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Public Choice (2008) 134: 3146
DOI 10.1007/s11127-007-9199-0
Rebecca MacKinnon
Received: 2 June 2007 / Accepted: 9 June 2007 / Published online: 9 August 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, BV 2007
Abstract The Internet simply because it exists in China will not bring democracy to China. It is a tool, not a cause of political change. So far, the Chinese government has succeeded through censorship and regulation in blocking activists from using the Internet as an effective political tool. Likewise, blogs may be a catalyst for long-term political change because they are helping to enlarge the space for collaboration and conversation on subjects not directly related to political activism or regime change. However their role in China is more likely to involve political evolutionnot revolution.
Keywords China Internet Democracy Blogs
1 Introduction
Even in the United States, there is much debate as to whether weblogs will contribute to a wider discourse amongst citizens that could make government more accountable. Yet there is a common popular assumption that the Internetand with it weblogs and other forms of online, participatory mediais ultimately a force for democratization. In May 2005, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed titled Death by a Thousand Blogs, in which he concluded: its the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Partys grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband (Kristof 2005).
Such conclusions are frequently echoed in the news media, but scholarship on Chinas Internet and politics takes a more sober view. While the Chinese government has supported the development of the Internet as a tool for business, entertainment, education, and information exchange, it has succeeded in preventing people from using the Internet to organize any kind of viable political opposition. The Open Net Initiative concluded in its 2004-05
R. MacKinnon ( )
Journalism & Media Studies Ctr, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]
R. MacKinnone-mail: [email protected]
Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China
32 Public Choice (2008) 134: 3146
study of Chinese Internet censorship that China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broad-reaching system of Internet ltering in the world (OpenNet Initiative 2005). A ten-fold explosion in the number of Chinese weblogs in 2005 posed a challenge to the regime. However,...