Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The breeding of nationalism and the growth of civil society are two major themes frequently addressed in the study of online political communication in China. Examining the course of on-line and off-line anti-Japanese protests in China that purported to oppose Japan’s ascension into the United Nation Security Council, this paper brings the themes of nationalism and civil society together, and interrogate the role Internet could play in the communication of inter-national affairs. This paper argues, even though the Internet could facilitate the formation of public opinion, the orchestration of popular political movements and the production of a transnational public sphere that ultimately could make an effect on the inter-national policy, it does not necessarily mean a promotion to the growth of domestic civil society in Mainland China. This contradiction exists because the crucial element underlying all these popular political communication is nationalism, which is indeed a double-edge sword to the Communist Party. The survivability of public opinion and popular nationalism can only exist when it is aligned with the interest of the state strongly demonstrates the function of the Internet as a state activation apparatus in online inter-national political communication, that is, a device by which the PRC government can employ to activate or make use of what is activated by the citizens through the medium of the internet to advance national interest in the international arena. The result implicates that a scalar analysis which help unfolding the complex interplay between new media, politics, people and the state as well as the dynamism between the national and the global is needed for the study of online political communication in the neo-authoritarian regime of China.