Author's Response: The Growing Power of Internet Activism in China

[ 182 ] asia policy common potential of the common people is released” (p. 216). First, it is not clear to me that Yang has demonstrated that it is in fact the common people who are the subjects of his book. Actually, he does not tell the reader much about who the users of the Internet in China are. Second, this also sounds an awful lot like Mao Zedong in the Great Leap Forward, and in particular Mao’s call for the ordinary people to smash the experts, try new things, write poetry, and not be hide-bound by tradition. The Great Leap was not a voluntary activity, and it created the greatest disaster in modern Chinese history. But Yang’s view of the Internet as absolutely leveling and absolutely democratic at the expense of expertise and of deserved or earned authority should strike some fear in the hearts of Chinese and those who care about them. Author’s Response: The Growing Power of Internet Activism in China Guobin Yang The thesis of my book is that online activism is dynamic and strong in China, that it has grown in tandem with political control, and that this paradoxical relationship between online activism and political control results from the peculiar mix of political, social, cultural, and economic conditions under which online activism in China takes place. My analytical approach rests on two axes. The synchronic axis consists of the key institutional determinants, namely, the state, market, contentious culture, and civil society (local and global). Positioning online activism on this axis is to view it in relation to its multiple institutional fields. The other axis is diachronic. The assumption is that online activism is a historical development whose significance and limits can only be fully grasped in a specific context (hence, for example, my use of the student movement in 1989 as a reference point). The intersection of these two axes means that the cultural, social, and political transformations associated with the Internet revolution are simultaneous and intertwined, not sequential. It is hard to overstate the centrality of history and culture in my study. Randy Kluver and Xu Wu rightly point to these dimensions. Wu sees online guobin yang is Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. He can be reached at . [ 183 ] book review roundtable • the power of the internet in china activism as “both the catalyst and the reflection of historical transformations.” Kluver points out that the use of the Internet in my story is informed by cultural conventions. He notes perceptively that my book does not draw any direct connection between the Internet and a democratic revolution but instead allows for multiple and even conflicting narratives. Regime Change Having pointed out the book’s analytical approach, let me now respond to the main issues raised by the reviewers in this roundtable. Juntao Wang is concerned with the direct link between the Internet and regime change. To his credit, he acknowledges that this link is not my main concern. Wang argues that the Chinese state maintains absolute power over the people, that the Internet is insufficient for creating political change, and that regime change must come through a political revolution, “accompanied by largescale street protests, military involvement or coups, faction clashes within the ruling core, and mobilization of major social groups through networking and organizing offline.” The Internet alone certainly cannot lead to regime change. Claims to the contrary are instances of the technological determinism that I explicitly reject. Yet Wang may have overestimated Chinese state power and underestimated the popular struggles linked to the Internet. His two examples of government control of information do not support his argument. During the SARS crisis in 2003, it was precisely the information flows on the Internet (and on mobile phones) that forced the Chinese government to open up the media, thereby creating a short period of media transparency about the SARS epidemic. During the Xinjiang riots in 2009, the Chinese government cut off the Internet in parts of the area. Wang takes this as an instance of the government’s supreme power, but it shows just as clearly the government’s fear of the power of the Internet...