China Policy Institute Policy Paper 2012 : No. 1
The Impact of Social Networking Sites on statecitizen relationships in China
Xiaoling Zhang & Gareth Shaw
A year on from the Jasmine Revolution, a challenge to the regime
similar to the Arab Spring is not in the offing in China. However, the
Chinese government remains deeply concerned that microblogging and
social networking sites may destabilize the country. How do they
change the state-citizen relationship? Can the Chinese state continue to
neutralize their impact?
In assessing the role of social networking sites (SNSs) in China, be it
Facebook, Twitter or Sina Weibo (China‟s foremost domestic microblogging
platform), we need to first of all place it in the context of the Chinese
Communist Party‟s (CCP) struggle for hegemonic rule and its interest in
staying in power with legitimacy. We also need to delve below China‟s label of
authoritarianism in order to discover “evidence of an agile, responsive, and
creative party effort” in adapting to the new socio-economic situation by
introducing changes into the existing political system in order to retain power
with legitimacy. Secondly, instead of dwelling on the liberal discourse of
“liberation technology” (ICTs that empower grassroots movement) we need to
consider SNSs as neutral platforms where Chinese officials, Internet
operators, media organisations and citizens have all become players in this
online contest. Indeed while posing challenges to the state control, new media
platforms are also creating technological conditions for the party-state to
become responsive and to better shape public opinion. And yet as the
government uses the technology to mobilize social support for its own cause,
opportunities are also created for other social forces to further their own
causes. It is a new and unexplored political realm where both the state and
society try to expand their own political space. Finally the CCP‟s increasingly
supreme efforts at Internet censorship show that the potential for social
revolution via social media is something that greatly troubles the
administration. Although social media has not been able to bring about
democracy to China, it has certainly promoted incremental political
liberalization, leading to a brand of “liberalized authoritarianism.” With the
expansion of Internet use and development, the political effects of the Internet
and the internet-enabled social media, both in China and on China‟s
international relations, will continue to unfold.
Social Networking in Context
Although the Chinese government blocks access to international platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube the explosion in the numbers of
Twitter-like microblogging -- a maximum of 140 Chinese characters that can
spread rapidly through chains of followers, has recaptured the imagination of
observers of China. According to the latest Statistical Report on Internet
Development in China, by the end of December 2011, almost 50% of the 513
million Internet users in China have participated in micro-blogging. Indeed like
"tweets", microblogs have boomed as platforms for sharing news, views,
gossip and public outrage.
The way and the speed that people can organize into groups, and their
potential to tear the seams of censorship and controls have become new
areas of concern to the Chinese authorities. Even though most blogs and
SNSs in Chinese cyberspace serve entertainment or personal expression
goals, they also offer forums for lambasting officials and reporting unrest or
official abuses. While commercial websites are not allowed to put on news,
microbloggers can send out information as “personal views” and
“experiences” (citizen journalism). Therefore compared to more traditional
media microblogging is inherently “societalizing” because it directly transfers
from the state or state media to individuals and groups in society the power to
initiate, send and receive messages.
In times of disaster, such as the high-speed railway disaster of 23 July 2011,
microbloggers spread news to journalists who then went to the scene even
before the central Propaganda Department sent out a ban. The crash
happened at 8:34pm, and by 2:00am of the following day, there were 500,000
microblog entries1. 13 minutes after the accident there were already microblogging for help from the train.2 Indeed state-controlled media coverage of
the accident at first followed a familiar script, faulting nature and foreign
technology, and throwing a spotlight on heroic rescue efforts. Within days,
however, that script began to collapse as scepticism and outrage spread
quickly in microblog traffic, fanning public ire and emboldening journalists.
Microbloggers also pushed the traditional media to become more liberal and
challenging: newspapers and magazines were soon spurning censors'
directives to stick to positive news and began excoriating the railway ministry.
It is this use of SNSs as a digital venue for organizing social mobilizations that
so greatly troubles the Chinese authorities. The potential for social unrest is
the greatest concern of the CCP, caused by internal reporting or blogging on
domestic issues and the way in which Web 2.0 technologies can amass large
amounts of people together very quickly.
1
2
See http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2011-07-24/02335826736.shtml.
See http://tech.qq.com/a/20110724/000108.htm).
How authoritarian regimes have endured and even prospered well after the
end of the Cold War is one of the most important questions in world politics
today. However, two things are certain: first, the Chinese Party-state has so
far been successful in resisting the transformation from authoritarianism to
democracy of any Western type. In other words, contrary to what many
observers have hoped, China has not followed, and is not following, the path
of political transition that other former communist states have taken.
Obviously Chinese leaders recognize the importance of the ICT industry and
made a conscious and enlightened judgment that harnessing the benefits of
the information revolution was absolutely crucial to the development and rise
of China: China must integrate into the global economy in order to strengthen
itself for competition, and integration requires not only economic and
administrative reform but also absorption of advanced technologies, including
the potentially subversive Internet.
Secondly, As Elizabeth Perry reminds us, post-Mao China has lasted longer
than the Mao era itself. “Whether or not current political conditions last for
many more years.” … This requires “a sober assessment of the techniques
and rules employed by the CCP, with particular attention to the regime‟s
capacity to curb and channel potentially threatening social forces.” Successful
authoritarian regimes such as China must be willing to respond to public
pressure through policy adaptation while also retaining the capacity to shape
public opinion.
New channel of interaction between state and society
On the one hand, we have witnessed social groups use the Internet to
influence state politics and policy practices, such as in the recent decision to
“postpone” the requirement that certain Green Dam software would have to
be installed on all new computers. On the other, Internet-enabled social media
offer the government what it cannot get from the traditional media outlets.
The government used to rule a very simple society, but now it is facing an
increasingly complex one.
To govern effectively, the government has to reach out to different social
forces. Weibo has served as a much needed channel for the party-state to
reach out to the most mobilized, informed and engaged segment of the
population as users tend to be wealthy, educated, young males who are more
heavily concentrated in major coastal cities, and to reshape the domestic
information environment. It provides technical conditions for the CCP to
develop a responsive authoritarianism based on accommodating popular
pressures within its policy-making processes in ways that shore up regime
stability.
The result is a kind of contained contention, in which popular protests
continue to erupt and influence specific policy decisions, but do not
fundamentally undermine the party-state‟s authority. In this way, China‟s
leaders seem to have discovered a solution to the dilemma laid out by
Huntington over four decades ago: how to accommodate rising popular
demands for political participation and representation within a nondemocratic
political system. Weibo creates a condition for the CCP to feel the mood of the
public and allow it to have its influence in its policy making when it helps the
state to rule with legitimacy.
Steps to counter the ambivalent nature of the Internet
The Chinese government is fully aware of the potential of micro-blogging.
Then how does the CCP deal with possible threat of the Internet? The
Chinese government has developed a combination of Internet industrial
development, legitimate regulations of digital communications, and political
censorship of the web. Such management allows the prosperity of the Internet
industry but at the same time also allows the Chinese government to deal with
the multifaceted challenge brought by the Internet.
Strict censorship
As a state-builder, the CCP knows the importance of information. Put simply,
the People‟s Republic was built through information control.
For decades, the Chinese government has ruthlessly suppressed any
organized dissent inside China through information control and other coercive
measures. In maintaining its domination, the CCP has often resorted to
coercive measures to stop popular demonstrations and to suppress political
organizations threatening its authority.
During the “Jasmine Revolution” that originated from some countries in North
Africa and the Middle East, the Chinese government rounded up and detained
known dissidents, including Ai Weiwei. The few public demonstrations that
took place were met with a fierce crackdown by law enforcement officers.
Foreign reporters in China were also instructed not to interview or take
pictures at the designated protest sites. Information flows on mass media
platforms such as the Internet and mobile phones were tightened. The term
„jasmine‟ on search engines and social network sites were blocked.
Similarly, microbloggers complained that their messages about the July 23 rd
train crash were being "harmonised". Nobody expects China's censorship to
crumble. Indeed, by late July China's propaganda machinery had reasserted
itself, forcing newspapers to cancel critical stories and magazines to pull
issues off the newsstands. After the riot in London last August, the Chinese
government also stepped up controls.
The decentralisation of censorship
The government also controls the traffic on the Internet by passing some of
the responsibility for information published on SNSs directly back to the
website hosts through punitive measures for non-compliance with censorship
regulations.
For instance, some 10 top executives, including Sina Corp's Charles Chao,
Baidu's Robin Li and Alibaba's Jack Ma, participated in the three-day
discussion that ended in November 2011 in Beijing hosted by the State
Internet Information Office, one of the country's Internet regulators. They are
reported to have "reached a common agreement" that they would
"conscientiously safeguard the broadcasting of positive messages online" and
"resolutely curb the spread of rumours online, online pornography, Internet
fraud and the illegal spread of harmful information on the Internet."
Officially, Sina's Weibo and other Chinese microblog sites are still in "trial"
mode. Content providers are required to keep records of everything that is
published, and are required to pass on such information to relevant
government agencies upon request.
“Guidance of online opinion”
Coercion alone cannot explain the Party‟s hold on power. After thirty years of
reform the Chinese society has developed a momentum of its own and it is
imperative that the Party-state relies on measures other than coercive to stay
ahead of challenges to its hold on power.
For the CCP, it is not merely an issue of censoring information published in
cyberspace; it is a question of channelling online opinion and neutralising
threat. Therefore in addition to responsive actions, the government has also
been pro-active in trying to find ways to keep ahead of the rapid-fire
messages that often spread news and opinion the government would like to
contain. For example, the Public Security Bureau has already set up more
than 4,000 official micro-blogs on the Sina Weibo service, and around 5,000
police officers have their own microblogs. Chinese police are encouraged to
use microblogs to give the public "correct" facts and release authorized
information to dispel rumours, in a new effort to counter critics of the
government.3
Staying ahead of the game when it comes to embracing social media is what
the CCP sees as the key to maintaining its dominance in a changing world.
Xiaoling Zhang is a Senior Fellow of the China Policy Institute and an
Associate Professor at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies,
University of Nottingham.
Gareth Shaw is a Master of Arts student in Contemporary Chinese Studies at
the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham.
3
(www.mps.gov.cn)
Views and assessments articulated in the CPI Policy Papers are that of the
author/s. They do not necessarily represent the views of the CPI at the
University of Nottingham.