The Internet, Accountability, but not Democracy

Earlier in the week China Beat featured a script from a talk given by Ying Zhu, professor of Media Culture at CUNY Staten Island, at Google’s New York offices. The piece teases at themes to be covered in depth in her upcoming book on China Central Television co-authored with Bruce Robinson. Focusing on recent news stories, Zhu argues that the size of the internet community, an increased access to information and a better-educated citizenry have created what she terms a “critical mass”. This term has three parts: (1) the mass has grown to the point where the Chinese government’s ability to put down a popular rebellion is limited, (2) the mass is able to articulate preferences and force a government response, and (3) the mass forms passive online associations ready to be organized into “active participation” should they be provided a catalyst.

In its shortened form the argument lacked clarity and it seems unclear that this “critical mass” exists in China. It is also unclear how this argument fits with the ideas included in the extended portions of the post that suggest the internet can reinforce the power of authoritarian regimes. Though it is clear the internet is not a silver bullet in the struggle for freedom, it is also not a key factor in the government’s ability to “adapt and accommodate” indefinitely.

Professor Zhu argues discussions of Chinese politics focus almost exclusively on political leaders and ignores trends within Chinese society; she argues regular Chinese are “more and more the masters of their own destiny.” She notes that most discussions of information flows in China emphasize government control and censorship. She, however, characterizes information sources in China in the following manner:

“What emerges in China is a commercialized and vastly expanding information society. We’ve heard about censorship and crackdowns; but as you know much better than I do, people who want to DO find means to bypass the Great Firewall. Vigorous public discussion and networking on the Internet and via social media have become central features of contemporary Chinese society. So, for the fans ofThe X-Files, I don’t know about the “truth,” but the information is out there, even in China. And people do process information on their own terms, incorporating a variety of resources…”

Zhu provides several examples of instances where rapid online mobilization generated shifts in or constraints on policy – the Google row, the Green Dam incident and the reinstatement of Avatar. The example of the online response to the Google incident is particularly interesting. Initially the sympathies of both citizens and netizens seemed to lie with Beijing. She gives the example of a conversation with a colleague from a university in China:

“She told me that the majority of her students consider it opportunistic for Google to threaten to leave China just when a new round of Internet crackdowns is raising eyebrows among Chinese netizens. Her students think that Google is exploiting anti-crackdown sentiment and that its threat is mainly a gesture to please the U.S. government.”

In the discussion of shifting public sentiment over the Google incident the piece seems to contradict its initial assertions. Zhu cites the “continuing lack of easy access to unfiltered information” for the initial lack of response to Google’s action by Chinese citizens. She goes further to say the following:

So it’s not surprising that the politically targeted computer hacking, downplayed in mainstream Chinese news reporting on Google, escaped widespread notice. To most people in China, the Google story is only about differences over the state’s censorship policy.

The fact that most Chinese use “the internet and social media primarily for entertainment, social networking and other mundane purposes” makes it highly unlikely that those individuals working to “assure that a constant stream of unauthorized information flows through the networks of public discourse” impact the online experience of ordinary citizens. Especially when Zhu says that “[Chinese] normally do not have any great reason to doubt the news reports of their own media or to go looking… for something more about the Google story than the mainstream media tell them”.

The final chapter to the Google story is yet to be written and it remains unclear what impact the internet discourse will have on the outcome. Zhu provides examples of nationalists rallying against the rhetoric of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton and equating freedom of information with imperialism. At the same time others see the struggle as a battle between liberty and tyranny. From her piece alone it is unclear which side carries the discourse – though she suggests opinion is turning in Google’s favor – or even the scale of the online debate. Despite this ambiguity, Zhu asserts that:

“In the case of Google, based on what I’ve gathered, the tide of public opinion expressed on the Internet and in social media appears to be turning now in Google’s favor. It at least looks as if a critical mass of public interest and opinion is building that will influence the ongoing negotiations between Google and the Chinese state.”

Additionally economic elites – crucial to Zhu’s notion of “critical masses” – apparently also sympathize with Google. The coalescence of popular and business sentiments will thus make it hard for Beijing to deal with Google severely.

Taking this example – and shorter examples about Avatar and Green Dam – Zhu moves on to her theory about the relationship between the internet and political change. The argument is riddled with jargon, but can be distilled to this: the internet can reinforce authoritarian governments by creating outlets for dissatisfaction, a mechanism for governments to discern the preferences of critical social groupings, and disaggregating demands into smaller groups based around malleable identities not tied to “primordial” characteristics. So while popular sentiment, if aligned with key economic players, can bring Avatar back to theatres and possibly keep Google in China this progress is double-edged. These new groupings can be readily mobilized, but Zhu argues that Chinese society more broadly has become “divided along socio-economic lines into smaller interest groups” and local issues “constitute the bulk of China’s recent [protest] activities such as the taxi driver strikes and localized and short-term protests about job losses and property confiscations.

Rather than linking this localization to policy successes in Beijing, Zhu argues it is in fact caused by the rise of “lifestyle politics”. Lifestyle politics simply refers to identities built around value preferences that are flexible owing to the availability of choices on the internet. Zhu argues that both Western governments and Beijing are incapable of servicing these new constituencies and that this spawns “public cynicism about government and traditional political action directed toward government action”. Instead people take it upon themselves to manage their lives.

I have three immediate hesitations about lifestyle politics and its explanatory value. First, the construct is vague and it is not clear why primordial, socio-economic or any other sort of identity cannot coexist with this new type. Second, there are numerous potential socio-economic issues that transcend the local level. Environmental degradation, youth unemployment, and even the property seizures that Zhu cites as a local concern are common across regions and provide the potential for broader political action. Finally, if government – local or central – is seen as impeding the realization of individual preferences, regardless of their relativism, there will be conflict between citizens and the government. Comparing the frustrations of average Chinese to the disgust some Americans felt about statements by the owner of Whole Foods against healthcare, as Zhu attempts to do, does not seem to make sense. The politics of grocery store choice among a small sub-segment of American consumers is hardly comparable to a Chinese family trying to receive recompense from a land seizure or American families trying to hang on to a mortgage. These issues cut across regional preferences and can mobilize people from competing ideological camps.

Zhu attempts to address this by explaining how lifestyle politics affect political participation. She argues that it also involves the “expression of individual rights and a consciousness abut the social responsibilities associated with a given lifestyle” and is about “associating with a group or class of people in order to claim rights and recognition against the insecurities of contemporary globalized society.” This sounds fairly unsurprising, “mediatized society” or not, and further suggests that lifestyle politics is like any other politics.

Zhu points out that there exists a great deal of public support for the Chinese regime and its form of government (how does this mesh with the cynicism built up earlier by these new identities?). Zhu argues that despite China’s autocratic form, there exists a “quasi-public sphere that compels the state to actively cultivate and incorporate public opinion into amore overtly deliberative policy making process.” This allows the government to react to public demands and undertake the accommodation necessary to avoid revolution.

This suggests that the primary challenge to authoritarian governments is a lack of information. While access to information is important and lower-level cadres have incentives to distort it, poor and unpopular policies persist for political reasons. When times are good the Chinese can afford to be more accommodating, but the regime’s flexibility will be severely challenged when crisis hits. If stability is the primary concern and resources become scarce, policy will overtly target constituencies crucial to the maintenance of communist party power. The majority of Chinese society is not yet one of those constituencies. It is easy to predict adaptability and persistence when things are good, and some argue that they are just going to get better, but no country’s development has been without crisis. And while some analysts believe in the ability of the Chinese government to ward off such calamities, history is not on their side.