A dynamic interplay: theorizing the relationship between online activism and government control in China

The relationship between the state and bottom-up activism in an authoritarian regime in the conventional wisdom is antagonistic, and activists’ use of new media technology intensifies this conflict. Although a handful of existing cases (e.g., Iran, Ukraine, Egypt, and Tunis) have strengthened the belief that digital media can help bring down the remaining authoritarian regimes. Yet in the case of China, this is not the scenery we observed. How Internet activism in China contend with the government control in the past 17 years? Why the Chinese government and activist choose and change their strategies across issues and over time? And how can we understand the interaction between the evolution of online activism and the tightened control by the government in an authoritarian deliberation? In this project, through a combination of case studies and longitudinal study, I found that Internet activism in China has already become a comprehensive practice with sophisticated strategies and tactics serving several major repertoires. This result reflects the establishment and the expanding of a counter public sphere. And then through the operation of organizations, groups and individual activists, half of the activism cases successfully entered the central public sphere, becoming public agenda. Along with this development is the change of Chinese government’s treatments to Internet activism from ignorance to strategic “management” as the result of the long-term negotiation between the activists and the authoritarian government. I then develop an ecosystem to illustrate this process and argue that all the mechanisms that channel the periphery sphere to the central sphere form a dynamic balance. The Chinese government and the activists both take advantage of this structure to achieve their objectives, and a collaborative relationship between them has actually formed in these political contentions.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Yuan Yua