Creating Technology for Social Change

Chinese Scholars on Internet and Civil Society

The question how Internet empowers or disempwers Chinese civil society has haunted me for some time and in 2010 I did a Chinese college students survey to try to establish the linear causal relationship between social networking sites use and their political participation, but when I look back I feel the question being asked might be too simplistic. Studies on the relations between Internet use and Chinese civil society ( the term civil society definitely needs to be re-examined in an authoritarian context) should not be reduced only to discover a positive/negative linkage pattern, but instead other social factors, and cultural contexts should be taken into consideration to complicate the research questions.

China’s over 30 years economic growth does not only lead to fundamental changes in property ownership based social relations, but also open up opportunities for opinion expression. How does the strong economic force shape the relation between ICT use and civil society in China? Yang’s 2009 book ‘The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online’ systematically examined the dynamics of Chinese online sphere and its political implications. He complicated discussion by introducing Chinese economic background instead of asking a simplistic question that addresses only linear relationship of Internet and civil society, as he wrote “This control regime, however, is torn by the internal contradictions between the priorities of economic development and ideological control”. (P.42). (Guobin Yang is an associate professor of Asian culture and sociology at University of Columbia. His research interests ranges from history of Cultural Revolution, 1989 Chinese Student Movement, NGOs and environmental activism as well as the relationship between Internet and civil society. )

Many terms such as civic engagement, civil society, and public participation for authoritarian countries might not have the same meaning as the western counterparts. Instead of pursuing a global consensus on the semantics some scholars touched on the use of public sphere as well as deliberation in Chinese context. Min Jiang particularly examined the notion of authoritarian deliberation on Chinese online sphere and she argues that ‘democracy needs not be a precursor to public deliberation. Instead, public deliberation may flourish as a viable alternative to the radical electoral democracy in authoritarian countries like China. ’(Min Jiang is an assistant professor of communication at UNC Charlotte and have publicized several scholarly articles on Chinese e-governance performance, authoritarian deliberation, and civic political participation on Chinese Internet and also she used to be a news journalist for BTV and CCTV.) Hu Yong challenged the widely held dichotomy between the civil society and the state, and he proposed in his 2009 book ‘The Rising Cacophony: Personal expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age’ a notion of common media where both controllers and protesters have a say in this arena. (Hu Yong, a professor of communication at Beijing University, is currently doing a fellowship with Asia Society. He translated the influential book ‘Being Digital’ into Chinese in 2000). In comparison with discussion on normative meaning of civic sphere, it is easier to reach consensus on questions of digital divide in developing countries. Jack Linchuan Qiu does not simply present the unequal distribution of ICT resources in China, but instead he presented the question in his 2009 book ‘Working-Class Network Society’ from an interesting perspective. Qiu adopted the concept of network society into Chinese context and proposed working-class network society, indicating a class division of using ICTs. (Jack Linchuan Qiu is associate professor at school of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. )