Online activism appeared in China in the mid-1990s, at a time when the revolutionary spirit of the student movement in 1989 had been sapped. It has become increasingly frequent and influential since its appearance. I have examined more than seventy cases in this book, involving hundreds of civic groups, online communities, and Web sites, and numerous people. Some of these cases were sustained struggles; others were episodic. Some involved large-scale, spontaneous protest activities; others were organized or took moderate or surreptitious forms. The issues ranged broadly, from the most horrific forms of human exploitation to controversies about single parenthood and sexual mores. All this adds up to an image of a restive society alive with conflict and contention. Together with the larger currents of popular contention in contemporary China, online activism marks the palpable revival of the revolutionary spirit.
At the macro level, Chinese online activism is a generalized response to the consequences of Chinese modernity. It is a countermovement rooted in material grievances and an identity movement born out of the identity crisis associated with dramatic change. In reality, most cases of activism involve overlapping concerns. Thus the antidiscrimination struggles by diabetes patients and hepatitis-B carriers discussed in chapter 1 are rooted in concerns about individual dignity. Yet they also involve practical matters of job placement or educational opportunities. In the same chapter, the cases of Sun Zhigang and Wei Wenhua represent protests against a form of political oppression that has become prevalent only in the past decade. This is the random and ruthless use of violence against citizens. In Sun Zhigang’s case, the perpetrators were the police. In Wei Wenhua’s case, they were city inspectors. Both groups of persecutors were law-enforcement personnel. These cases indicate the cancerous conditions of the law-enforcement authorities.1 If the conditions of rapid change and dislocation heighten identity concerns and intensify yearnings for recognition and belonging, the conditions of political oppression are the soil for rebellion.
At the meso and micro levels, online activism reflects Chinese citizens’ struggles in dynamic interaction with political, cultural, social, economic, and global conditions. Dynamic and multidimensional interaction reflects the condition of growing complexity in the age of globalization. Social activism in China responds to these complex conditions.
First, the issues and forms of online activism reflect the ways in which citizens creatively negotiate political power. That the Internet is under strict control is well known. Much less is known about the varieties of citizen activism online. In chapter 2, I showed that issue resonance and issue-specific political opportunity are important factors in influencing which contentious issues enter the public sphere. I identified three ways in which citizens creatively respond to Internet control—rightful resistance, artful contention, and digital hidden transcripts. As the forms of domination change, so do the forms of resistance. The simple truth is that domination is always met with resistance. But simple truths are often forgotten.
The second factor in the multi-interactionism model of online activism is culture. I have shown that the expression of contention in cyberspace depends on cultural tools and symbolic resources. It relies on language, symbols, imagery, sounds, and rhetorical conventions of expression. Even using the Internet to mobilize street demonstrations is a cultural activity. The culture of online activism is informed by history and tradition. Time-honored rituals and genres of contention have persisted in the Internet age. Like mental structures, they provide contemporary activism with cultural schemas.2 Both verbal and nonverbal rituals in Chinese contentious culture have been extended to cyberspace. The traditional practice of linking up as a form of petition journey is replicated online with the new kinds of linkages made possible by the Internet networks. Among the verbal rituals and genres I discussed are sloganeering, wall posters, and verse. These are perennial elements of popular protest in modern China. Yet they have taken on new forms and power in cyberspace because of the speed and scope of diffusion and the ease of publication. Political satire in the form of “slippery jingles,” for example, is among the most popular e-mail and text-messaging forwards; there is now a veritable electronic folklore exposing various social problems.
At the same time, online activism demonstrates enormous cultural creativity and innovation. Existing cultural forms are given new energy. New forms and practices have multiplied. Among the new practices I analyzed in chapter 3 are contention in BBS forums, text messaging, blogging, hacktivism, the hosting of campaign Web sites, and online signature petitions. Some newer forms, such as blogs, bear the imprints of the tradition of text-based communication. Others are multimedia, blending text with image, sound, and video files. Among the most innovative genres and practices used in online activism are Flash films, digital photographs, and digital videos. Like traditional texts, they are produced by individuals or groups, but they require a different kind of creativity—the facility to handle creative software and other digital technologies. Their power derives from both their direct visual and aural appeal and the ease and speed of dissemination.
Compared with earlier social movements, online activism manifests a different style. It is at once more playful and more prosaic, whereas earlier social movements often had an epic style suited to the expression of apocalyptic visions. Parodic forms are prevalent in online contention, facilitated by the ease and creative potential of new media technologies. The prosaic side of the new style is evident in the sometimes matter-of-fact approaches to claims making, such as the meticulous calculation of real-estate prices that the blogger in chapter 4 provided in his call for a movement to boycott home buying. As I will note below, the new styles of online activism are symptomatic of other changes in Chinese society.
Third, online activism has a business dimension. As if to keep up with the marketization of Chinese society, activism has attained market value. Some activists adopt marketing strategies to push their causes. Consumer activist Wang Hai, among others, used his Web site to expose counterfeit products while charging customers for the legal-aid services he provides. More importantly, Internet businesses have an vested interest in online contention, because contentious activities increase Web traffic. Major Web sites therefore welcome and embrace controversial media events and encourage their users to participate. This was true in the early history of the Chinese Internet, but it has become all the more so in recent years. My analysis of the “South China tiger” case in chapter 5 illustrates one Web company’s business strategies when a contentious event occurs. Government regulations allow commercial Web sites to carry news only from official news agencies and forbid them to produce their own news. Yet the business firm bypassed this rule through a nominal partnership with a provincial official Web site. At the same time, the firm promoted user participation and discussion through its “response to news” feature. As I also indicated in chapter 5, however, business interests in online contention may result in manipulative practices, thus damaging public debate. The business of contention must be viewed critically, but it does not negate the significance of this new phenomenon. Despite critiques of media commercialization, the market has a more ambivalent relationship to politics than is acknowledged. Under specific historical circumstances, it may provide the conditions for more open political participation.
The fourth factor is civil society, of which I examined two main components. Urban civic associations, the more formal of the two components, make active use of the Internet despite resource shortage. Clearly, a web of civic associations has emerged. Given the political constraints facing civil society in China, the Internet is a strategic opportunity and resource for achieving organizational development and social change. The less formal of the two components of civil society is the online communities. Here my findings go beyond current studies of online communities in China or elsewhere. Many studies have shown, correctly, the “reality” of virtual communities, arguing that they are just as real as offline communities. Such analysis emphasizes the practical aspects of online communities but neglects their meaning as spaces for identity and moral exploration. It also tends to focus on the internal dynamics of computer-mediated interaction, with little attention to their connections to the broader patterns of contemporary life.
My analysis in chapter 7 reveals a vibrant utopian impulse in Chinese online communities. This impulse is expressed in idealized images of online communities as spaces of freedom, solidarity, and social justice. In his famous study of elementary forms of religious life, Emile Durkheim wrote that “a society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal.”3 Creating an ideal is society’s way of creating and recreating itself. The ideal represents the sacred values of the community. Chinese online communities are thus both the products and the vehicles of social regeneration. Through them, people exert their work of the imagination. The values of freedom, solidarity, and justice both motivate online activism and are reaffirmed in the process. Such social regeneration is urgent, because the new conditions of Chinese modernity, such as new forms of inequalities, have greatly strained community and social justice. Contemporary Chinese modernity has created greater freedom in individual life. For large segments of the population, the choices of life have multiplied. But this freedom comes with new forms of anxiety and insecurity. The utopian impulse is rooted in these broader social transformations. As long as these conditions remain, people will continue to seek freedom, justice, and solidarity through online communities. But as my analysis also shows, they will not limit their ideas and action to cyberspace but will inevitably bring them to bear on the social spaces they inhabit. Nor, of course, do I intend to imply that all that happens in online communities is virtuous by civic standards.
The fifth factor in my multi-interactionism model of online activism is transnationalism. In chapter 8, I examined three broad types of transnational activists—the Chinese diaspora, international NGOs, and domestic activists. A main finding is that the radicalization of online activism is in direct proportion to the degree of transnationalization.4 The more transnational, the more radical and confrontational. This finding is significant because it reveals the limits of political control in the age of globalization. Observers of Internet control in China often neglect the contentious character of Chinese Internet culture. One reason for this is that they fail to see other balancing conditions, such as activists’ creativity, business interests, civil-society initiatives, and the possibilities of engaging in long-distance, transnational activism. If transnationalization improves the chances of more radical forms of activism, it is because it increases connections between domestic and international activists and thus gives domestic activists a degree of leverage that would otherwise be unavailable. This finding does not negate the continuing importance of the state. It shows, rather, that both the state and its challengers are based in an increasingly complex and connected world. As challengers gain more leverage, so is the state subject to more sources of pressure.
A Cultural Revolution
The multidimensional interactions that drive Chinese online activism suggest that online activism is a central locus of tension and conflict in contemporary Chinese society. Analyzing online activism provides a unique angle for understanding broader social trends. The forms, dynamics, and consequences of online activism contain elements of the structures of feeling in Chinese society. I will propose that Chinese online activism is emblematic of a communication revolution in contemporary China. This communication revolution is a cultural revolution in the sense that it significantly expands the horizons of learning and communication for ordinary people. I will further propose that this communication revolution is a social revolution, because the ordinary people assume an unprecedented role as agents of change and because new social formations are among its most profound outcomes.
I will propose, finally, that this communication revolution is expanding citizens’ unofficial democracy. It is true that democracy as a political system, an important element in Raymond Williams’s long revolution, is missing from China’s long revolution. Yet as Williams argues, the progress of democracy is not limited to simple political change. It depends ultimately “on conceptions of an open society and of freely cooperating individuals which alone are capable of releasing the creative potentiality of the changes in working skills and communication.” The long revolution “is not for democracy as a political system alone” but derives its meaning from new conceptions and practices of self, society, and politics.5 Ultimately, these new conceptions and practices are the social and cultural foundations for a democratic political system.
Let me begin with the cultural revolution. The culture of online activism is dynamic and creative. It marks a significant change in the style of contention in recent Chinese history. Yet its significance goes beyond what it means as a form of contention. It signifies and contributes to more basic and profound trends of cultural change in Chinese society. Such change is profound even in comparison with periods as recent as the 1980s, which witnessed a period of extraordinary cultural effervescence. From the “misty poetry” in the early 1980s to the “culture fever” later in that decade, one cultural movement followed another. The fields of art and literature were full of creativity. A dazzling array of works was published. Literary journals sold millions of copies and were presumably read by millions more.6 Yet the main force of this cultural blossoming consisted of intellectuals, writers, artists, and professors. Its elitist bias was exposed most starkly during the climactic event of that age—the student movement in 1989. During that movement, despite belated efforts to unite with workers and peasants, students and intellectuals not only dominated the stage of political action but deliberately tried to distinguish themselves as the torchbearers—the “chosen few.”
To the extent that the Internet was first adopted in universities and research institutions in China, it had an elitist origin. Yet its rapid nationwide diffusion brought it quickly within the reach of the average urban consumer, despite the persistent digital divide. With this comes the expansion of culture, of which online activism is only the most radical expression. This cultural expansion is evident in three aspects—the sources of information and means of learning, the tools of cultural production and innovation, and the spaces of communication.
First, for the vast majority of Internet users, one of the most exciting things about the Internet is that it opens up new worlds of information and learning. The biannual Internet surveys produced by CNNIC since 1997 consistently show that the majority of people use the Internet for information seeking. The personal stories I collected about Internet use in the earlier years of China’s Internet history exuded excitement about the new possibilities the Internet offered. Today, as more and more people begin to take it for granted, the thrill people experienced when they first signed on to the Internet is already being forgotten. It shows how far the Chinese people have come in just over ten years, but the historical significance of the expansion of information sources can hardly be overstated.
To be sure, the existing digital divide means that many people still have no access to online information.7 Even here, however, there are interesting new experiments. In some remote areas, for example, county-level governments have launched projects to wire villages indirectly. One study finds that in the county of Jinta in Gansu Province, the county information center collects and compiles agricultural information from the Internet and posts the information online. Then teachers in village schools use the school computer facilities to print and photocopy the information and distribute it to farmers.8 In other rural areas, Internet bars and cellphones provide options in the absence of home Internet access. Indeed, as of December 2007, close to half of all Internet users in rural areas accessed the Internet in Internet bars; 23 percent use cellphones for access.9 Among migrant workers, the culture of mobile phones and Internet bars is just as dynamic and colorful as the broader Internet culture in China.10 Some Chinese scholars believe that these alternative methods of Internet access will prove to be effective means of narrowing the digital divide.11 In the long run, the real divide is not access but use and capability, which are shaped by the entire structure of social stratification and inequality in a society. The fundamental solution therefore depends on attacking social inequality.
Second is the expansion of tools of cultural production and innovation. Here again, online activism both reflects and leads larger trends of cultural creativity. Online activism involves quintessentially activities of cultural production and innovation. This is evident in every case I discussed in this book. Writing BBS posts, creating Flash and digital videos, setting up and maintaining campaign and petition Web sites, various forms of “artful contention” and digital “hidden transcripts”—these are all creative activities. That the Internet and other new information technologies offer tools for these creative activities is in itself significant. But the real significance lies in the democratization of these tools. There have always been tools of cultural production and creativity, but rarely have ordinary joes had such broad access to them. Certainly, because of the digital divide, not all people have access or the capability to use these new creative tools. Yet here again it is worth emphasizing that although the digital divide is a barrier to overcome, it does not shadow the real progress of the communication revolution. The broad trend in the past decade has been the rapid expansion of access. More than any other creative technology before, these new communication technologies equip the common people with the tools for creating their own cultural products.
Common people have become publishers, editors, writers, and artists, rather than just consumers, audience, and readers. Instead of just trying to receive and digest knowledge produced by dead authors or living authorities, they become knowledge producers.12 The enormous creative potential of the common people is released. This is crucial for correcting the asymmetry in knowledge production. In modern society, knowledge production is socially organized such that a minority of experts, authorities, and institutions control the processes of knowledge production and certification. The dominant ideas of society are the ideas of this minority. This in itself runs counter to the principles of a democratic culture. Thus when the ordinary people become knowledge producers, they infuse a new culture into society. They provide alternative perspectives, different standpoints, and more diverse life experiences. Their alternative experiences and perspectives can challenge cultural stereotypes, correct misinformation, and resist symbolic violence (symbolic violence meaning violence inflicted on society by the ruling elites through labeling, categorization, and other discursive forms).
The cases of online activism I studied all in one way or another involved the common people as knowledge producers. The knowledge they created typically subverted received wisdom or prevailing views. Thus activists among hepatitis-B carriers challenged the received wisdom about the vectors of infection for this virus and pointed out how discriminatory government policies helped perpetuate popular misconceptions. Similarly, Flash videos about animal protection during the avian flu crisis in 2005, by taking the perspectives of birds and chickens, revealed the mindlessness, paranoia, and cruelty that human beings are capable of during times of perceived danger. And of course, a main part of consumer-rights defense is to expose counterfeit products.
The expansion of tools of cultural creativity and the release of the creative energies of the common people are directly related to the extension of existing cultural forms and the appearance of new ones. An important feature of online activism is its diverse genres and rituals. These cultural forms are the vehicles of citizen activism. They are also the vehicles of popular sentiments in general. Herein lies the significance of these cultural forms. For what they express, ultimately, are the concerns and aspirations of the common people. Slippery jingles are a popular cultural form, and so are Flash videos, youtube videos, blogs, and BBS postings. They communicate experiences, viewpoints, and values often at variance with those carried in official forms. That is why between popular and official forms there is always conflict. One seeks to dominate, the other resists. Resistance is more effective the more creative it is.
The third area of cultural expansion is the emergence of a citizens’ discourse space. A citizens’ discourse space is where people can voice concerns and express their feelings and opinions.13 To expand citizens’ discourse space is an important goal of the new citizen activism. A major achievement in this respect, not surprisingly, is the social construction of the Internet as such a space. Nowhere else do Chinese citizens participate more actively and directly in communication about public affairs. Nowhere else are so many social issues brought into public discussion on a daily basis.
A new concept is born out of a new reality while shaping that reality. “Discourse space,” or huayu kongjian, is one of the new vocabulary terms linked to citizen activism in China today. Other examples include “discourse right” (huayu quan), “rights protection” (wei quan), “disempowered groups” (ruoshi qunti), “right to know” (zhiqing quan), “citizen rights” (gongmin quan), “public participation” (gongzhong canyu), “grassroots” (caogen), “public sphere” (gonggong lingyu), and “civil society” (gongmin shehui). Some of these concepts, such as “right to know” and “public sphere,” are entirely new coinages or translations.14 Others use Chinese terms and expressions used in the past, but the old concepts are replaced with new ones emphasizing citizen participation. For example, in the earlier period, jiceng was the Chinese equivalent of the English word “grassroots.” Literally meaning “foundation” or “infrastructure,” jiceng is a term with a revolutionary history. The hallmark of Mao’s organizational approach, the so-called mass-line,15 was based on the assumption that the voice of the party should penetrate into the very basic fabric of Chinese life—the jiceng or foundation. The new vocabulary has abandoned the term jiceng and adopted a literal translation of the English word “grassroots” as caogen.
A citizens’ discourse space is thus also a space for fashioning a new language and a new identity. Perhaps the most important new identity fashioned in cyberspace is the rather mundane term “netizen” (wang min). A netizen is an Internet user, but both in Chinese and English, the term carries the meaning of a citizen, because it combines the two words of “Internet” and “citizen” into one. But the mundane netizens in China today are synonymous with being fearless, informed, impassioned, and not easily deceived. Sometimes they are denigrated as Internet mobs (wangluo baomin), but recall that, in history, whenever the common people act up they are denounced as mobs. It is true that there is a great deal of radicalism in Chinese cyberspace, but as I have shown in these chapters, Internet radicals are often called into being by even more radical forms of social injustice. The popular Southern Metropolis News carried a story on January 13, 2008, titled “Don’t Even Think About Deceiving Netizens.” The story refers to many of the cases of Internet contention that happened in 2007 and that are discussed in this book. The story argues that these Internet events show convincingly that in the Internet age, netizens will not let themselves be deceived by anyone, because “suppression and deception will only strengthen netizens’ desire to express themselves.”16
A Social Revolution
China’s communication revolution is also a social revolution. It is social because its dynamics are social dynamics, because its primary agents of change are the ordinary people, and because its most profound influences appear in the form of new social formations. It is revolutionary not because it happens abruptly but because in the depth and scope of its influences, it is unparalleled in history. The Internet revolution marks, accompanies, and contributes to profound changes in all aspects of Chinese society.
The communication revolution is rooted in contemporary social conditions. As I argued in chapter 1, online activism responds to two central consequences of Chinese modernity. One is the social polarization that has accompanied China’s rapid economic development. Economic developments do not automatically bring about social progress. Rather, grave social injustices and insidious forms of social inequality have become exacerbated over the course of economic developments. Many of the spontaneous forms of online protests happen as a countermovement against social injustice and inequality. The other consequence is social dislocation. Social injustices happen to the poor, the weak, and the disempowered. Social dislocation touches everyone in a rapidly changing society, the upwardly as well as the downwardly mobile. The consequences of social dislocation are identity anxieties and crises. Online activism is thus also an identity movement, expressed as yearnings and struggles for social recognition, personal dignity, and a sense of community.
Not surprisingly, the yearnings for justice, identity, and community are translated into acts of communication, for communication is about community and vice versa.17 A communication revolution is necessarily a social revolution. The rapid development of the Internet is as much about technological change as it is about social change. It often seems that a new development in communications technology triggers social change. But the opposite is just as true. New technological developments are just as much responses to social needs. A dynamic and participatory Internet culture would be hard to imagine without the intense social yearnings for communication. Not only is society a cause of the communication revolution, but the dynamics of the communication revolution are also social. Never before has social participation been as important an engine of technological development as in the case of the Internet today. The Internet would not be what it is without social participation. Participation on the Internet is a productive activity. No wonder that Internet firms are willing to invest their resources in maintaining free blogs and online forums, for these free spaces of communication are also spaces of social and economic production.
Just as the cultural revolution associated with the Internet creates new cultural forms, so its social consequences are manifest in the rise of new social forms and formations. Over a decade of online communication has created numerous online communities. New social types have proliferated, ranging from citizen journalists and bloggers to hackers, cybernationalists, BBS hosts, Flash animators, Internet gamers, and, of course, online activists. Civic associations maintain an active Web presence and use Web sites to achieve organizational visibility and promote causes of social change.
The significance of these new forms and formations is fourfold. First, they are significant because of the relative weakness of citizen organizing in the history of the PRC. Citizen organizing was not absent in the past, but it lacked a legitimate and institutionalized base. Today, it has attained a degree of institutionalization. Online communities are legitimate formations, and as I showed in chapter 7, their activities extend offline. Civic associations such as NGOs have to negotiate restrictive state regulations in what they can or cannot do, but they enjoy de facto or de jure legitimacy and have room to maneuver. This is not to underestimate the political restrictions they face, but rather to recognize the importance of the institutionalization of new social forms.
Second, the size and scale of citizen organizing are significant. The largest online communities have millions of registered members, larger than any other form of social organization except for the Chinese Communist Party itself. There are also tens of thousands of small communities. The scale is equally remarkable, considering that the members in many communities are scattered not only in different cities but in different regions of the world. The social interactions take place at multiple levels. All this translates into an enormous synergy of social interaction. For any political ruler, it is a new social force to reckon with. Growing control of the Internet partly reflects the state’s awareness of this new social force.
Third, the new social formations are significant for the values they represent. My analysis of online communities in chapter 7 shows that members of online communities not only express critiques of social reality and affirm moral values they see as damaged in contemporary society but are ready to act on their cherished values. They demonstrate a high degree of civic engagement, or, in the words of some Chinese scholars, “civicness.”18 At a time when Chinese society is plagued by a crisis of trust, it may appear ironic that trust should exist in online communities. As I showed in chapter 7, members of online communities both demonstrate high degrees of trust and strive to reaffirm it. The irony is superficial. The reality is that if communication remains open, people will build trust. Trust is only as poor as communication.
Finally, the new forms and formations represent new developments in Chinese civil society. As I indicated in my introduction, civil society is a loaded concept, but it is only as loaded as history itself. Historical developments in China today have given it new meaning. When the concepts of “public sphere” and “civil society” were first introduced into Chinese intellectual discourse in the late 1980s, they were alien. They remain controversial in the Western scholarly literature. Yet in China today, they have become key concepts both in intellectual and popular, journalistic discourse. Some Chinese scholars have argued recently that with the thriving of civic associations China has stepped onto the threshold of a civil society.19 Thresholds aside, my analysis of online organizing and online communities supports the argument that a veritable associational revolution in China is happening.20 Online social formations are a crucial component of this associational revolution. It bears emphasis that online social formations are always projects under construction because of their openness and dynamism. Different viewpoints and social and political forces will necessarily come into contact. There will be tensions and conflicts. The future of these formations therefore remains open to negotiation or transformation.
Toward an Unofficial Democracy
Both the cultural and social transformations associated with the communication revolution involve political dynamics and have political implications. But the communication revolution also has more direct political consequences. It has shaped state politics and contributed to the rise of a grassroots, citizen politics. Thus although democracy as a political system remains an ideal and not a reality, at the grassroots level, people are already practicing and experimenting with forms of citizen democracy. As Raymond Williams puts it, “if people cannot have official democracy, they will have unofficial democracy, in any of its possible forms, from the armed revolt or riot, through the ‘unofficial’ strike or restriction of labor, to the quietest but most alarming form—a general sullenness and withdrawal of interest.”21 As is clear from the above chapters, withdrawal is not a feature of Chinese people’s struggles for grassroots democracy. Engagement is. I will return to this point below. But since citizen politics comes about in direct relation to state power, it is necessary to first trace the evolution of state power in the Internet age.
The basic point here is that as technological change enables new forms and dynamics of citizen activism, so it provides occasions for state actors to adjust and refine the institutions, concepts, and methods of governance. The adjustments reflect both the grassroots pressure for democratic participation and elites’ attempts to strengthen political control. There is thus evidence of the slow and limited institutionalization of government transparency and citizen input. This is an ongoing process throughout the reform period, despite periodic policy contractions and relaxations and scholarly disagreements as to the sources of the process.22 The contribution of online activism to this process is the mounting social pressure for government transparency and public participation. Progress is limited but merits mention. One development is e-government. As I noted in chapter 5, e-government lags behind e-business or e–civil society. Still, major e-government initiatives have been under way for years, with campaigns to set up Web sites for government agencies at all levels and to use Web sites to publicize government policies and encourage direct citizen input. Kathleen Hartford’s study of two e-government projects at the municipal level, for example, shows the broad range of social issues that citizens brought to the attention of city governments through the mayor’s e-mail boxes. These mailboxes elicit citizen feedback and enhance government transparency.23
Besides e-government projects, there are efforts to promote information disclosure. The year 2007 has some significance in this respect. In April 2007, the State Council promulgated the “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Government Information Disclosure.” This was the first of its kind at the level of the central government, with a mandate to “ensure that citizens, legal persons and other organizations obtain government information in accordance with the law” and “enhance transparency of the work of government.”24 Also in April 2007, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) issued China’s first-ever “Regulations on Environmental Information Disclosure.” The regulations require both government and business enterprises to disclose environmental information in order to safeguard the rights of citizens to obtain information about the environment. The process of formulating this regulation reflects popular pressure. For years, SEPA officials had been working closely with environmental NGOs to promote public participation in decision making on environmental issues. For example, in April 2005, SEPA held the first public hearing on a controversial environmental project concerning the protection of the lake bed of the Yuanmingyuan Garden in western Beijing.25 The public hearing resulted in the cancellation of the project. The hearing was held because environmentalists had launched a media campaign to request such a hearing to oppose the project.
The institutionalization of government transparency and citizen participation, however, lags far behind government efforts to strengthen and refine methods of control and governance. In this respect, Internet control is par excellence a field for the state to experiment with new ways of governing. As I argued in chapter 2, in fewer than fifteen years, China’s Internet-control regime has undergone three stages of evolution. With each new stage, the methods of control became more refined and sophisticated. The general trend is a gradual move from repressive power to disciplinary power, from hard control to soft control. From 2003 to the present, the dominant mode of power has been disciplinary. On the one hand, the state is stepping up Internet control. This is evident in the new Internet-related regulations promulgated since 2003.
On the other hand, fully aware of the productive aspects of the Internet economy, the state is reluctant to sacrifice economic gains to blunt methods of control. Hoping to maintain both prosperity and control, state authorities have been refining the technologies of control into what a Foucaultian perspective might view as biopower. The essence of biopower is to harness human subjects in the service of the state’s agendas. It is a productive power because it enables the production of particular kinds of knowledge, subjects, and needs.26 A central element in this new biopower regime is the so-called soft-control approach (rouxing guanli). In contrast to hard control, soft control, a term borrowed from business management, is more about self-discipline, indirect guidance, efficient management, positive cues, and rule by law. The new principles of governance laid out at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in September 2004, which I cited in chapter 2, embody the idea of soft control. The promotion of self-discipline and the ethical use of the Internet, as well as a new system of asking citizens to voluntarily report on (jian ju) violations through an officially sponsored portal site, also embodies the idea of soft control. Technologies of power are most effective when they appear in the forms of technologies of the self, that is, when they induce individuals to willingly partake of their own transformation. From this perspective, the Internet may also be transformed into a technology of power.
The shift toward a more disciplinary mode of power is not limited to Internet control. As both a new object and a priority area of control, however, the Internet provides a strategic opportunity for state actors to adjust and refine the entire apparatus of governance and control. Thus the refined approaches to Internet control are visible in other areas, such as the control of the mass media, for here too, state control is becoming more sophisticated.
The constant evolution of power is a condition that will make China’s long revolution, a struggle for a more open and democratic society, an arduous process. Yet it is important to see the signs of progress. What are the political gains of China’s online activism? What are the signs of political progress in China’s long revolution?
The most important development here is citizens’ unofficial democracy. Online activism is a microcosm of China’s new citizen activism, and it is one of its most vibrant currents. In this sense, online activism marks the expansion of a grassroots, citizen democracy. It is an unofficial democracy because the initiatives, both in thinking and action, come from citizens. The expansion is evident both in consciousness and practice. In consciousness, the major developments are the rising awareness of citizenship rights among the Chinese people and the changing views of power and authority. Neither development is limited to online activism, yet both have expanded because of it. Chinese struggles for citizenship rights constitute perhaps the core of citizen activism since the 1990s. They have been extensively documented by the many scholars I have cited throughout this book. Online activism has been most instrumental in disseminating and deepening popular consciousness about citizens’ information rights. Freedom of speech was a main stake in earlier social movements, and it remains central. Information rights, such as citizens’ right to know, put additional demands on the government. Not only do citizens demand the right to express their opinions, but now they also demand the right to be informed of issues of concern to their well-being.
Online activism promotes the awareness of information rights by eroding information control and propaganda. It makes it harder for state authorities and news agencies to control information. In 2001, a school explosion in rural Jiangxi province killed forty-two people. In 2002, a food-poisoning accident in the city of Nanjing killed over forty. In both cases, government authorities attempted to put a media gag on information but were eventually forced to reveal the truth because of exposure and controversies on the Internet. These cases led an influential Chinese media scholar to claim that the Internet has brought about the demise of propaganda based on centralized control of news and information.27 Whether this alleged demise has occurred or not is open to debate, but it is clear that centralized information control has become increasingly difficult.
Negative experiences also offer instructive lessons and help bring home the importance of information rights. Initial information control during the SARS crisis in 2003 and the Songhua River pollution crisis exacerbated the confusion and unrest. When people are poorly informed, rumors flourish. When rumors flourish, fear strikes deeply, and people lose the capacity for sound judgment and sensible action. When, under pressure, the Chinese government opened up the information channels, confidence and order were restored.
The growing rights consciousness parallels changing conceptions of power and authority. In contemporary China, power and authority are much revered and feared. To some extent, the onslaughts on official bureaucracies and bureaucratic power carried out by Mao and the Cultural Revolution have been reversed. The traditional, official-centered political culture (guan ben wei wenhua) has returned to Chinese society with a vengeance. The culture of official-centricity is everywhere today and being continuously propagated by China’s officially controlled mass media and culture industry. In popular culture, television dramas and films that glorify emperors, empresses, lords, and generals flood the market. They exalt power and wealth and inculcate values of blind loyalty to the superiors. Official newscasts of the xinwen lianbo style retain the same mode of presentation as they had decades ago, with high proportions of airtime given to party leaders, who are presented in an aura of power and authority.
It is against this culture of official-centricity that the Internet culture of humor and play assumes special significance. Play has a spirit of irreverence. It always sits uncomfortably with power. The subversive power of the Wang Shuo–type “hooligan literature” in the recent history of Chinese culture comes from its spirit of play.28 Much online activism, and much Chinese Internet culture in general, is enlivened with this spirit. If Wang Shuo’s hooligan literature was shocking and heretical to its audience when it first appeared in the 1980s, it now appears timid and old-fashioned in comparison with the hilariously nonconformist Internet culture. In Chinese cyberspace, nothing is sacred. Pretensions to authority are favorite targets of attack. This culture of irreverence is not confined to the Internet but merges into the broader popular culture today. If religion is about the worship of an external source of power, one is tempted to argue that China has only now entered its secular age. The consequences of this secularization for political change will only gradually unfold.
The second area in the expansion of citizen democracy is practice. The growing rights consciousness is matched by the proliferation of forms of citizen participation in public affairs. Again, online activism is symptomatic of this expansion. Examples abound in other areas of contemporary life. The PX incident in the city of Xiamen, which I discussed in chapter 3 in relation to the use of text messaging for mobilization, is exemplary, because it combines participation with opposition and joins online with offline action.
The PX case is about resistance. The online debate and the street demonstration expressed residents’ opposition to the construction of a chemical factory in their neighborhood. The project was supported by the municipal government. Therefore public opposition challenged both business and the local government. The PX case is also about citizen participation. For citizens to be able to participate in making decisions concerning their own well-being is a basic requirement of any democracy. Rapid economic development has not improved citizens’ chances of participating in democratic decision making. The growing sense of identity crisis and anxieties discussed in chapter 1 suggests that people increasingly feel that life is out of their control. It is as a reaction against this loss of control that citizens begin to be more actively engaged in civic affairs. Some residents in Xiamen learned about the PX project in online forums. Many learned about the planned demonstration through SMS, a simple cellphone text message that called on people to “take a leisure walk.” Several images of anti-PX graffiti painted on the walls near Xiamen University were circulated online. The information was there, but people did not have to participate. That they did, simply in response to an SMS message or a BBS post, reflected their desire to take control of their own affairs. They participated when they realized that they could no longer trust the government.29
The debate on the rule of law and democracy featured in a recent book issues from the premise that neither exists in China at the dawn of the twenty-first century.30 The Chinese government may have been building a legal system for decades, yet despite halting and limited progress, this system lacks transparency, accountability, and due process. Thus it is not surprising that Chinese citizens are increasingly resorting to contentious means in their struggles for a more just society. The Internet satisfies an immediate social need. It provides a new medium for citizens to speak up, link up, and act up against power, corruption, and social injustice. By using the Internet to speak up, link up, and act up, Chinese citizens participate in Chinese politics uninvited. They practice their own unofficial democracy.
Online activism represents Chinese people’s everyday struggles for freedom, justice, and community. It articulates people’s aspirations for basic citizenship rights—the right to voice their opinions on government policies, to be informed of issues that affect their lives, to freely organize themselves and defend their interests, to publicly challenge authorities and social injustices, and to be able to enjoy equal rights and human dignity. These everyday struggles have a mundane character. They do not necessarily articulate lofty visions for grand political designs. Yet beneath these mundane struggles run powerful undercurrents. The effervescence of online activism, as part of China’s new citizen activism, indicates the palpable revival of the revolutionary impulse in Chinese society. The power of the Internet lies in revealing this impulse and in signaling the probable coming of another revolution. As I have tried to suggest in these concluding pages, this would be a different kind of revolution. It may lack the usual revolutionary fanfare, but it will not be lacking in revolutionary power. As civic engagements in unofficial democracy expand, the distance to an officially institutionalized democracy shortens.