4 Discussion Posts about China's Government

University of Pennsylvania Press

Chapter Title: INTRODUCTION: The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China Chapter Author(s): Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein and Guobin Yang

Book Title: The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China Book Editor(s): Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, Guobin Yang Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. (2016) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1b3t8nr.3

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

The Internet, Social Media,

and a Changing China

Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

New media— the Internet and especially social media— have become perva- sive and transformative forces in contemporary China. Th eir reach is vast: nearly half of China’s 1.3 billion citizens use the Internet.1 Tens of millions are active users of Sina Weibo, China’s principal Twitter- like ser vice, and tens of millions more have weibo accounts.2 Although much attention to these media has focused on their importance as a way for ordinary citizens to express and share opinions and information, new media also have changed the way the Chinese authorities communicate with the people they rule. China’s party- state now invests heavily in speaking to Chinese citizens through the Internet and social media, as well as controlling the speech that occurs in that space.

New media have altered the fabric of China’s civil society, legal aff airs, politics, and foreign relations. Policy debates and public discourse regularly occur through— and sometimes focus on— the Internet and social media to an extent unimaginable a de cade or two ago. Almost no area of public con- cern remains beyond the reach of discussion in cyberspace. Th is rise of new media refl ects technological, economic, and po liti cal change in China. Use of the Internet initially grew with the advent of Internet cafés, as well as home and offi ce- based computers. With the widespread adoption of smartphones, access expanded sharply. SMS (simple texting) and MMS (multimedia mes- sages) were followed by weibo (microblogging similar to Twitter), and more recently the mobile text and voice messaging ser vice weixin (known in En glish as WeChat).

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2 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

Th e economic changes that have profoundly altered China during the reform era that began in 1978 underlie the story of the ascent of new media. Rising individual wealth, education, and urbanization have generated much— but not all—of the demand for the Internet and social media. Like other soci- eties, China has developed a “digital divide” that partly tracks broader social and economic in e qual ity, which has increased sharply in China over the course of the reform era.3

Th e growth of the Internet and social media is also a result of the com- mercialization of media in China through policies that have required formerly state- subsidized and closely state- controlled media to compete in the mar- ketplace and that have allowed the emergence of new, more in de pen dent media. Partly in a quest for audiences and, in turn, revenue, these increasingly diverse outlets have moved heavily onto the web and into social media where they distribute some of their most controversial and audience- engaging con- tent, albeit sometimes only briefl y until the authorities require its removal.

Po liti cal change is part of the story as well. Th e rise of the Internet and social media refl ects the partial liberalization of China’s po liti cal climate. Over the last few de cades, Chinese citizens have enjoyed much more freedom to express opinions on a wide range of issues, including po liti cal ones, and to do so in relatively public ways. Th e criticism of offi cials (below the very top leadership) and policies (outside certain controversial areas) that has been tolerated and become commonplace among China’s “netizens” is the virtual face of a broader social and po liti cal phenomenon.

Internet and social media- based expression of citizens’ discontent and exposure of unlawful or outrageous acts by cadres, enterprises, or others are allowed in part because they can serve the regime’s interest. On one hand, they provide a “steam valve” for citizen anger and bring potentially stability- threatening problems to the attention of the authorities who can then respond with ameliorative or repressive mea sures. On the other hand, new media give China’s rulers novel channels to shape public opinion by directly using such media by mobilizing, and sometimes paying, others to express pro- regime views (the so- called wumaodang or “fi ft y- cent party”), or by relying on spontaneous expressions of orthodox sentiments by some members of China’s diverse online communities. Th e Internet and social media also provide a ready means for the authorities to monitor public opinion and, at times, to discover and target dissidents and those who might form more or ga nized opposition to the party- state and its policies.

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Introduction 3

Concerns about the Internet’s and social media’s potential to facilitate eff orts to erode the regime’s authority, to provide a platform for or ga niz ing dissent, or to foment “disorder” explain the ruling party’s evident wariness and ambivalence. Along with the authorities’ limited liberalization of the en- vironment for new media and their use of it have come new eff orts at con- trol. Th e vastness, complexity, and changeability of the online world in China have posed challenges for China’s rulers as they have struggled to fi nd eff ec- tive means to pursue old goals— maintaining a monopoly on or ga nized pol- itics, limiting dissent, and censoring some ideas while privileging others—in a new context.

As this brief sketch suggests and as the chapters in this volume explore in depth, the relationship between the Internet and social media, on one hand, and China’s society, politics, legal system, and even its foreign relations, on the other, has become diverse and dynamic. Across these many issues, when ordinary citizens and Chinese authorities engage in cyberspace, the pattern has become one of complex contestation. Th e contributions to this book show that the scope for critical expression, the level of civility, the social impact, and the policy consequences vary considerably across and within issue areas and over time. Simple dichotomies of “freedom versus control” or “promot- ing democracy versus strengthening authoritarianism” do not suffi ce as frameworks for understanding the role and impact of new media in today’s China. Even the more nuanced paradigm of “coevolution” of the Internet and civil society does not fully capture the diversity and confl ict that now char- acterize China’s new media and their interaction with society, policy, and law.

Dystopian views that the Internet is not changing China or is stabilizing authoritarian rule are also too simplistic and too pessimistic. Th e authors in this volume show how the Internet and social media have been having sig- nifi cant eff ects. Much of that impact comes from the grass roots, including from citizens who criticize the authorities, their actions and policies, and broader offi cial narratives. Given the limited channels available to members of the Chinese public to express their opinions and infl uence their govern- ment, the relative signifi cance of the Internet and new media is greater than in liberal- democratic polities. Internet postings, text messages, microblogs, and WeChat circles have become especially important means for citizens to weigh in on controversial legal cases, the regime’s handling of foreign pol- icy, misbehavior by offi cials, and many other social and po liti cal questions. Far from providing a simple tool for reinforcing or sustaining authoritarian

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4 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

rule, the rapid and complex development of the Internet and social media oft en have put the regime back on its heels, requiring it to scramble to fi nd ways to address these new challenges to its authority without incurring unacceptable collateral costs.

At the same time, expectations that the Internet would quickly become an overwhelmingly positive and transformative force in China have proven to be equally misplaced. Th e studies in this book examine several aspects of this phenomenon. Th e still capable and determined Chinese party- state has adapted and developed new means of limiting and controlling speech in cyberspace, including mechanisms of participation, monitoring, regulating, censoring, and sanctioning.

Citizens’ behavior in cyberspace has had its dark side as well, giving rise to its own “uncivil society.” Venomous attacks, rumormongering, false ac- cusations, so- called human fl esh searches, and similar phenomena on the Internet and in social media have contributed to real- world harms, including deaths. Although Chinese netizens have sometimes pressed courts to reach just outcomes and forgo corrupt ones, the Internet has at times instead fa- cilitated mob justice that poses a populist threat to judicial in de pen dence and the development of the rule of law.4

Internet pop u lism has aff ected China’s foreign relations as well. Strident pop u lar nationalism expressed on the Internet and through social media sometimes dovetails with the regime’s foreign policy agenda and allows Chinese leaders to play a “two- level game,” pleading domestic constraints on their ability to make concessions abroad. Yet pop u lar nationalism expressed and amplifi ed in cyberspace— and sometimes coming from Chinese nation- als and ethnic Chinese outside of China— oft en has been a problem for Bei- jing’s foreign policy. It has sometimes generated pressure to pursue approaches that are more unaccommodating than the leadership’s preferences or their assessments of China’s national interests would dictate. Although the Inter- net and social media are not the underlying cause of pop u lar constraints on foreign policy decision makers, they have created new forums that give such constraints greater potency.

The Internet and Civil Society

A central aspect of the information revolution in China has been the expan- sion of civil society and citizen engagement through the use of the Internet. In

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Introduction 5

the early years of Internet diff usion, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the key dynamic was relatively simple and straightforward. On the one hand, the Internet and civil society had an interdependent relationship and shaped each other in a coevolutionary trajectory. Th e Internet contributed to the growth of a fl edgling civil society by enhancing civic or ga niz ing and fos- tering public debate and communication, while civil society facilitated the diff usion of the Internet by providing the necessary social basis for com- munication and interaction. On the other hand, as online protests appeared, state authorities responded by introducing mea sures of Internet censor- ship. Overall, however, the practices of control and censorship at that time were crude and ad hoc, lacking the sophistication and comprehensiveness we see today.

In the last de cade, profound social, technological, and po liti cal devel- opments in China and in the world have signifi cantly changed the context in which civil society and the Internet interact in China. Th e spaces for online citizen engagement have expanded in many ways, but they have also contracted in other respects. To understand the ramifi cations of new infor- mation and communication technologies, we must analyze intricate, inter- twined, and complex interactions involving multiple actors and institutions. Compared with ten years ago, the Internet is now a much more hotly contested arena with much higher stakes, in China as elsewhere around the world.

Although a cyclical pattern of liberalization and relaxation may broadly characterize Chinese politics, the chapters in this book suggest a more compli- cated picture. Patterns in citizens’ online participation suggest that the famil- iar temporal cycle of Chinese politics may have given way to a layered spatial array of online activism and governance. In this new pattern, we fi nd a more diverse set of actors from civil society inhabiting diff erent parts of the online space with varying degrees of po liti cal legitimacy, while state authorities at central and regional levels and in diff erent state bureaucracies target par tic u- lar social issues or social actors according to their own priorities. Th is spatial pattern in China’s virtual realm parallels the boundary- spanning contention in China’s real- world politics described by Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li.5

In China’s online spaces, this layered, spatial pattern is associated with complex contestation among multiple actors, from Party and government agencies to Internet fi rms, traditional media, citizens, “uncivil society,” global IT corporations, and international governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Civil society includes ordinary netizens, NGOs, and dissidents, most (but not all) of whom reside within China. Some dissidents

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6 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

remain outside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while maintaining a presence on China’s domestic Internet platforms, such as Sina Weibo. And the civic voices on these platforms are not limited to Chinese, whether in China or abroad. Multinational corporations, foreign embassies, and global media institutions maintain an online presence as well. A well- known example is the U.S. Embassy’s Twitter feed (@BeijingAir) that publishes air- quality data for Beijing based on readings from a monitor installed atop the embassy. Th is information is posted to the embassy’s website; such air quality indexes are also posted by the U.S. consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou. In 2012, when bloggers spread the word that the readings from the American Embassy re- vealed much poorer air quality than the offi cial data published by Beijing’s municipal government, a heated debate occurred on Sina Weibo. What en- sued was a do- it- yourself air- quality testing campaign that eventually led to greater transparency in China’s offi cially published air- quality data.6

In the area of Internet censorship, new actors and new practices have sur- faced in recent years that may have long- term consequences for online civic expression in China. Public relations fi rms are one such new actor. When the scandal over melamine poisoning from contaminated milk products (espe- cially baby formula) broke in 2008, the Sanlu Group— one of the principal producers of melamine- tainted products— reportedly approached China’s main Internet search engine, Baidu, with an off er of 3 million renminbi (RMB) for Baidu if it would censor negative information about Sanlu on its site.7 When this episode came to light, it alerted the public to a practice already common among China’s public relations fi rms. Clients, including business fi rms and government offi cials, oft en enlist public relations fi rms to pull strings or pay bribes to induce website editors to delete embarrassing or critical postings.8

Although the emergence of novel actors and practices on China’s Inter- net has been a signifi cant development, ordinary citizens continue to play im- portant roles as well, especially as online civic engagement has expanded in the past fi ve years with microblogging taking center stage. Despite earlier clones of Twitter in China (such as Fanfou . com, which opened in May 2007 and was closed by the Chinese government two years later), it was not until Sina launched its weibo ser vice in August 2009 that microblogging began to catch on in China. Major commercial portal sites like Sohu, NetEase, and Tencent, and the offi cial People . com . cn also launched microblogging ser vices. However, the most pop u lar and infl uential of these remains Sina Weibo, which registered 9 million users in its fi rst year and by the end of December 2013 reported more than 100 million monthly active users.9

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Introduction 7

On Sina Weibo, Chinese netizens actively participate in public discussion, or ga niz ing, and protest.10 Diverse actors with radically diff erent agendas pop- ulate the weibo platform and compete for attention and loyalty by producing their own narratives. Government departments, business fi rms, media in- stitutions, and regular citizens inside and outside China express their diff er- ent views and aims, exercise diff erent levels of infl uence, and have diff erent experiences with China’s Internet- regulating authorities.11 Postings in some parts of the platform, written by people addressing especially sensitive is- sues, may be deleted even while most of the platform remains open for public communication.12 In par tic u lar, weibo celebrities (“Big Vs” who attract large numbers of followers) have become online public opinion leaders and now face tighter scrutiny and regulation.

Although all the chapters in this volume engage issues of the Internet and civil society in China, three take this area as their special focus. In chapter 1, Min Jiang examines four types of activities in China’s digital world, namely: real- time activism, online po liti cal jamming, weibo celebrities, and the rise of an uncivil society online. Jiang defi nes online po liti cal jamming as the use of digital media and pop u lar culture “to disseminate dissenting images and viewpoints, disrupt stultifying mainstream po liti cal discourses, and expose social injustices.” Jiang shows that like cultural jamming, online po liti cal jamming challenges the dominant po liti cal discourse by producing and dis- tributing counter- hegemonic messages.

Jiang also off ers a critique of the incivility of some online practices. She uses the notion of an “uncivil society online” to characterize “the plentitude of disrespect between interlocutors and feeble existence of a public sphere (in the Habermasian sense),” pointing to the lack of mechanisms to channel on- line exchanges to build eff ective institutions. She argues that heterogeneous groups inhabit online space and the concept of “civil society” becomes in- creasingly inadequate to capture its complex dynamics. Consequently, “the implicit assumption of a liberal subject demanding social justice, media free- dom, and po liti cal reforms online” is incomplete and therefore potentially inadequate. Related to her analysis of uncivil society is her critique of new mea sures of surveillance and censorship taken by the state to control the Internet in response to rising online activism, a development also addressed by several other authors in this volume.

In chapter 2, Marina Svensson covers multiple forms of civic action on Sina Weibo. She discusses the integration of weibo with off - line activism, such as charitable work. She highlights the proliferation of images of re sis tance,

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8 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

grievance, and suff ering on Sina Weibo. Svennson’s central argument about civil society and the Internet in China is similar to the argument of self- redemption in chapter  3, though Svennson engages a diff erent theoretical literature. Responding to the debate about slacktivism and clicktivism in the study of digital activism, Svensson argues that although civic action on weibo may seem to resemble forms of clicktivism— that is, po liti cal partici- pation through the clicking of a computer mouse—it ultimately diff ers from clicktivism because the social context of po liti cal participation is dif- ferent in China. She writes: “Th e fact that civil society is relatively weak in China, and that many people are wary of or skeptical about formal organi- zations, including some NGOs (Government Or ga nized Nongovernmental Organizations), makes issue- based civic engagement and individual ad hoc activities on social media quite attractive.” By “individual ad hoc activities on social media,” she refers to the numerous personalized expressions and actions in Chinese online spaces.

Svensson sees these forms of action as meaningful po liti cal activism— and not mere clicktivism—in the Chinese context. She fi nds similarities be- tween them and the kind of connective action studied by communication scholars Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, in which digital networks are used to link together personalized expressions, thereby facilitating col- lective action.13 Svensson’s analysis of the variety of action appearing on Sina Weibo shows that it is a useful platform for fl uid and personal engagement even without requiring sustained activity or membership. She further shows that virtual activism oft en extends off - line as civic associations and NGOs come to rely on social media to sustain their real- world eff orts.

In chapter 3, Zengzhi Shi and Guobin Yang theorize about the develop- ment of public communication enabled by social media. Th ey argue that the era of public communication through the Internet and social media has opened a new chapter in state- society relations in China. Specifi cally, they claim that social media have enabled multiple forms of empowerment. Of par tic u lar interest is individual empowerment, which is conceived as a form of self- redemption. Here, self- redemption means the moral responsibility of individual citizens to take action and produce social change. Th e availabil- ity of new digital media not only makes it possible for citizens to take action but also makes it morally compelling to do so, because citizens now have less of an excuse not to act: “Faced with a changing society, especially in today’s new media empowerment which has made it possible for people to liberate themselves, the question for everyone is, ‘What should we do?’ ” Understood

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Introduction 9

in the context of China’s history, in which citizens were accustomed to being passive recipients and followers of government policies, this notion of self- redemption takes on po liti cal signifi cance.

Shi and Yang draw illustrations from examples of civic uses of websites and the Sina Weibo microblogging platform. Th ese include Shi’s own expe- rience as a founder of the “Peace China” Charity Fund for Public Communi- cation, which promotes the use of digital media for civic engagement among journalists, NGOs, and citizens.

Law and the Internet

Th e complex and fraught relationships among new media, public opinion, and law in the Internet age in China refl ect new developments that have emerged against the backdrop of long- standing patterns. Th e idea that het- erodox speech is po liti cally dangerous and needs to be checked by exercises of state power, including law, is one with deep roots in China. So, too, is the idea that po liti cal authorities should use their control— including control exercised through law— over media and the producers of cultural and intel- lectual content to advance the state’s agenda, including goals of inculcating the people with regime- supporting values. Th ese tropes date not just to the early days of the Chinese Communist Party but even to the era of dynastic rule. As several of the chapters in this volume indicate, they have persisted into the Internet age.14

As with other aspects of life in contemporary China, however, the most relevant context is the one that has emerged since the death of Mao Zedong. Th e founding moment of the reform era— the Th ird Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee held in December 1978— announced a project of legal reconstruction to repair the damage to law and the legal system wrought under Mao and to move China toward rule by law and, perhaps, the rule of law. From that time forward, Chinese authorities have used media— including, in recent years, the Internet and social media—to propagate knowledge about the many laws and regulations that the state has adopted and to urge citizens to follow the law and use legal institutions in lawful and orderly ways. Law- focused publications, such as Legal System Daily (Fazhi Ribao), were estab- lished early in the reform era, and mainstream print and electronic media began to devote unpre ce dented attention to legal issues and legal cases. Campaigns to pop u lar ize legal knowledge through offi cial media became

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10 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

commonplace. Among the more striking examples from the 1990s were a fl ood of traditional format publications, media reports, and even tele vi sion game shows that focused on knowledge about the Hong Kong Basic Law (which has served as a mini- constitution since the territory’s return to Chi- nese rule in 1997) and the law of the World Trade Or ga ni za tion (which China joined in late 2001 aft er a fi ft een- year quest for membership).

At the same time, unoffi cial expressions of unorthodox views about law emerged rapidly as well, sometimes causing alarm within the regime. Wei Jingsheng and other Democracy Wall activists in 1978–79 articulated visions of law as regime- constraining and human rights- based and denounced the Deng Xiaoping leadership’s crabbed notions of legality. Th ey disseminated these views through self- published journals, leafl ets, and speeches.15 A de cade later, some of the participants in the Tiananmen Democracy Move- ment included legal principles and reforms among their calls for change.16 Th ey issued demands to implement fully the promises of democracy and free speech that they saw enshrined in the PRC’s highest law, the national constitution, and they condemned as lawless the decision to implement martial law and, later, the violent methods used to end the movement. To spread their views on legal issues (as well as news of the movement more generally) they, too, relied on established and emerging media. For a time, state and state- controlled media off ered sympathetic coverage. A dense foreign media presence— boosted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing— meant that the students’ demands and actions and the regime’s responses reached a global audience and, in turn, seeped back into China, evading censorship eff orts and jamming of foreign broadcasts that targeted Chinese audiences. When the crackdown came, supporters of the movement outside the PRC launched a “fax saves lives” campaign, using a then relatively new technology for rapid communication.

In the aft ermaths of both Democracy Wall and the Tiananmen Democ- racy Movement, the authorities also turned to the media to explain, justify, and defend the legal dimensions of their responses.17 Extensive state media coverage of the trials of Wei Jingsheng and the Tiananmen dissidents argued elaborately that the defendants’ actions were illegal under preexisting laws, that they were tried according to proper procedures, and that they were be- ing punished for crimes of endangering the public and the state (of the sort that any legal system would punish), not for their dissident po liti cal beliefs or “thought crimes.” Traditional media followed much the same script in the context of the criminal trial of the Gang of Four and members of the Lin Biao

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Introduction 11

“clique” at the beginning of the 1980s for, respectively, acts against the Party, state, and people during the Cultural Revolution, and an attempted coup against Mao.18

As newer communications technologies emerged and spread in China, a broadly similar dynamic unfolded. For example, when the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis struck in 2003, citizens loosed a storm of SMS messages that undercut the initial offi cial story that the disease was under control and that the state’s regulatory response had been eff ec- tive. Rattled authorities fi rst responded with legal measures— ostensibly an interpretation of existing laws— that threatened severe sanctions against those who spread false rumors about infectious diseases. Shortly thereaft er, a new draft law on responding to public health and other emergencies produced a contentious debate about the confl ict between a proposed provision punish- ing the spreading of potentially disruptive information and the public’s “right to know.”19

Th e advent of widespread and, increasingly, mobile access to the Inter- net and the rise of social media have continued and amplifi ed past patterns and trends in the legal dimension of the interaction among media, politics, and society. Th e Internet and social media have become far- reaching, large- scale, and complex means for Chinese citizens to engage legal issues and have prompted reactions from the regime that have ranged from participation to suppression.

Th e Internet and social media have provided potent mechanisms for crit- ics of existing laws and legal institutions to articulate and disseminate agen- das for legal reform, including systemic change. Agendas for constitutional reform, including those associated with Liu Xiaobo and Charter ’08 or Xu Zhiyong and the gongmeng/Open Constitution initiative and New Citizen Movement, achieved much of their public exposure and social reach through online media. Th e closing statement Xu draft ed for his criminal trial was considered suffi ciently volatile and intriguing to China’s netizens that Baidu quickly blocked searches for it.20 Like numerous other advocates for changes promoting liberal values, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights in China, the prominent blogger Liu Junning has relied heavily on the Inter- net and social media to reach large audiences.21

Some among China’s diverse and shift ing community of rights protec- tion lawyers (weiquan lushi) have depended on Internet platforms and social media— and their stature as cyberspace celebrities—to spread their views. Th is has been especially true for those, such as Gao Zhisheng or Chen

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12 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

Guangcheng, who moved from representing individual clients to launching jeremiads against what they see as a legal and po liti cal system in need of fun- damental change.22

Th ose with more moderate agendas for legal change have relied heavily on the same forums. For example, Yirenping— a civil society or ga ni za tion that began by focusing on discrimination against people with Hepatitis B and expanded to address many other types of discrimination in employment and other contexts— developed from an online forum for those living with the disease into a hybrid online– off - line or ga ni za tion that uses the Internet to pursue a commingled strategy of individual lawsuits, impact litigation, leg- islative reform, and social activism.23 Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economist who advocated for more robust autonomy for Xinjiang Uighurs within China, became well known primarily through the website he co- founded, Uyghur Online, and he was convicted on charges of separatism largely on the basis of his webposts on the now- blocked site.

Chinese netizens also have used Internet platforms to address and press for outcomes in par tic u lar cases of alleged illegal action— oft en with impli- cations for larger legal and po liti cal issues. In recent years, there have been numerous Internet fi restorms focusing on legal cases or on situations that bloggers and posters claimed demanded a legal response. A few examples from the last several years suggest the scope and variety. Wu Ping and Yang Wu, the own ers of the famous Chongqing “nail house,” played to the media— old and new, foreign and domestic. Th ey invoked the then newly adopted constitutional and statutory provisions on property rights and aired com- plaints about the inadequate compensation off ered by the state for their home and business, which perched precariously atop a spire of land within a vast construction site from which neighboring buildings had been cleared. Deng Yujiao’s case stirred an online audience and mobilized public pressure against her prosecution for having killed a local offi cial who sexually as- saulted her. Tang Hui faced reeducation through labor (a form of incarcera- tion without judicial pro cess) for her temerity in challenging the refusal by local offi cials to prosecute their associates who had traffi cked Tang’s young daughter into prostitution. Her case spawned an outpouring of social media criticism of the abusiveness of local offi cials and the system of reedu- cation through labor. Yang Jia’s killing of police offi cers both triggered an intense online debate about the Chinese judicial system’s shortcomings in dealing with mentally ill defendants and also elicited a disturbing level of online public sympathy for Yang from citizens fed up with police misbehavior.

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Introduction 13

Teenage web- poster Yang Hui drew widespread support from netizens af- ter he was detained in 2013 under newly adopted “anti- rumormongering” Internet regulations for posting a complaint about the suspicious failure of the local police to investigate a murder at a karaoke club. Yang’s treatment prompted outrage among bloggers and led to the suspension of the local police chief. Li Zhuang, a criminal defense lawyer, faced prosecution for daring to perform his professional role in representing a target of Chongq- ing Party chief Bo Xilai’s “anti- Mafi a” crackdown. Li’s detention prompted sustained and largely Internet- based criticism from leading public legal intellectuals such as He Weifang that, in turn, sped Bo’s ouster from power and criminal prosecution.24 And the melamine- tainted milk poisoning cases, the collapse of badly built school houses and apartments (dubbed “tofu construction”) in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and the derailing of a high- speed rail train all prompted widespread netizen outrage over perceived cover- ups, condemnation of regulatory failure, and demands for punishment of those responsible for mass harms.

Such online legal activism— ranging from a “retail” focus on celebrated individual legal cases to a more “ wholesale” critique of institutional and sys- temic legal problems— was made possible, in part, by the conjunction of two factors: the relatively great opportunities for speech that had developed in the hard- to- control and fast- changing world of the web and social media, and the legitimacy that many years of “pro- legality” offi cial rhetoric and policy had conferred on public discourse concerning legal issues. Wittingly or not, the regime may have bound itself to the mast with its long- running insistence that it was committed to ruling by law, building a “socialist rule of law state,” and subjecting exercises of state power (at least below the top levels) to greater legal regulation. Th is seems to have helped create widespread “rights con- sciousness” (or at least “rules consciousness”) among an increasingly wired public that sees itself as especially empowered to weigh in on legal issues and shortcomings in the legal system.25

As chapters by Rogier Creemers and others in this book make clear, Party and state authorities have not been passive onlookers in the face of these de- velopments. Party and state institutions have used the Internet and social media as increasingly vital tools in their long- running eff orts to disseminate knowledge about or “pop u lar ize” law (pufa). Online and social media com- plaints and criticisms have become important means for the regime to mon- itor opinions about law, legal issues, and legal institutions. Postings and tweets can expose lawless behavior at local levels that central authorities want to

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14 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

correct. When complaints about more systemic legal issues or illegal activity emerge in online forums, the authorities can respond to them while they are still relatively fragmentary, isolated, or inchoate and thus oft en well short of social unrest or or ga nized movements. Posting draft laws and regu- lations on the web has become an important means for the regime to receive public opinion, and to do so without opening the door to institutionalized demo cratic input and pop u lar accountability. Online draft laws and regu- lations oft en receive tens of thousands of comments. Such comments are so numerous and diverse and the rules governing draft ers’ responses so fl exi- ble that legislators and regulators garner much information while retaining discretion to incorporate or ignore online input. Courts now routinely post case decisions online. Th is provides an important means by which citizens learn about legal rules and rights, increases transparency, and, in turn, can bolster courts’ legitimacy. It also provides a mechanism for horizontal com- munication among courts that can foster consistency in adjudication, self- confi dence in the judiciary, and, perhaps, the authority of courts.

Faced with the contentious online debates over legal issues, offi cial and orthodox sources have entered the fray, countering regime- criticizing or regime- challenging content with their own counternarratives. Th ese threads oft en condemn dissidents’ and protesters’ behavior and advocacy as illegal and as threatening the economic, social, and po liti cal order that is portrayed as the right, and need, of all citizens. Th ey point to possible malign foreign conspiracies that seek to spread Western- style legal ideas and norms, under- mine the Party’s rule, and threaten the national interest. Th ey press a broadly pro- “law and order” message to cultivate support for harsh legal mea sures.

China’s rulers also have engaged in legal innovation, devising new regu- latory techniques to address novel challenges from cyberspace.26 For ex- ample, microbloggers with large followings— so- called Big Vs— have faced special requirements and scrutiny and in many cases succumbed to the resulting chilling eff ects on their postings. Moves to require weibo account holders to register with their real names have sought, with limited impact, to curtail anonymous postings. New rules have authorized punishment of those who post damaging rumors that are retransmitted by more than fi ve hundred users or seen by more than fi ve thousand viewers— outcomes that are beyond the control of the original author.27 Th e authorities also have sought to shift some of the daunting burden of monitoring and enforcing to Internet ser vice providers and industry associations—in eff ect semi- privatizing regulation and enlisting nonstate actors in regulation. Civil law

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Introduction 15

mechanisms— such as suits by victims (including offi cials) of false or exag- gerated allegations or exposure of personal information— have begun to emerge as a legal means to limit some types of content on the Internet.28 New laws also have imposed liability on Internet ser vice providers when users post prohibited material and required ISPs to retain information about users and to cooperate with public security organs—in eff ect conscripting ISPs as im- plementers and enforcers of the state’s legal proscriptions.29 Vague Internet- related provisions in China’s 2015 National Security Law exacerbated concerns among foreign technology companies that believed they would be required to install “trapdoors” that, among other things, could allow Chinese authori- ties to monitor users. And a draft Cybersecurity Law, disclosed in July 2015, pointed to the possibility of clearer and stricter obligations of ISPs to support and assist government investigations; to monitor actively for “illegal” con- tent, and to enforce the hitherto weakly implemented “real name” registration requirements.

Th ese novel mea sures coexist with adaptations of traditional law- employing techniques used by the authorities against disfavored speech and related action, including blocking and removal of websites and postings, sus- pension or cancellation of social media accounts, and criminal prosecution or administrative sanctions for behavior that would have been punished in the pre- Internet world as well but that now occurs partly online.30 China has insisted to the outside world that it has the legitimate authority to impose a wide range of restrictive mea sures, consistent with the Beijing- backed (and Russia- supported) international legal theory of national “Internet sover- eignty.”

Th ese relatively clear patterns and trends from the recent past coexist with signifi cant uncertainties in the relationship between law and new media in contemporary China. First, online engagement, particularly concerning individual court cases, has an ambivalent relationship to legality or “rule of law” values.31 As several contributors to this volume emphasize, public intellec- tuals and ordinary citizens can use new media to press the authorities, in- cluding courts, to achieve just and lawful outcomes and to change legally questionable and widely despised rules. But Internet and social media users can also create great pressure on courts to follow public sentiment to decide cases in ways that may diff er from the legally proper result— for example, un- just convictions or unwarranted acquittals in criminal cases. Adding to the complexity, party organs sometimes push courts to respond to pop u lar de- mands that are at odds with the law, and online legal expert commentators

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16 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

sometimes receive undisclosed payments from litigants whose positions they endorse. More subtly, outpourings of online opinion may lead to legally cor- rect or defensible outcomes that are reached for reasons having little to do with law— much as occurs when bribery, po liti cal infl uence, or local protection- ism produce results consistent with the law. Reaching the legally “right” re- sult for the “wrong” reasons has, at best, complicated implications for legality.

Second, as the online controversies over legal cases and issues examined by Anne Cheung, Ya- Wen Lei, and Daniel Xiaodan Zhou in this volume partly illustrate, it is far from clear that such controversies are ultimately or primarily about law or legal issues. Oft en and for many participants, they surely are. But in especially heated cases and for a signifi cant portion of netizens, the discourse is more broadly po liti cal. Discussions of court cases and legal institutions can and do become vehicles for addressing big- ger questions of po liti cal reform and governmental failure. Law and legal questions may provide almost accidental foci or— because of the legiti- macy offi cial rhetoric and policy have given to law— relatively “safe” spaces in which to initiate conversations and criticisms that otherwise would be too controversial.

Th ird, the latest waves of technological change— the rise of weixin and the corresponding relative decline of weibo— have raised concerns that online discussions will retreat into narrower spheres, undercutting the plat- form weibo had provided for legal public intellectuals, rights protection lawyers, and legal reform advocates to reach wide audiences. But, for such purposes, weixin may prove to be more a complement than a substitute, providing a space in which clusters of would-be law reformers and critics of legal failure can interact and formulate views with some modest hope of escaping monitoring and censoring before “going public” with their views and attracting attention on weibo or in other online forums.

Th ree chapters in this book take up aspects of the relationships among law, the Internet and social media, and politics in China. In chapter  4, Rogier Creemers analyzes how the Chinese regime’s approach to the legal regulation of speech has evolved in the Internet age. Creemers argues that when traditional media were still dominant, Chinese laws and regulations denied constitutionally promised “free speech” through methods with deep roots in Chinese Communist and broader Chinese history, specifi cally by licensing and censoring media. Creemers sketches regime eff orts at content control through privileging favored speech and controlling channels for dissemination of ideas that date to the Qing dynasty, and that continued under

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Introduction 17

Mao and into the reform era. As media underwent decentralization and commercialization in the early reform era and, later, as Internet use ex- panded, smartphones came into widespread use and new forms of online activity, including social media, boomed, legal and regulatory methods evolved. Old- style means for controlling traditional media were extended to the Internet.

Th ese were soon joined by new regulatory tools. First came required li- censing of new types of users (mostly by established institutions wielding new regulations), self- regulation by industry associations (which sought to address the regulatory challenges posed by rapid proliferation of content providers generating problematic content), and expansion of criminal liability for on- line activities (some of which addressed distinctively online behavior such as national- security- undermining hacking and others that concerned traditional off enses— such as commercial fraud, defamation, and po liti cal activism— now occurring online). Next came reforms to key regulatory institutions (including the state bureaucracy overseeing new media, the or- gan i za tional structures for self- regulation in Internet companies, and new organs to analyze Internet content for policy makers), and new rules that primarily targeted individual users. Creemers describes recent develop- ments that have sought to chill and restrict expression in cyberspace. He concludes that these developments ref lect broader problems of limits to po liti cal reform—an area that the Xi administration so far seems unwilling to address.

In chapter 5, Ya- Wen Lei and Daniel Xiaodan Zhou provide quantitative and qualitative content analyses of discussions in the offi cial media and by commentators in a major online forum of the famous “South China tiger” fraud scandal— which arose when local offi cials touted faked photographs of an endangered species in the wild as evidence of government success and a basis for seeking additional resources. Also drawing on the Asian Barome- ter Survey of Chinese citizens’ perceptions of regime legality and trust, Lei and Zhou fi nd a wide gap between offi cial and online conceptions of law. In the offi cial account, law is a technical means to seek and disclose the truth, to prosecute and punish illegal behavior (in the South China tiger case by a greedy individual and lax local offi cials), and to prevent recurrences. In con- trast, the online public’s conception of law envisions law in more po liti cal terms and as something that should be a vehicle for protecting citizens’ rights and human rights and for pursuing such “moral” ends as freedom, fairness, and justice. Th e online public that participated in the debates about the South

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18 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

China tiger incident drew comparisons to law in the United States and Tai- wan and linked the discrete scandal to much larger questions of the govern- ment’s systematic mendacity, corruption, secrecy, illegality, and denial of media freedom and court autonomy. At times, the online critique expanded to broader condemnation of the party- state’s monopoly of po liti cal power and a resulting sham “rule of law with Chinese characteristics.”

For Lei and Zhou, the online public’s evident distrust of the regime— including the central authorities as well as frequently criticized local offi cials— and the online public’s belief in the regime’s lack of legality por- tend trouble for the regime’s long- running reform era strategy of relying on “law” or “the rule of law” as a basis for legitimacy. Lei and Zhou emphasize the signifi cance of this threat to the regime’s strategy, given the extent to which China’s authoritarian rulers have turned to law as an instrument to rule the country, ameliorate po liti cal confl ict, and promote economic devel- opment, and the extent to which the regime’s emphasis on law has created the space in which online Chinese citizens have been able to develop their regime- criticizing counternarratives.

In chapter 6, Anne S. Y. Cheung examines microbloggers’— and, more generally, online public opinion’s— impact on courts’ handling of controver- sial legal cases in China. Focusing on cases that have generated especially large- scale discussion on the Internet, Cheung argues that online commenters have moved beyond traditional Party- led “public opinion supervision,” which enlists the public to help the Party discover offi cial misconduct and discern public opinion. Th ey have moved instead to more autonomous and judicial outcome- aff ecting “public opinion monitoring” that is oft en more critical of party- state misbehavior, not only in individual cases but also in the broader patterns the cases exemplify.

Th e online public opinion Cheung examines oft en targets the judiciary. Th e courts accordingly have become arenas for confl ict among social forces and confl icting opinions about what justice requires in individual cases— all expressed on the Internet. Th is has led to tensions among the courts’ claims to legitimacy (which depend partly on their success in carving out a space for courts to follow the law and adjudicate cases somewhat in de pen dently, and partly on courts’ being seen as “doing justice”), the Party’s goals in super- vising the courts, and the online public’s views about appropriate outcomes in high- profi le cases. Much online commentary uses the language of law and rights to attack apparent injustice, especially toward victims of mis- behavior by offi cials. Yet the outcomes of cases— including the fi ve case

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Introduction 19

studies Cheung examines in depth— oft en appear to be mixed or compro- mise verdicts. Th is perhaps refl ects the online public’s signifi cant but still limited eff ect on decision making by courts that also remain under Party supervision. In the cases she examines, Cheung fi nds that online public opinion generally favors justice (as understood by the online public) and criticizes lawlessness (especially offi cial lawlessness). Yet to the extent that court decisions in cases that become the focus of web discussions represent a resolution among the vectors of online public pressure, traditional Party infl uence, and the courts’ quest for autonomy, the implications for achieving legally correct or substantively just outcomes, for supporting rule of law values, and even for judicial power are ambiguous.

The Internet and Foreign Relations

Although much of the attention paid to the growing importance of new me- dia in China has been directed at domestic aff airs, scholars have also begun to take note of its eff ects on China’s international relations. Th e end of the insular policies embraced during most of the Maoist era opened China to a fl ow of information about international aff airs and China’s role in the world that had previously been limited and controlled by offi cial news outlets— print, radio, and tele vi sion. As China became more internationally engaged during the 1980s, increased coverage of global aff airs appeared in the old of- fi cial media but also in less strictly controlled new outlets that fl ourished as the news market followed the general trend toward commercialization and competition.32 Th is trend toward more, and more diverse, sources of infor- mation about China’s international relations was briefl y interrupted in the wake of the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy Movement. But it resumed during the 1990s and accelerated with the advent of the Inter- net. To an even greater extent than during the 1980s, the Internet gave rise to exchanges of information and opinion within China about the country’s foreign policy and world aff airs. New ser vices such as microblogging and nearly ubiquitous access with the spread of mobile phones greatly increased the ability for Chinese netizens to spread information about and share their views on international aff airs in the opening years of the twenty- fi rst century.

Th ese changes prompted analysts to wonder whether increasingly salient public opinion expressed through new media was becoming a signifi cant

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20 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

infl uence on foreign policy decision makers in Beijing— either by providing leaders in the authoritarian regime with one of the few ways they could dis- cern the views of the Chinese people, or by generating unpre ce dented pop u- lar pressure on China’s rulers.33 Much of the opinion expressed on China’s Internet forums and bulletin boards came from those who urged leaders to stand up more vigorously for the country’s interests.34 Among the hot- button issues triggering such demands and sometimes leading to partly Internet- mobilized public protests were China’s policies toward Taiwan, the United States, and Japan.

Although the signifi cance of new media and public opinion for China’s international relations remains diffi cult to assess, some eff ects are clear. First, the proliferation of media outlets within China, advancing technol- ogy, and the country’s integration with the international community over the past thirty- fi ve years ended the era in which most information about China’s international relations was limited to the Party elite privy to confi - dential documents. On such issues, the Chinese people are better informed than at any time since the founding of the PRC in 1949. To be sure, the CCP still tries to manage the circulation of information. But because the re- gime’s po liti cal fortunes rest on a modernization program that requires embracing modern information technologies and cross- border exchanges, eff ective control over the fl ow of information has become increasingly problematic.

Second, and related, the Chinese people are now not only better informed about world events but are also able to follow debates about them online and in traditional media, such as national and provincial tele vi sion. Public intel- lectuals, including university- based academics, think tank scholars, serving and retired government offi cials and military offi cers (including some still serving and others who are retired), frequently appear on broadcasts to dis- cuss, debate, and sometimes sharply disagree about important foreign pol- icy matters (such as China’s relationship with the United States, Japan, or North Korea), even if their diff erences typically fall within a fairly narrow range.35 Th ese programs trigger further exchanges online and in social me- dia, oft en integrated with the broadcasts themselves. In short, although the regime can still set boundaries on acceptable policy debates, the prolifera- tion of even constrained discussions about vital issues of international secu- rity and foreign policy contrasts starkly with the situation that prevailed in previous de cades when public discussions of such topics usually remained off - limits to all but the most se nior Party and military offi cials.

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Introduction 21

Th ird, media not only provide the Chinese public with more information about world events; they also do so more promptly. Th is contrasts with ear- lier periods when the regime could determine when and how it shared in- formation with the Chinese people about foreign policy matters. Control over the dissemination of information had allowed the Party to frame events in ways that fi t with the policy response it preferred. With the rise and spread of new media, and especially social media, the initiative is no longer reliably controlled by the regime. Instead, international incidents oft en trigger quick reactions among China’s netizens that the regime must then decide how to manage.

Fourth, the regime has increased the sophistication of its attempts to limit the extent to which new media lead to unwanted public pressure on foreign policy making and the threat a new media- empowered citizenry might pose to the leading role that the regime reserves to itself on such consequential matters. In addition to relying on the “Great Firewall” of ever more advanced blocking technologies to fi lter out heterodox views, the CCP seeks to shape the terms of public debate and opinion about foreign policy through a pro- active approach that mobilizes offi cials and sponsors supporters to post messages online that back approved policy positions and sometimes warn ardent critics about the dangerous consequences they may be courting.36

Increasingly, management of online activities that target foreign policy includes decisions about whether to permit discussion and debate on the In- ternet and social media to spill over into street protests. Jessica Weiss’s re- search has highlighted the diffi cult decisions the regime faces when it must choose whether to indulge or to repress the nationalist impulse that can infl ame online debate and spark demonstrations.37 Either choice is a risky one. If it represses calls for public protest, the CCP risks the charge that it is insuffi ciently concerned about aff ronts to China’s interests. But if it permits protests to unfold, the CCP risks unleashing a sequence of events that can damage bilateral relations with the country (oft en Japan or the United States) targeted by wrathful Chinese nationalists. Permitting demonstrations also entails a danger that demonstrators, once in the streets, will redirect their fury against China’s rulers for shortcomings other than their handling of an international incident that initially motivated their anger. Weiss argues that China’s leaders can try to exploit these risky choices to send credible, because costly, signals to other states about the likelihood that China will compro- mise in its international disputes. But she also fi nds the new media weapon in China’s foreign policy arsenal to be a double- edged sword: it is eff ective

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22 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

because of the risks new media creates for the regime by more closely link- ing foreign policy and domestic po liti cal considerations.

Fift h, when Beijing does permit, or even engineers, a growing chorus of nationalist demands for a tough response to a perceived foreign policy chal- lenge, and especially when it allows street demonstrations, new media can complicate international disputes and make them more diffi cult to resolve through compromise. Because strident public opinion can shift the focus from the specifi c matter at hand to more general doubts about Beijing’s willingness to defend China’s honor and interests, new media can serve as an amplifi er of confl ict in China’s foreign relations.

Sixth, aside from its role in shaping the circulation of information and opinion, new media have themselves at times become a foreign policy issue for China’s leaders. To some extent, today’s disagreements have merely shift ed the focus from the treatment of traditional print and broadcast media to newer electronic forms. Disputes with foreign governments and news cor- porations about the access to be granted to their journalists working in China (numbers of credentials, terms of visas, domestic travel restrictions) predate the age of the Internet. Confl icts over the access Chinese audiences would have to foreign media content are also not new. But disputes increasingly have focused on cyberspace—on decisions of the Chinese government to block the websites of par tic u lar foreign news outlets or to block searches that would lead to such content. Th ese moves oft en have been in retaliation for foreign media’s coverage of topics that the CCP sees as too sensitive for public con- sumption or as refl ecting an unacceptably hostile stance toward the Chinese regime. Th e targeted content has been varied but it has especially included coverage of dissident groups or individuals, controversial po liti cal events in recent Chinese history, the private lives and fortunes of high- ranking offi - cials, and accounts of controversial issues in external relations or relations with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau that diverge too far from offi cial views.38

New media also have become the focus of international economic disputes for China. New media present lucrative opportunities for providing highly pop u lar ser vices to Chinese consumers that Beijing is leery of ceding to foreign business interests. Th e CCP’s steps to curb the operations of Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter serve not only to head off potential new chal- lenges to the Party’s po liti cal orthodoxy and control but also as an industrial policy that seeks to give a competitive advantage to the Chinese alternatives to these foreign new media ser vices: Baidu, Renren, Youku, weibo, and weixin. New media thus have become another point of contention between China and

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Introduction 23

other states whose businesses complain that they are being denied equitable treatment and a fair regulatory environment.39

Seventh, China’s leadership is determined to ensure that new media do not aggravate what it sees as a growing array of threats to China’s cybersecu- rity. Developments in the early years of the Xi Jinping administration have made clear the regime’s concerns about this issue. Th e landmark sixty- point decision issued at the Th ird Plenum of the Eigh teenth Central Committee in 2013 highlighted the creation of a National Security Commission tasked with addressing links between foreign and domestic security threats. In February 2014, the CCP followed this up with the announcement that it was creating an Internet Security and Informatization Leading Small Group to deal with cybersecurity.40 A new National Security Law adopted in July 2015 declared cyberspace to be an important national security interest, alongside traditional territorial security.

Th e concerns that motivated such moves include issues related to foreign aff airs and new media: fears of destabilizing contagion eff ects from the social- media- facilitated “color revolutions” that challenged or toppled authoritarian regimes elsewhere and whose experiences are spread by new media within China. Th e CCP’s concerns are also motivated by the regime’s reaction to the unnerving pattern of unrest in the minority regions along China’s interna- tional frontiers, especially a well- publicized rash of violent attacks by Chinese Uighurs since 2009. Th e CCP claims that this growing unrest and the recent violence have both been exacerbated by new media that allegedly facilitate communications among extremist conspirators within China and between them and backers abroad. In short, the regime has made cybersecurity, with a focus on controlling new media, a priority in its eff orts to nip in the bud domestic and transnational challenges to stability.41

As scholars have begun to study the connections among new media, public opinion, and China’s foreign policy, they confront conceptual and empirical challenges. Four chapters in this volume address these issues. In chapter  7, Dalei Jie puts the problem in broader perspective and notes continuing dis- agreements about such questions even among scholars in the more mature fi eld of American foreign policy studies. Although he acknowledges the gen- eral if not very enlightening consensus that public opinion matters for for- eign policy, questions about when, how, and how much it matters have not been resolved. In the case of China’s foreign policy, a lack of transparency has long hampered research, compounding ubiquitous problems of establishing causes and eff ects. Yet, as Jie notes, the Chinese public’s openly expressed

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24 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

and increasingly visible nationalist views— often voiced or mobilized online— since the last de cades of the twentieth century have been drawing the attention of analysts who seek to understand how, or perhaps whether, such developments are having a signifi cant eff ect on China’s foreign policy. And while Jie probes the role of the media as a nexus between manifestations of nationalist public opinion and the regime’s decision makers, he questions the presumed greater signifi cance of newer media as opposed to traditional outlets. In the end, Jie emphasizes the need to determine more precisely the circumstances under which media, old or new, refl ect or engender genuine expressions of public opinion on international aff airs and the circumstances under which the media is instead simply a vehicle for the regime to manage and manipulate publicly expressed opinions to support its own foreign policy agenda.

Th e remaining chapters focus on specifi c issues in foreign relations where there has been signifi cant and possibly infl uential expression of public opinion on the Internet and in social media. In chapter 8, Peter Gries, Derek Steiger, and Wang Tao analyze the eff ects of Chinese nationalism expressed through new media in shaping Beijing’s policies toward the dispute with Japan over a string of islands in the East China Sea (known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku Islands). Gries and his coauthors focus on the upsurge in public anger and protest that followed the announcement that Japan’s government would purchase the privately owned islands— a step widely viewed in China as nationalization intended to assert Japa nese sovereignty, but that Japan characterized as a step to prevent a more danger- ously provocative purchase by assertive Japa nese nationalists.

Th eir chapter employs quantitative methods and qualitative description to assess the nationalist demands aired on social media in China and echoed in sometimes violent anti- Japanese demonstrations beginning in September 2012. Th e authors argue that these expressions of public opinion strongly aff ected Beijing’s toughening policy on the dispute with Japan. Th ey assert that because the CCP’s legitimacy increasingly depends on its nationalist cre- dentials, the regime is reluctant to repress patriotic protests by using the portfolio of coercive tools it oft en employs to censor expressions of public opinion or to prevent the Chinese people from acting on other grievances. Gries and his coauthors add that the regime’s pandering to anti- Japanese sen- timent expressed among netizens and the wider public led Beijing to adopt a more dangerously confrontational foreign policy with unpredictable conse- quences.

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Introduction 25

In chapter 9, James Reilly explores a foreign policy issue that has quickly emerged as a major Chinese concern— the well- being and interest of Chinese nationals abroad and, to some extent, members of overseas Chinese ethnic communities. Th e latter group dates to the Chinese diaspora that grew in size and signifi cance starting in the nineteenth century, a PRC policy adjustment de cades ago greatly reduced China’s commitment to protect them or claim a right to intervene on their behalf in their countries of citizenship. Th e for- mer group is a much newer phenomenon, mainly a consequence of Beijing’s decision to encourage Chinese businesses to “go out” (zou chuqu) early in the twenty- fi rst century. As China’s rapidly growing economy became a source, and not just a recipient, of foreign investment, Chinese businesspeople and employees joined the already large contingents of students and scholars who took advantage of opportunities aff orded by the “opening to the outside” initiated under Deng Xiaoping in 1979.

As the number of Chinese citizens outside the PRC has swelled, their vul- nerability to natural disasters, criminal activity, and po liti cal mistreatment has presented Beijing with a new foreign policy challenge. How should China respond when Chinese abroad are under threat? Reilly examines the ways new media have shaped the answers to this question. Reilly describes how new media in China bring such problems to the attention of the Chinese people and have enabled attentive Chinese netizens to pressure their government to better protect their countrymen and countrywomen overseas. Reilly also re- counts how, in the face of netizens’ criticism that offi cial responses have been insuffi cient, the regime has begun to use new media proactively to communi- cate its eff orts to ensure the safety and interests of Chinese abroad. Although fi nding these changes signifi cant, Reilly also points to clear variation in the leadership’s responsiveness to these pressures, depending on the categories of Chinese who are at risk abroad. He argues that Beijing’s approach suggests yet another type of “digital divide,” with the sectors of Chinese society that are privileged at home also being more likely to benefi t from the regime’s attentiveness to their online demands for protection overseas.

Finally, in chapter 10, Chuanjie Zhang takes up some of the analytical challenges that Jie’s chapter raises. Aft er looking to the Western literature about public opinion and foreign policy— especially generalizations about ideological consistency of domestic and foreign policy views, Zhang under- takes a close examination of opinions about policy toward North Korea (the Demo cratic People’s Republic of Korea) expressed on social media in China. He combines qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze a series of

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26 Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang

major events involving North Korea that have triggered reactions from Chi- na’s netizens. Zhang examines patterns of posted messages about these events aft er 2009, a period during which tension over Korean peninsula is- sues was frequent and China’s microblogs (weibo) had become the predomi- nant social media outlet through which China’s netizens expressed their views. Although Zhang off ers some tentative conclusions, he acknowledges the problems of data limitation, the diffi culty of gauging the relative impor- tance of diff erent new media, and uncertainty about the representativeness of selected samples of opinions at a time when new media continue to evolve and diversify even as they coexist with their traditional print and broadcast counterparts. Zhang, then, shares Jie’s concerns about questions of method- ology and research design that need to be answered before accepting what may seem to be plausible claims about presumed connections among public opinion, media, and China’s foreign policy.

Dynamism and Complexity: Ongoing Change, New Challenges, and Regime Responses

Overall, the regime’s reaction to the challenges it faces in the changing land- scape of the Internet and social media in China has been multifaceted and varying. As the chapters in this book illustrate, broad cycles of fang (relative relaxation) and shou (reassertions of control) do not adequately capture the pattern.42 Dynamism in technology has yielded a more complex, constantly changing picture. During the very brief period since many of the events analyzed in this book occurred, for example, social media in China have moved from dominance by the Twitter- like weibo toward greater use of weixin. Th is shake-up in the social media landscape could have signifi cant but as yet unclear implications for the character and consequences of what occurs in China’s online world.

Th is uncertainty is compounded by the po liti cal climate in which new media operate. During its fi rst years in offi ce the fi ft h- generation leadership headed by Xi Jinping has signaled a tougher line on many types of cyber- activities. At the beginning of 2015, the regime took steps to make the Great Firewall of China less porous. To the growing consternation of business- people, researchers, artists, resident foreigners, and ordinary Chinese In- ternet users, China has more fully blocked Gmail and other Google ser vices and repeatedly attempted to disable the virtual private networks (VPNs)

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Introduction 27

that many in China used to evade the onerous restrictions on Internet ac- cess that laws and policies offi cially impose.43

Th e 2015 National Security Law mandates mea sures to strengthen se- curity and control over the Internet and information systems. Th e nearly simultaneous draft Cybersecurity Law refl ects the same agenda and appears to be an eff ort to consolidate, and strengthen, the currently fragmented legal rules and policy authority to control and limit the Internet.44 Chinese offi cials have called on domestic website managers to “spread positive en- ergy” (meaning regime- favored messages) and warned foreign fi rms oper- ating in Chinese cyberspace that they must abide by China’s laws. In the increasingly fraught international debates about Internet governance, China under Xi has strengthened its support for “Internet sovereignty,” “better governance,” and an Internet “governed by all”— code words for international norms that would recognize each state’s right to impose tight controls on the Internet at home and that reject the dominance of global Internet rule making by U.S. and Western entities that have favored liberal principles.45

Th e depth, durability, and implications of this apparent po liti cal shift are not yet clear, in part because some signs point in a diff erent direction. Th e opening years of the Xi era have brought reaffi rmation of China’s pursuit of an “innovation economy,” pledges of greater transparency in governance, commitments to root out corruption, and promises to subject po liti cal power to tighter legal controls— goals that are more diffi cult to achieve if tight con- straints are imposed on the Internet and social media.

Faced with ongoing changes in technology and citizens’ use of the Inter- net and social media, China’s rulers will continue to encounter challenges in determining how they will tolerate, use, and control new media and the di- verse users of new media. And they will have to do so from what is likely to be an enduringly ambivalent perspective toward three major policy concerns that have gone increasingly online and that are the foci of this book: civil so- ciety, the roles of law, and the nationalist turn in Chinese foreign policy.46

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