ABSTRACT

The rapid expansion of the Internet and social media has heightened the tension between the ruling and the ruled in authoritarian regimes. In particular, by enabling freer information flow, the Internet now empowers social actors in repressive settings to better communicate, organize and mobilize (Shirky, 2011). But authoritarian regimes such as China have remained resilient, despite the digital challenges. Why? One plausible explanation is China has a high-capacity state that has effectively curtailed the Internet’s emancipating effects using a series of control mechanisms as well as other adaptive measures. Another explanation could be that citizens in China are focusing on concrete and specific grievances, thus are not interested in contesting and denying the CCP’s legitimacy to rule. This chapter proposes a third explanation from the perspective of discourse competition. By examining how “public intellectuals” as a group have been denigrated in Chinese cyberspace, it argues that the anticipated effect of the Internet to promote liberal and democratic values has been severely hindered by pluralization of online expression, which in turn decreases the threat towards authoritarian rule.