Few experiences have been as liberating for China's youth as exploration and experimentation on the internet. Since the introduction of the Web in the 1990s, the population of “netizens” (wangmin) has grown to over 400 million. Although there are many restrictions on internet use, conversations that have taken place via instant messaging, blogging, social networks and microblogging have voiced criticism of government policy, exposed corruption and facilitated the organization of large-scale protests. Scholars seeking to understand how internet use has transformed Chinese politics should read After the Internet, before Democracy.
Previous research on the role of the internet in Chinese politics has seen it either as contributing to the longevity of the one-party regime by allowing the government to monitor dissent and address public concerns, or as the cause of social empowerment and democratization. Lagerkvist shares the latter perspective. Based on interviews conducted during more than a decade of research, Lagerkvist argues online social interaction, information-sharing among heterogeneous individuals, and resistance to internet controls have contributed to the rise of a “youth/subaltern norm,” which challenges the “elitist and hegemonic Party-state norm” (p. 31). Social norms enable individuals connected via networks to act in concert and achieve common objectives as blogger-activists, citizen-journalists, and virtual vigilantes. Furthermore, freedom of speech on the internet contrasts sharply with the content of tightly controlled mass media; this dims the appeal of “ideotainment,” or media content that is “more informative and less propagandistic, yet contains “biased and politicized information” (p. 161).
In China, privately owned websites, blogs, social networks and mass media compete for audiences. Media content that celebrates the “party-state norm” garners little popular support. Although Lagerkvist notes that governmental influence over nationalism remains strong, After the Internet, before Democracy claims that the patriotism of young Chinese reflects their identification with the Chinese nation more than it does with the overweening state. Ardent nationalists are often financially independent, free thinkers who are likely to advocate democracy.
For Lagerkvist, the main catalyst for China's democratization is not that the lower classes will fight for unfettered internet use in cafés, nor is it that China's 200-million-plus bloggers will set the political agenda or chip away at the prestige of leaders through satire. Civil society organizations, he suggests, are too weak to break open the “locked-in” public sphere. There is “limited support for the claim that globalization and globalizing media bring freedom, media pluralism, and social emancipation” (p. 20). Rather, Lagerkvist argues that China's democratic breakthrough will occur as the result of competition between citizens and party propagandists over the construction of social norms, a struggle that undermines the Chinese Communist Party's influence over public opinion.
One weakness of After the Internet, before Democracy is its failure to connect the Party's defeat in the battle for public opinion to the onset of democratic government. Lagerkvist assumes China's “long revolution” will culminate in participatory democracy but fails to explain how the demise of what Daniel C. Lynch once called the Chinese “propaganda state” could lead to democratic government. Lagerkvist also does not spell out how a shift in norms will translate into political mobilization online and offline in ways that eventually restrain the reach of the state, promote inclusive citizenship and power-sharing, and protect freedom of speech and association – conditions that political scientists associate with democracy.
After the Internet, before Democracy treats China's democratization as if it could be easily accomplished. The country has delayed democratic reforms because “its principal actors are too insecure or inept at turning increasing technocratic responsiveness – so-called ‘authoritarian deliberation’ – into popular participation that counts from a Western perspective as democratic” (p. 19). This portrayal of Chinese leaders as almost too apathetic to democratize the polity obscures the numerous personal, ideological and economic reasons for Chinese to favour the status quo over a chaotic political system characterized by political competition with uncertain outcomes.
Despite the book's controversial prediction of Chinese democracy, which echoes the thesis of Bruce Gilley's China's Democratic Future (Columbia University Press, 2004), After the Internet, before Democracy features some of the most perceptive analysis of the internet's role in Chinese politics to date. The volume's accessible prose would make it very stimulating reading for undergraduate courses.
