AFTERWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

Since this book came out in June 2009, online activism in China has undergone some new developments. Important new cases of online protest have occured. The influences of political and commercial forces are becoming more subtle and pervasive. New Internet services, especially microblogging, have caught on. These new developments invite some updates and critical reflections.

The Persistence of Online Activism

From the late 1990s to 2008, online activism in China surged. I have collected fifty-six new cases of contentious Internet events for 2009 and 2010, and despite some new features, they remain fundamentally similar to the cases studied in my book, suggesting that the main characteristics of online activism have not changed. These cases cover the same broad range of issues as described in the book. Forced demolition and relocation, rural land seizure, corruption, the abuse of power by government officials, environmental pollution, and problems in the public health system continue to be focal points of concern to netizens. The most common targets of the protests are local governments and officials, especially law enforcement authorities. The dynamics of protest remain very much the same, with many of the protests starting in the bulletin board systems (BBS) of large online communities like Tianya.cn, then spinning off into other Web portals, and finally ending up in the mass media. Many cases were spontaneous reactions to street protests, but these online reactions helped to magnify the scale and impact of street action.

The forms of online activism and ways of negotiating Internet control are as creative as ever. New contentious forms appear in response to new technological features or political initiatives. In early 2009, the Chinese government launched an “oppose online vulgarity” campaign to crack down on online pornography and indecency. When the campaign began to implicate Web sites known for their political discussions, netizens turned the tables with their ingenious invention of the grass-mud horse. An innocent-looking mythical animal, the grass-mud horse is a pun on a foul Chinese word, and a subversive symbol that netizens use to mock Internet censorship. The image of the mythical horse soon morphed into numerous multimedia digital versions, complete with lyrics and the charming tune of a children’s ditty. Easily found online, the mythical horse is often shown in an epic battle with river crabs, another pun which symbolizes Internet censorship.¹

Two of my original issue categories, “rights defense” and “corruption and power abuse,” are even more prevalent in recent cases than before. Just about all the fifty-six new cases in my collection involve one or both of these issues. The bizarre incident known as “Eluding the Cat,” reminiscent of the Sun Zhigang case in the book, serves as an example.

“Eluding the cat” is a Chinese idiom for “hide-and-seek.” On February 12, 2009, police authorities in Yunnan province announced that Li Qiaoming, an inmate in a local detention center, died of fatal injuries from playing the game of “eluding the cat.” Doubtful of this bizarre explanation, netizens protested and demanded an investigation. In response, the Yunnan provincial authorities announced that an investigation committee would be set up, and in an unprecedented move, invited netizens to join. Ten out of 510 applicants were selected to form a committee with four government officials and three journalists.² Subsequently, on the basis of the investigation, the provincial authorities announced that Li had died of beating by fellow inmates and that officers in charge of the detention center would be punished accordingly.³

The prevalence of “rights defense” and “corruption and power abuse” in online protest shows that the Chinese ruling regime may be suffering a crisis of credibility. In almost all cases, netizens protested because they did not trust official accounts of the events or because government authorities withheld information. Citizens want an open and accountable government. Online protests thus reveal a profound lack of trust in government authorities, especially local government agencies and officials. In the “Eluding the Cat” case, the Yunnan provincial government’s decision to include netizens in the investigation committee was an attempt to boost government credibility, which was as much the issue in question as the death of the inmate.⁴

The Internet in Labor Strikes

An important new development in online activism is the use of the Internet and mobile phones in labor strikes, which dominated the first half of 2010. They have been common throughout the reform period, yet as Ching Kwan Lee has argued, ⁵ labor strikes occur in isolation from one another and take cellular and localized forms. The strikes in 2010, however, generated a cascade of protest. The first major strike started in mid-May in a Honda auto parts factory in Foshan, Guangdong, and ended with a wage raise for the workers. This success, coupled with a series of suicides at Foxconn factories, seemed to have a triggering effect. Over the next two months, labor strikes occured in over forty foreign-invested factories in seventeen Chinese cities.⁶

Although the strikes had complex causes (including the promulgation of a new labor law in 2008), a notable feature was workers’ use of the Internet and cell phones for mobilization. At the very first strike at the Honda auto parts factory in Foshan, workers used BBS forums to discuss labor conditions and spread the news of their strike.⁷ This practice inspired workers in later strikes, such as the one at the Honda Lock auto parts factory in Zhongshan, Guangdong, which began on June 9, 2010. A New York Times story even called it a “labor revolt by text message and video upload,” because workers “fired off cellphone text messages urging colleagues to resist pressure from factory bosses” and “uploaded video of Honda Lock’s security guards roughing up employees.”⁸

Unlike their parents, China’s young workers are a digital generation. They have grown up with the Internet, cell phones, and QQ, an extremely popular Internet chat platform that has made Tencent one of China’s biggest Internet portals. Among migrant workers on the east coast, at least, there has already formed a lively working-class digital culture. Reminiscent of the English working-class culture studied by E. P. Thompson, young Chinese workers chat about life experiences online and even publish poetry in their own online forums.⁹ Though isolated at work, they maintain social networks through their cell phones’ contact lists (one young woman was almost completely helpless once she lost her cell phone, having also lost all her social contacts¹⁰).

Other social groups and civic associations have long used the Internet for activism. Feminist networks, religious groups, NGOs, nationalist zealots, gay and lesbian communities, advocacy lawyers, and public intellectuals have all taken their activism online.¹¹ Among migrant workers, it is their physical environment, especially their concentration in factory dormitories, that has so far provided the main channels of communication when they agitate for strikes.¹² This is the first time that organized workers have taken up the Internet in a big way.

This is significant because of all social groups, the Chinese government has always been most concerned about independent worker organizations, if only because Chinese leaders know best the power of labor organizing from the history of the Chinese communist revolution. Thus it was workers and not students who were treated most harshly after the suppression of the Democracy Wall movement in 1979 and the student protests in 1989. Because Web sites can be used for activism, state censorship of worker Web sites seems especially tight, which partly explains why there are few influential worker Web sites. China Workers Web (www.zggr.org), one of the few worker Web sites that fostered debates about workers’ conditions, industrial policies, and social inequalities, was closed on February 22, 2006, after only a brief existence.

The labor strikes in 2010 revived the image of the powerful working class in modern Chinese history. Yet the image is no longer one of banner-waving brawny males on a Mao-era poster, but that of young women and men of a new, digital generation holding up their cell phones to take photographs or send text messages about their struggles.

Microblogging

Although there were clones of Twitter in China as early as in 2007, ¹³ it was not until Sina launched its microblogging service in August 2009 that microblogging began to catch on. Major commercial portal sites like Sohu, Netease, and Tencent, and the official People.com.cn all launched micro-blogging services one after another. In just one year, Sina’s microblog registered nine million users. Despite its brief history, microblogging has already demonstrated great potential for social mobilization.

Microblogging has a real-time news function. “Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world” is what Twitter says on its first page. Its basic follower function gives a clearer structure to the increasingly expansive and formless flow of information in cyberspace. By following another Twitter user, I automatically receive his or her messages, called tweets. The person being followed can manage his or her following by de-following or blocking unwelcome followers. Popular twitterers have large followings. As of August 23, 2010, Lady Gaga surpassed Britney Spears as the newly crowned “queen” of Twitter, with 5,734,612 followers. Her Chinese counterpart is film star Yao Chen, “queen” of Sina’s microblog, with 2,638,183 followers as of August 26, 2010. Due to the criss-crossing, networked patterns of following (people may follow strangers who happen to be friends’ friends), a person with a large Twitter following has enormous broadcasting power. Twitter’s social networking function is further enhanced by external applications, such as those found on compatible mobile phones that can read, receive, and send tweets.

Microblogging is effective both for real-time macro-communication and targeted micro-communication. Macro-communication involves massive information dissemination and happens during large media events, natural disasters, and crisis situations such as the earthquakes in Chile in February 2010. Micro-communication resembles target marketing. In this form, micro-blogging is used for precise communication and coordination by speedily pooling the scattered information and collective wisdom of Internet users. Using this form, for example, twitterers in China saved a life in March 2010. On March 16, a college student in the city of Qingdao posted a message on Twitter saying that, fed up with life, he was going to commit suicide. Minutes later, this message was caught and spread on Twitter. Someone tweeted, “Is there anyone from Qingdao University? Call Qingdao University! Please go there to save a student named Zhang Difan! Hurry up!” This was retweeted with additional calls for help by twitterers such as “zuola” and “amoiist,” who had large followings. Very soon, another person tweeted, “I’ve just got in touch with Qingdao University where Zhang Difan studies. They should be contacting him now.” ¹⁴ The next day, a local newspaper published a story confirming that the student had been saved, thanks to the rapid action taken by twitterers.¹⁵

Twitter is blocked in China, but still has tens of thousands of active users there who access it via circumvention technologies in their ongoing creative negotiation with Internet control. Numerous Chinese “rights defense” activists are linked into an advocacy network on Twitter. This network also includes the exiled and diasporic democracy activists (whom I discuss in chapter 8), as well as activists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other world regions. Already in existence before the advent of microblogs, the network has attained a new level of stickiness and salience on the microblogosphere. The shape of the network, of who links up with whom and talks about what, has become clearer than before. This large transborder advocacy network continuously generates an oppositional discourse about China’s domestic social problems, human rights issues, and government policies.¹⁶

Chinese twitterers have mobilized several notable protests. In one case in July 2009, an anonymous and mysterious message titled “Jia Junpeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat” went viral in China’s biggest online gaming community, Baidu’s “post bar” (tieba) for World of Warcraft fans.¹⁷ With just a title and no other content, this curious phrase became a popular Internet meme in Chinese cyberspace and was then appropriated for political activism. Just one day before the Jia Junpeng posting appeared, blogger Guo Baofeng was detained by police in the town of Mawei in Fujian province under the charge that he had used his blog to spread rumors about the local police. At the police station, he secretly sent a Twitter message asking for urgent help: “i have been arrested by Mawei police, SOS.” Upon receiving his tweet, his friends started campaigning for his release. Inspired by the Jia Junpeng posting, one blogger called on people to send postcards with the phrase “Guo Baofeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat” to the police station where Guo was detained. This created a “postcard movement,” which Guo himself believed led to his release.¹⁸

Unlike the Chinese-language twittersphere, microblogs in China are dominated by nonpolitical discourse. Sina deliberately promotes its micro-blog as a platform for sharing personal feelings, a place of “tender warmth” (wenqing). To sell this idea, Sina coined a new term, weibo, literally meaning “scarf,” to describe its microblogging service. A homonym for “microblog,” “scarf” denotes warmth and intimacy. The idea caught on, and “scarf” has become a nickname for microblogs.

Microblogging services in China are censored for subversive content like other domestic Internet services.¹⁹ The eleven types of content prohibited online, which I mention on page 50, apply to microblogs as well. Consequently, tweets that directly challenge the legitimacy of the party-state are censored. Yet even so, the Chinese microblogosphere still produces large volumes of contentious discourse. Protests involving the seven issue types I describe on pages 55 and 56 of the book are common.

An influential case is Fang Zhouzi’s exposure of former Microsoft China executive Tang Jun. Tang claims in his autobiography that he has a Ph.D. from the prestigious California Institute of Technology. In July 2010, Fang contended on his Sina microblog that Tang’s degree was not from CalTech, but from an obscure American university that had been shut down because it was basically a diploma mill selling academic credentials. Tang initially dismissed Fang’s accusation but eventually backed down as Fang widened his attack by exposing other false or dishonest information in Tang’s published autobiography. The case made national news, bringing to the limelight, once again, the widespread crisis of trust in Chinese society.²⁰

Despite its instant popularity, microblogging has not replaced other established Internet services. The good old bulletin board systems (BBS) remain as popular as ever and still provide the most important platform for online protest. The majority of the new cases still take place in BBS-supported online communities. This is because BBS forums are more interactive and anonymous, whereas more and more bloggers and microbloggers choose to use their real names. In environments of anonymous interaction, users have a screen of protection from cyber police as well as hostile and militant fellow community members. More importantly, it is only when there are interactions, when users respond to and debate about postings, that the issue under discussion has a chance of becoming a contentious event. Another reason why BBS forums continue to ferment protest is their history. Because popular online communities have routinely generated protest and are known as places for such activities, when people have concerns to bring to public attention, their first thought is to go to these communities.²¹ Habits once formed are hard to change.

For this reason, microblogging is not a replacement for other Internet services. The trend is toward the interfacing of multiple services, so that users may choose different ones for different purposes. Various application programming interfaces (API) easily link together these different services.

A Comprehensive Internet Control Model

My analysis of online activism focuses on its key institutional and cultural influences, namely, the state, market, contentious culture, and civil society (local and global, online and offline). I examine each of these elements in a longer historical frame and in relation to one another to highlight the significance of online activism in a larger web of interactive forces. Over the past two years, online activism has continued to reflect the influence of these intertwining forces. The power relations among the various actors remain roughly the same. Two new complications, however, merit emphasis; reflecting political and commercial reactions to the growing power of the Internet, they concern the growing sophistication of the state’s Internet governance strategies and the more pervasive influence of commercial interests.

Guided by the party resolution on improving governance adopted in 2004 (see page 49), China’s Internet-control regime began to develop a comprehensive strategy for what it calls the “administration” of the Internet. On June 8, 2010, the Information Office of the State Council issued a white paper on “The Internet in China.” Making a case to the international community, it elevates the strategy to a “Chinese model of Internet administration”: “China adheres to scientific and effective Internet administration by law, strives to improve an Internet administration system combining laws and regulations, administrative supervision, self-regulation, technical protection, public supervision and social education.”²² Despite some of its controversial claims, ²³ the white paper recognizes the legitimacy of online public opinion by stating, “The authorities attach great importance to social conditions and public opinion as reflected on the Internet, which has become a bridge facilitating direct communication between the government and the public.”²⁴

This model stresses a more proactive approach to Internet governance and control. Aligned with China’s global soft power strategy, ²⁵ this Internet governance model is now in full swing. A major new initiative is to stimulate the growth of official news Web portals through the market mechanism. This is based on the assumption that a strong Web presence of official news media will enhance the positive influence of party media. Although the Chinese government has all along encouraged official news media to go online, until recently, it has forbidden official news Web sites to be listed in the stock market. The Web sites of large news agencies like People’s Daily and China Central Television (CCTV) are appendages of their parent media. Operating with limited financial resources and within the boundaries of the official news model, they cannot rival the popularity and success of commercial portal sites.²⁶ In May 2010, however, it was reported that ten official news Web sites, including those of People’s Daily and CCTV, had been approved to be listed in the A-share market, marking the beginning of the marketization of official news portals.²⁷

Reflecting its proactive approach to Internet control, the Chinese government has been honing the skills of its local agencies in responding to online protest. Since July 2009, the newly established Media Opinion Monitoring Office of People’s Daily Online has published quarterly reports on local governments’ capacity to respond to “Internet mass incidents,” a euphemism for online protest. The first report lists ten incidents in the first half of 2009 and ranks local governments according to how well they managed them. The rankings are based on six parameters: government responsiveness, transparency of information, government credibility, restoration of social order, dynamic responsiveness, and accountability of government officials. Based on the total points accrued, the report assigns one of four color-coded rankings to the local governments concerned. Blue means “response is appropriate,” yellow means “needs improvement,” orange means “clearly problematic,” and red indicates “serious and major problems.” The municipal government of Shishou in Hubei province earned a red ranking because of its poor handling of a riot in June 2009 that prompted lots of online protest.

Besides the rankings, the report also contains policy recommendations. It states that Chinese netizens have formed a new “pressure group,” and that with multiple online information channels, it is impossible to stop their voices. Therefore government officials should be responsive to online opinion and learn to handle it in a way that will not intensify social conflict. The report proposes that publicizing information is a better approach than damming it, and that when Internet protests happen, local governments should use a “separation” strategy to protect the image of the government, that is, to separate the central government from the local government, the local government from the grassroots, and government at all levels from bad officials, so that the first in each pair will not be made to appear to endorse the actions of the second.²⁸

A more responsive approach to Internet activism does not mean relaxed Internet control. In fact, new initiatives have been launched to strengthen control. In one abortive attempt, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued a directive on May 19, 2009, stating that beginning July 1, all computers sold in China must be pre-installed with a filtering software called “Green Dam Youth Escort.” The policy was allegedly designed to protect minors from pornography, yet it set off fears and protests about broadening Internet surveillance.

Although this initiative was suspended under domestic and international pressure, MIIT rolled out more policies aimed at strengthening control. In February 2010, it issued a directive requiring domain name service providers to verify domain name applicants’ personal information and keep records of their ID cards.²⁹ This is in-line with measures to institute a real-name registration system for news Web sites and major commercial portals,³⁰ another major initiative that may have far-reaching implications for online political participation.

The model of Internet governance articulated in the white paper, if fully implemented, may affect online activism in two ways. On the surface, it offers more political opportunities for online protest because of its acknowledgment of the legitimacy of online public opinion. Its emphasis on the strategic importance of the telecommunications industry for national economic development means that as a new industry, the Internet will continue to grow. At the same time, however, the emphasis on a Chinese model of administration, on sovereignty and national security, and on law-based administration suggests that control of the Internet will take more subtle and sophisticated forms. There will be more efforts to generate “positive” public opinion by official news portals and more hidden attempts to penetrate online spaces and activist networks. These may neutralize the power of online activism.

Dubious Commercial Practices

In the early history of the Internet in China, civil society use of the Internet was well ahead of commercial uses. This is still the case today, although commercial uses have increased greatly. In June 2003, only 11.7 percent of China’s 68 million Internet users often used the Internet for online shopping, while close to 23 percent frequently used BBS forums. In June 2008, the total number of Internet users rose to 253 million, of which 25 percent chose online shopping and 39 percent chose BBS. In June 2010, the total number of Internet users reached 420 million. Close to 34 percent of them frequently use online shopping, while 31.5 percent use BBS and 55 percent use blogs.³¹ The commercial and social uses of the Internet have increased in a parallel fashion.

The Internet thrives on the participation of users, who both consume and produce online content. The success of Internet businesses thus depends on whether they can attract users, even those who turn to the Internet for contentious purposes. This creates a new type of relationship between market and activism, whereby activist uses of the Internet may benefit businesses, and Web sites will welcome or accommodate contentious use of their platforms. While stressing the significance of this relationship for online activism, I have warned about the dangers of manufactured contention brought on by the commercial practice of “pushing hands” (see pages 119–121).

This practice has become even more popular in the past year, if only because there has been more coverage of its dubious character in mainstream media.³² Touted as a form of effective online marketing, it often involves posting false or misleading information, artificially creating sensationalist online events, and blocking or deleting information unfavorable to one’s products or public image. Because of the deceptive nature of such information, the practice of commercial “Internet pushing hands” may harm the credibility of online information in the long run and thus compromise the power of the Internet as a platform for citizen action.

Suppose a business firm wants to market a product. It might hire an “Internet pushing hands” agency. The contractor will design a plan and hire Internet users as “pushing hands.” These people will write blogs or BBS postings crafted to provoke controversy, because controversy draws responses and enhances online interaction. Once the postings have generated enough attention online, mass media will cover the story. With mass media coverage, a public event is born and the pushing hands have successfully marketed the product.

A well-known case of commercial “pushing” concerns the Wong Lo Kat herbal tea. In 2008, after the earthquake in Sichuan, this herbal tea company announced a donation of 100 million yuan for disaster relief. The consulting firm that it had hired to promote its product came up with a marketing plan. Rather than praising the company for its generosity, they would hire Internet users to put up anonymous postings in online communities to attack the company for its presumed “arrogance” in making such a huge donation. A sensational posting titled “Ban Wong Lo Kat herbal tea! Let it disappear from the shops in China!” soon spread online. Netizens questioned and debated the rationale for banning the products of such a generous company. Mainstream media soon picked up the story and turned it into national news. As a result, Wong Lo Kat became a best-selling drink in the summer of 2008. However, when netizens later learned about the hidden marketing scheme behind the story, they felt a sense of betrayal.³³

There is money in the business of “Internet pushing hands.” According to one report, each posting costs about fifty cents (similar to the amount paid to politically motivated Internet commentators, the so-called fifty-cent party). If the posting is headlined in a major BBS forum, then the cost goes up to 600 to 1000 yuan. Web traffic is crucial. If a posting gets 10,000 hits, it becomes a “hot posting” and that costs 100,000 yuan.³⁴ A hiring commercial posted in a forum on Baidu has the following job pitch: “If you are a netizen and spend over six hours online daily, you may join our team. This company solemnly pledges that you will earn a monthly pay of over 1,000 yuan.”³⁵

It is estimated that there are thousands of companies specializing in online “pushing hands” in China.³⁶ On its official Web site, a firm in Beijing lists the following services under its “Internet pushing hands” category: Internet branding, Web site promotion, information release, marketing, sales channels, customer service, customer relations, and Internet research.³⁷ The same company advertises its business on several blogs. One blog entry has the following passage in English, here quoted verbatim. “We have professional creative planning team, writing team and executive team. With accumulated network spreading experiences for a long time, we collect thousands of valid source of information, and also establish long-term cooperation relationship with lots of famous professional website and media, which can make your information spreaded on the Internet soon, and establish the profile of the company and individual.”³⁸

Business companies can also pay to block online information unfavorable to their image or their products. Baidu’s entanglement in the tainted milk scandal is a case in point. At the end of 2008, it was discovered that the baby formula milk products manufactured by Sanlu were the likely cause of kidney damage in hundreds of children, because harmful chemicals had been added to the formula to make it look more nutritious. The manufacturer Sanlu reportedly approached the Chinese search engine giant Baidu with a three-million-yuan offer for Baidu to screen negative information about Sanlu.³⁹ Baidu refuted public allegations of any deal with Sanlu, but the case shows the vulnerability of Internet businesses to commercial interests.

To gauge how seriously the practice of commercial “pushing hands” may damage user trust in online information, I raised the issue with a group of dotcom executives at a public forum in Beijing in July 2010. The respondents emphasized three points that they believe will help to assure the credibility of online information. First, many Internet businesses are already promoting the ethics of corporate social responsibility and a healthy business environment. Second, the collective wisdom of Internet users in the process of interaction helps to curtail the dissemination of false information. Finally, users develop the skills to interpret online information based on their own online experience.

These views are confirmed in my interview with the marketing executive of a large Internet firm in Beijing. She explained the situation to me from the perspectives of both Internet users and marketing firms. For marketing firms, online marketing was initially an exciting discovery. In the old days, they had to invest in personal relationships with editors in the mass media, in addition to the normal costs of business transactions. Then they discovered they could directly market their products by posting or planting commercials in online communities, or by hiring cheap labor to do so. “They were thrilled,” she said,

so they did it at the lowest cost and in the crudest ways. But in this process, people gradually become mature. Marketing at the cost of 20,000 yuan would not get the same result as 100,000 yuan…. And then the bigger consulting firms realize that if they do it the same way as the small firms, how are they different? If I hire people to post information the same way as he does, how do I show that I offer superior services? How do I express my value? I can’t…. He will realize that simply posting information online doesn’t work. With the improvement of clients, advertisers, and mainstream PR firms, online postings of the fifty-cent party kind are being used less and less for commercial purposes.⁴⁰

Turning to Internet users, my interviewee said,

Initially, users may have a hard time figuring out the truthfulness of the information online. People may see a posting that speaks ill of a certain person. Then more and more people may join the conversation. Some of them may think well of that person while others don’t. Those who really care will do two things. They will go to their acquaintances, online or offline, [to verify the information]. Moreover, many users know what clues to watch out for. For example, the length of registration of the ID is a clue. If the ID has just been registered, then chances are that its posting is not so reliable. . . . If an ID has existed for a long time but only posts certain kinds of information and nothing else, then the information may be false. Therefore, as users accumulate online experience, they will gradually learn to tell truth from falsehood.⁴¹

Internet executives, therefore, are aware of the problems in commercial “hand-pushing,” but are optimistic that these problems are transitory and manageable and will not cause serious damage to China’s Internet culture. They may be partial commentators when it comes to their own business, yet their optimism and confidence about the future of a dynamic Internet culture are inescapable. Despite current concerns about the death of the open Web, ⁴² the future of the Internet is still open.

Complex Interaction and the Shape of Future Struggles

Revisiting the thesis of my book in light of recent developments has shown that online activism, as the expression of the power of the Internet in China, has persisted, while the means of governing and controlling the Internet have been refined and the influence of commercial interests has become more pervasive and ambivalent. The growing penetration of political and commercial interests into the civic cybersphere is clearly a response to the growing power of the Internet. It is because contentious Internet events have become an important marker of public opinion, for example, that party propaganda departments and marketing firms have both taken a special interest in them.

To highlight the major new actors and new forms of action, I have focused on workers, microblogs, new government strategies, and commercial “pushing hands.” Many other notable developments have occurred though, and I would like to briefly mention a few.

On March 22, 2010, Google began rerouting requests for Google.cn to its Google.com.hk site, thus effectively ending its compliance with Chinese government regulations on the censoring of its search results. Google’s much publicized confrontation with China on issues of Internet freedom and censorship not only sets the stage for ongoing international debates on these important issues but also, and perhaps more importantly, signals the entry of multinational corporations into the complex tango of online activism and Internet control. Multinational corporations like Yahoo! have been previously implicated in the prosecution of dissidents in collusion with the Chinese government.⁴³ By dissociating itself from China’s censorship practices, Google positioned itself on the moral high ground as a champion of global Internet freedom. The Google incident may have a significant, though as yet unclear, impact on the dynamics of Chinese online activism.

Related to the Google story is the surging global discourse on Internet security, cybersecurity, network crimes, and national security. Regardless of its multiple causes, this discourse pressures governments around the world, including democracies, to exert more control over the Internet.⁴⁴ When national security trumps every other issue, the discourse on the securitization of the Internet may be easily used to legitimize surveillance and censorship practices that target innocent citizens and civil society. As can be seen from China’s white paper on the Internet, which cites national security in its defense of its Internet governance strategies, the language of securitization has the double-edged effect of both defending and harming Internet freedom.

Finally, with respect to Internet activists, microbloggers and a new generation of migrant workers have emerged on the scene. These two new players join the other civil society actors I cover in the book—NGOs, bloggers, gamers, hackers, environmentalists, nationalists, whistle-blowers, pet owners, home owners, consumer activists, dissidents in exile, as well as students, intellectuals, and other middle-class professionals, all of whom participate in daily struggles for justice, freedom, and collective belonging. The existence of such a broad field of Internet activism by no means presumes any form of collective solidarity on a national level, or homogeneity among the different social groups. Internal divisions and conflicts abound,⁴⁵ and some social groups are still missing from the picture.⁴⁶ Yet I hope to have shown an increasingly plural field of aspiring individuals and collectivities, sensibilities, associational forms, and practices. Online activism will continue to unfold in a historical process involving the interactions of multiple social forces. These complex interactions will shape, and be shaped by, the future of online activism and Internet freedom in China. To the extent that these struggles are an integral part of the long revolution of social, cultural, political, and economic change in modern China, they will shape China’s future.