Is authoritarian rule in China today resilient or fragile? As China becomes wealthier and its middle classes grow, will it democratize? Or will authoritarian one-man rule under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping persist?

China today has the largest online population in the world. How will they shape the future of Chinese politics? Cyber-libertarians have long argued that the Internet is an inherently liberalizing force, and a number of scholars (e.g., Yang Guobin) have suggested that the Internet will promote progressive political change in China. Others, however, counter both that the Internet provides the CCP with a new tool to guide public opinion, and that most Chinese are apolitical online, seeking infotainment instead (e.g., James Leibold).

Rongbin Han’s book explores the puzzle of why the Internet has fostered more widespread political participation in Mainland China, but failed to democratize it, arguing that CCP censorship has largely been ineffective, but that online social groups have defended the Party-state against its critics. “Ineffective state control does not automatically lead to democratization,” Han writes, because “those criticizing the regime are popularly discredited” (p. 176). In other words, it is not that state censorship and control of the Internet is successful—it is often ineffective and even counterproductive. Instead, pro-state voices within Chinese cyberspace neutralize the CCP’s liberal critics. It is the “voluntary fifty-cent army” (derided as unpaid trolls) and other Chinese netizens who support the regime against “national enemies” that best explain authoritarian resilience in China today. In short, the Party-state is not in full control of online discourse, but “the state’s loss is not regime critics’ gain” (p. 187).

Contesting Cyberspace in China makes significant theoretic and empirical contributions to the literatures on authoritarianism and Chinese politics. Theoretically, Han follows in the tradition of his Berkeley mentor Kevin O’Brien in not just disaggregating the state, but also disaggregating society. He shows how both state and nonstate actors (in the plural) compete to manipulate public opinion through “discourse competition” (p. 16). He thus exposes both the internal fragmentation of the Party-state and the heterogeneity of netizen groups (p. 175).

Empirically, Han contributes to our understanding of Chinese politics and society today through his detailed interrogation of the micro-dynamics of online discourse competition. Following Guobin Yang, Han engages in “guerilla ethnography,” the long-term observation of selected websites and chatrooms (p. 23). This produces a rich picture of discourse competition in Chinese cyberspace. For instance, in Chapter 7 the reader learns about several techniques of online combat, such as “labeling wars,” “face-slapping,” “crosstalk,” and “fishing.” Examples of “labeling wars” include when nationalists label their enemies as the “U.S. cents party” (美分党), the “dog food party” (狗粮党), or the “road-leading party” (带路党) who invite foreign invaders in (pp. 160–161). These details provide a nuanced view of the identity politics that drive online debates.

Han was raised in Mainland China and received his Bachelor’s at Peking University before earning a PhD at Berkeley. As a non-Westerner, Han easily sidesteps the liberal binary of control versus resistance that so often impedes Western studies of Chinese politics and society. He does not insist on pitting a David society against a Goliath state. Instead, Han clearly sees and describes the heterogeneity among the various state and social actors (in the plural) in Chinese cyberspace. A great strength of Contesting Cyberspace in China is its ability to deconstruct online society into many subgroups. In his Preface, Han shares that as a freshman at Peking University he was a “BBS addict” (p. x) on online bulletin boards, and his lengthy immersion in Chinese cyberspace gives his book a richness that few can match.

Being socialized in post-Tiananmen China may also shape Han’s view of the nationalism that is so central to his story. Han argues convincingly that the Party-state is not directly in control of discourse competition online, and that the “voluntary fifty-cent army” and other cyber-nationalists play an immediate role in shouting down CCP critics as traitors. But what’s largely missing from the book is the distal hand of the Party-state in constructing popular nationalism in the first place. We do not hear much about the post-Tiananmen “Patriotic Education Campaign” (爱国教育运动) that Sam Zhao first wrote about, or the CCP’s more recent stoking of anti-Japanese sentiment though the financing and production of “War of Resistance Against Japan” (抗日战争) video games, movies, and serial TV dramas. Han also downplays the role that nationalism plays in legitimizing the Party-state today, highlighting instead legitimacy claims based on economic development and good governance (p. 177).

Han’s very brief but anomalous treatment of Japan is noteworthy. “The Chinese,” Han claims, “responded to the [2011] Japanese earthquake and tsunami with good intentions,” but encountered “hostility from the Japanese” (p. 148). In a book marked by a laudably consistent deconstruction of the idea of a unitary Chinese public, “the Chinese” and “the Japanese” in the singular are striking. Given that many (not all!) Chinese netizens apparently actually responded to the 2011 disaster in Japan with schadenfreude, gleefully declaring “just deserts!” (活该!) online (see Ying Yang, Xiao-xiao Liu, Yang Fang, and Ying-yi Hong “Unresolved World War II Animosity Dampens Empathy Toward 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(2), 2014), Han’s essentializing depiction of the beneficent Chinese set against the ungrateful Japanese is particularly puzzling.

Contesting Cyberspace in China is a fantastic contribution to the literatures on authoritarianism, cyberpolitics, and Chinese politics. By deconstructing both state and society, Han shows that a key to authoritarian resilience/collapse lies in discourse competition among heterogeneous groups of Chinese netizens online. As long as a plurality of Chinese netizens have been socialized to believe that China needs a strong government to protect the “China Dream” (中国之梦) from internal and external “national enemies,” and question democracy as a means to national revival (p. 186), they are likely to continue to neutralize regime criticism online and sustain authoritarian rule.