China's Contested Internet
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GUOBIN YANG GUOBIN YANG An exploration of the Chinese Internet based on first-hand research and original data China’s Is there a pre-Weibo and post-Weibo era in Chinese Internet history? Are hackerspaces in China the same as in the West? How can the censorship of an Internet novel end up “producing” it? How is Lu Xun’s passive and ignorant spectator turned into an activist on the Internet? What are the Contested multiple ways of being political online? Such intriguing questions are the subject of this captivating new book. Its ten chapters combine first-hand research with multi-disciplinary perspectives to offer original insights on Internet the fast-changing landscape of the Chinese Internet. Other topics studied CONTESTED INTERNET CHINA’S include online political consultation, ethnic identity and racial contestation in cyberspace, and the Southern Weekly protest in 2013. In addition, the editor’s introduction highlights the importance of understanding the depth of people’s experiences and institutional practices with a historical sensibility. About the editor Guobin Yang is Associate Professor of Communication and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Department of Sociology. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. Governance in Asia series Edited by www.niaspress.dk Guobin Yang Yang-pbk-cover.indd 1 31/08/2015 09:20 CHINA’S CONTESTED INTERNET Yang-book.indd 1 31/08/2015 09:12 Governance in Asia Series Editor: Tak-Wing Ngo, Professor of Political Science, University of Macau ([email protected]) Most Asian countries have experienced radical social transformation in the past decades. Some have undergone democratization yet are still plagued by problems of political instability, official malfeasance and weak administration. Others have embraced market liberalization but are threatened by rampant rent seeking and business capture. Without exception, they all face the challenge of effective gov- ernance. This book series explores how Asian societies and markets are governed in the rapidly changing world and explores the problem of governance from an Asian perspective. It also encourages studies sensitive to the autochthony and hybridity of Asian history and development, which locate the issue of governance within specific meanings of rule and order, structures of political authority and mobilization of institutional resources distinctive to the Asian context. The series aims to publish timely and well-researched books that will have the cumulative effect of developing theories of governance pertinent to Asian realities. Also published in this series Politicized Society: The Long Shadow of Taiwan’s One-Party Legacy, by Mikael Mattlin Negotiating Autonomy in Greater China: Hong Kong and Its Sovereign Before and After 1997, edited by Ray Yep Governing Civil Service Pay in China, by Alfred M. Wu NIAS Press is the autonomous publishing arm of NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, a research institute located at the University of Copenhagen. NIAS is partially funded by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden via the Nordic Council of Ministers, and works to encourage and support Asian studies in the Nordic countries. In so doing, NIAS has been publishing books since 1969, with more than two hundred titles produced in the past few years. UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN Nordic Council of Ministers Yang-book.indd 2 31/08/2015 09:12 CHINA’S CONTESTED INTERNET Edited by Guobin Yang Yang-book.indd 3 31/08/2015 09:12 Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Governance in Asia series, no. 4 First published in 2015 by NIAS Press NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark Tel: +45 3532 9501 • Fax: +45 3532 9549 E-mail: [email protected] • Online: www.niaspress.dk © NIAS Press 2015 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, copyright in the individual chapters belongs to their authors. No material may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-87-7694-175-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-87-7694-176-5 (pbk) Cover image: Based in part on a photo by Greig Davidson. All efforts to contact the photographer have failed but we would be happy to hear from him on this matter. Typesetting by Lene Jakobsen Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxfordshire Yang-book.indd 4 31/08/2015 09:12 Contents Acknowledgements vii Contributors ix Introduction: Deep Approaches to China’s Contested Internet (Guobin Yang) 1 Part I 1. The orkshopW of the World: Censorship and the Internet Novel ‘Such Is This World’ Thomas( Chen) 19 2. Hackerspaces and the Internet of Things in China: How Makers Reinvent Industrial Production, Innovation, and the Self (Silvia Lindtner) 44 3. Government Consultation and Political Participation on the Chinese Internet (Steven J. Balla) 75 4. Web-based Backpacking Communities and Online Activism in China: Movement without Marching (Ning Zhang) 108 5. Ethnic Identity and Racial Contestation in Cyberspace: Deconstructing the Chineseness of Lou Jing (Robeson Taj Frazier and Lin Zhang) 137 Part II 6. The ‘Losers’ of China’s Internet: Memes as ‘Structures of Feeling’ for Disillusioned Young Netizens (Marcella Szablewicz) 168 7. Official Microblogging and Social Management by Local Govern- ments in China (Jesper Schlæger and Min Jiang) 192 8. Voice, Power and Connectivity in China’s Microblogosphere: Digital Divides on SinaWeibo (Marina Svensson) 227 9. Online Weiguan in Web 2.0 China: Historical Origins, Characteristics, Platforms and Consequences (Jian Xu) 257 v Yang-book.indd 5 31/08/2015 09:12 China’s Contested Internet 10. Collective Action in Digital China: A Case Study of the 2013 Southern Weekly Incident (Sally Xiaojin Chen) 283 Index 305 List of Figures 2.1: Apple iPhone: designed by Apple in California assembled in China 52 2.2: Table with tools during first maker workshop at the Shanghai- based hackerspace XinCheJian 58 2.3: Seeeduino v 3.0 Atmega 62 2.4: ‘Innovate with China’ product label, Seeed Studio 63 List of Tables 3.1: Dependent variable descriptions and summary statistics 82 3.2: Explanatory variable descriptions and summary statistics 85 3.3: Determinants of the tone and substance of health system reform comments 88 8.1: Year in which different groups and individuals started microblog- ging 236 vi Yang-book.indd 6 31/08/2015 09:12 Acknowledgements This volume has its origins in a special issue on ‘Cyber-Politics in China’ in China Information. I am deeply indebted to Professor Tak-Wing Ngo for inviting me to guest-edit the special issue and for helping me to turn it into a book for the ‘Governance in Asia’ series, which he edits. I also thank Gerald Jackson, editor-in-chief of NIAS Press, for his great passion, expertise, and professionalism. I truly enjoyed working with Gerald. For their support at various stages of editing this volume, I am grate- ful to Wenhong Chen, Michael Keane, Randy Kluver, Fengshu Liu, Jun Liu, Peter Marolt, Bingchun Meng, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Simon Shen, Jonathan Sullivan, Wanning Sun, Jingrong Tong, Cara Wallis, Elaine Yuan, and Xiaoling Zhang. My thanks, too, to Bo Mai for compiling the index. Guobin Yang, editor vii Yang-book.indd 7 31/08/2015 09:12 Yang-book.indd 8 31/08/2015 09:12 Contributors Steven J. Balla is Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs at The George Washington University, where he is a faculty member at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. His research focuses on the implications of information disclosure and public-participation-governance reforms for stability and change in the Chinese political system. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Contemporary China, and Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. He has served as a Fulbright Scholar in the Peking University School of Government, where he has also been a vis- iting scholar at the Leo Koguan Institute of Business and Government. Sally Xiaojin Chen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London, UK. Her PhD re- search explores the effects of the Internet on collective democratic action in China. Focusing on emotions and embodiment experience in action, she examines the change of dynamics and the mechanism of collective action in digital China. Chen worked as a journalist for Southern Media Group before commencing her PhD project in the UK. Her research interests include topics related to media culture in China and the UK. Thomas Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film. Recent publications include ‘An Italian bicycle in the People’s Republic: Minor transnation- alism’ and the Chinese translation of Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thieves, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 1.2 (2014), 91–107; ‘The Censorship of Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads’, in Angelica Duran and Yuhan Huang (eds) Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, ix Yang-book.indd 9 31/08/2015 09:12 China’s Contested Internet (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2014), pp. 37–49; and ‘Blanks to be filled: Public-making and the censorship of Jia Pingwa’s Decadent Capital’, China Perspectives 2015/1, forthcoming. Robeson Taj Frazier is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He is the author of The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (Duke University Press, 2014), and is completing another book, From Mao to Yao: Culture, Media, and Black Life in China.