New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. xvi, 315 pp. (Tables, illustrations.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-231-18475-5.
Han’s book offers a fresh perspective on China’s vibrant virtual world. Going beyond the traditional state-versus-society dichotomy that presents a battle between a liberating, regime-challenging Internet and a repressive state, the book argues forcefully that the Chinese Internet, mirroring Chinese society, is a multifaceted site on which the state negotiates its censorship and control over the flow of information with semi-autonomous and profit-driven ISPs and other intermediaries, while also addressing the needs of a demanding and assertive society with diverse preferences and interests. It is defined not by polarization, as mainstream scholarship has portrayed, but by pluralization reflecting the growing social and economic dynamics in China. The world of the Chinese cat-and-mouse censorship warfare can even lead to ironic situations, as illustrated by an example in the book: a government supporter gaining access to porn sites by using Falun Gong-designed software meant to circumvent censorship (91).
It is the concept of pluralization that explains China’s authoritarian resilience and the co-prosperity of both the regime and the Internet, which is often perceived to be a regime challenger. The explanation the book offers may be counterintuitive but it is a straightforward one: there is an independent, genuine, and powerful regime-supporting force on the Internet to balance out and compete with regime-challenging voices, and thus reduce the political risk of the Internet. The lack of imminent threat to the regime means there is little need for open repression.
The discovery of a strong regime-supporting force enables Han to pose a forceful alternative explanation of China’s authoritarian resilience: it is not because of the will and capacity of the Party-state to repress, control, and adapt to new circumstances, but because of popular acceptance of the Party-state, based on its performance and the lack of a viable alternative. As Han sharply puts it: “the apparent resilience of Chinese authoritarianism in the face of the internet’s liberalizing and democratizing impact is primarily a result of the fragmentation of cyberspace, the pluralization of online expression, and ultimately the lack of consensus on a viable alternative to the current system” (19).
The book offers a two-level analytic structure to explain Internet censorship in an authoritarian state. At the first level, there is the censorship game that defines the boundaries of permissible speech. Political censorship is inherent to an authoritarian state and certain regime-challenging speech, which addresses the legitimacy of the state, would be regarded as dangerous and treated as such. While the actual size of the taboo zone and its precise content may vary, the state has always taken exceptional measures to root out what it considers legitimacy-undermining speeches so that they do not appear in any public discussion and deliberation.
At the second level, in the long shadow of an exceptional, forbidden zone, there is a normal zone that is characterized by ambiguity, tolerance, and freedom. There, in Han’s term, “discourse competition” is intense and, in the gray and free zones, different social groups compete for dominance, forming a diverse and even plural landscape of competing ideas on the Chinese Internet. The cyberspace is thus composed of multiple zones: some taboo and off-limits, others gray, but mostly free, in which netizens socialize with each other, articulate different views, and occasionally mobilize to express a particular interest.
A significant caveat which warrants emphasis is that the Chinese cyberspace is largely apolitical. People enjoy their private conversations while taking extraordinary caution to maintain a safe distance from contentious political topics. There are also uncivil pockets on the Internet that are infested with hatred, bigotry, and indecency necessitating and legitimizing state intervention and regulation. There is a strong demand from society to clean the virtual space.
The politics tolerated in Chinese cyberspace constitutes what Han refers to as “pop activism,” through which “playful netizens” engage in half-hearted cyberpolitics. Indeed, individual netizens regularly resort to the Internet to air their grievances as “the weapon of the weak” or simply for private amusement and curiosity. The Internet is, without a doubt, a liberating force that has created an emancipating impact in China. But its impact is limited to the realm of personal freedom in a liberal sense rather than the realm of politics in a democratic sense. The Party-state is aware of the nature of contentious discussions on the Chinese Internet and has tailored control mechanisms accordingly to manage social discontent and curiosity. Between state repression and the most daring subversion, there is a huge space filled with contention and compromise, allowing a degree of deliberative space for the netizens to articulate and to act.
As the book points out, the emergence of a powerful regime-supporting force in the Chinese cyberspace is a factor that has been neglected in previous studies. Nationalist vigilantes, commonly referred to as the voluntary fifty-cent army, regularly patrol the virtual space on behalf of the Party-state and come to its defence when they perceive it to be under attack. It is wrong, as Han points out, to assume that the Internet is inherently regime challenging. The regime has gained and maintained a degree of credibility (154), and has created its own supporters, who regularly harass dissidents, neutralize dissenting voices, and mobilize, using the same tactics as the state challengers, to defend the state interest. While regime supporters come in different shades and from different backgrounds, what unites them (with the exception of a minority of Maoist zealots who romanticize the revolutionary past) is the performance that the Party has delivered to most of the Chinese people and, perhaps more significantly, the lack of a viable alternative to the existing political system.
This is not of course to suggest in any way that the Chinese state is neutral vis à vis the Internet. Indeed, a challenging question yet to be answered is the degree of mutual reinforcement of the fifty-cent army on the state payroll and the genuine regime supporters. The state has effectively weaponized the Internet to shape public opinion, to project its own ideology, and to serve its propaganda agenda. The impact of China’s propaganda state may be so strong that any demarcation between those two categories is inevitably blurred.
Hualing Fu
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong