Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In his latest book, Contesting Cyberspace in China, Han Rong-Bin draws our attention to two main actors involved in China’s online activism, the authoritarian state of China and China’s Internet, and foregrounds the complex interplay between these two, which he thinks by studying carefully, we can have a balanced understanding of why an incident like Wangfujing Demonstration, a widely online advertised activism event inspired by Arab Spring, failed to translate into an actual offline movement. To find a reason for the failure and also the Party-state’s resilience, he reminds us that it is fruitless to focus on the state capacity and adaptability to control people because that ignores the significance of the constitution of China’s Internet and the pluralization of online expression. I think the concept of the pluralization of online expression is especially important for him, because that activates and empowers not merely regime critics but also regime defenders, and therefore, pro-regime groups help neutralize the regime-challenging discourses and sustain authoritarian rule. However, to decipher the secret reasons why online activism is hard to translate into offline movement in China, we have to understand that China’s Internet is a symptomatic environment that exposes the penetration problem of online opinion platforms, the uncertainty or the fluidity of policy-making and implementation, and the zhongyong concept embedded deep inside Chinese culture. Thus, in this paper, I try to deliver a more in-depth investigation into these problems that I think creates such an environment inhibiting an offline activism event like this.