State Market and Society

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Furthermore, the other types of the online citizens - five cents party is leading major online opinion, they receive task from superiors, search for topic, post comments to guide public opinion (Newstatesman 2012), it helped the state to disperse the public sight when the sensitive issue happened, and monitoring of Internet discourse to protect political stability, like “Influence public understanding of X event”, “Promote the correct direction of public opinion on XXXX” (Newstatesman 2012). The five cents party will play different roles on the internet, such as the leader, the netizens, even the suspecting netizens, and constant debate, argue with at least two distinct identities on the internet, to confuse onlookers and make the message more credible. By “auguring” with the five cents party members even themselves, they will catch the eye of the followers, then, they will provide some “powerful” evidence, to convince the onlookers and achieve the objective which directs the public opinion and delivery the hidden message. We may say that the five cents party makes the rumor to whitewash the sensitive issue. Although the online channel scatters attention of the public, it is also the channel for the public to evaluate and criticize the performance of the state. Nicholas D. Krist of sums up that “its potential for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away.” (Baculinao 2012). To avoid the “positive” function of online forum transforms to harmful power, the CCP had set up great Firewall of China in 2005 and internet police and self-censorship through five cents party, the evidence of internet censorship in China shows the paradoxical power of the autonomous nature of online nationalism, it threats of other types of activism, can therefore pose a challenge to the authoritarian.

Gries observes that the CCP increasingly relies on its nationalist credentials due to the decline of communist ideology and lack of elective democratic legitimacy; hence, the Chinese government too is compelled to satisfy popular opinion in the form of nationalism (Gries 2004). It means that the state faces the risk in making the decision in repressing, tolerating, or encouraging anti-foreign protest.” Cyber-politics is more likely to be used to promote nationalism than liberal-democracy, the former being far more difficult to suppress than the latter for a regime whose legitimacy depends increasingly on nationalist claims.” (Baculinao 2012) Since the hacker unions are an "autonomous" organization is not directly dominated by the state, the members can shift the public attention or public opinion to challenge the government by revealing potential domestic problems, and eventually forming threats to national stability which the state will apply suppressive measures to retain. For example,” red hackers” flourished and the anti-Japan riots, the former one was restrained and the latter one was tolerated. The hacker organization is nominally independent, they usually have a special relationship with the state as the state ‘need’ them to be strong. The ex-hackers said “I believe no government will come to a hacker organization, it’s not possible for the two to have any relations because states have rule of law, governments won’t do anything under the table” (Baculinao 2012)

To sum up, I repute the CCP can effectively dominate the nationalism and the newly-typed nationalism. In most of the time, nationalism buttresses the regime, by the assist of different government-organized or government-related organizations. It does sometimes happen the protest and remonstrance, like Tibetan independence in 2008 and Chinese pro-democracy protests in 2011, which may imperil the state stability, will immediately be suppressed those “pernicious” social movements by the state. Although nationalism remains a double-edged sword, it is a benefit rather than a disadvantage.

Reference list

Baculinao, Nina. 2012. “Fenqing: A Study of China’s ’Angry Youth’ in the Era of the

Internet.” Columbia East Asia Review, 79-97.

Gries, Peter Hays. 2004. “Popular Nationalism and State Legitimation in China.” In

Peter Hays Gries & Stanley Rosen (eds.), State and Society on 21st – Century China: Crisis Contention, and Legitimation. New York and London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Newstatesman.com. 2012. China’s Paid Trolls: Meet the 50-Cent Party. Available at:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/10/china%E2%80%99s-paid-trolls-meet-50-cent-party. Accessed on December 7, 2015.

Zhao, S. 2004. Chinese Foreign Policy: pragmatism and strategic behavior. ME Sharpe.

William,

Interesting discussion, and you did well to focus squarely on popular nationalism, illustrated with examples, to analyze how it works to buttress the regime but at times also threaten its status quo.

Marks: 76 / 100

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Marking guide: 70% - 79%

- Answers demonstrating a clear and correct understanding of the topic issue

- Factual descriptions of the issue are correctly delineated

- The essay has been written with a clear structure and the argument logically conducted throughout

- The essay is clearly written with excellent use of language