online news reports through decrees. The Ninth Bureau of the State Council manages Internet culture and also has the authority to exert control over online forums, blogs, and microblogs. See Su Yongtong, “Guoxinban ‘Kuobian,’ Wangluo Guanli Jusi Yi Bian Er” (“State Council Information Office Expansion: One Internet Administration Bureau Becomes Two”), Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), May 20, 2010; Tao Xizhe, “Jiekai Zhongguo Wangluo Jiankong Jizhi de Neimu” (“Uncovering Inside Stories of China’s Internet Censorship Regime”), Reporters Without Borders, October 10, 2007, http://archives.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/China_Internet_Report_in_Chinese.pdf.
24. Michael Wines, “China Creates New Agency for Patrolling the Internet,” New York Times, May 4, 2012.
25. See Jack Linchuan Qiu, “Virtual Censorship in China: Keeping the Gate Between the Cybersapces,” International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, no. 4 (2000): 1–25. Qiu argues that the government has come to play a more significant role as the Party has moved into the background. See also Tao, “Jiekai Zhongguo Wangluo Jiankong Jizhi de Neimu.”
26. The Internet Police perform multiple functions, with online content surveillance being one of them. See Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang, 96–98.
27. For news reports, see Xing Jun, Chen Wei, Ji Yu, and Zhang Gaofeng, “.cn Geren Yuming Shenqing Bei Jiaoting, Wangyou Zhiyi Tuixie Jianguan Zeren” (“Individuals’ Applications to .cn Domain Name Suspended, Netizens Criticize It as Shirking Regulating Responsibility”), Netease, December 15, 2009, http://news.163.com/09/1215/08/5QIHRTVE0001124J.html; Hou Zhenwei, “Geren Weihe Bei Jin Zhuce ‘.cn’ ” (“Why Individuals Are Forbidden to Register for .cn Domains”), Beijing Wanbao (Beijing Evening News), December 24, 2009.
29. The state has never released an official list of taboo words, forcing forums to maintain their own lists. This is according to group discussions at the National Campus Bulletin Board System Managers Conference in Suzhou, October 24, 2012, and interviews with BBS managers in Suzhou, October 23–24, 2009: interviews RSZ 2009–21, RSZ 2009–23, RSZ 2009–24, RSZ 2009–25, RSZ 2009–29, and RSZ 2009–30.
30. For instance, see Shanghai Municipal Government, “Shanghai Shi Wangluo yu Xinxi Anquan Shijian Zhuanxiang Yingji Yu’an” (“Special Emergency Plan for Internet and Information Security Crises of Shanghai Municipality”), Shanghai Emergency Response Center for Information Security, February 20, 2014, http://www.sercis.cn/html/30254986.html; Fengxian County Party Committee Office and Fengxian County Government Office, “Fengxian Xinxi Anquan Tufa Shijian Yingji Yu’an” (“Emergency Plan for Information Security Crises of Fengxian County”), Government Website of Fengxian County, September 25, 2012, www.sxfx.gov.cn/?viewinfor-199-0-11518.htm.
32. Wang Xin, “Xinlang Tengxun Weibo Zanting Pinglun San Tian” (“Sina and Tencent Suspend Comment Function of Microblog Services for Three Days”), Chengdu Ribao (Chengdu Daily), April 1, 2012.
33. Cheng Shuwen, “Woguo Wangluo Fanfu Chuxian ‘Duanyashi Jiangwen’ ” (“Online Anticorruption Cools Down Dramatically”), Nanfang Dushibao (Southern Metropolis Daily), December 26, 2014.
34. See Tao, “Jiekai Zhongguo Wangluo Jiankong Jizhi de Neimu.”
35. Jasper Schlæger, E-Government in China: Technology, Power and Local Government Reform (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013); Kathleen Hartford, “Dear Mayor: Online Communications with Local Governments in Hangzhou and Nanjing,” China Information 19, no. 2 (July 1, 2005): 217–60.
36. In August 2000, the People’s Daily urged state media to conquer “online commanding heights of thought and public opinion.” See “Dali Jiaqiang Woguo Hulianwang Meiti Jianshe” (“Strengthen the Construction of Our Internet Media”), People’s Daily, August 9, 2000. In December 2000, the State Council Information Office approved nine key online news providers, all of which were mouthpiece agencies, such as People’s Daily Online, Xinhua Net, and CCTV Online.
37. Schlæger and Jiang, “Official Microblogging”; Liang Ma, “The Diffusion of Government Microblogging,” Public Management Review 15, no. 2 (February 28, 2013): 288–309; Esarey, “Winning Hearts and Minds?”
38. Lagerkvist, “Internet Ideotainment in the PRC”; Rongbin Han, “Manufacturing Consent in Cyberspace: China’s ‘Fifty-Cent Army,’ ” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 105–34; Chin-Fu Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age: Internet Commentators and the Weng’an Incident,” Issues & Studies 46, no. 4 (2010): 149–81.
39. In 2004, at the Fourth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s Sixteenth National Congress, then president Hu Jintao proposed the idea of a “harmonious society” as a strategic goal for China’s development. This idea soon became the official rhetoric that the state, particularly its local agents, would use to justify its efforts to maintain social stability, suppress popular mobilization, and censor online expression. This is why netizens have used the term harmony to refer to state censorship. Chapter 4 discusses netizens’ reactions to the idea of a “harmonious society” and state censorship in greater detail.
40. Shie, “The Tangled Web,” 538.
41. See Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang, 126–30.
42. State Council Information Office, Hulianwang Shangwang Fuwu Yingye Changsuo Guanli Tiaoli (Regulations on the Administration of Business Sites of Internet Access Services), September 29, 2002.
43. The Cybersecurity Law, passed in November 2016, explicitly requires network operators, including online service providers, to verify users’ true identity. This law has resulted in greater implementation of real-name registration. Forums such as Baidu Tieba and NewSmth now force users to provide cellphone numbers before allowing them to post. But as of June 6, 2017, Tianya still allows users to post without going through identity verification.
44. For instance, see Gady Epstein and Lin Yang, “Sina Weibo,” Forbes Asia 7, no. 3 (March 2011): 56–60.
45. Interview RSZ 2009–25, with a campus BBS manager, Suzhou, October 24, 2009; interview RBJ 2009–18, with an unofficial forum campus BBS manager, Beijing, October 22, 2009; interview OBE 2011–53, phone interview with a private BBS manager, February 9, 2011.
46. As indicated by the numerous ads online, helping online businesses with the registration and licensing process is actually a lucrative business.
47. See John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
48. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18.
49. Li Shao, “The Continuing Authoritarian Resilience Under Internet Development in China: An Observation of Sina Micro-Blog” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 1-51, http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b21909970~S1; Ian Bremmer, “Why China’s Leaders Fear the Teletubbies,” Foreign Policy, June 13, 2012, http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/13/why_china_s_leaders_fear_the_teletubbies.
50. King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.”
52. Hong Sha, “Liu Xiaobo ‘Ruanjin’ Bairi yu Qizi Dierci Jianmian” (“After One-Hundred-Day House Arrest, Liu Xiaobo Sees His Wife Again”), Sina North America, March 20, 2009, http://news.sina.com/ch/dwworld/102-000-101-105/2009-03-20/04163726082.html; Nick Amies, “Europe Praises, China Condemns Liu Xiaobo Choice for Nobel Peace Prize,” Deutsche Welle, October 8, 2010, www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6093118,00.html; “Liu Xiaobo Bei Kong Shandong Dianfu Guojia Zhengquan Zui” (“Liu Xiaobo Accused of Inciting Subversion of State Authority”), BBC Chinese, June 24, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/trad/hi/newsid_8110000/newsid_8116000/8116019.stm.
53. Jim Yadley, “Detained AIDS Doctor Allowed to Visit U.S. Later, China Says,” New York Times, February 17, 2007.
54. Interview RBJ 2010–41, with a forum manager of a large commercial website, Beijing, May 21, 2010.
55. Qin Wang, “Zhuli Zhe de Xin Jianghu” (“New Rivers and Lakes for Profit Seekers”), Nandu Zhoukan (Southern Metropolis Weekly), no. 3 (2010): 36.
56. See Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Andrew Mertha, “ ‘Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” The China Quarterly, no. 200 (2009): 995–1012.
57. See Zheng, Technological Empowerment, 50. An understanding of the distinction between regulatory and control regimes is insightful. Note that the regulatory regime may facilitate content control.
58. See Austin Ramzy, “China’s Domain-Name Limits: Web Censorship?” Time, December 18, 2009, www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948283,00.html; Zhang Yi, “Zhuce CN Yumin Jin Qi Ju Geren” (“CN Domain Name Registration Closed for Individuals from Today Onward”), Xin Jingbao (Beijing News), December 14, 2009. In 2006, the China Internet Network Information Center campaigned to rectify domain name registration, but more for regulatory than control purposes. See “Xinxi Chanye Bu Jiang Zhengdun Yumin Zhuce” (“The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Will Start Rectifying Domain Name Registration), Xinhua Net, November 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2006-11/06/content_5297176.htm. There have also been discussions on loosening policy restrictions. See “Zhuceliang Die Zhi Disi, CN Yuming Ruhe Shoufu Shidi?” (“Registration Rate Falling to Number 4; How Will CN Domain Name Reclaim the Loss?”), Zhongguo Xin Tongxin (China New Telecommunications), no. 14 (2010): 27–28.
59. This may be inaccurate, as another source suggests that three major telecommunication giants together shut down around 136,000 unregistered websites. See Wang Yunhui, “Gongye he Xinxihua Bu: Shouji Saohuang ‘Shenhoushi’ ” (The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: The Aftermath of the Mobile Phone Anti-pornography Campaign”), Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), January 21, 2010.
60. Wang, “Zhuli Zhe de Xin Jianghu,” 36.
61. “Gongxin Buzhang Fouren Fengsha Geren Wangzhan, Cheng Zhili Yao Jiada Lidu” (“Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Minister Denies Banning Personal Websites, Asserting that Rectification Will Be Strengthened”), Netease, March 9, 2010, http://news.163.com/10/0309/09/61ASVNQK000146BD.html.
62. Interview RBJ 2009–34, with a PR manager of a multinational corporation, Beijing, April 23, 2010.
63. Xi Yihao and Zhang Wei, “Wangjing Huilu Wangjing: Ti Lingdao Shantie” (“Internet Police Bribing Internet Police: Deleting Posts for Local Leaders”), Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), April 17, 2014.
64. See “Zhongyang Waixuanban Yuan Fujuzhuang Gao Jianyun Shouqian Shantie Beicha” (“Former Deputy Bureau Director of Central International Communication Office Gao Jianyun Under Investigation for Taking Bribes to Delete Online Postings”), Xinhua Net, January 21, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2015-01/21/c_1114076120.htm.
65. See Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010), 49. Helen Sun has discussed the struggle between the Ministry of the Electronics Industry and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications over the formation of China Unicom as a competitor of China Telecom. See Helen Sun, Internet Policy in China: A Field Study of Internet Cafés (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010), 148–49.
66. See Chen Hanci, “Xinwen Chunban Zongshu Zaici Qiangdiao Wangluo Youxi Shenpiquan Guishu” (“The General Administration of Press and Publication Reasserts Its Authority of Online Gaming Approval”), Diyi Caijing Ribao (China Business News), October 12, 2009.
67. See “Guangdian Zongju he Gongxinbu Qiajia, Haisi Putong Wangmin he Wangzhan Zhanzhang” (“Fight Between the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Damaging to Ordinary Netizens and Website Administrators”), PC Online, December 13, 2009, http://itbbs.pconline.com.cn/diy/topic_10477883-10849950.html. The competition between the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been widely acknowledged and reported, even in the mainstream media. See Chen Xuedong, “Liang Buwei Boyi Hulianwang Dianshi” (“The Struggle Between the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Over Internet Television”), Xin Kuaibao (New Express News), August 27, 2009.
68. Tao, “Jiekai Zhongguo Wangluo Jiankong Jizhi de Neimu.”
69. The First National Campus Bulletin Board System Managers Conference, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, October 23–25, 2009.
70. An example here is the former high-ranking Xinhua News Agency official Xu Jiatun, who defected after the 1989 democratic movement. See Zhou Nan, “Zhou Nan Koushu: Xu Jiatun Pantao” (“Zhou Nan’s Account: The Defection of Xu Jiatun”), Lingdao Wencui (Leadership Digest), no. 16 (2010): 109–112.
71. See the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (1982; amended 1988, 1993, 1999, 2004), Article 35. A most recent example is the “Open Letter to the National People’s Congress,” written by a group of former officials headed by Li Rui, a former deputy director of the Central Organization Department, advocating for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. See David Bandurski (trans.), “Open Letter from Party Elders Calls for Free Speech,” China Media Project, October 11, 2010, http://chinamediaproject.org/2010/10/13/translation-the-october-11-letter-from-party-elders/. The message even spread within the Great Firewall. See “Jiang Ping, Li Rui, Hu Jiwei, deng Zhi Quanguo Renda Gongkaixin” (“Open Letter to the National People’s Congress from Jiang Ping, Li Rui, Hu Jiwei, et al.”), NewSmth, October 12, 2010, http://www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=Law&gid=78794.
73. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 272–73.
75. Interview RBE 2008–02, with a former journalist from Guangzhou Daily, Berkeley, California, October 25, 2008; interview RBJ 2009–08, with a former journalist, Beijing, January 9, 2009; interview OBE 2010–52, phone interview with a junior faculty member at a communications school who had once been a CCTV reporter, September 4, 2010.
76. Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector?”
77. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 49–50.
78. An investigative report suggests that websites registered in Beijing are more tightly controlled than those registered in Shenzhen. See Mr. Tao [pseud.], China: Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship (Paris: Reporters Without Borders, 2007), http://www.refworld.org/docid/47fcdc630.html. See also Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0: How Companies Censor Bloggers,” First Monday 14, no. 2 (2009), http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2378/2089.
79. Maria Edin, “State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China: CCP Cadre Management from a Township Perspective,” The China Quarterly, no. 173 (2003): 35–52; Maria Edin, “Remaking the Communist Party-State: The Cadre Responsibility System at the Local Level in China,” China: An International Journal 1, no. 1 (2003): 1–15; Yuhua Wang and Carl Minzner, “The Rise of the Chinese Security State,” The China Quarterly, no. 222 (2015): 339–59; Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China,” Comparative Politics 31, no. 2 (1999): 167–86.
80. See “Wang Shuai Yihuo Guojia Peichang, Gong’an Juzhang Dengmen Daoqian” (“Wang Shuai Receives State Compensation, Police Chief Visits His House and Apologizes”), Fuzhou Ribao—Xin Dushi (Fuzhou Daily—New Metropolitan), April 20, 2009.
81. Wang Junxiu, “Yipian Tiezi Huanlai Bei Qiu Bari” (“One Online Posting Resulted in Eight Days in Detention), Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Daily), April 8, 2009; Zhang Dongfeng, “Fatie ‘Feibang’ Bei Panxing Shijian Wangshang Taolun Relie” (“Hot Discussion Arises Among Netizens on Being Jailed for Online ‘Libel’ ”), Nanfang Dushibao (Southern Metropolis Daily), April 21, 2009. The story is also available in English; see “Ordos Becomes Nationally Known Word,” EastSouthWestNorth Blog, April 21, 2009, http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200904a.brief.htm.
82. For studies on stability maintenance, see Yue Xie and Wei Shan, “China Struggles to Maintain Stability: Strengthening Its Public Security Apparatus,” in China: Development and Governance, ed. Gungwu Wang and Yongnian Zheng (Singapore: World Scientific, 2012), 55–62; Wang and Minzner, “The Rise of the Chinese Security State”; Jonathan Hassid and Wanning Sun, “Stability Maintenance and Chinese Media: Beyond Political Communication?” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 3–15; Yue Xie, “Rising Central Spending on Public Security and the Dilemma Facing Grassroots,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42, no. 2 (2013): 79–109; Jie Gao, “Political Rationality vs. Technical Rationality in China’s Target-Based Performance Measurement System: The Case of Social Stability Maintenance,” Policy and Society 34, no. 1 (March 2015): 37–48.
83. Brook Larmer, “In China, an Internet Joke Is Not Always Just a Joke. It’s a Form of Defiance—and the Government Is Not Amused,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, October 30, 2011.
84. The uncertainty of the censorship system may encourage self-censorship. See Rachel E. Stern and Jonathan Hassid, “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 10 (2012): 1230–54.
3. TO COMPLY OR TO RESIST?
1. Chinese citizens are adept at boundary-spanning contention. See Kevin J. O’Brien, “Neither Transgressive nor Contained: Boundary-Spanning Contention in China,” Mobilization 8, no. 1 (2003): 51–64.
2. For instance, see Vivienne Shue, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
3. Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Jean Oi, Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue, “Into Leather: State-Led Development and the Private Sector in Xinji,” The China Quarterly, no. 166 (2001): 368–93; Thomas. P Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation Without Representation in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kevin J. O’Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
4. Andrew Mertha, “ ‘Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” The China Quarterly, no. 200 (2009): 995–1012. Also see Yuan Yao and Rongbin Han, “Challenging, But Not Trouble-Making: Cultural Elites in China’s Urban Heritage Preservation,” Journal of Contemporary China 25, no. 98 (2016): 292–306.
5. Shanthi Kalathil, “China’s New Media Sector: Keeping the State In,” The Pacific Review 16, no. 4 (2003): 489–501.
6. The intelligent contrast between “just doing business” and “doing just business” is borrowed from the title of the following article: Gary Elijah Dann and Neil Haddow, “Just Doing Business or Doing Just Business: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and the Business of Censoring China’s Internet,” Journal of Business Ethics 79, no. 3 (2008): 219–34.
9. Jedidiah R. Crandall, Masahi Crete-Nishihata, Jeffrey Knockel, Sarah McKune, Adam Senft, Diana Tseng, et al., “Chat Program Censorship and Surveillance in China: Tracking TOM-Skype and Sina UC,” First Monday 18, no. 7 (2013), http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4628/3727.
10. Microsoft remained cooperative with the Chinese state even after Google’s withdrawal. See Joshua Rhett Miller, “Microsoft to Continue Censorship in China as Google Opens Up,” Fox News, March 16, 2010, www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/16/google-reportedly-ends-censorship-china/; Rebecca MacKinnon, “Flatter World and Thicker Walls? Blogs, Censorship and Civic Discourse in China,” Public Choice 134, no. 1–2 (2008): 31–46.
11. Clive Thompson, “Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem),” New York Times, April 23, 2006.
12. See Ethan Zuckerman, “Intermediary Censorship,” in Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace, ed. Ronald J. Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 82–83.
13. See Yonggang Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang: Wangluo Shidai de Biaoda Yu Jianguan (Our Great Firewall: Expression and Governance in the Era of the Internet) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009), 141.
14. See Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010), 146–47. Intermediary actors such as forums take preemptive measures to prevent content that may trigger state censorship from being posted. In this sense, they are censoring themselves.
16. Johan Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector? The Party-State and Industry Real-Name Registration Waltz,” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 2628–46.
17. Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma,” 2628.
18. See for instance, An Chen, “Capitalist Development, Entrepreneurial Class, and Democratization in China,” Political Science Quarterly 117, no. 3 (September 15, 2002): 401–22; Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007); Bruce J. Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson, Allies of the State: China’s Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
19. For instance, see Jean-Jacques Laffont and David Martimort, The Theory of Incentives: The Principal–Agent Model (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
20. Interview RBJ 2009–09, January 11, 2009; interview RBJ 2010–37, May 14, 2010, interview RBJ 2010–38, May 14, 2010; with Bdwm system administrators, board managers, and users, all in Beijing.
21. Interview RBJ 2010–42, interview RBJ 2010–47, and interview RBJ 2010–49, with several unofficial campus BBS managers, Beijing, May 22, 2010. For stories about of how website owners have suffered state censorship, see Zhu Xiaokun, “Baozhengshu de Shijie” (“In the World of Affidavits”), Diyi Caijing Zhoukan (CBN Weekly), no. 43 (November 22, 2010): 56–64.
23. Rachel E. Stern and Jonathan Hassid, “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 10 (February 23, 2012): 1230–54.
25. See Article 17 of “Shuimu Shequ Guanli Guize” (“NewSmth Community Management Regulations”), NewSmth, November 11, 2012, www.newsmth.net/nForum/#!reg.
26. Large commercial or mouthpiece forums had no problem, as they were either already registered or could easily obtain registration.
27. Many registered by paying brokers who claimed to have connections with local Ministry of Information Industry subsidiaries. Many also moved their websites to overseas servers and registered international domain names with the hope of solving the problem once and for all and to avoid future campaigns.
28. The system translated users’ online activities (based on the history of the account and the degree of account activity) into points, and only those with more than two thousand points were allowed to post on “NewExpress.” In October 2011, the forum lowered the requirement to five hundred points.
29. China is not a unique case in this regard. For instance, see Christopher Soghoian, “The Spies We Trust: Third Party Service Providers and Law Enforcement Surveillance,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2012): 1–107, http://files.dubfire.net/csoghoian-dissertation-final-8-1-2012.pdf. In fact, IT giants such as Google and Facebook now release their records of government data requests annually.
32. Some forums have also been asked to provide surveillance reports on popular opinion. Interview RBJ 2010–42, with the forum manager of an unofficial campus BBS, Beijing, May 22, 2010.
33. See Li Shao, “The Continuing Authoritarian Resilience Under Internet Development in China: An Observation of Sina Micro-Blog” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 1–51, http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b21909970~S1. In some cases, the post will still be “published,” but visible only to the user him- or herself.
34. Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0”; Yongming Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 179.
35. MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0.”
36. All major commercial forums included in this study (e.g., 163, Kdnet, Sina, Sohu, and Tianya) have established such a system. Tianya has both board managers and content editors, with the content editors in charge of content control. Board managers are often selected from among a forum’s users, and their responsibilities include moderating discussions, compiling digests, and organizing online and offline activities.
37. For instance, on March 6, 2012, the welcome page of the forum provided a link to the following article: Zhang Lei, “Wang Jingguan, Wo Xiang Bao Nin Yixia” (“Officer Wang, I Want to Hug You”), Fazhi Wanbao (Legal Evening News), February 23, 2012. The article praises a police officer from the Haidian branch of the Beijing Municipal Police Bureau.
38. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 147; see also Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector?”
39. Many BBS managers in Beijing envy BYR, the official campus BBS of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications because its administrators have maintained a positive relationship with university authorities. Interview RBJ 2010–48, with a forum manager, Beijing, May 22, 2010.
40. Interview RBJ 2010–43, with a university faculty member who supervises student BBSs, Beijing, May 22, 2010. Though impossible to completely fend off state intervention, trust from university supervisory bodies may enable freer online discussion by reducing the need for self-censorship.
41. Interview RBJ 2010–44, interview RBJ 2010–45, interview RBJ 2010–48, and interview RBJ 2010–48, with forum managers, Beijing, May 22, 2010.
42. Interview RBJ 2009–18, with an unofficial forum campus BBS manager, Beijing, October 22, 2009.
43. Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector?”
44. These low-profile strategies resemble what James Scott calls “weapons of the weak.” See James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).
45. Interview OBJ 2009–13, online interview with a state-run forum administrator, August 28, 2009.
46. Interview RBJ 2010–44, with a forum manager, Beijing, May 22, 2010.
47. None of the officials at the meeting responded to the complaints.
48. For instance, the following thread was first posted on April 15 and attracted fifty replies by May 3 before being deleted. See “‘Bai Jia Hei’—Zhongguo Diyibu Miaoxie Liusi Yundong de Zizhuanti Xiaoshuo” (“‘Black and White’—China’s First Autobiographical Novel on the June Fourth Movement”), NewSmth, April 23, 2016, http://ar.newsmth.net/thread-1ac547bdd085e31-1.html.
49. See Li Liang and Yu Li, “14 Buwei Lianhe Jinghua Hulianwang” (“Fourteen Ministries and Commissions Jointly Cleanse the Internet”), Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), August 18, 2005.
50. See Ministry of Information Industry, “Xinxi Chanyebu Guanyu Zuohao Hulianwang Wangzhan Shiming Guanli Gongzuo de Tongzhi” (“Ministry of Information Industry Circular on Effectively Enforcing Real-Name Administration of Websites”), July 19, 2007.
51. Qin Wang, “Zhuli Zhe de Xin Jianghu” (“New Rivers and Lakes for Profit Seekers”), Nandu Zhoukan (Southern Metropolis Weekly), no. 3 (2010): 34–37; Zhou Peng, “Zhongxiao Wangzhan Handong ‘Duanwang’ ” (“Small and Medium-Size Websites ‘Down’ in Freezing Winter”), Nandu Zhoukan (Southern Metropolis Weekly), no. 3 (2010): 26–30.
52. Interview RBJ 2010–42, with the forum administrator of an unofficial campus BBS, Beijing, May 22, 2010. A number of campus BBS sites started to implement the policy under pressure from their home universities as a result of the Ministry of Education’s 2005 mandate to transform campus forums into internal communication platforms.
53. Interview RBJ 2010–36 with the forum manager of a large commercial website, Beijing, May 6, 2010.
54. Xiao Qiang, “1984bbs Wangzhan Guanbi you Chongkai Shuoming le Shenme?” (“What Can We Learn from the Shutdown and Resurrection of 1984bbs?”), Radio Free Asia, October 26, 2010, www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/xiaoqiang/xq-10262010171852.html. The forum based its server outside China, although its founder and owner, Jiannan Zhang (a.k.a. SecretaryZhang), lives in Beijing. The forum suffered many hacker attacks, and Zhang himself was harassed and threatened by the authorities. The forum was finally forced down in October 2010 after allowing a discussion of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. An interesting question here is why the Great Firewall failed to block 1984bbs before its closure. Zhang and his group claimed that it was because they had outsmarted the firewall. However, someone (likely an Internet security expert) challenged this claim, suggesting that Great Firewall authorities turned a blind eye to the forum because it was compromised by the state. Another netizen suggested that it might be that the forum appeared controllable to the state. See Huo Ju and Ayue A, “He SecretaryZhang Jiufen Shimo” (“The Whole Story of My Controversy with SecretaryZhang”), Google Buzz, November 1, 2010, https://profiles.google.com/109778955150081671489/buzz/c5E5GfefCpR. It is also worth noting that 1984bbs here refers exclusively to 1984bbs.com, not to 1984bbs.org, which was established after the closure of 1984bbs.com.
55. For more information about the scandal, see “Wangbao Shaanxi Ankang Huanyun Qi Yue Yunfu Qiangzhi Yinchan” (“Internet Disclosed Seven-Month Pregnant Women Forced to Abort in Ankang, Shaanxi”), Netease, June 12, 2012, http://news.163.com/12/0612/18/83QP5TAI00011229.html.
56. Interview RBJ 2009–09, January 11, 2009; interview RBJ 2010–37, May 14, 2010; interview RBJ 2010–38, May 14, 2010; with Bdwm system administrators, board managers, and users, all in Beijing. Also interview RBJ 2009–17, with veteran forum users, Beijing, September 23, 2009. The takeover took place on January 1, 2003, in a very dramatic way. The university authorities summoned all system administrators for a meeting while working with some of them to move the BBS server from the computer center to the Youth Research Center of the university’s Communist Youth League Committee. Those who cooperated with the university justified their choice by arguing that the takeover would grant official status to the BBs and thus ensure more support from the university.
57. Interview RBE 2008–01, with a former forum manager from Tsinghua University, Berkeley, California, September 23, 2008; interview RBJ 2009–12, with a Smth user who was familiar with the Smth system administrators involved in the struggle in Beijing. For a brief introduction to the event, see “Weishenme You Liangge Shuimu? 3.16 Shi Shenme?” (“Why Are There Two Smth Sites? What Is March 16?”), NewSmth, March 16, 2006, www.newsmth.net/bbscon.php?bid=313&id=9466&ftype=11.
58. See Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
59. Later, Nanjing University authorities and forum administrators actually compromised and restored Lily, though with more restrictions imposed.
60. The two based in China—Yjrg (yjrg.org) and Lqqm (lqqm.net)—were significantly depoliticized, but still allowed former Ytht users to grumble. A third forum was re-established in the United States, also named Ytht. All three forums were based on backup data from the original forum. Anecdotally, when Ytht was forced down, authorities attempted to destroy its hard drives. Yet, some hard drives survived because forum administrators at the scene claimed them to be personal belongings. Interview RBJ 2009–07, with a former Ytht board manager, Beijing, January 6, 2009; interview RBJ 2010–38, with a Bdwm administrator who was also a veteran user and board manager of Ytht, Beijing, May 14, 2010.
61. See “Renminwang Qiangguo Shequ Xinban Shangxian Youjiang Huodong Huojiang Gonggao” (“Winning Announcement of People’s Daily Online Qiangguo Community New Version Launch Awards Event”), People’s Daily Online, July 27, 2012, www.people.com.cn/n/2012/0727/c345746-18613565.html.
62. Interview OBJ 2009–13, online interview with a state-run forum administrator, August 28, 2009.
63. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation,” Science 345, no. 6199 (2014): 1–10.
64. For instance, see Gady Epstein and Lin Yang, “Sina Weibo,” Forbes Asia 7, no. 3 (March 2011): 56–60.
65. Ethan Zuckerman, “Cute Cats to the Rescue? Participatory Media and Political Expression,” in From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age, ed. Danielle Allen and Jennifer S. Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 131–54.
66. State Council Information Office Internet Bureau, “Guanyu Tengxun Wang Weigui Qingkuang de Tongbao” (“Circular on Tencent’s Violations of Regulations”), leaked internal censorship directive communication, March 3, 2009. According to the Administrative Provisions of Internet News Information Services, the company is not qualified to produce its own news reports. It can only reprint reports from state-sanctioned sources.
67. Yawei Liu, “A Long Term View of China’s Microblog Politics” (paper presented at the 10th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, University of Southern California, Annenberg, Los Angeles, CA, May 21–22, 2012).
69. See “Ni Zenme Kandai Google Tuichu Zhongguo Shichang” (“Your Opinions on Google’s Withdrawal from China”), Admin5, January 13, 2010, www.a5.net/thread-1546443-1–1.html. Of survey respondents, 330 (86.61 percent) stated that Google had provided convenience to Chinese users, Google should not exit China, and the government should support Google.
70. Most campus forums are hosted on university servers, use university bandwidth, and are exempt from or have obtained Internet content provider registration with university facilitation. Official campus forums can generate revenue but are not designed to be profit seeking. Some forums earn good money by selling advertising spots: Bdwm’s ad revenue, for example, was estimated to be over 200,000 RMB in 2009. But since they normally cannot spend the money directly, forums have no incentive to increase revenue. Interview RBJ 2009–19 and interview RBJ 2009–20, with campus forum managers, Beijing, October 21, 2009.
71. Interview RBJ 2009–18, interview RBJ 2009–19, and interview RBJ 2009–20, with campus forum managers, Beijing, October 21, 2009; interview RSZ 2009–26, with a BBS manager, Suzhou, October 24, 2009; interview RBJ 2010–46, with a BBS manager, Beijing, May 22, 2010. At one university, there were four student forums whose managers competed for a scholarship from a tech company to advance the development of campus Internet platforms.
72. Earlier campus forums, whether official or not, were primarily driven by nonprofit motivations. Ytht, for instance, relied on donations from its administrators and users; however, this was not sustainable in the long run. Recognizing this, forum administrators began to discuss ways to generate greater revenue. Unfortunately, they did not have a chance to try out their plans before the site was shut down in 2004. See “lovemeandyou Huida mgzf Tiwen” (“lovemeandyou Responds to mgzf’s Questions”), hkday.net, October 26, 2003, www.hkday.net/ytht/SM_Election/8/3/7/1.html (link expired); “[Huida mgzf Wangyou Tiwen] Guanyu Yitahutu de Fazhan Fangxiang” (“[Responses to mgzf’s Questions] About the Direction of Ytht’s Future Development”), hkday.net, October 26, 2003, http://hkday.net/ytht/SM_Election/8/3/3/1.html (link expired).
73. Being an unofficial BBS run primarily by Peking University students, Ytht attempted to maintain a liberal discussion environment because its administrators and active users believed in freedom of expression. The founder of NewYtht is also a Peking University graduate. He and a few friends set up the new site with the goal of maintaining the spirit of Ytht. Interview RBJ 2009–18, with the forum manager of an unofficial campus BBS, Beijing, October 22, 2009.
74. Ethan Michelson finds that bureaucratic, instrumental, or affective ties to the Party-state and its agents can help lawyers in their everyday difficulties. See Ethan Michelson, “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China’s Transition from Socialism,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 2 (2007): 352–414.
75. Kalathil, “China’s New Media Sector.”
76. Lagerkvist, “Principal–Agent Dilemma in China’s Social Media Sector?” The state has used a similar strategy to control the traditional commercial media. See Ashley Esarey, “Cornering the Market: State Strategies for Controlling China’s Commercial Media,” Asian Perspective 29, no.4 (2005): 37–83.
77. Certain channels on those platforms can be shut down under state pressure. For instance, in 2009, Tianya suspended its “Grassroots Voices” board, which allows netizens to complain about issues including government misconduct, for weeks for the People’s Republic of China’s sixtieth anniversary.
78. Wang, “Zhuli Zhe de Xinjiang Hu”; Zhou, “Zhongxiao Wangzhan Handong ‘Duanwang’ ”; “Gongxin Buzhang Fouren Fengsha Geren Wangzhan, Cheng Zhili Yao Jiada Lidu” (“Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Minister Denies Banning Personal Websites, Asserting that Rectification Will Be Strengthened”), Netease, March 9, 2010, http://news.163.com/10/0309/09/61ASVNQK000146BD.html.
79. For instance, Ccthere attempted to depoliticize itself in early 2012 by posting a notice on its front page in which its owner and administrator, Tieshou (a.k.a. the Iron Hand) stated, “You are welcome to use herewp.com. Those who feel constrained on Ccthere or Cchere, consider herewp.com. Cchere will not address politically controversial topics. Ccthere will also gradually clean up these topics, particularly topics on Chinese domestic politics.” See Laowantong, “Jubao Tieshou” (“A Complaint Against Tieshou”), Ccthere, July 26, 2012, www.ccthere.com/article/3761371.
80. For stories on forums geared toward ideological and intellectual expression, see Ji Tianqin and Tang Ailin, “BBS Wangshi” (“The Legend of BBS”), Nandu Zhoukan (Southern Metropolis Weekly), no. 20 (May 28, 2012): 56–63.
81. Daniela Stockmann, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 51.
4. POP ACTIVISM: PLAYFUL NETIZENS IN CYBERPOLITICS
1. Mao Tse-Tung, “On Protracted War,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 2 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 143–44.
2. Guobin Yang, ed., China’s Contested Internet (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2015).
3. Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 14.
4. For instance, see Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms,” Media, Culture & Society 2, no. 1 (1980): 57–72; Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Emile Durkheim, “The Cultural Logic of Collective Representations,” in Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), 98–108; Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993); Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2002); Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noeri (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Liesbet van Zoonen, Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
5. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1963); Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Bob Franklin, Packaging Politics: Political Communications in Britain’s Media Democracy, 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004); van Zoonen, Entertaining the Citizen; Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives (New York: Henry Holt, 2007).
6. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16–18.
7. Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
8. Rob Rosenthal and Richard Flacks, Playing for Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016).
9. Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan,” Comparative Politics 33, no. 4 (2001): 401–19; Tianjian Shi, “China: Democratic Values Supporting an Authoritarian System,” in How East Asians View Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 209–37; Wenfang Tang, Populist Authoritarianism: Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
10. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994).
11. Michael X. Delli Carpini, “The Political Effects of Entertainment Media,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, ed. Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
12. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18; Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); John Sullivan, “China’s Weibo: Is Faster Different?” New Media & Society 16, no. 1 (2014): 24–37.
13. Bingchun Meng, “From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet,” Global Media and Communication 7, no. 1 (2011): 33–51; Paola Voci, China on Video: Smaller-Screen Realities (New York: Routledge, 2010); Christopher G. Rea, “Spoofing (E’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet,” in Humour in Chinese Life and Culture, ed. Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 149–72; David Kurt Herold and Peter Marolt, “Online Society in China: Creating, Celebrating, and Instrumentalising the Online Carnival,” Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia (New York: Routledge, 2011).
14. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 85.
15. Guobin Yang, “Technology and Its Contents: Issues in the Study of the Chinese Internet,” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1043–50.
16. Jens Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society,” Critical Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2007): 285.
17. James Leibold, “Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 3.
18. Min Jiang, “The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China,” in The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, ed. Jacques DeLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 28–48.
19. Yang, “Technology and Its Contents.”
20. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 63.
21. Rea, “Spoofing (E’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet.”
22. Shaohua Guo, “Ruled by Attention: A Case Study of Professional Digital Attention Agents at Sina.com and the Chinese Blogosphere,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 4 (2016): 407–23.
24. This may be why Qiangguo Luntan, the forum run by people.com.cn, used to close down at 10:00 PM and reopen at 10:00 AM before its new version came online on July 1, 2012.
25. It is also easier to bump a post to the top-ten list then because traffic is usually much lighter.
26. A discussion of Xu also took place in a private club on Bdwm where a few members knew him personally.
27. Netizens not only use this strategy to avoid censorship, but also for other, sometimes mischievous, purposes. For instance, one Mitbbs user trolled forum users by putting up a post promising 10 Mitbbs yuan (a virtual currency that can be used for a variety of forum functions) to everyone who replied. After attracting hundreds of replies, he altered his original post by adding pornographic photos.
29. See Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 61.
30. Tech-savvy netizens have even developed software that automatically breaks down words or reformats texts so that filtering software cannot recognize taboo words. For an example of such software, see “Wangluo Fayan Fang Hexie Qi” (“Anti-censorship Software for Online Expression”), SourceForge, November 13, 2011, http://fanghexie.sourceforge.net/.
33. See Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 57. Yang borrowed the idea of rightful resistance from Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, who studied how peasants use laws, policies, and officially promoted values to resist misconduct by local authorities. See Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
34. Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48, no. 5 (2008): 752–72.
36. The boundary-spanning program was sometimes censored by the state. For instance, one episode that criticized “official-center-ness” (guanbenwei, 官本位, the official rank-oriented political culture that prioritizes political power and status over other merits or achievements) by mocking the five-bar Young Pioneer in Wuhan was banned by the state according to a Falun Gong source. See “[Jinwen] Longyan Dayue Xinqu Egao Wudaogang” (“Forbidden News: New Song by The Emperor Looks Happy Spoofs Five-Bar”), YouTube video, 3:45, posted by “ntdtvchinese3,” May 10, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrgd5PZZLvg. A 13-year-old boy in Wuhan, Hubei Province, became one of the hottest topics in Chinese cyberspace in May 2011 after he posted a picture of himself wearing a five-bar Young Pioneer badge on Weibo. The Chinese Young Pioneers are a mass organization of elementary school students run by the Chinese Communist Party. Student officers of the Young Pioneers wear white badges with red bars to indicate their position, with two bars indicating a class monitor and three bars indicating a grade-level leader. There has never been a five-bar ranking, and Huang’s five-bar badge, indicating his status as chief of Wuhan’s Young Pioneers, was a local invention.
37. Interview OBE 2011–61, online interview with a veteran netizen from Beijing, October 18, 2011.
38. “Martian language” (huoxingwen) refers to an unconventional presentation of Chinese characters, which can be extremely hard to decode. For instance, after the Ministry of Education mandated campus forums to reform into internal communications platforms and restrict off-campus access, netizens on Smth, the official BBS of Tsinghua University, replaced the forum’s name, “水木,” with “囦困.” By putting the characters “水木” into squares, they were attempting to convey the message that the forum had been restricted and was trapped.
40. David Barboza, “Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader,” New York Times, October 26, 2012.
41. Wen Jiabao, “Yangwang Xingkong” (“Looking Up to the Starry Sky”), Renmin Ribao (The People’s Daily), September 4, 2007.
43. According to open reports, New Horizon Capital, a private equity firm cofounded by Wen’s son, made over 10 billion yuan through capital operations in three years with an initial investment of 75 million yuan. Hu Zhongbin, “Huarui Fengdian Ziben Chuanqi Xintianyu Sannian Huibao 145 Bei” (“Legendary Capital Operations of Sinovel New Horizon Capital Earned a 145-Times Return in Three Years”), Jingji Guanchabao (Economic Observer), January 10, 2011.
44. See “Wen Weishenme Jiao Yingdi” (“Why Is Wen Called Best Actor?”), Baidu Knows, February 26, 2014, http://dwz.cn/iJbdt.
45. See “271 Daibiao Shenme Yisi?” (“What Does 271 Stand For?”), Baidu Knows, July 22, 2013, http://dwz.cn/iJavX.
47. Guobin Yang provides a wonderful summary of some of the genres of digital contention. According to Yang, two popular genres are confessional/autobiographical genres, including diaries, letters, essays, and personal photographs, and parody/travesty genres, including jokes, doggerel (dayoushi 打油诗), slippery jingles (shunkouliu, 顺口溜), and Flash videos. He argues that the second category embodies the playful style of digital contention. See Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 76–82, 89.
48. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
49. See “Cao Ni Ma Zhige” (“The Song of the Grass Mud Horse”), YouTube video, 1:23, posted by “ideacm,” February 4, 2009, https://youtu.be/01RPek5uAJ4. The video has had over 1.1 million views. For a version with English subtitles, see “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma),” YouTube video, 1:24, posted by “skippybentley,” March 12, 2009, https://youtu.be/wKx1aenJK08.
50. Costume play (or cosplay) is a type of performance art in which actors dress up to role-play characters from movies, comics, or games.
54. Ibid. The post not only complains about housing prices, but also mocks developers and the government. The developer is called “Poor-Don’t-Bother” and develops only tombs for the rich; the government, by prohibiting the poor from constructing their own tombs, forces them to buy from developers.
55. See “Bainian Zhihou, Nide Muzhiming hui Zenme Xie?” The entry has been censored. One should note that to “die without a burial place” is considered one of the most unfortunate scenarios in life for Chinese people, and the phrase is often used as a severe curse.
56. Guobin Yang and Min Jiang, “The Networked Practice of Online Political Satire in China: Between Ritual and Resistance,” International Communication Gazette 77, no. 3 (2015): 215–31.
57. The epitaph goes like this: “[He] studied literature early on and failed exams three times; [he] switched to martial arts, shot the drummer when taking the exam and thus was kicked out of the field; [he then] tried medicine with limited success, gave himself a prescription, took the medicine, and died.” The populist passage was cited multiple times in the thread. See “Bainian Zhihou, Nide Muzhiming hui Zenme Xie?”
58. The title is also a parody of Records of the Grand Historian, which is considered one of the most prestigious, important, and trustworthy history books of ancient China.
59. Major diseases insurance is a government-sponsored health care system that covers the expenses associated with major diseases.
60. In 2008, milk and infant formula produced by several producers in China were found to have been adulterated with melamine, affecting thousands of victims, including several babies who died. The scandal started with the Sanlu Group. For a collection of reports in English, see “Sanlu Milk Sickens Babies,” China Daily, 2008, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/china_2008sanlu_page.html.
62. Marcella Szablewicz, “The ‘Losers’ of China’s Internet: Memes as ‘Structures of Feeling’ for Disillusioned Young Netizens,” China Information 28, no. 2 (2014): 259–75.
63. Netizens complained about the difficulty of accessing services like Google and Facebook, especially when there is no Chinese counterpart, as is the case with Google Scholar. Such instrumental reasons explain why Google’s withdrawal triggered huge waves of criticism of state censorship.
64. Interview RBJ 2008–04, with a veteran forum user, Beijing, December 29, 2008; interview RBJ 2009–16, online interview with a veteran forum user, September 22, 2009.
65. Interview RBJ 2009–06, with a board manager and veteran forum user, Beijing, January 6, 2009; interview RBJ 2009–10, with a veteran forum user, Beijing, August 21, 2009; interview RBJ 2009–17, with a veteran forum user, Beijing, September 23, 2009. Users of the overseas democratic activist forum “Free China” had a conversation about this. See “Dui Ziyoumen Gongsi de Jianyi” (“Suggestions to the Freegate Company”), Free China, April 8, 2010, http://zyzg.us/archiver/tid-207519.html.
66. See “Zhongguo Guge Bei Hei le Ma? Quanshi Zhexie Xinwen” (“Google.cn Got Hacked? News About It Everywhere”), Long de Tiankong (Dragon’s Sky), November 8, 2008, http://lkong.cn/thread/204283.
67. “Falun Gong” literally means “Dharma [Law] Wheel Practice.” Netizens call its practitioners “wheels” to satirize their beliefs.
68. This was before Google’s withdrawal. The thread was started by an Lkong user who accidentally found news reports from the Epoch Times, a Falun Gong media outlet, via Google.cn, which should likely have been filtered by the search engine.
69. See “Cao Ni Ma Zhige.”
70. See Li Bin, “Wangyou Chuangzao ‘Shida Shenshou’ ” (“Netizens Create Top Ten Holy Animals”), Xinxi Shibao (Information Times), January 6, 2009.
71. The other nine holy animals are the stretch-tailed whale (wei sheng jin, 尾申鲸, “sanitary pad”); the hidden fiery crab (qian lie xie, 潜烈蟹, “prostate”); the intelligent, fragrant chicken (da fei ji, 达菲鸡, “male masturbation”)’ the lucky journey cat (ji ba mao, 吉跋猫, “pubic hair”); the singing field goose (yin dao yan, 吟稻雁, “vaginitis”); the chrysanthemum silkworm (ju hua can, 菊花蚕, “broken anus”); the small, elegant butterfly (ya mie die, 雅蠛蝶, “Yamete,” meaning “stop,” a reference to rape scenes in Japanese porn videos); the French–Croatian squid (fa ke you, 法克鱿, “fuck you”), and the quail pigeon or spring pigeon (chun ge, 鹑鸽, “Brother Chun,” which mocks the androgynous appearance of the popular singer Li Yuchun). For some basic information in English, see “Baidu Ten Mythical Creatures,” Wikipedia, last modified August 9, 2017, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_10_Mythical_Creatures.
72. See “Cao Ni Ma Zhige”; Michael Wines, “A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors,” New York Times, March 12, 2009.
74. The producers expressed their hope that the title could be a symbol that their program would bring “endless happiness to the audience.” See “ ‘Longyan Dayue’ 2011 Quanji.”
75. Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007), 46.
77. See “ ‘Longyan Dayue’ 2011 Quanji.”
78. Netizens using the terms are not necessarily against universal values, democracy, or liberties. Rather, many are simply targeting individuals or groups that they believe are opportunists trying to profit from a disruptive transition in China while leaving average people to suffer.
80. For the comic serial, see “Nanian Natu Naxie Shier” (“Year, Hare, Affair”), Cjdby, June 19, 2011, http://lt.cjdby.net/thread-1163825-1–1.html. For the videos, see “Nanian Natu Naxie Shier” (“Year, Hare, Affair”), YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyiOC9sDtnuZTVdZBU9bGw.
81. While many netizens believe that the picture was taken on the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), one picture in the collection shows the mark “CV-61.”
82. For the role of Liu in China’s aircraft carrier dream, see Andrew S. Erikson and Andrew R. Wilson, “China’s Aircraft Carrier Dilemma,” Naval War College Review 59, no. 4 (2006): 13–45. Also see Li Jun, “Cisheng Wukui ‘Zhongguo Hangmu Zhifu,’ Zhi Han Weineng Qinjian Zhongguo Hangmu Xiashui” (“He Is Worthy of Being Considered the ‘Father of China’s Aircraft Carrier,’ His Only Regret Is Not Seeing China’s Aircraft Carrier in Service”), Yangzi Wanbao (Yangtse Evening News), January 15, 2011.
84. See “[Heji] [Zhuan] Nanian Natu–Liaoning Jian” (“[Compiled] [Forwarded] Year, Hare–Carrier Liaoning”), Newsmth, September 27, 2012, www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=MilitaryJoke&gid=221488. The thread made its way into the top-ten list, which is rare for the “MilitaryJoke” board, as it normally attracts only a small amount of traffic.
85. Otaku is a Japanese term referring to people obsessed with Japanese anime, manga, or video games.
86. “Moé” is an idea closely related to the Japanese anime subculture. Chinese anime fans and netizens use the term to refer to a particular type of “adorable” or “cute” content.
87. For instance, see “[Zongbu Shisheng HGCG Meng Fanyi Xilie] 11 Qu Chanjing: Ji Er Shenme De Doushi Tubalu Wangtu Mabi Huangjun Douzhi de Guiji” (“[Headquarter Porn-Saint HGCG Moé Translation Serial”] Economic News from District 11: Talking about G2 Is Only a Scheme of the Eighth Route Army to Lull the Will of Imperial Army”), Cjdby, November 16, 2009, http://lt.cjdby.net/thread-723428-1–1.
88. “Can’t We All Just Get It On?” Economist 404, no. 8803 (2012): 54. The article reads too much into the slogan “The Diaoyu Islands belong to China; Sora Aoi belongs to the world.” It is not so much a contradiction as an example of pop activism that mixes nationalistic sentiment with fun.
89. Similar messages spread widely online. See “Lubian Kuaixun: Ri Xiang Yetian Jiayan Timing Cangjing Kong wei Xinren Zhuhua Dashi” (“Roadside Express: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda Nominates Sora Aoi as New Ambassador to China”), Tianya, September 16, 2012, http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/worldlook/1/565840.shtml.
90. Esarey and Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere”; Guobin Yang, “China Since Tiananmen: Online Activism,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 33–36; Yang and Jiang, “The Networked Practice of Online Political Satire in China.”
91. Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010); Rongbin Han, “Defending the Authoritarian Regime Online: China’s ‘Voluntary Fifty-Cent Army,’ ” The China Quarterly, no. 224 (2015): 1006–25; Rongbin Han, “Manufacturing Consent in Cyberspace: China’s ‘Fifty-Cent Army,’ ” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 105–34.
92. Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society”; Leibold, “Blogging Alone.”
93. Guo, “Ruled by Attention.”
94. Yang and Jiang, “The Networked Practice of Online Political Satire in China.”
95. Meng, “From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse,” 35.
96. See “Shaojiang Zheme Meng, Nimen Buxu Chaoxiao Ta” (“Major General Is So Moé, You Should Not Laugh at Him”), Mitbbs, March 26, 2012, www.mitbbs.com/article_t1/Military/37501841_0_2.html. See also “Shaojiang Zheme Meng, Nimen Buxu Zai Quxiao Ta” (“Major General Is So Moé, You Should Make Fun of Him”), Tianya, March 12, 2012, www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/2425719.shtml.
97. Liu Yiheng, “Ai Weiwei Zhen Mianmu: Wu Wan Yishu Jia—Wudu Juquan” (“Ai Weiwei’s True Colors: A Five-Play Artist—Full of Evil”), Wenweipo, April 15, 2011. Though based in Hong Kong, Wenweipo is long recognized as a pro–Chinese Communist Party media outlet. See also Jin Yi, “Zhongguo Dangdai Yishujia Aiweiwei Zuopin ‘Tonghua’ Bei Zhi Chaoxi” (“Chinese Contemporary Artist Ai Weiwei’s Work ‘Fairy Tale’ Charged with Plagiarism”), Xinhua Net, June 21, 2007, http://news.xinhuanet.com/shuhua/2007-06/21/content_6272614.htm; “Xifang Zongxiang Gei Zhongguo Fayuan ‘Pi Tiaozi’ ” (“The West Always Wants to Issue Directives to the Chinese Court”), Global Times, June 24, 2011. For a rebuttal, see Geremie R. Barmé, “A View on Ai Weiwei’s Exit,” China Heritage Quarterly, no. 26 (2011), www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=026_aiweiwei.inc&issue=026.
98. See Ai Weiwei Never Sorry, directed by Alison Klayman (2012; United Expression Media).
99. See Meng Bingchun, “Mediated Citizenship or Mediatized Politics? Political Discourse on Chinese Internet” (paper presented at the 10th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, University of Southern California, Annenberg, Los Angeles, CA, May 21–22, 2012).
103. See “Ai Weiwei Xuechang Cao Ni Ma Zhige” (“Ai Weiwei Learns to Sing ‘The Song of the Grass Mud Horse’ ”), YouTube video, 2:50, posted by “译者,” November 12, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL57X4GcyTs.
104. “Yi Li Xiaolu Seqingpian Cang Liu Si Guanggao Wangshang Fengchuan” (“June 4 Ads Found in Suspected Li Xiaolu Sex Videos and Went Viral Online”), DW News, May 11, 2014, china.dwnews.com/news/2014-05-11/59470725.html. In his interview with VOA, Wen claimed that he did the same thing using the sex scandal of the pop star Edison Chen to spread a Tiananmen Square documentary in 2008. See “Shishi Dajiatan: Buya Shipin ‘Touliang Huanzhu’, Duifu Baozheng Bushe Dixian?” (“Roundtable on Politics: Infiltrating Sex Videos with Political Messages, No Bottom Line Fighting Against Tyranny?”) VOA, May 14, 2014, www.voachinese.com/a/1914392.html.
107. See “Ai Weiwei Meiyou Shuoguo Cao Ni Ma Zuguo.” It is worth noting that “wee wee” was used intentionally.
108. Netizens learn about each other’s political orientations through repeated interactions. This user constantly and exclusively posted anti-regime materials. He used to post daily reports on Feng Zhenghu, a dissident stranded at Narita Airport in Tokyo between November 2009 and January 2010 because Chinese authorities refused his re-entry into China. When Ai Weiwei was jailed, the same user changed his nickname to “I am not the hero; I am a creditor of the hero,” to illustrate that he had donated money to Ai.
109. The policy is pinned to the top of the board. See “Benban Bu Huanying Zhengzhilei Ticai de Fei Xiaohua” (“This Board Does not Welcome Political Topics that Are not Funny”), Mitbbs, November 10, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t2/Joke/32046745.html. It is worth noting that forums inside China may also explicitly or implicitly discourage political jokes to avoid censorship pressure, though users’ antipathy toward such “not-so-funny” topics also matters.
110. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy.
5. TROLLING FOR THE PARTY
2. For instance, see Taylor C. Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web: The Control of Internet Use in Nondemocratic Regimes,” in How Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution: National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology, ed. John Zysman and Abraham Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 361–78; Eric Harwit and Duncan Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control Over Network Infrastructure and Content,” Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2001): 377–408; Ronald Deibert et al., Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007); Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48, no. 5 (2008): 752–72; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18.
3. For instance, see Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Neil Munro, Popular Support for an Undemocratic Regime: The Changing Views of Russians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan,” Comparative Politics 33, no. 4 (2001): 401–19; Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson, Allies of the State: China’s Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Lianjiang Li, “The Magnitude and Resilience of Trust in the Center: Evidence from Interviews with Petitioners in Beijing and a Local Survey in Rural China,” Modern China 39, no. 1 (2013): 3–36; Barbara Geddes and John Zaller, “Sources of Popular Support for Authoritarian Regimes,” American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 2 (1989): 319–47; Wenfang Tang, Populist Authoritarianism: Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Bruce J. Dickson, The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Teresa Wright, Accepting Authoritarianism: State–Society Relations in China’s Reform Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
4. Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17; Xiaojun Yan, “Engineering Stability: Authoritarian Political Control Over University Students in Post-Deng China,” The China Quarterly, no. 218 (2014): 493–513; Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139–57; Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders, “Authoritarian Learning and Authoritarian Resilience: Regime Responses to the ‘Arab Awakening,’ ” Globalizations 8, no. 5 (2011): 647–53; Karrie J. Koesel and Valerie J. Bunce, “Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Responses to Waves of Popular Mobilizations Against Authoritarian Rulers,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 3 (2013): 753–68; Florian Toepfl, “Blogging for the Sake of the President: The Online-Diaries of Russian Governors,” Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 8 (2012): 1435–59.
5. Patricia Thornton, “Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China: Boomerang, Backfire or Spectacle?” in Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 179–204; Michael S. Chase and James C. Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002); Esarey and Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere”; Yang, The Power of the Internet in China.
6. Jonathan Hassid, “Safety Valve or Pressure Cooker? Blogs in Chinese Political Life,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2 (2012): 212–30; Lijun Tang and Helen Sampson, “The Interaction Between Mass Media and the Internet in Non-democratic States: The Case of China,” Media, Culture & Society 34, no. 4 (2012): 457–71.
7. Li Gao and James Stanyer, “Hunting Corrupt Officials Online: The Human Flesh Search Engine and the Search for Justice in China,” Information, Communication, & Society 17, no. 7 (2014): 814–29.
8. Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Yongnian Zheng and Guoguang Wu, “Information Technology, Public Space, and Collective Action in China,” Comparative Political Studies 38, no. 5 (2005): 507–36.
9. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation,” Science 345, no. 6199 (2014): 1–10; King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression”; Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s Censorship 2.0: How Companies Censor Bloggers,” First Monday 14, no. 2 (2009), http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2378/2089; Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web”; Harwit and Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China”; Lena L. Zhang, “Behind the ‘Great Firewall’: Decoding China’s Internet Media Policies from the Inside,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies 12, no. 3 (2006): 271–91.
10. The state-imposed boundaries of online expression have numerous loopholes. For instance, see Yang, The Power of the Internet in China; Esarey and Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere”; Lagerkvist, The Internet in China. See also chapter 2 of this book.
11. For instance, see David Barboza, “China Leader Encourages Criticism of Government,” New York Times, January 27, 2011; Fareed Zakaria, “Interview with Wen Jiabao,” CNN Global Public Square, October 3, 2010, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1010/03/fzgps.01.html.
12. Ethan Zuckerman, “Cute Cats to the Rescue? Participatory Media and Political Expression,” in From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age, ed. Danielle Allen and Jennifer S. Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 131–54.
14. See Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Peter Lorentzen, “Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Public Protest in an Authoritarian Regime,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8, no. 2 (2013): 127–58.
15. Peter Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship,” American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 2 (2014): 402–14; King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression”; King, Pan, and Roberts, “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China.”
16. Rachel E. Stern and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Politics at the Boundary: Mixed Signals and the Chinese State,” Modern China 38, no. 2 (2011): 174–98.
17. Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media,” Foreign Affairs 90, no.1 (2011): 28–41.
18. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience”; Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship.”
19. China Internet Network Information Center, Di 39 Ci Zhongguo Hulian Wangluo Fazhan Zhuangkuang Tongji Baogao (The 39th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China), January 22, 2017.
20. Kathleen Hartford, “Dear Mayor: Online Communications with Local Governments in Hangzhou and Nanjing,” China Information 19, no. 2 (2005): 217–60; Xia Li Lollar, “Assessing China’s E-Government: Information, Service, Transparency and Citizen Outreach of Government Websites,” Journal of Contemporary China 15, no. 46 (2006): 31–41; Jesper Schlæger, E-Government in China: Technology, Power and Local Government Reform (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013).
21. See “Dali Jiaqiang Woguo Hulianwang Meiti Jianshe” (“Strengthen the Construction of Our Internet Media”), People’s Daily, August 9, 2000.
22. See State Council Information Office and Ministry of Information Industry, Hulian Wangzhan Congshi Dengzai Xinwen Yewu Guanli Zanxing Guiding (Interim Provisions for the Administration of News Publication by Internet Sites), November 6, 2000; State Council Information Office and Ministry of Information Industry, Hulianwang Xinwen Xinxi Fuwu Guanli Guiding (Administrative Provisions for Internet News Information Services), September 25, 2005.
23. Tang Xujun, Wu Xinxun, Huang Chuxin, and Liu Ruisheng, eds., Zhongguo Xinmeiti Fazhan Baogao No. 5 (Annual Report on the Development of New Media in China, 2014) (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2014), 18–19.
24. Jesper Schlæger and Min Jiang, “Official Microblogging and Social Management by Local Governments in China,” China Information 28, no. 2 (2014): 189–213; Liang Ma, “The Diffusion of Government Microblogging,” Public Management Review 15, no. 2 (2013): 288–309; Ashley Esarey, “Winning Hearts and Minds? Cadres as Microbloggers in China,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 69–103; Nele Noesselt, “Microblogs and the Adaptation of the Chinese Party-State’s Governance Strategy,” Governance 27, no. 3 (2014): 449–68.
25. China Internet Network Information Center, Di 39 Ci Zhongguo Hulian Wangluo Fazhan Zhuangkuang Tongji Baogao.
26. Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
27. Yuezhi Zhao, “Toward a Propaganda/Commercial Model of Journalism in China? The Case of the Beijing Youth News,” International Communication Gazette 58, no. 3 (1997): 143–57.
28. Daniela Stockmann, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); see also Daniela Stockmann and Mary E. Gallagher, “Remote Control: How the Media Sustain Authoritarian Rule in China,” Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 4 (2011): 436–67.
30. Johan Lagerkvist, “Internet Ideotainment in the PRC: National Responses to Cultural Globalization,” Journal of Contemporary China 17, no. 54 (2008): 121–40.
31. See Chang Meng, “Xi’s Cartoon Depiction Breaks Taboo,” Global Times, February 20, 2014, www.globaltimes.cn/content/843632.shtml; “Li Joins Xi in Viral Cartoon Celebrity,” Global Times, February 28, 2014, www.globaltimes.cn/content/845260.shtml. This was the first time the Chinese state had published official cartoon images of top leaders, although non–state sanctioned cartoon images of top leaders like Deng Xiaoping had appeared much earlier. See Zhang Wu, “Lingdaoren Manhua Youxue Yourou, Baozhi Shichang Chuxian” (“Vivid Cartoon Images of Top Leaders Have Appeared in Newspapers Often”), Xinwen Chenbao (Shanghai Morning Post), February 20, 2014.
32. See “How Leaders Were Tempered?” YouTube video, 5:28, posted by “ministryoftofu,” October 16, 2013, https://youtu.be/6BosGD5Bk98. The producer, Studio on Fuxing (Revival) Road, is not well known. However, the former CCTV headquarters were located on Fuxing Road, Beijing. In addition, the term “Revival Road” echoes the state propaganda of the national revival of China.
33. The video concludes, “Whether by a single ballot that gets the whole nation out to vote or by a meritocratic screening that requires years of hard work like the making of a Kung Fu master, as long as the people are satisfied and the country develops and progresses as a result, it’s working.”
34. Youku Quanshijiao, “5 Fenzhong Xianqi Quanmin Da Taolun Lingdaoren Zheyang Liancheng” (“Five-Minute Video Inspired Nationwide Discussion, and This Is How Leaders Were Tempered”), Youku video, 3:47, posted by “Seven News,” October 15, 2013, http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjIzMTM4ODI0.html; “[Xi Da Pu Ben] Lingdaoren Shi Zenyang Liancheng De” (“[Exhilarating News that Everyone Is Celebrating and Spreading] How Leaders Were Tempered”), Youku video, 5:02, posted by “Fuxing Road,” October 14, 2013, http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjIxNTg1NzI0.html.
35. Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010), 122, and chapter 5.
36. Yanqi Tong and Shaohua Lei, “War of Position and Microblogging in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 80 (2013): 292–311; see also Xueyi Chen and Tianjian Shi, “Media Effects on Political Confidence and Trust in the People’s Republic of China in the Post-Tiananmen Period,” East Asia 19, no. 3 (2001): 84–118; Jiangnan Zhu, Jie Lu, and Tianjian Shi, “When Grapevine News Meets Mass Media: Different Information Sources and Popular Perceptions of Government Corruption in Mainland China,” Comparative Political Studies 46, no. 8 (2012): 920–46.
37. Dexter Roberts, “Inside the War Against China’s Blogs,” BusinessWeek, June 12, 2008; Zhou Chunlin, “Jiekai Wangluo Tuishou Zhizao ‘Zuimei Nüjiaoshi’ Beihou Neimu” (“Uncovering How Internet Spin Doctors Crafted ‘The Most Beautiful Female Teacher’ ”), Xinhua Net, July 28, 2007, http://news.xinhuanet.com/2007-07/28/content_6441463.htm; Zhang Shunhe, “WangluoTuishou Jiemi Chaozuo Neimu: Yige Fengjie Ke Fu Yige Tuandui “ (“Internet Spin Doctor Discloses Inside Story of Spinning: A Sister Phoenix Can Make a Whole Group Rich”), Sina, April 15, 2010, http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2010-04-15/11484061901.shtml; Kong Pu, “Jiemi Wangluo Weiji Gongguan” (“Deciphering Online Crisis Management”), Xin Shiji Zhoukan (Century Weekly) 340, no. 28 (October 2008): 62–63. Astroturfing wars are often fought among market competitors. See “The Chinese Dairy Wars,” EastSouthWestNorth Blog, October 20–25, 2010, http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20101021_1.htm.
38. See David Streitfeld, “The Best Reviews Money Can Buy,” New York Times, August 26, 2015.
39. Ron Deibert, “Cyberspace Under Siege,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 3 (2015): 64–78.
40. Tom Cahill, “Pro-Clinton Super PAC Spending $1 Million Hiring Online Trolls,” U.S. Uncut, April 21, 2016, http://usuncut.com/politics/clinton-super-pac-busted/; Olga Khazan, “Russia’s Online-Comment Propaganda Army,” Atlantic, October 9, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/.
41. Chin-Fu Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age: Internet Commentators and the Weng’an Incident,” Issues & Studies 46, no. 4 (2010): 149–81.
42. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review 111, no.3 (2017): 484–501.
43. Blake Andrew Phillip Miller, “Automatic Detection of Comment Propaganda in Chinese Media,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016, 1–38, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2738325.
45. This is similar to what Stern and O’Brien advocate as the “state reflected in society approach.” See Stern and O’Brien, “Politics at the Boundary.”
47. Scholars debate the effectiveness of state propaganda and the state’s capacity to control the propaganda system. See Chen and Shi, “Media Effects on Political Confidence and Trust in the People’s Republic of China in the Post-Tiananmen Period”; Stockmann, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China; Stockmann and Gallagher, “Remote Control”; David Shambaugh, “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy,” China Journal, no. 57 (2007): 25–58; John James Kennedy, “Maintaining Popular Support for the Chinese Communist Party: The Influence of Education and the State-Controlled Media,” Political Studies 57, no. 3 (2009): 517–36; Tong and Lei, “War of Position and Microblogging in China”; Lagerkvist, After the Internet; Maria Repnikova, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jonathan Hassid, China’s Unruly Journalists: How Committed Professionals Are Changing the People’s Republic (New York: Routledge, 2015).
48. See “CCAV, Laozi Dong Fayu, Ni pian Gui Ah?” (“CCAV, Your Daddy Knows French, So You’re Cheating the Ghost!”), Huashang Forum, March 28, 2011, http://bbs.hsw.cn/a/t249/2677249.html. (CCAV is the derogatory nickname used by Chinese Internet commentators for CCTV; the “AV” refers to “adult video.”)
49. Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age.”
50. According to Changsha Yearbook 2006, the launch of Changsha’s Internet commentator system could have been as early as August 2004. See Gong Jian, “Jianchi Sanjiehe, Zujian Wangluo Pinglunyuan Duiwu” (“Stick to the Three-in-One Combination and Establish the Troop of Online Commentators”), in Changsha Yearbook 2006, ed. Changsha Municipal Office of Local Chronicles (Beijing: Fangzhi Chubanshe, 2006), 55–56; “Zhongyang Jiwei Gaodu Zhongshi Wangluo Pinglun Gongzuo” (“Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Attaches Much Importance to Online Commentary Work”), CCP Hubei Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, January 1, 2005, www.hbjwjc.gov.cn/wzlm/info/18944.htm; David Bandurski, “China’s Guerrilla War for the Web,” Far Eastern Economic Review 171, no. 6 (July 2008): 41–44; Wen Yunchao, “Shouquan Fabu: Dalu Wangluo Pinglunyuan Jianru Gongzhong Shiye” (“Authorized Release: China’s Internet Commentators Gradually Gaining Public Sight”), Zuiren Yiyu Blog, July 17, 2007, https://wenyc1230.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/授权发布：大陆网络评论员渐入公众视野/.
52. See Wen, “Shouquan Fabu.”
53. China’s largest oil and gas producer, Sinopec, mobilized its employees to justify rising gas prices through online astroturfing. See Wang Xing, “Zhongshihua Beibao Zuizhi Renyuan zai Wangshang Xuanchuan Zhangjia Heli” (“Sinopec Exposed for Organizing Personnel to Justify Price Increase Online”), Nanfang Dushibao (Southern Metropolis Daily), February 13, 2011.
55. See Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, “Guanyu Jianli Shandong Zhongyiyao Daxue Wangluo Pinglunyuan Duiwu de Tongzhi” (“Circular on Establishing an Internet Commentator Troop at the Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine”), November 27, 2008, http://xcb.web.sdutcm.edu.cn/htm/tz/646.html; Dingtao No. 1 Middle School, “Guanyu Zujian Dingtao Yizhong Wangluo Pinglunyuan Duiwu de Yijian” (“Opinions on Establishing Internet Commentator Troops at Dingtao No. 1 Middle School”), December 21, 2009, www.sddtyz.cn/web/pro/detail.php?tid=1450; “ ‘Dangxiao Zhendi’ Wangpingyuan Guanli Banfa” (“Regulations on the Internet Commentator Management of the ‘Party School Front’ ”), Hengyang Party Building Net, January 8, 2010, http://dx.hydjnet.gov.cn/News_View.asp?NewsID=28290; Chinese Communist Party Zhengding County Committee Propaganda Department, “Guanyu Zhaopin Hulianwang Wangluo Xuanchuan Pinglunyuan de Tongzhi” (“Circular on Recruiting Internet Commentators”), June 18, 2009, www.zd.gov.cn/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=12226&BigClassName=%B9%AB%B8%E6%C0%B8&SmallClassName=%B9%AB%B8%E6%C0%B8&SpecialID=0.
56. Observation at the First Conference of National Campus Bulletin Board System Managers, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, October 23–25, 2009.
58. Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee Office, “Wangluo Xuanchuanyuan Duiwu Jianshe Tongzhi” (“Circular on Establishing an Internet Propaganda Troop”), March 19, 2014.
59. See Wen, “Shouquan Fabu.” The article provides a good description of how Internet commentators are trained.
60. Hong Yanqing, “Woqu Shouci Zuzhi Wangpingyuan Peixun” (“Our District Organizes Its First Internet Commentator Training”), Jinri Jiangdong (Jiangdong Today), October 27, 2009. For more examples, see Fuyang Public Health Bureau, “Woshi Weishengju Jianzhi Wangpingyuan Shanggang” (“Part-Time Internet Commentators of the Public Health Bureau in Position”), Fuyang Public Health Bureau Website, September 7, 2009, http://wsj.fuyang.gov.cn/zwdt_8848/20090907226641.shtml.
62. See “ ‘Dangxiao Zhendi’ Wangpingyuan Guanli Banfa.”
63. For instance, see “Zhejiang Zaixian ‘Shijia Banzhu, Shijia Boke, Shijia Wangpingyuan’ Pingxuan Huodong” (“Selection of the Top Ten Board Managers, Top Ten Bloggers, and Top Ten Internet Commentators of Zhejiang Online”), Zhejiang Online Community, October 14, 2008, http://bbs.zjol.com.cn/zjolbbs/system/2008/10/14/010026334.shtml; “Dangwang 2009 Niandu Youxiu Tongxunyuan, Shida Wangpingren’ Pingxuan, Huanying Toupiao” (“Please Vote for Outstanding Correspondents and the Top Ten Internet Commentators of Party Web in 2009”), July 1st Community, January 22, 2010, http://71bbs.people.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=118294.
64. See “Zhonggong Zhengding Xianwei Xuanchuanbu Guanyu Zhaopin Hulianwang Wangluo Xuanchuan Pinglunyuan de Tongzhi.”
65. See Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age.”
66. See Rongbin Han, “Manufacturing Consent in Cyberspace: China’s ‘Fifty-Cent Army,’ ” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 119–21.
67. Chen Liangqiu, “Guifan Yindao Liucheng, Zhuangda Wangping Duiwu” (“Standardize Opinion Guidance Procedures and Strengthen the Internet Commentating Troops”), Zhongguo Xinwen Chuban Bao (China Press and Publishing Journal), June 24, 2008.
69. In 2009, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology attempted to require all PC manufacturers to preinstall Green Dam software, which filters out pornography and other “undesirable” content. The policy turned out to be a public relations disaster. See Andrew Jacobs, “China Requires Censorship Software on New PCs,” New York Times, June 8, 2009; Rebecca Mackinnon, “The Green Dam Phenomenon: Governments Everywhere Are Treading on Web Freedoms,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124525992051023961.html.
71. Qian Yanfeng, “Shanghai Residents Fight Forced Demolitions,” China Daily, February 26, 2010, www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/26/content_9506528.htm. The report claims that it was not actually a self-immolation incident. Instead, the protestor was fighting the demolition squad with homemade Molotov cocktails.
72. A driver was entrapped by traffic authorities in Pudong District, Shanghai, who were investigating illegal cabs. He was so disturbed that he cut off a finger to prove his innocence. A follow-up investigation found that local traffic authorities had generated millions of yuan in fines using such “entrapment” law enforcement methods over a period of two years. For a collection of reports (translated from Chinese sources) on this issue, see “The Shanghai Illegal Cab Entrapment Case,” EastSouthWestNorth Blog, October 17–27, 2009, www.zonaeuropa.com/20091025_1.htm. See also Bao Qian, “Shanghai Shizhengfu Jieru Diaoyu Zhifa Shijian, Lüshi Shenqing Xinxi Gongkai” (“Shanghai Municipal Government Steps in in Illegal Cab Entrapment Case, and Lawyer Asks for Information Disclosure”), Legal Daily (Fazhi Ribao), October 19, 2009.
74. See “Hengyangshi Xuanchuan Zhanxian ‘Jiefang Sixiang Dajiatan’ Taolun Zhuantie” (“Hengyang Municipal Propaganda Branch ‘Big Discussion on Liberating Thoughts’ Special Thread”), Red Net Forum, September 22, 2008, http://bbs.rednet.cn/a/a.asp?B=339&ID=13937127. When last accessed on February 26, 2011, there were 1,155 comments on the thread. And it is worth noting that the language used in all these comments carries a strong propagandist flavor.
75. Zhanggong District Internet Propaganda Office, “Shi Wenqing Zhongguo Ganzhou Wang Zaixian Fangtan” (“Shi Wenqing’s Online Interview with China Ganzhou Net”), internal email communication, January 16, 2014, 12:24 AM.
76. “Cao Guoxing, Guanzhong Kuibao: Zhanggongqu Wangxinban Xinxiang Baoguang Wumao Yunzuo Jizhi” (“Zhanggong District Cyberspace Administration Email Leakage Reveals How the ‘Fifty-Cent Army’ Operates”), Radio France Internationale, May 12, 2014, www.chinese.rfi.fr/中国/20141205-管中窥豹：章贡区网信办信箱曝光五毛运作机制.
77. “Shanghai Shangxueyuan Wangxuan Duiwu Fadong Weibo Zhuanfa Pinglun Qingkuang” (“Shanghai Business College Internet Propaganda Team’s Efforts to Forward and Comment on Weibo”), leaked internal email, December 13, 2014, 11:22 PM.
78. “Shanghai Shifan Daxue ‘Guojia Gongjiri’ Xuezi Zhiyuxing Huodong Canyu Qingkuang” (“Shanghai Normal University ‘National Memorial Day’ Student Awareness and Engagement Activity Report”), leaked internal email, December 13, 2014, 9:26 PM; “Woxiao Shouge 12.13 Guojia Gongjiri Daonian Huodong Zongjie Shanghai Yiyao Gaodeng Zhuanke Xuexiao” (“The First December 13 National Memorial Day Activity Report by the Shanghai Institute of Health Sciences”), leaked internal email, December 16, 2014, 10:22 AM; “Shanghai Caijing Daxue Wangxuanyuan Canyu Tuanzhongyang Gongjiri Huodong Qingkuang” (“The Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Internet Propaganda Team’s Participation in the Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee’s National Memorial Day Campaign”), leaked internal email, December 13, 2014, 9:36 PM; “Huashida Gongjiri Huodong Zongjie” (“East China Normal University National Memorial Day Activity Report”), leaked internal email, December 13, 2014, 9:37 PM.
79. The Weibo entry was first posted at 2:43 PM, December 12, 2014, and the last comment it received was posted at 2:39 PM, December 16, 2014, which suggests that there was a precise four-day window within which student commentators engaged.
80. Very few people defended the Internet commentator system. But some interviewees with whom I spoke mentioned this point as one of the few positive implications. Interview RBJ 2010–39, with a veteran forum user and observer, Beijing, May 21, 2010; interview RBJ 2010–40, with a junior media scholar, Beijing, May 21, 2010; interview RBE 2011–58, with a Chinese scholar, Berkeley, May 28, 2011.
81. Zhang Lei, “Wumaodang de Wangluo Jianghu” (“The Cyberspace Rivers and Lakes of the Fifty-Cent Party”), Changcheng News Digest (Changcheng Yuebao), no. 9 (2010).
82. Interview RBJ 2009–18, interview RBJ 2009–19, and interview RBJ 2009–20, with campus forum managers, Beijing, October 21, 2009.
83. “Hukou Xian Guanyu Dui ‘Zhongwei Huagong Tuoqian Yuangong Gongzi’ Yuqing de Huifu Shuoming” (“Hukou County on the Response to the Public Opinion Event of Arrears of Wages by Zhongwei Chemical Company”), internal e-mail communication to the Internet Propaganda Office of Jiujiang Prefecture, January 27, 2014, 3:17 AM.
84. Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee Office, “Wangluo Xuanchuanyuan Duiwu Jianshe Tongzhi.”
85. Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee Office, “Gongqingtuan Zhongyang Guanyu Guangfan Zujian Qingnian Wangluo Wenming Zhiyuanzhe Duiwu, Shenru Tuijin Qingnian Wangluo Wenming Zhiyuan Xingdong de Tongzhi” (“Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee Office Circular on Widely Establishing a Youth Internet Civilized Volunteers Troop and Deeply Promoting Youth Internet Civilized Action”), February 16, 2015.
86. King, Pan, and Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction.”
88. Haifeng Huang, “Propaganda as Signaling,” Comparative Politics 47, no. 4 (July 2015): 419–37.
89. Zhang, “Wumaodang de Wangluo Jianghu.”
91. Interview RBJ 2009–15, with a student Internet commentator, Beijing, September 21, 2009.
92. Ann Florini, Hairong Lai, and Yeling Tan, China Experiments: From Local Innovations to National Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012).
93. Zhang, “Wumaodang de Wangluo Jianghu.”
94. “Shanxisheng Shoupi Wangluo Bianji he Wangluo Pinglunyuan Peixunban Xueyuan Zhengshi Zai Bing Jieye.”
95. “Gansu Jiang Jian 650 Ren Wangping Duiwu Tixi” (“Gansu Province Will Set Up an Internet Commentator Troop with Six Hundred Members”), Nanfang Dushibao (Southern Metropolis Daily), January 20, 2010; Cai Xiaoquan, “Suqian 26 Wangpingyuan Jin Shanggang” (“Twenty-six Internet Commentators in Position Today”), Yangzi Wanbao (Yangtse Evening Post), April 29, 2005.
97. Tong and Lei, “War of Position and Microblogging in China.”
98. Zhang, “Invisible Footprints of Online Commentators.”
99. Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Andrew Mertha, “ ‘Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” The China Quarterly, no. 200 (2009): 995–1012.
6. MANUFACTURING DISTRUST
1. See Tiananmen: The Gate of Heavenly Peace, directed by Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton (Boston: Long Bow, 1995). For a complete transcript of the documentary, see www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript.html.
2. Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010).
3. Yonggang Li, Women de Fanghuoqiang: Wangluo Shidai de Biaoda Yu Jianguan (Our Great Firewall: Expression and Governance in the Era of the Internet) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009).
4. See Fang Tang, “Zhengzhi Wangmin de Shehui Jingji Diwei yu Zhengzhi Qingxiang: Jiyu Qiangguo he Maoyan de Tansuoxing Fenxi” (“Political Netizens’ Socioeconomic Status and Political Orientations: Exploratory Research on Qiangguo and Maoyan Forums”), China Media Report 8, no. 3 (2009): 96–107.
5. Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007); Simon Shen and Shaun Breslin, eds., Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010); Peter Gries, “Chinese Nationalism: Challenging the State?” Current History 104, no. 683 (2005): 251–56; James Leibold, “More than a Category: Han Supremacism on the Chinese Internet,” The China Quarterly, no. 203 (2010): 539–59.
6. Min Jiang, “The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China,” in The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, ed. Jacques DeLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 28–48.
7. Adrian Rauchfleisch and Mike S. Schäfer, “Multiple Public Spheres of Weibo: A Typology of Forms and Potentials of Online Public Spheres in China,” Information, Communication & Society 18, no. 2 (February 24, 2015): 139–55.
8. Lagerkvist argues that “as long as anonymity on the Internet and online use remains relatively free compared to the offline world, it can be conceived as an institution and cultural form that is facilitating normative change, and transforming China toward its ultimate horizon—inclusive democracy.” See Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 39.
9. Some users would initiate politically sensitive topics at midnight, not only to evade censorship, but also to make the top-ten list quickly and thus generate a greater impact beyond the particular board.
10. Many forums allow users to have multiple accounts. One’s most frequently used account is called the primary ID, and all other accounts are called ghost accounts or jackets. Ghost accounts became so prevalent in determining top-ten lists and other BBS activities that major BBS sites had to change their rules regulating the use of jacket IDs. For instance, both Bdwm and NewSmth changed the top-ten ranking from being ID-based to IP-based because the latter is much more difficult to fabricate. In addition, both sites now stipulate that users cannot have more than three IDs. However, without strict enforcement of real-name registration, forums cannot practically prevent users from using jackets.
11. See Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
12. Business astroturfing activities are rampant in Chinese cyberspace. In fact, there are crowdsourcing platforms, such as hubajie.com, which business owners can use to hire people to conduct business astroturfing. State media outlets have widely criticized this phenomenon. See Jing Xiaolei, “The Business of Manipulation,” Beijing Review 54, no. 2 (2011): 18–19; interview RBJ 2010–36, with a forum manager of a large commercial website, Beijing, May 6, 2010.
13. See Yongshun Cai, “Disruptive Collective Action in the Reform Era,” in Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 163–78; Yongshun Cai, Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
14. See Michael S. Chase and James C. Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), 1. Dissident groups include Falun Gong, activists in support of independence for Xinjiang and Tibet, and democratic activists, all of whom are regarded as subversive by the Chinese authorities.
15. Even today, posts from identifiable Falun Gong sources still invite antipathy on many forums even when they are not banned. Both state denigration and Falun Gong’s association with foreign support contribute to this antipathy, in addition to the backlash of Falun Gong’s PR efforts discussed here.
16. Chase and Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent.
17. The email was received on December 6, 2010.
20. In early 2011, a post titled “Old Pictures: Five-Cent Dining Together” was posted to NewSmth’s “MilitaryJoke” board, with photos from the Fourth Anniversary Potluck Party at the Chinese Democratic Party U.S. headquarters. The post claimed that one man in the photo was an active online astroturfer (“Director Wang”) and charged him with fabricating the post comparing government buildings from the United States and China. See “Laotu: Wumeifen Kaifan le” (“Old Pictures: Five-Cents Dining Together”), NewSmth, January 1, 2011, www.newsmth.net/bbscon.php?bid=1031&id=125689.
22. Interview RBJ 2010–32, with a top executive of a portal website, Beijing, April 22 2010.
23. Henry Chiui Hail, “Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters with Criticisms of China,” Journal of Studies in International Education 19, no. 4 (January 12, 2015): 311–26.
24. See Cecilia Kang, “Secretary Clinton Dines with High-Tech Titans to Talk Diplomacy,” Washington Post, January 11, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/01/sec_clinton_dines_high-tech_ti.html; Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on Internet Freedom,” U.S. Department of State, January 21, 2010, https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2010/01/135519.htm.
25. Jeremy Page, “What’s He Doing Here? Ambassador’s Unusual Protest Cameo,” Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2011, http://on.wsj.com/17d6nlq. For the reaction of Chinese netizens, see “Tuwen + Shipin Baoliao: Meiguo Dashi Qinfu Wangfujing Wei ‘Dailu dang’ Zhuwei Daqi!” (“Text, Pictures, and Video Reports: The U.S. Ambassador Showed Up on Wangfujing Street to Encourage ‘Road-Leading Party!’ ”), April Youth Community, February 23, 2011, http://bbs.m4.cn/viewthread.php?tid=301579&rpid=4155507&ordertype=0&page=30#pid4155507.
26. Huntsman made the statement at the 2012 South Carolina Republican Party presidential debate. For the reactions of Chinese netizens, see “Wokao, Hong Peibo Huochuqu le” (“Holy Shit! Huntsman Has Thrown Caution to the Wind”), Mitbbs, November 15, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/36740857.html; “Hong Bopei—Meiguo Jiang Jiezhu Zhongguo Wangmin de Liliang lai Jikui Zhongguo” (“Jon Huntsman: The U.S. Will Topple China with Assistance from Chinese Netizens”), Newsmth, November 15, 2011, www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=MilitaryJoke&gid=174754; “Hong Peibo: Women Yao he Zhongguo Neibu de Mengyou Yiqi Yindao Zhongguo de Biange” (“Jon Huntsman: We Should Guide China’s Reform with Allies Inside China”), Ccthere, November 15, 2011, www.ccthere.com/article/3610243.
28. The platform later evolved into a larger and more comprehensive nationalistic website called April Youth Media (m4.cn).
29. According to Anti-CNN.com, such media outlets include bild.de, n-tv.de, rtlaktuell.de, N24, the Washington Post, and Fox News.
30. CNN cropped a photo, cutting off the half that depicted Tibetans throwing stones at a truck.
31. The Berliner Morgenpost website and the BBC mistook an ambulance for a police vehicle.
32. YouTube is said to have reduced the view counts of a Chinese nationalistic video titled “Tibet Was and Is and Always Be Part of China.”
34. “What Do You Really Want from Us?” Washington Post, May 18, 2008.
35. “Zongjie Pian—Du Mark A. Jones he Zangdu Bianlun Yougan” (“Summary: Reflections After Reading How Mark A. Jones Debated with Tibet Independence Supporters”), Mitbbs, April 21, 2008, www.mitbbs.com/pc/pccon_2306_36397.html.
36. See “Lingqu Buzhu Shouxu Liucheng [4 Yue 24 Ri Gengxin Zanzhu Jipiao Feiyong $11777.41 Meiyuan Juankuan]” (“Procedure to Claim the Subsidies [April 24 Update: Donated Airfare Funding $11,777.41]”), Mitbbs, April 8, 2008, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/SanFrancisco/31296057.html.
37. Cafferty made the comment on the April 9, 2008, broadcast of CNN’s The Situation Room. This resulted in offline protests against CNN and an official apology from CNN. See David Pierson, “Protesters Gather at CNN,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/apr/20/local/me-cnn20; Matthew Moore, “CNN Apologises to Chinese Over Host’s ‘Goons and Thugs’ Outburst,” Telegraph, April 16, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1895792/CNN-apologises-to-Chinese-over-hosts-goons-and-thugs-outburst.html.
38. “Wang Dan zai Fating Chengren: Shoudao Chen Shui-Bian de 40 Wan Meiyuan” (“Wang Dan Confesses in Court: He Received US$400,000 from Chen Shui-bian”), Mitbbs, April 15, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/35644205.html; “Wang A-Dan Na le Chen A-Bian 40 Wan Meijin” (“Wang A-Dan Took US$400,000 from Chen A-Bian”), Mitbbs, April 15, 2011, http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/35642545.html.
39. This accounts for his online nickname “Liu 300.” In fact, the Mitbbs military board added a sticky post (a post pinned to the top of the page) titled “NED 2009 Asia Program Highlights,” which was not unpinned until April 29, 2011.
40. Ironically, this mechanism is more prevalent on forums outside China, partly because the state bans these groups within the Great Firewall.
42. Netizens later discovered that it was a group account trying to attract attention through controversial topics. This does not affect the analysis here, as the key is not the expression per se, but its popularity.
43. The message was forwarded to all major forums I observed, including Ccthere, m4.cn, Mitbbs, NewSmth, and Tianya. See also “Tuwen + Shipin Baoliao”; “Haishi Kankan Ranxiang de Dianjing Zhiyu” (“Let’s See Ranxiang’s Perceptive Comments Again”), Ccthere, February 24, 2011, https://www.ccthere.com/article/3298313.
46. Tiananmen. The documentary had a negative impact on Chai Ling’s image. Many believe that it was her stubbornness and that of a few others that led to the suppression.
47. For more discussion on labeling wars, see the following discussion, especially table 6.1.
48. See Wusuonanyang’s microblog, “Wo dui Qingnian men Zhuiqiu Minzhu de Yongqi Biaoshi Zanshang” (“I Admire the Young People for Their Courage to Pursue Democracy”), Sina Weibo, February 22, 2011, http://t.sina.com.cn/1671042153/5en0VNP4PIl. However, the entry was deleted by the time I attempted to revisit the site on November 14, 2011.
53. Some netizens call Southern Clique “Southern Lizard” (“Nanfang Xi”). See “Shenshou Xinpian: Nanfang Xi” (“New Holy Animals: Southern Lizard”), Ccthere, April 14, 2010, www.ccthere.com/article/2841932. According to an entry created by netizens on the Wikipedia-like site Hudong Baike, Southern Lizards live near the “Tencent Jungle” on the “South Ma-le Desert” (Male Gebi, 马勒戈壁; a dirty pun in Chinese). The Southern Lizards have scales that can change color for camouflage. They attract insects and small animals with a “pussy, pussy” sound (mocking “universal values”). The sound attracts a specific type of fly, the “elite” fly (a homophone of “elite” in Chinese). Southern Lizards also have a strange capacity. When encountering a predator, they can drive little insects like elite flies to attack it while they themselves flee. Southern Lizards have sharp teeth with strong poison and they like drinking “persimmon oil” (a homophone of “freedom” in Chinese). So some people cook persimmon oil to attract Southern Lizards and threaten anyone who dislikes persimmon oil that Southern Lizards will bite them to death. See “Nanfang Xi” (Southern Lizard), Hudong Wiki, last updated on December 12, 2012, http://www.hudong.com/wiki/南方蜥.
54. This echoes Lagerkvist’s observation on Southern Weekend as a major driving force of investigative reports in China. See Lagerkvist, After the Internet, chapter 3.
55. Interview RBE 2011–54, with a former Southern Metropolis Daily journalist, Berkeley, California, February 11, 2011. Many media professionals demonstrate a similar tendency. See interview RBE 2008–02, with a former journalist of the Guangzhou Daily Group, Berkeley, California, October 25, 2008; interview RBJ 2009–08, with a former journalist, Beijing, January 9, 2009; interview OBE 2010–52, phone interview with junior faculty member at a communications school who was a former CCTV reporter, September 4, 2010. For studies on critical journalists, see Maria Repnikova, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jonathan Hassid, China’s Unruly Journalists: How Committed Professionals Are Changing the People’s Republic (New York: Routledge, 2015); H. Christoph Steinhardt, “From Blind Spot to Media Spotlight: Propaganda Policy, Media Activism and the Emergence of Protest Events in the Chinese Public Sphere,” Asian Studies Review 39, no. 1 (2015): 119–37; David Bandurski and Martin Hala, eds., Investigative Journalism in China: Eight Cases in Chinese Watchdog Journalism (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).
58. See Sichuan Xiaoqi, “You Zhihui de Wangyou Zongjie: Nanfang Zhoumo: Buxu Shuo Meiguo Huaihua” (“Summary by Wise Netizens: Southern Weekend: We Don’t Allow You to Say Anything Bad About the U.S.”), April Youth Community, November 18, 2011, http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-3244443-1-1.html.
61. For instance, see “Yao Jiaxin Sixing Ji Yicheng Dingju Meiti Qiuqing Beiju” (“Yao Jiaxin’s Death Penalty Is Almost Certain, Media’s Plea for Forgiveness Was Rejected”), KDS Community, April 20, 2011, http://club.kdslife.com/t_6249691_0_0.html.
62. The image has been deleted from its original source (weibo.com/2105744042). For an example of nationalistic responses, see “Dailu Dang, Yige Exin de Qunti” (“The Road-Leading Party: A Sick Group of People”), Tiexue Shequ (The Iron and Blood Community), December 10, 2011, http://bbs.tiexue.net/post2_5628039_1.html.
63. See “Biantai Laojiang Zhenshi Xiaoshun Ah, Kuailai Weiguann Laojiang Gei Wolao Gaode Mudi” (“The Psychopathic Laojiang Is So Filial-Hearted: Come and Have a Look at the Graveyard Laojiang Built for Me”), Mitbbs, April 20, 2011, http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/35674583.html.
65. Some users once impeached a board manager of “ChinaNews” because they believed that he or she was an imposter from Laojiang.
66. One major difference between forums inside and outside the Great Firewall is the scope of discussion. Taboo topics such as Falun Gong and the 1989 democratic movement are freely discussed (whether condemned or championed) on overseas forums but not on domestic forums.
67. Yong Hu, Zhongsheng Xuanhua: Wangluo Shidai de Geren Biaoda Yu Gonggong Taolun (The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008).
68. “Shuiyao Zaigei Xiao Riben Juankuan, Wo Duo le Ta! (Zhuanzai)” (“Whoever Donates to the Japanese, I Will Chop!” (forwarded), Mitbbs, March 29, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Stock/33405813.html; “Zhongguo Juanzeng Bengche Hou Riben Wangmin de Fanying” (“Reactions from Japanese Netizens After China Donates Pump Vehicles to Japan”), China Net Forum, March 22, 2011, http://club.china.com/data/thread/1011/2723/93/31/8_1.html; “[Shishi Jujiao] Zhongguo Bengche Zao Baiyan” (“[News Focus] Japanese Disdained Pump Vehicles Donated by China” (forwarded), Tianya, March 24, 2011, http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/worldlook/1/333008.shtml; “Riben Wangmin Ruhe Pingjia Zhongguo Juankuan?” (“How Japanese Netizens Responded to Chinese Donations”), Baidu Tieba Shenzhen Ba, March 19, 2011, http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=1029009252.
69. The state and media elites have lost their monopoly over the dissemination of information to the outside world, which was critical in shaping public perceptions of other countries (or “facts” in a broader sense), as well as of China. See Haifeng Huang and Yao-Yuan Yeh, “Information from Abroad: Foreign Media, Selective Exposure and Political Support in China,” British Journal of Political Science (2017): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000739.
70. This was not the only mechanism at work. As soon as the earthquake occurred, some netizens proposed not helping Japan because of unpleasant historical memories. See “Xiezai He Chen’ai Shangwei Luoding de Shike” (“At this Time when Nuclear Dust Is Still in the Air”), Ccthere, March 15, 2011, https://ccthere.com/article/3326816. The post received more than three thousand “flowers” (an icon indicating support) when last retrieved, making it the third highest-ranking post in the website’s history.
71. See “Xiezai He Chen’ai Shangwei Luoding de Shike”; “Shuiyao Zaigei Xiao Riben Juankuan.”
72. “Google Fangyan Tuichu Zhongguo, Xilali Yeshi Muhou Tuishou?” (“Google Declares Withdrawal from China; Is Hillary Also Pushing Behind the Scenes?”), April Youth Community, January 14, 2010, http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-217242-1-1.html; “Google Shitu Yaoxie Zhongguo? Baigong Shitu Zhengzhihua Google?” (“Is Google Attempting to Blackmail China? Is the White House Attempting to Politicize Google?”), April Youth Community, January 13, 2010, http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-217168-1-1.html. Similar threads are widely circulated on forums such as Ccthere, Mitbbs, NewSmth, and Tianya.
74. “Meicuo, Wo Shi Maiban, Wo Shi Jingying, Wo Shi Diguozhuyi Fang Zhongguo de Diwu Zhongdui” (“Alright! I Am a Comprador. I Am Elite. I Am a Fifth-Column Agent Planted in China by Imperialists”), Ccthere, January 13, 2010, http://www.ccthere.com/article/2654783.
75. “Kuai Yinian le, Huitou Kankan Zhiqian Ziji Fa de Zhepian Tiezi, Yi You Shenme Fenlu Gan le” (“Almost a Year Later, When I Read this Post Again, I Am no Longer Angry”), Ccthere, December 27, 2010, http://www.ccthere.com/article/3222301. This may be the reason why the majority of small websites managers sided with Google.
76. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, 265–67.
77. The mechanism echoes Haifeng Huang’s research. Huang has found that Chinese citizens’ attitudes toward the government are conditioned by their perceptions of foreign countries. See Haifeng Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic Evaluations in a Changing Society: The Case of China,” American Political Science Review 109, no. 3 (2015): 613–34.
78. For instance, see Anthony G. Wilhelm, “Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative Is Online Political Discussion?” Information, Communication & Society 1, no. 3 (1998): 313–38; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Rethinking the Fragmentation of the Cyberpublic: From Consensus to Contestation,” New Media & Society 9, no. 5 (2007): 827–47; Cass R. Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
7. DEFENDING THE REGIME
A significant portion of this chapter was published as a journal article under the title “Defending the Authoritarian Regime Online: China’s ‘Voluntary Fifty-Cent Army.’ ” Reprinted with permission from The China Quarterly, no. 224 (2015): 1006–25.
1. Guobin Yang, “The Internet and the Rise of a Transnational Chinese Cultural Sphere,” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2003): 469–90.
2. Min Jiang, “The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China,” in The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, ed. Jacques DeLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 28–48; Rongbin Han, “Withering Gongzhi: Cyber Criticism of Chinese Public Intellectuals,” International Journal of Communication, forthcoming.
3. Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007), 151. Lagerkvist borrowed the concept from Todd Gitlin, “Public Sphere or Public Sphericules?” in Media, Ritual and Identity, ed. Tamar Liebes and James Curran (London: Routledge, 1998), 68–174.
4. For some excellent works, see Bingchun Meng, “Moving Beyond Democratization: A Thought Piece on the China Internet Research Agenda,” International Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 501–8; Bingchun Meng, “From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet,” Global Media and Communication 7, no. 1 (2011): 33–51; Paola Voci, China on Video: Smaller-Screen Realities (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010); Christopher G. Rea, “Spoofing (E’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet,” in Humour in Chinese Life and Culture, ed. Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 149–72; David Kurt Herold and Peter Marolt, “Online Society in China: Creating, Celebrating, and Instrumentalising the Online Carnival,” Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
5. Jens Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society,” Critical Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2007): 273–94.
6. For instance, see Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Guobin Yang, “The Co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China,” Asian Survey 43, no. 3 (2003): 124–41; Guobin Yang, “How Do Chinese Civic Associations Respond to the Internet? Findings from a Survey,” The China Quarterly, no. 189 (2007): 122–43; Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Lagerkvist, The Internet in China; Yong Hu, Zhongsheng Xuanhua: Wangluo Shidai de Geren Biaoda Yu Gonggong Taolun (The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008).
7. Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World (London: Penguin, 2011); Bruce Bimber, “Information and Political Engagement in America: The Search for Effects of Information Technology at the Individual Level,” Political Research Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 53–67; Dietram A. Scheufele and Matthew C. Nisbet, “Being a Citizen Online: New Opportunities and Dead Ends,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 7, no. 3 (2002): 55–75.
8. Hindman measured online traffic and audience share using link density as an effective proxy. See Matthew Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 56.
9. Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, “Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities,” in Networks in the Global Village: Life in Contemporary Communities, ed. Barry Wellman (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 331–66.
10. Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes, Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
11. Anthony G. Wilhelm, “Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative Is Online Political Discussion?” Information, Communication & Society 1, no. 3 (1998): 313–38.
12. Lincoln Dahlberg, “The Internet and Democratic Discourse: Exploring the Prospects of Online Deliberative Forums Extending the Public Sphere,” Information, Communication & Society 4, no. 4 (2001): 615–33; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Computer-Mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 7, no. 1 (2001): 0; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Rethinking the Fragmentation of the Cyberpublic: From Consensus to Contestation,” New Media & Society 9, no. 5 (2007): 827–47.
13. Cass R. Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 7. See also Cass R. Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
14. Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society”; James Leibold, “Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1023–41.
15. Cuiming Pang, “Self-Censorship and the Rise of Cyber Collectives: An Anthropological Study of a Chinese Online Community,” Intercultural Communication Studies VXII, no. 3 (2008): 57–76.
16. See Fang Tang, “Zhengzhi Wangmin de Shehui Jingji Diwei yu Zhengzhi Qingxiang: Jiyu Qiangguo he Maoyan de Tansuoxing Fenxi” (“Political Netizens’ Socioeconomic Status and Political Orientations: Exploratory Research on Qiangguo and Maoyan Forums”), China Media Report 8, no. 3 (2009): 96–107. Tang first sampled users from the two forums and then analyzed their political inclination by tracing and coding their online posts.
17. Yuan Le and Boxu Yang, “Online Political Discussion and Left–Right Ideological Debate: A Comparative Study of Two Major Chinese BBS Forums” (paper presented at the 7th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, May 27–29, 2009). Le and Yang sampled posts, which may explain why the left–right ratio is less striking for Maoyan than it is in Tang’s study. Right-wing netizens can be underrepresented if they are less active in posting.
18. James Leibold, “More Than a Category: Han Supremacism on the Chinese Internet,” The China Quarterly, no. 203 (2010): 539–59; Peter Gries, “Chinese Nationalism: Challenging the State?” Current History 104, no. 683 (2005): 251–56; Simon Shen and Shaun Breslin, eds., Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations (Lexington Books, 2010); Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007).
19. Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010), 14.
20. For instance, see Hill and Hughes, Cyberpolitics; Wilhelm, “Virtual Sounding Boards”; Fang Tang, “Zhengzhi Wangmin de Shehui Jingji Diwei yu Zhengzhi Qingxiang”; Le and Yang, “Online Political Discussion and Left–Right Ideological Debate.”
21. Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Rebecca MacKinnon, “China’s ‘Networked Authoritarianism,’ ” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 2 (2011): 32–46; Chin-fu Hung, “China’s Propaganda in the Information Age: Internet Commentators and the Weng’an Incident,” Issues & Studies 46, no. 4 (2010): 149–81; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review 111, no.3 (2017): 484–501; Blake Andrew Phillip Miller, “Automatic Detection of Comment Propaganda in Chinese Media,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016, 1–38, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2738325.
22. Dahlberg, “The Internet and Democratic Discourse,” 618.
23. This derogatory nickname appeared in the title of a book by the dissident Yu Jie. Yu is in exile, and the book is banned in China. See Yu Jie, Zhongguo Yingdi Wen Jiabao (China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao), (Hong Kong: New Century, 2010). See also Michael Wines, “China Seeks to Halt Book That Faults Its Prime Minister,” New York Times, July 7, 2010.
24. Yang, “The Internet and the Rise of a Transnational Chinese Cultural Sphere,” 471.
25. “Accidental casualties” are not unidirectional. Several interviewees reported being labeled as both the fifty-cent army and “U.S. cents” by netizens. Interview OBJ 2009–05, online communication with a veteran forum user and board manager, January 3, 2009; interview RBJ 2009–11, with a veteran forum user and junior economics faculty member, Beijing, August 23, 2009; interview RBJ 2010–33, with a media student, Beijing, April 23, 2010; interview RBJ 2010–35, with a veteran BBS user and observer, Beijing, May 6, 2010.
26. Zhang Lei, “Invisible Footprints of Online Commentators,” Global Times, February 5, 2010, http://special.globaltimes.cn/2010-02/503820.html. The report quoted the following article by Zhang Shengjun, who argues that Western media are crucial in spreading the term. And because of this article, Zhang Shengjun was labeled many times as a member of the fifty-cent army. See Zhang Shengjun, “ ‘Wumao Dang’ de Maozi Neng Xiazhu Shui?” (“Who Will Be Intimidated by Being Labeled as Fifty-Cent Army?”), Netease, January 20, 2010, http://news.163.com/10/0120/16/5TG1UTRM00012GGA.html.
27. As discussed in chapter 4, the nickname often shows an affinity to the Chinese Communist Party because for the voluntary fifty-cent army, it is the Party’s yokel (tu) nature that lessens the distance between the Party and the people.
28. See “Guanyu 2000 Nian—2005 Nian Renkou Zengzhang de Linglei Jieshi” (“An Alternative Explanation to Population Growth from 2000 to 2005”), Ccthere, March 7, 2007, http://www.ccthere.com/article/996699.
29. Andy Yinan Hu, “The Revival of Chinese Leftism Online,” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007): 233–38.
30. The two labels are often intentionally, and sarcastically, misspelled so that they instead mean “elite fly” (精蝇) and “male spider” (公蜘), respectively.
31. These netizens are not necessarily pro-censorship. Even though some of them believe that online expression should be regulated, many simply see the idea of a “free Internet” as utopian. Cynical as it is, the belief is not totally unfounded. Indeed, if the West can justify its control with concerns of terrorism or public security, why can China not censor for the sake of stability or national interest? See Ronald J. Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 4–5.
32. The post states, “I remember after the Wenchuan quake, many jumped up shouting that the China Earthquake Administration was incompetent and China was incompetent for failing to forecast the earthquake! They claimed countries like Japan have advanced technologies to forecast earthquakes with high success! They … attacked anyone daring enough to say that earthquakes cannot be forecasted! Then what about this earthquake in Japan? … I am waiting for their explanations!” See “Dangnian Wenchuan Dizhen Shi Naxie Yubao Dang Ne?? Wo Jintian Lai Dalian le” (“Where Are Those Earthquake Forecasters After the Wenchuan Earthquake? I am Going to Face-Slap Today”), Cjdby, March 12, 2011, http://lt.cjdby.net/thread-1090661-1–1.html; see also “Qiguai, Riben de Dizhen Xuejia Zenme Ye Yubao Buliao Dizheng Ah” (“Is It Strange That Japanese Seismologists Could Not Forecast an Earthquake Either?”), Tianya, March 11, 2011, http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/2114334.shtml.
33. “Nanfang Riwu Zhoukan Pinming wei Riben Dizhen Biaoxian Xidi” (“Southern People Weekly Is Trying Its Best to Justify Japan’s Behaviors After the Earthquake”), jinbushe.org, March 31, 2011, http://xinu.jinbushe.org/index.php?doc-view-4740.html; “Nanfang Zhoumo: Di Luan Le, Xin Que Bu Luan, Zai Da Zhenzhai Li Du Riben” (Southern Weekend: “The Earth Is a Mess, The Heart Isn’t: Read About Japan’s Disastrous Earthquake”), NewSmth, March 17, 2011, www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=MilitaryJoke&gid=139829; “Chaoxiao Guizi Dizhen de, Dou Yinggai Qukan Zuixin de Nanfang Renwu Zhoukan” (“All Those Laughing at the Japanese Earthquake Should Read the Latest Issue of Southern People Weekly”), NewSmth, March 26, 2011, www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=MilitaryJoke&gid=141451.
34. A star destroyer is a nonexistent powerful space weaponry platform depicted in science fiction. See “Ah, Buyao Piaofu de Haishang Guanchai, Women Yao Jianxing Jian” (“Ah, No Floating Coffin on the Sea, We Want a Star Destroyer”), Ccthere, August 9, 2011, http://www.ccthere.com/article/3528859.
35. Calling the Chinese aircraft carrier a coffin was not rare. For instance, see “Meiguo Zhuanjia: Dalu Hangmu Shige ‘Tie Guanchai’, Taiwan Wuxu Danxin” (“American Experts: Mainland’s Aircraft Carrier Is an Iron Coffin, Taiwan Should Not Worry”), Global Times Online, October 19, 2011, http://taiwan.huanqiu.com/taiwan_military/2011-10/2096184.html.
36. The slogan, frequently used by Falun Gong media outlets, hinges on the traditional political belief that natural disasters are indicators of heaven’s outrage toward an illegitimate or incompetent ruler.
37. Many netizens (and dissidents) attribute the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to the Three Gorges Dam project. See Li Ping, “Sanxia Gongcheng Hui Shengtai, Yuanshi: Daba Jiancheng Dizhen Duo” (“Three Gorges Project Damages the Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Academic: More Earthquakes to Come After Dam Constructed”), Epoch Times, June 9, 2011, www.epochtimes.com/gb/11/6/9/n3280858.htm; “1992 Nian Sanxia Shuiku Kaijian shi Fanduipai de Beitan, Rujin Sanxia Zhishang Zhende Yingyan le” (“Sigh of Someone Who Opposed Three Gorges Project in 1992, and Now Worries Are Becoming Real”), Tianya, May 21, 2011, www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/2169063.shtml.
38. See “Niuyue Dazhen, Tianmie Zhonggong” (“New York Shakes and Heaven Condemns the Chinese Communist Party”), Mitbbs, August 23, 2011, www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/31999563.html. Aside from the title, the post has only one line: “It is all caused by the Three Gorges.”
39. The term “Kuomintang fans” derides netizens who support the Kuomintang, the nationalist party that ruled China prior to 1949. The “truth discovery party” refers to netizens those who claim to have found historical truths concealed by the Chinese Communist Party. Both groups share the goal of delegitimizing the Party.
40. “Muhaogu,” “Liuyan de Cuihuawu: Diaoyu yu Zhengwei” (“Catalyst for Rumor: Fishing and Falsification”), Jianghuai Chenbao (Jianghuai Morning Post), January 7, 2011.
41. The title of the post is “Gaotie: Qiaoqiao Kaiqi Qunfaxing Dizhi Zhaihai de Mohe” (“High-Speed Rail: Quietly Opening a Pandora’s Box of Geological Disasters”). The original post has been deleted. For reference, see “[Taolun] Gaotie: Qiaoqiao Kaiqi Qunfaxing Dizhi Zhaihai de Mohe” (“[Discussion] High-Speed Rail: Quietly Opening a Pandora’s Box of Geological Disasters”), Songshuhui Sciences Forum, September 12, 2010, http://songshuhui.net/forum/viewthread.php?tid=14993. Even the name of the figure, “Zhang Shimai,” is a straightforward parody. Shimai, meaning “ten miles,” corresponds to Wanli; that is, “ten thousand li.” “Li” is a Chinese distance unit of a half-kilometer.
42. “Chuan Zhongguo Dizhi Bushihe Jian Gaotie, Zhongkeyuan Cheng Xi Yaoyan” (“Rumors Say China’s Geological Conditions Not Suitable for High-Speed Rail, Chinese Academy of Sciences Refutes Claim as Groundless”), Netease, October 31, 2011, http://news.163.com/10/1031/11/6KAR20VS0001124J.html.
43. Zhang Lihua and Zhang Li, “Gaotie ‘Zizhu Chuangxin’ Zhimi” (“The Myth of the ‘Self-Reliant Innovation’ of High-Speed Rail”), Diyi Caijing (China Business Network), July 29, 2011, www.yicai.com/news/2011/07/970535.html. The quotation from “Professor Zhang Shimai” was removed from the link after netizens criticized the report. But as of April 20, 2017, the original article with the quotation was still available at http://finance.qq.com/a/20110729/000413.htm.
45. It is both interesting and ironic to note that many voluntary fifty-cent army members are not actually in favor of state propaganda. They often join their opponents to criticize CCTV, the People’s Daily, and other official media outlets, as well as the propaganda system as a whole. In their eyes, propaganda officials are either China’s new compradors or completely incompetent, as they have been defeated technically and ideologically by the West and cannot communicate effectively with the people.
47. See “Jingli guo Haiwan, Yinhe, Taihai, 58, Zhuangji, Gunzi, Jingli guo BKC Mantianfei de Toushinian de Xiongdi tou TMD Jinlai ya” (“Come in! Brothers Lived Through the Gulf War, Yinhe Incident, Strait Crisis, May 8th Incident, Air Collision, J-10, and the Ten Years When the Sky Was Full of BKC!”), Cjdby, January 11, 2011, http://lt.cjdby.net/thread-1048839-5–1.html. The thread title invokes memories of a series of historical events, all of which, except J-10, are considered to be humiliating by nationalist netizens. The Gulf War shocked Chinese by demonstrating the technological gap between China and the United States. The Yinhe Incident was a 1993 Sino–U.S. confrontation in which the U.S. Navy forced the Chinese container ship Yinhe to stop in international waters for three weeks for allegedly carrying chemical weapons to Iran. The United States refused to apologize even after the allegation was proved false following a joint Saudi–U.S. search. The “Strait Crisis” refers to the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis in which U.S. intervention was viewed as violent interference with Chinese sovereignty. The “May 8th Incident” refers to the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 by the U.S. air force. The “air collision” refers to the 2001 collision of a U.S. EP3-E intelligence aircraft and a Chinese J-8II fighter, which resulted in the death of the Chinese pilot. The J-10 is China’s domestically made third-generation fighter and symbolizes the nation’s achievements in catching up with the latest military technology. “BKC,” meaning “white underpants,” refers to surrender, because “white underpants” resemble white flags. Conversely, “HKC,” meaning “red underpants,” refers to self-confidence and pride.
48. One reason netizens liked the lyrics was that they understood all the inside references. Methodologically, this is one instance in which long-term online ethnographic work paid off.
49. See “The Surrounding Gaze,” China Media Project, January 4, 2011, http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/01/04/9399/; “Zhongguo Hulianwang 16 Nian: Weiguan Gaibian Zhongguo” (“Sixteen Years of China’s Internet: Onlooking Changes China”), Xin Zhoukan (New Weekly), no. 22 (November 2010); and Wang Xiuning, “Weibo Zhili Shidai Shida Shijian: Weiguan Gaibian Zhongguo” (“Top Ten Big Events in the Era of Microblog Governance: Onlooking Changes China”), Shidai Zhoubao (Time Weekly), November 29, 2010.
50. For instance, see replies to the post, “Mao Huijian Riben Shehui Dang Weiyuanzhang Zuozuomu Gengshan” (“Mao Meeting Japan Socialist Party Chairman Sasaki Kouzou”), Ccthere, April 5, 2009, http://www.ccthere.com/article/2118383.
51. See “[Wenzhai Jizhang] BBC: Yizhang Zhaopian Yong Banian, Yushijujin Hao Bangyang” (“[Account-Keeping Digest]: BBC Uses the Same Photo for Eight Years, Good Example for Keeping Pace with the Times”), Ccthere, August 1, 2008, www.ccthere.com/article/1717029.
52. This does not mean that voluntary fifty-cent army members are truly more factually correct or rational than their opponents. But they emphasize facts and rationality in their rhetoric. For an interesting study on how the state and its critics struggle over “facts” in content control, see Li Shao, “The Continuing Authoritarian Resilience Under Internet Development in China: An Observation of Sina Micro-Blog” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 1–51, http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b21909970~S1.
54. Sometimes they may ask the original author for permission to post the bait on other forums; other times, they simply do it. Once it becomes popular, it starts to disseminate just as rumors do.
55. “Yige Meiyou Renquan de Guojia, Zao Hangmu You Shenme Yong?” (“For a Country Without Human Rights, What’s the Point of Building Aircraft Carriers?”), Mitbbs, August 15, 2011, http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/36266465.html; “Mou Zheng Jianzao Hangmu de Daguo, Ni Minzhu le Ma?” (“The Power That Is Building an Aircraft Carrier, Are You Democratized?), Ccthere, August 15, 2011, http://www.ccthere.com/article/3535578.
56. Members of the voluntary fifty-cent army recognize the dilemma. See “[Heji] Xinzhu Yihou Cai Zhidao, Gen Kandaha de Wanggong Bi, Zhongguo de Gugong Zhishi ge Nongzhuang” (“[Compilation] Didn’t Know Until I Believed in God: The Forbidden City Is Only a Farm Compared to Kandahar’s Palaces”), NewSmth, June 11, 2012, http://www.newsmth.net/bbstcon.php?board=MilitaryJoke&gid=166906.
57. Technically, both Mitbbs and NewSmth are no longer based on any university campus. But both have inherited a huge influence among college students (overseas and domestically, respectively) from their predecessors.
58. For a discussion on the attention economy, see Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2001).
59. From 2008 onward, Mitbbs records show that the “Military” board regularly had more than two thousand users online simultaneously during peak hours, whereas “ChinaNews” typically has fewer than two hundred.
60. Both QQ and WeChat are popular social media platforms provided by China’s IT giant, Tencent.
61. Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 59–60.
62. It is not just the voluntary fifty-cent army communities that form cross-site links. Other groups do so as well. For instance, users on NewSmth’s “Reader” board are close to certain groups on douban.com.
63. “Weishenme Yao Zhichi Wuyou Zhixiang?” (“Why We Should Support WYZX?”), Ccthere, August 14, 2011, www.ccthere.com/article/3534277. Most Ccthere users do not identify themselves with users of WYZX, as they perceive them as ultra-left.
64. For a brief history of April Media, see “Siyue Licheng” (“The Journey of April Media”), Siyue Wang (The April Net), http://www.m4.cn/about/#m4history. Guancha.cn is an online news and comment aggregator. Its editor in chief and several columnists used to be active on platforms such as Sonicbbs, the predecessor of Sbanzu, and Ccthere, where members of the voluntary fifty-cent army concentrate.
66. Ning Hui and David Wertime, “Is This the New Face of China’s Silent Majority?” Foreign Policy, October 22, 2014; “Sheping: Weigong Zhou Xiaoping Bushi Wangluo Da V de Guangrong” (“Editorial: It Is Not Glorious for Big Vs to Attack Zhou Xiaoping”), Global Times, October 17, 2014; Xin Lin, “Liang ‘Ziganwu’ Zuojia Huo Xi Jinping Dianming Biaoyang Yin Zhengyi” (“Controversies Arise from Two ‘Voluntary Fifty-Cent’ Writers Praised by Xi Jinping”), Radio Free Asia, October 17, 2014, www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/meiti/xl1-10172014093716.html.
67. Xin, “Liang ‘Ziganwu’ Zuojia Huo Xi Jinping Dianming Biaoyang Yin Zhengyi.”
68. Adam Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 24 (2014): 8788–90.
69. See J. Xie, S. Sreenivasan, G. Korniss, W. Zhang, C. Lim, and B. K. Szymanski, “Social Consensus Through the Influence of Committed Minorities,” Physical Review E 84, no. 1 (2011): 1–9.
70. See “Xianhua 67: Zidai Ganliang de Wumao” (“Casual Talk Serial 67: The Fifty-Cent Army Carries Its Own Rations”), Ccthere, March 1, 2011, www.ccthere.com/article/3304108.
71. Edward Wong, “Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper,” New York Times, November 7, 2011.
72. Eric Harwit and Duncan Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control Over Network Infrastructure and Content,” Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2001): 377–408; Lagerkvist, After the Internet; Guobin Yang, “The Internet and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment,” Journal of Contemporary China 12, no. 36 (2003): 453–75; Yang, “The Co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China”; Yang, “How Do Chinese Civic Associations Respond to the Internet?”; Yang, The Power of the Internet in China; Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao, “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere,” Asian Survey 48, no. 5 (2008): 752–72; Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski, and Zittrain, Access Controlled; Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18.
73. For instance, see Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139–57; Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters,” The China Quarterly, no. 215 (2013): 533–52; Kevin J. O’Brien and Yanhua Deng, “The Reach of the State: Work Units, Family Ties and ‘Harmonious Demolition,’ ” The China Journal, no. 74 (2015): 1–17; Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, “The Power of Instability: Unraveling the Microfoundations of Bargained Authoritarianism in China,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 6 (2013): 1475–1508; Julia Chuang, “China’s Rural Land Politics: Bureaucratic Absorption and the Muting of Rightful Resistance,” The China Quarterly, no. 219 (2014): 649–69; Rachel E. Stern and Jonathan Hassid, “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 10 (2012): 1230–54; Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17; David L. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Suzanne E. Scoggins, “Policing China: Struggles of Law, Order, and Organization for Ground-Level Officers” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2016).
8. AUTHORITARIAN RESILIENCE ONLINE
1. The topic has attracted the interest of first-rate scholars who have produced several exceptional monographs. See Daniela Stockmann, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Johan Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy: Competing Norms in Chinese Media and Society (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010); Haiqing Yu, Media and Cultural Transformation in China (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009); Paola Voci, China on Video: Smaller-Screen Realities (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010); Eric Harwit, China’s Telecommunications Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Jack Linchuan Qiu, Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
2. Carolina Vendil Pallin, “Internet Control Through Ownership: The Case of Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 1 (2017): 16–33.
3. Zheng, Technological Empowerment.
4. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 1–18; Peter Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship,” American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 2 (2014): 402–14.
5. Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Philip N. Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
6. Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17; David L. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
7. Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Gabriella Montinola, Yingyi Qian, and Barry R. Weingast, “Federalism, Chinese Style: The Political Basis for Economic Success in China,” World Politics 48, no.1 (1995): 50–81; Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
8. Dingxin Zhao, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3 (2009): 416–33; Bruce Gilley and Heike Holbig, “In Search of Legitimacy in Post-Revolutionary China: Bringing Ideology and Governance Back,” GIGA Working Paper, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, March 8, 2010.
9. Lowell Dittmer and Guoli Liu, China’s Deep Reform: Domestic Politics in Transition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience”; Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party.
10. Gang Lin, “Leadership Transition, Intra-Party Democracy, and Institution Building in China,” Asian Survey 44, no. 2 (2004): 255–75; Cheng Li, “Intra-Party Democracy in China: Should We Take It Seriously?” China Leadership Monitor 30, no. 3 (2009): 1–14; Neil Jeffrey Diamant, Stanley B. Lubman, and Kevin J. O’Brien, eds., Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Randall Peerenboom, “A Government of Laws: Democracy, Rule of Law and Administrative Law Reform in the PRC,” Journal of Contemporary China 34, no. 12 (2003): 45–67; Kevin J. O’Brien and Rongbin Han, “Path to Democracy? Assessing Village Elections in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 18, no. 60 (2009): 359–78; Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Accommodating ‘Democracy’ in a One-Party State: Introducing Village Elections in China,” The China Quarterly, no. 162 (2009): 465–89; Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China,” Modern China 27, no. 4 (2001): 407–35; Thomas Heberer and Gunter Schubert, eds., Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Institutional Change and Stability (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2008); Dittmer and Liu, China’s Deep Reform.
11. Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters,” The China Quarterly, no. 215 (2013): 533–52; Kevin J. O’Brien and Yanhua Deng, “The Reach of the State: Work Units, Family Ties and ‘Harmonious Demolition,’ ” The China Journal, no. 74 (2015): 1–17; Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, “The Power of Instability: Unraveling the Microfoundations of Bargained Authoritarianism in China,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 6 (2013): 1475–1508; Rachel E. Stern and Jonathan Hassid, “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 10 (February 23, 2012): 1230–54.
12. Susan H. Whiting and Hua Shao, “Courts and Political Stability: Mediating Rural Land Disputes,” in Resolving Land Disputes in East Asia: Exploring the Limits of Law, ed. Hualing Fu and John Gillespie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 222–47; Sarah Biddulph, The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015); Yue Xie and Wei Shan, “China Struggles to Maintain Stability: Strengthening Its Public Security Apparatus,” in China: Development and Governance, ed. Gungwu Wang and Yongnian Zheng (Singapore: World Scientific, 2012), 55–62.
13. Yang Su and Xin He, “Street as Courtroom: State Accommodation of Labor Protest in South China,” Law and Society Review 44, no. 1 (2010): 157–84; Robert P. Weller, “Responsive Authoritarianism and Blind-Eye Governance in China,” in Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China, 1989–2009, ed. Nina Bandelj and Dorothy J. Solinger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 83–102; Yongshun Cai, State and Agents in China: Disciplining Government Officials (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Suing the Local State: Administrative Litigation in Rural China,” The China Journal, no. 51 (2004): 75–96.
14. Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Peter Lorentzen, “Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Public Protest in an Authoritarian Regime,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8, no. 2 (2013): 127–58.
15. Lily L. Tsai, “Constructive Noncompliance,” Comparative Politics 47, no. 3 (2015): 253–79.
16. Bruce Gilley, “The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 18–26; Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
17. Andrew J. Nathan, “Authoritarian Impermanence,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 37–40.
19. Cheng Li, “The End of the CCP’s Resilient Authoritarianism? A Tripartite Assessment of Shifting Power in China,” The China Quarterly, no. 211 (2012): 595–623; see also Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
22. King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.”
23. Timothy Brook, Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Sara Meg Davis and Hai Lin, “Demolished: Forced Evictions and the Tenants’ Rights Movement in China,” Human Rights Watch 16, no. 4 (2004); Human Rights Watch, “Walking on Thin Ice”: Control, Intimidation, and Harassment of Lawyers in China (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008); Jean-Philippe Béja, “The Massacre’s Long Shadow,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 5–16; Dingxin Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen: State–Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Deng and O’Brien, “Relational Repression in China”; O’Brien and Deng, “The Reach of the State”; Stern and Hassid, “Amplifying Silence”; Lee and Zhang, “The Power of Instability”; Julia Chuang, “China’s Rural Land Politics: Bureaucratic Absorption and the Muting of Rightful Resistance,” The China Quarterly, no. 219 (2014): 649–69.
24. Similarly, scholars find that media commercialization may benefit authoritarian rule by allowing the state to increase its responsiveness. See Stockmann, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China.
25. Lagerkvist, After the Internet.
26. Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media,” Foreign Affairs 90, no.1 (2011): 28–41.
27. Leon Aron, “Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong,” Foreign Policy, no. 187 (July/August 2011): 64–70.
28. Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee, Wangluo Xuanchuanyuan Duiwu Jianshe Tongzhi (Circular on Establishing an Internet Propaganda Troop), March 19, 2014; Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee, Gongqingtuan Zhongyang Guanyu Guangfan Zujian Qingnian Wangluo Wenming Zhiyuanzhe Duiwu, Shenru Tuijin Qingnian Wangluo Wenming Zhiyuan Xingdong de Tongzhi (Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee Circular on Widely Establishing a Youth Internet Civilized Volunteers Troop and Heavily Promoting Youth Internet Civilized Action), February 16, 2015.
29. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review 111, no. 3 (2017): 484–501.
30. For a discussion on displays of political loyalty in China, see Victor Shih, “ ‘Nauseating’ Displays of Loyalty: Monitoring the Factional Bargain Through Ideological Campaigns in China,” The Journal of Politics 70, no. 4 (2008): 1177–92.
31. An Chen, “Capitalist Development, Entrepreneurial Class, and Democratization in China,” Political Science Quarterly 117, no. 3 (September 15, 2002): 401–22; Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson, Allies of the State: China’s Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); see also Jie Chen and Chunlong Lu, “Democratization and the Middle Class in China: The Middle Class’s Attitudes Toward Democracy,” Political Research Quarterly 64, no. 3 (September 1, 2011): 705–19.
32. O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China; Daniel Kelliher, “The Chinese Debate Over Village Self-Government,” China Journal 37 (1997): 63–86; O’Brien and Li, “Accommodating ‘Democracy’ in a One-Party State.”
33. Jonathan Hassid, “Safety Valve or Pressure Cooker? Blogs in Chinese Political Life,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2 (2012): 212–30.
34. Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship.”
35. See Li Gao and James Stanyer, “Hunting Corrupt Officials Online: The Human Flesh Search Engine and the Search for Justice in China,” Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 7 (2014): 814–29.
36. Local authorities are often reluctant to respond to the online disclosure of corruption cases unless there is sufficient popular pressure. See Malcolm Moore, “Chinese Internet Vigilantes Bring Down Another Official,” Telegraph, December 30, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4026624/Chinese-internet-vigilantes-bring-down-another-official.html; Tom Phillips, “Chinese Civil Servant Sacked Over Luxury Wardrobe,” Telegraph, September 21, 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9558179/Chinese-civil-servant-sacked-over-luxury-wardrobe.html.
37. Chinese citizens trust the central government more than local authorities. They also distinguish between the central government’s intent and its capacity to make local officials enforce its policies. See Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside,” Comparative Politics 40, no. 2 (2008): 209–26; Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust in Rural China,” Modern China 30, no. 2 (2004): 228–58.
38. Taylor C. Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web: The Control of Internet Use in Nondemocratic Regimes,” in How Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution? National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology, ed. John Zysman and Abraham Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2006), 361–78.
39. Lagerkvist, After the Internet.
40. Zheng, Technological Empowerment.
41. Markus Prior, “News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout,” American Journal of Political Science 49, no. 3 (2005): 577–92.
42. James Leibold, “Blogging Alone: China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion?” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1027.
43. Jens Damm, “The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society,” Critical Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2007): 290.
44. Guobin Yang, “The Internet and the Rise of a Transnational Chinese Cultural Sphere,” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2003): 469–90; Johan Lagerkvist, The Internet in China: Unlocking and Containing the Public Sphere (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Publications, 2007).
45. Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
46. Both Johan Lagerkvist and Yong Hu see the Internet as an unfinished “public sphere” with the repressive state being the main obstacle. The findings in this book suggest that independence from the state will not automatically lead to public deliberation. See Lagerkvist, The Internet in China; Yong Hu, Zhongsheng Xuanhua: Wangluo Shidai de Geren Biaoda Yu Gonggong Taolun (The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age) (Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008).
47. Lagerkvist, After the Internet.
48. Wenfang Tang, Populist Authoritarianism: Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Tianjian Shi, “China: Democratic Values Supporting an Authoritarian System,” in How East Asians View Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 209–37; Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan,” Comparative Politics 33, no. 4 (2001): 401–19; Melanie Manion, “Democracy, Community, Trust: The Impact of Elections in Rural China,” Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 3 (2006): 301–24; Jie Chen, Popular Political Support in Urban China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); Li, “Political Trust in Rural China.”
49. See Lagerkvist, The Internet in China, 31–33.
50. Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 229.
51. The anti-establishment trend is nothing new and certainly not unique to China. See John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 323–24; William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 1083.
52. Jean-Philippe Béja, “The Massacre’s Long Shadow,” 9.
53. Yanqi Tong and Shaohua Lei, “War of Position and Microblogging in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 80 (2013): 292–311.
54. Lagerkvist, After the Internet, Before Democracy.
56. Patricia M. Thornton, “Crisis and Governance: SARS and the Resilience of the Chinese Body Politic,” The China Journal, no. 61 (2009): 23–48.
57. Ching Kwan Lee and Eli Friedman, “China Since Tiananmen: The Labor Movement,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 21. Similarly, O’Brien finds “cooperation across class lines” to be “rare” in rural protest. See Kevin J. O’Brien, “China Since Tiananmen: Rural Protest,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 27.
58. Ian Johnson, “Blogging the Slow-Motion Revolution: An Interview with China’s Huang Qi,” New York Review of Books, February 9, 2013, www.nybooks.com/daily/2013/02/09/blogging-slow-revolution-interview-huang-qi/. The site initially focused on human trafficking and abuse of workers. But then it started to cover Falun Gong and victims of the 1989 democratic movement. Subsequently, the state blocked the site and jailed Huang for “subversion.”
59. This partially explains why cases such as the fall of Bo Xilai or other top officials have caused little social turmoil at the grassroots level. After all, fights at the top, no matter whether a result of ideological conflicts or conflicts of interest, are remote to the average person.
61. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party, 161.
62. Li, “The End of the CCP’s Resilient Authoritarianism?”
63. Lian Yuming and Wu Jianzhong, eds., Wangluo Xinzheng (New Politics of the Internet) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shidai Jingji Chubanshe, 2009).
64. Jesper Schlæger, E-Government in China: Technology, Power and Local Government Reform (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013); Xiang Zhou, “E-Government in China: A Content Analysis of National and Provincial Web Sites,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9, no. 4 (June 23, 2006): 0; Jesper Schlæger and Min Jiang, “Official Microblogging and Social Management by Local Governments in China,” China Information 28, no. 2 (2014): 189–213; Ashley Esarey, “Winning Hearts and Minds? Cadres as Microbloggers in China,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 44, no. 2 (2015): 69–103; Jens Damm, “China’s E-Policy: Examples of Local E-Government in Guangdong and Fujian,” in Chinese Cyberspaces: Technological Changes and Political Effects, ed. Jens Damm and Simona Thomas (London: Routledge, 2006).
66. Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Ronald J. Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
67. Ron Deibert, “Cyberspace Under Siege,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 3 (2015): 64–78.
69. Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Neil Munro, Popular Support for an Undemocratic Regime: The Changing Views of Russians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
70. Deibert, “Cyberspace Under Siege.” The Journal of Democracy published a special issue on the authoritarian resurgence in April 2015.
71. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (New York: Vintage, 1840), 98–99.
72. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Andreas Schedler, “What Is Democratic Consolidation?” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 2 (1998): 91–107; Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, “Assessing the Quality of Democracy” (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).