All these online forums are closely monitored by China’s Internet police, and their hosts meticulously control and censor comments to ensure that the discussion does not cross politically acceptable boundaries. However, because such forums remain the only place for widespread, efficient, and direct online communication, the bulletin boards have created a virtual public sphere that does not exist anywhere else in Chinese society. For China’s Internet generation, it has become a crucial mode of identity and self-expression. Bulletin boards provide an alternative to the agenda set by the official press by allowing users, instead of propaganda officials, to determine the leading stories from domestic and overseas media.

This interaction between online news forums and the official media was recently demonstrated in a very public and positive way in Shenzhen, a southern PRC special economic zone. On November 16, 2002, an author using the online name “Crazy for You” posted a long essay titled “Shenzhen, Who Abandoned You?” on Strong Nation Forum and Development Forum, another popular bulletin board hosted by the official Xinhua News Agency website. The article outlined many existing problems with Shenzhen city government policy, including inefficiency, mismanagement of the residential certification system, and a poor investment environment.

The author, who was clearly very familiar with the inner workings of the government, wrote a thoughtful and well-documented piece that stayed within approved political boundaries. Nevertheless, such an independent and frank critique would not have been published by the official press. However, after publishing his piece online, the author received a tremendous amount of public support, which the government was unable to ignore or dismiss. The posting generated hundreds of responses. Many readers emailed it to friends nationwide, and it soon appeared on many official and semi-official websites across China. In an unprecedented response, the Shenzhen mayor met the author and publicly responded in the local official press to his criticisms, putting the issues discussed in the piece on the city policy reform agenda. This milestone demonstrates the Internet’s power to be a positive force in broadening China’s public discourse.

Internet-Facilitated Civil Society

The expanded space for discussion of public affairs facilitated by the Internet has thus allowed for the establishment of online communities that challenge government limitations, creating and fostering a space for civil society to push the boundaries of associative and communicative freedoms. While authorities effectively stifle a civil society of independent social organizations, grassroots groups that depart from the official agenda in covering environmental issues, women’s rights, homosexuality, and other social issues often rely on the Internet to organize and distribute information. One important example is the website of AIDS activist Wan Yanhai’s Aizhi Action group, one of the only independent sources of information in China on public health and AIDS. Because of the government’s sensitivity toward the AIDS crisis, Wan’s project is on the borderline of government tolerance, and he was arrested for a month in 2002. However, his website is still operating, and his organization has now received official acceptance, largely because of international attention to the issue.

As Wan’s case illustrates, a powerful tension is developing between these nascent social forces which rely on the Internet for their existence and the government’s determined efforts to keep the flow of information under control. China’s 59 million “netizens” increasingly resist censorship mechanisms. As authorities stifle citizens’ newly emerging freedom to express themselves and access information, many people who were indifferent to politics have been galvanized to defend their fundamental rights. And because their sense of identity has been fostered by the Internet’s culture of free expression and individuality, they are willing to express their dissatisfaction publicly.

The Internet even provides an ideal forum for such agitation. When authorities blocked the Chinese version of Google—a popular Internet search engine—in September 2002, Internet users launched vehement online protests, that eventually led the government to compromise by allowing access to a modified version of the search engine.

Caught in the Net

One of the most visible examples of this online resistance is the widely circulated Declaration of Internet Citizens’ Rights, which demands freedoms of expression, information, and association on the Internet, and was launched in July 2002 after the government announced new regulations enforcing self-censorship among Internet publishers. The authors quote from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights in defending their right to free expression. “A modern society is an open society,” state the authors, “As the Chinese people again face a historic transition into a modern society any measure that closes China only harms China’s emergence into the international community and Chinese society’s peace and progress.” Initiated by prominent writers, lawyers, and private webmasters, including Wan Yanhai, the declaration has now gained the support of more than 1,000 Web publishers, Internet users, and other Chinese netizens.

In a more recent example, Internet users have initiated a campaign to release a fellow Internet writer, Liu Di, a 22 year-old psychology student whose online pen name is “Stainless Steel Mouse.” Liu’s thoughtful, insightful, and humorous writing often challenged the political and social system, making her a popular commentator on China’s largest online bulletin board, Xici Hutong, which has 500,000 registered users. In one essay she commented that the work of the Internet police was actually endangering national security by not allowing people to express themselves.

After she disappeared from the online forum in September 2002, her Internet friends investigated and discovered that she had been arrested on suspicion of “endangering national security.” Her arrest triggered a global grassroots online campaign, and more than 2000 netizens—including many prominent Chinese writers and intellectuals who signed their real names—have signed a petition to the PRC government demanding her release. In a motion of solidarity, hundreds of online writers have put “Stainless Steel” in front of their online names, making Liu a powerful symbol of freedom of expression in China. In contrast to Wei Jingsheng, who was also sent to prison for his political writings, Liu Di did not have to wait 13 years for her supporters to send information to the world via a floating bottle. Rather, the Internet has enabled an immediate global grassroots movement in her name fighting for freedom of expression.