Internet Events, Social Media and National
Security in China
by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos
December 4, 2013
(Image source: http://www.seeisee.com/index.php/2012/02/27/p4871)
I. Introduction
Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos analyze information flows to and from China and analyze social
media use (especially the use of micro-blogging or weibos ) and find that those flows allowed a
much broader dialogue and even some inclusionary processes regarding national security issues in
China. There are also anecdotal, yet illustrative examples of the extent to which these developments
likely affected Chinese policy-making. We also argue that China s government recognizes there is an
opportunity to interact with China s huge netizen communities at a speed and volume that exceeds
the government s current capabilities. The dialectical response has been a clamp on information
flows until policy and technology are in balance. The new inclusionary processes also allow for a
type of participatory government. We also infer that just as information flows inside China are
changing, Chinese social media actors will also interact with external security players states,
corporations, and transnational civil society in new ways that will change the nature of geopolitics
in the region. Managing these changes will require new forms of civic diplomacy and a greater
emphasis on conducting discussions with China in Chinese language.
Peter Hayes is Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute and a Professor of International Relations
at RMIT University. Roger Cavazos is a Nautilus Institute Associate and retired US military officer
with assignments in the intelligence and policy communities.
Many of the findings from this paper were presented at a conference titled Sino-U.S. Relations,
Transparency and Governance . The conference was organized by the Institute of Communication
and Culture (Peking University); Center of Global Governance (Peking University) and Hong Kong
International Strategic Studies Society. Several media organizations from Mainland China, Hong
Kong, Macao and overseas covered the conference. In particular here are links to coverage in short-
The authors thank Adam Segal for his comments and insights on China s Internet.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the
Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on
significant topics in order to identify common ground.
II. Special Report by PETER HAYES and Roger Cavazos
Internet Events, Social Media and National Security in China
Most US national security engagement with Chinese counterparts is conducted at the level of
Beijing-based elites, who formulate and implement China s national security and foreign policies.
This contact is often undertaken during face-to-face visits at conferences or round-tables (sometimes
on extended fellowships and study tours) and results in the formation of US-China transnational
networks of senior influentials who participate in official track 1.0, semi-official track 1.5, or nonofficial/non-state track 2.0 meetings and dialogues. This process has its virtual analog with private
and public information services. Many of these services are produced in the United States, written in
English (but increasingly also in Chinese) and aim to service the information needs of Chinese
counterparts and, to a lesser extent, eliciting and airing their views.
Although this conventional communication process has been effective to a point in aligning
perceptions and creating common understandings between outsiders and Chinese counterparts on
critical security issues, its effectiveness in achieving genuine, in-depth communication is
questionable at best. In fact, it may now be disconnected from a critical and massive shift in
information flows within China itself. The way in which Chinese national security elites
communicate with each other, the velocity of information flows and the explosion of non-elite
Chinese voices mark an abrupt system-level change in the information milieu in which Chinese
national security and foreign policy decisions are made. This transformative shift also enables
external actors to communicate not only with official security circles, but also with influential
Chinese civil society voices who inform, reflect, monitor and evaluate policy decisions. On matters
related to nuclear security and non-state actors who originate and operate in civil society, such
engagement is critical; possibly more so than direct engagement of central officials which
represents a change to the dialectic of closed, elite decision-making and open, popular discussion.
In the following section we explain why it is critical to respond to this development rather than
propose to do more of the same conventional communication with security elites in China. China s
recent measures such as criminalizing social media voices who were judged to be circulating too
many views or spreading rumors too often may be viewed as a dialectic response to the speedy rise
of the virtual citizen or netizens voice designed to induce self-censorship. The operative dialectic
indirectly with their Chinese counterparts is now an imperative, as is communicating with them in
Chinese language.
INFORMATION FLOW IN CHINA: A CHANGING LANDSCAPE
Among China s security and foreign policy elites, positions on policy may diverge over core domestic
issues, such as political reform versus democracy. However, when it comes to shared notions such
as China s rightful place in the world, the nature of external threat, and the appropriate geostrategic
response including nuclear and conventional force structures these elites tend to converge on the
status quo. The policy currents that shaped China s national security and foreign policy orientations
were relatively insulated from direct pressure from most entities within Chinese society. This
opacity made it difficult to monitor and interpret leading and lagging indicators of policy change or
the limits of policy debate in China on many issues, including national security and foreign policy.
External information that flows to and from officials is channeled via bureaucracies and is largely
controlled by them. Well-known gatekeepers from more or less government-affiliated organizations,
institutes, university departments, and even relatively autonomous think tanks meet with and
extract various rents from external visitors, whether they are foreign entities or individuals coming
to China for track 1.0, 1.5, or track 2.0 engagements. The rent charged for obtaining access to
fluidity due to new actors or netizens on social media
Often, the central or provincial governments attempt to manipulate netizen use of virtual media to
collectively comment on or criticize official policies and actions. Here, scale of participation has
shifted by orders of magnitude, to the point where mere quantitative change on a factorial scale has
led to qualitative change in the outcome. There are a few thousands of officials who make China s
security and military policy, and with whom one might purport to relate via face-face visits,
systematic distribution of emails, and promotion of Internet services. But given that on-line social
interactions are the result of network operations on a vast scale (permutations of and that China s
virtual producers and consumers of on-line media now number in the hundreds of millions, forecast
to be more than a billion by 2015. Conversations and issues appear without warning and almost
instantaneously, China s mass communication is unprecedented in human history and easily the
largest public sphere, by far.
SOCIAL MEDIA IN CHINA
Here, we need first to note the extraordinary speed and breadth of individual connectivity to the
Chinese Internet. At the end of 2012, China had about 560 million Internet users.[4] Overall, in
2012, about 156 million users were rural; and about 408 million were urban. In 2011-2012, rural
users grew at about 13 percent per year; and urban users at about 5 percent per year.[5]
The Chinese government is investing heavily in Broadband China aiming to deliver 20 Mbps
bandwidth to urban households, and 4 Mbps in rural households by 2015 according to 12th Five Year
Development Plan.[6] Thus, it is reasonable to anticipate continued rapid growth in Internet access
and usage in spite of the economic slow-down in China since the global recession in 2008. Some
forecasts show total internet connected devices to double to about 1.1 billion by 2015 although
many users will have more than 1 type of device (for example, PC and mobile smart or mobile dumb
phone) and suggest that the Internet-connected population will rise to 1.2 billion or 87 percent of
the national population, by 2015 (see Figure 1). Our own estimate based on 2011-2012 growth rates
is that the expansion is more likely to be about 10 percent overall per year, reaching a total Internet
connected population of about 700 million or about 53 percent of the national population. In all
likelihood, the number will fall somewhere in-between these two estimates, and likely at the lower
end of this range. However, it is clear there is no other country with more citizens, in absolute
numbers, on the internet.
Figure 1: Forecast Chinese Digital Access to Internet in 2015 (Source: Resonance China at:
http://www.resonancechina.com/2010/05/19/china-digital-statistics-2007-2015/)
The biggest expansion will be seen in mobile devices. In 2012 there were about 144 million nonmobile users versus about 422 million mobile Internet users an increase of 64 million from 2011.
The bulk of Internet access was via mobile phones in 2012 around 75 percent. Email, traditional
blogs and bulletin boards were in decline in virtual China, and a major shift occurred to use of
instant messaging and microblogging on mobile phones about 202 million of them joining the ranks
of microbloggers according to China s official internet statistics. [7]
Figure 2: Social Media Landscape in China. (Source: Resonance China at:
http://www.resonancechina.com/2013/05/06/china-social-media-landscape/resonancechina_china-soc
ial-media-landscape/)
was reshaping the creation and communication of public opinions. Normal users, opinion leaders
and traditional media all turned to microblog to different degrees as a way to obtain news, publish
news, express opinions and stir up public opinions, which resulted in high growth rate in number of
personal users of microblog in 2012. The change in the behavior of microblog users was more worth
noting than the growth in number of users at current stage. The second half of 2012 saw stagnant
and even less activity of microblog users on the PC. According to the data of Chinese Internet Data
Platform, the number of daily active users of microblog was on a month-on-month decline in the
second half of 2012, decreasing from 112 million (peak value) in July to 87 million in December, and
the daily visiting time of microblog also dropped from 11.72 million hours (peak value) in July to 7.78
million hours in December. The reasons behind this tendency were as follows: on one hand,
microblog lost the sense of freshness to users, which caused the retention to microblog to weaken;
on the other hand, part of the microblog users chose to read and post microblog on their mobile
phones instead. 202 million microblog users visited microblogs on their mobile phones by the end of
2012, accounting for 65.6% of the microblog users, and the tendency of users to choose mobile
internet made microblog one of the products with the greatest development potentials in the mobile
internet era.[8]
Social media in China is a vast electronic landscape (see Figure 2 above), and micro-blogging
revolves around two Weibo platforms: Tencent and Sina. Tencent and Sina have about 500 million
subscribers each, although it is unclear how much the memberships overlap, and how many of the
collective roughly one billion registered members are only registered once. It is also clear there is a
migration toward Wechat. This trend will almost certainly gain speed as China s government
continues to clamp down on weibo. New Chinese rules on weibo stating that users who send
politically incorrect rumors that are viewed more than 5000 times or retransmitted more than 500
times face imprisonment have a chilling effect. That chill also removes a peaceful feedback loop.
The figures for the number of weibo users is likely greater than the total number of Internet users
for several reasons such as people having multiple accounts, using the services via multiple IP
addresses, and also because the overseas Chinese diaspora and others interested in China are also
joining those platforms.
The typical Chinese netizen is not only absorbed in private or domestic concerns. A significant
level of virtual commentary now exists on core foreign policy and security issues, much of it highly
critical of the central government and its policies. In Table 1, we summarize a selection of such
social media storms that relate to foreign policy and security issues, including China-DPRK
relations and Japan s military white paper.
It is important to note that some of the nationalist and even xenophobic positions articulated in
Chinese popular social media are encouraged by officials or official agencies. For the most part,
they are tolerated and only the most virulent, if any, are scrubbed from the system. This serves to
buttress the central government s position in dealing with external adversaries such as the United
States, Japan, and even the DPRK. This was evident in the responses to Japan s defense white paper
in 2013 (see Table 1). Typically, however, although some bloggers (often officials in private
capacity) support government policy, the vast majority of China s netizens are critical or even
condemnatory of government policy when the case calls for outrage (as in the case of the DPRK
arrest of a Chinese fishing vessel, see below).
At issue is the tremendous amount of bottom-up and sometimes lateral pressure on policy makers
generated by electronic swarming. That pressure also creates a new type of volatility and lends
uncertainty to outcomes. Due to the effects of this new force in China s foreign policy and security
policies, it is critical for external actors, especially civil society, to not only identify and communicate
with those people who traditionally were key to influencing these debates, but also, to communicate
with social media in China directly in order to inform, temper, and sometimes, propagate the
domestic debates from inside to outside of China. We will discuss a conceptual model later in this
essay.
TABLE 1: SELECTED SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTARY ON SECURITY ISSUES, 2012-2013
January 2012: Rumors of DPRK Coup: Chinese netizens mostly dismissed as implausible
rumors of a DPRK coup d état.
February 2012: Rumors of North Korea Assassination Attempt: PRC netizens discussed a
rumor that DPRK leader Kim Jong-un was assassinated in his house in Pyongyang.
April 2012: PRC-DPRK Account Gains Following: Pro-North Korea Today Korea account
opened on Sina Weibo and attracted over 100,000 followers in only a few days
September 2012: Anti-Japan Protests Become a Hot Topic: Anti-Japan protests related to SinoJapanese territorial disputes over the Senkakus (Diaoyu Islands in China) discussed on Chinese
social media.
April 2013: PRC Netizens Report Military Mobilization on DPRK Border; Oil Aid
Unaffected: Despite foreign media reports that China suspended crude oil exports to the North in
February, Sina Weibo user Chaoji Da Benying said that the operation of the oil pipeline from
Dandong to North Korea appears to be undisrupted (1 April). RyanEquilibrium claimed seeing
DPRK officials at an oil measurement station in Dandong, who the user said visit the station every
month (1 April). User mickeymouse (note that a user on a Chinese system chose to adopt a
June 2013: PRC Netizens Discuss Japan s Defense White Paper: PRC microblogs Sina Weibo
and QQ Weibo, posted 11,938 and 7,800 comments on Japan s defense white paper. Japan s defense
white paper accused China of attempting to change the status quo by force based on its own
Exactly how social media plays out in the power dynamics of foreign policy and geo-strategic
decision-makers is opaque. Those in the academic and policy advisory inner circles often float a trial
opined that the United States has gone too far and that its losses will outweigh its gains if it
decides to enter war with a country that possesses nuclear weapons. Conjecturing that the United
States and the ROK will make certain compromises with the DPRK, Yue maintained that the DPRK
will become the big winner if there is no war launched in the end (Sina Weibo, 9 April).
Military expert Zhao Chu asserted that the reason the DPRK has managed to stay safe since the
Cold War is not due to its nuclear weapon capabilities, but because of 1) the complicated situation
on the Korean Peninsula, 2) the ROK s inability to reunite with the DPRK, and 3) former US
President George W. Bush s focus on fighting terrorism (Sina Weibo, 8 April).
Many PRC netizens commented that China is responsible for the current crisis on the Korean
Peninsula.
QQ Weibo user Du Qiu said China has raised a dog that bites the ones who feed it, adding that
the DPRK will destroy China s stability and the good progress of the country s reform and
opening up (QQ Weibo, 10 April).
QQ Weibo user Zhai Cheng Feng condemned China for having a double standard, as it did not say
a word when the United States and the ROK were conducting military drills near the DPRK, but
then attacked the DPRK for launching a nuclear test (QQ Weibo, 10 April).
Sina Weibo user Cool Is My Trademark argued that the current Korean Peninsula crisis has much
to do with China s conniving behavior toward the DPRK. Another user ItsRyaning maintained that
the crisis is entirely of China s own making (Sina Weibo, 10 April).
Other PRC netizens, however, blamed the United States for the current situation.
QQ Weibo user Stroll in Rainy Night said while it is necessary for the DPRK to put up a front,
it is impossible that the DPRK will conduct a missile launch unprovoked. He then urged people to
stop chastising only the DPRK, which behaves the way it does because it has been pushed into a
corner by the United States (QQ Weibo, 10 April).
Sina Weibo user Mini Young Melon asked why everyone points their finger at the DPRK but not at
the culprits
the United States, Japan, and the ROK (Sina Weibo, 10 April).
Calling the United States a nation that does not know how to respect other countries, Sina Weibo
user Tian Tian Xiang Shan Bu Yong Xue Xi blamed the United States for the crisis, and said it
deserves to be attacked by other countries (Sina Weibo, 10 April).
Micro-blogging on matters related to the DPRK is fairly continuous these days. For example, the
possible restart of the North Korean graphite-moderated reactor in mid-September 2013 prompted
Weibo users to suggest that the DPRK sought either assistance or attention by leveraging the West
with the implicit threat represented by the reactor. Some mocked Kim Jong-un as lonely. [12]
Beijing-based TCBFLW observed: If the US can t knock out Assad, how will it take care of Kim Jongun? [13] Li ang_Sikete (Sichuan) notes: This creates an excuse for the US to strike. [14] in
Shanghai cautions Just you watch once the curtain has fallen on Syria, North Korea will
immediately take the stage. [15]
Sina Weibo microbloggers on North Korean subjects tend to fall into three distinct categories. The
first are official Chinese media correspondents who file hundreds of posts from Pyongyang. Xinhua
correspondent Du Baiyu on her Sina Weibo account named Du Xiaobai covers events on-the-spot.
On July 25, 2013, for example, she posted a report that Kim Yong-chun, vice chairman of the DPRK
Central Military Commission, hosted a banquet for PRC war veterans.[16]
Many Chinese experts on North Korea from government-affiliated think-tanks the second
category more or less follow the official line on the DPRK. Mei Xinyu, for example, from the
Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (Ministry of Commerce) often comments
on the DPRK economy and trade with China on his Weibo account. On June 8, for example, he
posted on coffee shops and development in Pyongyang as signs of the North s economic
revitalization.[17]
In the third category unaffiliated individuals with commercial or other relationships with the
DPRK generally pro-DPRK views are expressed. One, Writer Cui Chenghao, is particularly wellknown with 1.6 million followers in November 2013. He describes himself to be trading across the
border. His pro-DPRK blogs tend to be melodramatic, often prove to be inaccurate, and generally
anti-American.
Much on-line commentary by Chinese citizens falls outside these categories, however, and simply
expresses trenchant commentary on current affairs. In April 2013, for example, cartoonist Johnny
Won posted Impish Overlord, to Sina Weibo, showing Kim Jong-un atop a pedestal, costumed with
a cape. He is peeing on a muscular United States, a samurai warrior Japan and a South Korea clad
in traditional formal civil clothes. Off to one side, China leans on its cane and says, Stupid child,
you re asking for death.
(Source: Impish Overlord, posted at Comic China, China Media Project, University of Hong Kong,
at: http://cmp.hku.hk/2013/04/11/32581/)
Exactly how these contentious and often contradictory views relate to high-level official perspectives
on the DPRK is unclear. In our observation, official perspectives on the DPRK at the level of the
central party, military, and agencies, tend to fall into three positions: a) senior leaders, who view
the DPRK as a long-term liability, even adversary, but a problem to be managed jointly in the short-
term with the United States if only they can find common cause; b) the administrators of daily
transactions and active relationships with the DPRK in many channels and dimensions, who tend to
be pragmatic and search for short-term solutions; and c) within the military, the Old Guard which is
pro-DPRK for historical reasons as allies in combat, but increasingly concerned that the DPRK is
shedding its revolutionary ideology and adopting erratic, even bizarre garb under Kim Jong-un,
versus, the New Guard of rising officers who are pro-DPRK on the basis of strident anti--.
Thus, at least some of the military appear to be voluble on the DPRK issues in Sina Weibo,
expressing contrasting views. After the DPRK s February 12, 2013 nuclear test, for example, Major
General Luo Yuan (CPPCC National Committee, China Military Science Society, PLA Strategy
Culture Promotion Association) condemned Pyongyang saying it threatened China and advocating
moderate sanctions (24 February). Conversely, Dai Xu (Hainan Institute for Maritime Security and
Cooperation, National Defense University) castigated the United States for making use of the
Korean Peninsula tension to strategically shift its military deployment to the east in an attempt to
contain China (12 April) while Guo Songmin (writer, ex- PLA Air Force) claimed that the DPRK s
test provided security enabling it to focus on economic development (10 July).
CHINESE SUPER-BLOGGERS
The massive reach of super-bloggers in China should not be under-estimated. In July 2013, for
example, ten Chinese super-bloggers were invited to tour and blog in South Korea trips that
undoubtedly required central government approval.[18] The top two of these ten bloggers have a
combined social media following of 23 million people in China. If only half of their readers read
their posts, then 11.5 million active followers were exposed to their posts from South Korea. If we
assume just two percent of their active followers then shared these messages with their friends and
followers, then the super-bloggers Korean posts may have reached a further 1.1 million readers
(assuming 500 friends/followers for each person who reposted the original super-bloggers post).
Just two super-bloggers can realistically reach 13 million netizens in China, another demonstration
of the rapid increase in information velocity. The information travels far more rapidly than before
and is directed from the super bloggers to people and challenges the cultural meta-narrative that the
Party controls all.
EXTERNAL INFORMATION
A vast reach can also be prompted by external postings circulated inside China. For example,
Nautilus Special Report on the large-scale uptake of cell phones in North Korea (On the Cusp of a
Digital Revolution[19] by Alexandre Mansourov) went viral on social media in China. On one site[20],
the following conversation (summarized after translation) occurred:
A person posted a brief excerpt of the Nautilus report On The Cusp Of A Digital Revolution . She,
her friends, and others then chatted about it. The first comment was I had no idea there were so
many cell phones in North Korea . The person s friends joined the conversation and started
wondering how people can afford cell phones when they can t eat (a clear indicator at least some
average Chinese understand North Korea is experiencing a famine). One remarks that a structure is
determined by its foundation (an allusion that North Korea is only as strong as Kim Jong-un and an
implication he is not strong). And another netizen disparages Fat Kim / Fat Gold (In Chinese
language the character for Kim is gold . Fat Kim is a commonly accepted, though manifestly
impolite, reference to Kim Jong-un, North Korea s ruler).
Exactly what exposure triggered this netizen interest is unknown. The essay was re-posted by the
(official) China Arms Control and Disarmament Association on their website on November 4,
2011[21] but social and digital news media did not begin reposting it en masse until November
21st. Social media interest may have been triggered by international media coverage that
mentioned the report on November 21st (a Reuter s report[22] for example). Perhaps it was
domestic digital news coverage that morning (at 163.com for example[23]). The distinction in these
cases whether the news media reporters followed the path of social media swarming around the
topic, or social media were set off by the news media is unclear but unimportant.
What is evident is that an external report triggered social and news media storms that fed off each
other, resulting in massive coverage of a topic highly salient to a sensitive external relationship
between China, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States. Consequently, Internet events
on social media and the Internet have profound bottom-up and lateral potential to pressure the
central government officials and agencies to realign provincial or local government policy, scapegoat
a specific individual, company, or agency, etc. in order to preserve the meta-narrative of legitimacy
and power of the central government or its provincial agents. For example, in the blame game that
ensued after the horrific July 2011 crash of a high speed train in Wenzhou city in Zhejiang Province,
Beijing officials used the Internet to put the onus on lax local government and the line agencies
responsible for the accident, and kept the focus away from the central leadership.[24]
SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLICY-MAKING
One can only conjecture exactly how these information vectors based on virtual, bottom-up citizen
mobilization intersect with the personal, intimate politics of networked patronage and mutual
obligation at the center. One answer is to argue that such influence can only be inferred indirectly
from observed effects, always subject to the problem of counter-factuality (what else might have
changed or be influential, which can never be known in full). Another answer is to use either formal
or informal agent-based modeling to simulate the true complexity of this interplay, and then
interpret the patterns that result from the specification of the agents and their decision rules.
For example, using agent-based modeling, Tan, Li and Mao simulated two public Internet events in
China in 2010, the Synutra baby milk powder scandal, and the conflict between Qihoo and Tencent
software companies over privacy protection software.[25] In both cases, Internet events erupted
resulting in hundreds of reports, scores of thousands of comments, and ultimately, government
intervention to resolve both situations.
The model specified five entities, viz, main party, opposite party, netizen group, media, and
government. The main party refers to the people or the group who initiate a hot event. Those
negative actions (in the case of netizens, these include praise, donate, digitally broadcast or
suppress, and criticize) have more influence than positive actions, which is reflected in the
models.[27]
(Figure 3: Agent-based model for netizen-centered Internet events in China
Source: Z. Tan, X. Li, W. Mao, Agent-Based Modeling of Netizen Groups in Chinese Internet Event
s, Quarterly SCS M&S Magazine, (journal of Society for Modeling & Simulation International) April
2012, p. 40, at: http://www.scs.org/magazines/2012-04/index_file/Articles.htm)
Tan, Li and Mao used a standard agent-based modeling tool (Repast) to represent these entities,
states, and interactions and compared simulated their interaction over time with actual social media
data mined from postings. In the case of the Synutra baby milk, the skepticism of the netizens
clearly contributed to the media attention and to eventual government intervention after official
inaction and cover-up, forcing the Health Ministry to intervene in response to bottom-up netizen
rage.[28] The simulated pattern of interaction over time closely (but not always) matches that of the
actual data as occurs in the modeling to the Qihoo and Tencent conflict. Of particular interest is
the way and speed that social media and mass media coincide in putting the main party in the
Internet event and thereby also placing the government, in a negative limelight, thus forcing an
official response in order for the government to reinforce the meta-narrative of government control.
In a foreign policy or national security context especially one involving high levels of secrecy such
as nuclear weapons policy, deployments, threats, delivery systems, or outcomes of use, a relatively
simple five agent model such as that above may be difficult to specify but not impossible. In some
cases, the object of ire may be a local embassy of a target main group (for example, as occurred with
protests against Japan in China in recent years). However, we are not aware of any agent-based
modeling of the interaction of social media with elite perceptions, views, and policy-making in China
at this time. However, Dr. Jessica Chen Weiss provides another model for analyzing public protests
and their impact on foreign policy in China. China s government likely balanced several factors in
their decisions about dealing with protests. The model assumed governments calculated and made
trade offs in a rational manner. Governments could encourage and allow protests which always
runs a risk of getting out of control. Or they could pre-empt and avoid a protest at a possible cost of
appearing unpatriotic to their people. Under these assumptions, it would appear that Chinese
decisions to allow or stop domestic protests were allowed because they served diplomatic bargaining
leverage purposes.[29]
Nonetheless, we are always free to infer the mechanisms and processes by which social media
influences officialdom and vice versa, starting with the fundamentals and accounting for the
contextual and structural parallels between domestic Internet events and official policy with foreign
policy and national security concerns. As noted earlier, contending Chinese policy currents that
transect China s pyramid of power composed of the party, military, and line agencies confront a set
of master narratives about domestic and international issues that frame modern China. In terms
of the legitimacy of power (always a sensitive topic) at the center, these policy currents propose
different approaches to the primary issues of the distribution of wealth and power, equity and social
justice, political reform and democracy, ecological integrity, the fate of the oppressed minorities.
When such issues explode into Internet events, they provide an opportunity for central authorities to
monitor local developments, to direct ire against local agencies or to promote local solutions to
concrete local social problems. Bottom-up reporting of local events combined with expression of
local resentment are amplified by social media into Internet events, and enable the center to be
responsive to social grievances, in a long tradition of petitioning the center for redress against local
abuses of power and authority.
The Internet and social media thereby become a means whereby Chinese citizens can participate in
deliberations within China s rigid political system rather than requiring structural changes to create
a democratic, pluralist system. The latter may not look like a classic Western democracy, but it is a
possible dialectical response which allows China s Party to adapt and maintain its legitimacy by
managing an otherwise antagonistic contradiction between itself and its virtual civil society.
In some of the key concepts that legitimate Communist Party rule such as restoring China s rightful
place in the world,[30] national security and foreign policy concerns loom large. In the case of
North Korea, for example, the explosion of social media commentary on DPRK issues and its
sensitivity to the latest rumors, as well as field reporting along the border, included at various times
strongly stated views concerning China diminished prestige, its (lack of) ability to impose its will on
its small but nuclear-armed ally, and its passive role relative to the United States in coercing the
DPRK to capitulate on nuclear and other issues. This time, the social media commentaries coincided
with a policy line struggle that continued for months as various entities in Beijing considered
whether to demote the DPRK as full ally to a marginal and possibly negative relationship in the
context of regional and global geo-strategic considerations.[31]
In this instance, social media not only criticized core tenets of Chinese policy towards the DPRK
such as emphasis on slow reform before regime change, but focused directly on previously taboo
topics for public discussion such as nuclear weapons arising from the DPRK s campaign of nuclear
threats against the United States and its allies, and even, some admitted, directed against China
itself. The breadth and depth of this discussion were summarized in Table 2. Similar sentiments
and debates to those in social media were observed within the foreign policy and security elite at the
center. In some cases, officials used the stereotype of ugly North Koreans to whip up nationalist
sentiment (as in the fishing boat incident). But in general, Chinese virtual opinion and much of the
central officialdom have shifted their emotional and political loyalties away from an alliance born in
the blood of 900,000 Chinese casualties in the Korean War towards merely tolerating North Korea
but slouching toward eventual drift away from the North Koreans. To be clear, the official policy is
that the relations between the two countries are normal as opposed to previous characterizations
of a special relationship.
There are also generational fault lines: those who were directly involved in the Korean War as
Chinese People s Volunteers fighting in Korea have been out of power for almost a decade, while
the e-literate elites are present at most levels of China s government and account for almost all
provincial and municipal level leaders. The China-DPRK alliance holds for the younger generations,
but is strictly based on brutal self interest without regard to emotional and ideological ties forged
during the Korean War. The two generations also represent digital fault lines: digital outsiders,
digital immigrants and digital natives.[32] Those who fought in the Korean War are generally digital
outsiders with no social media presence whatsoever. The transitional generation roughly defined as
grandchildren of those who fought in the Korean War are digital immigrants. Almost all of China s
leaders at the municipal level and below are digital natives. China s political leadership is groomed
by serving in successively higher levels of responsibility. Today s municipal leaders are also twenty
to thirty years away from being in China s most powerful positions and they cannot relate to most
North Koreans.
POLICY CURRENTS AND BOUNDARIES
The boundaries where social media form flash floods that feed into tributaries that in turn, merge
into slower moving policy currents down-river, are chaotic and indeterminate. Sometimes social
media will be driven by central government policies, statements, and actions. In such cases, they
accelerate a bottom-up or sideways push effect. In other instances, social media will amplify
pressure building in a policy current to the point that it can burst through resistance and lead to
change instigated at the highest level, sometimes by replacement of senior officials. The ultimate
flood a burgeoning social movement demanding democratic pluralism faces a massive dam the
Party. But all sorts of billabongs, holding reservoirs, spillways, and other control devices exist to
forestall the day when virtual deliberative discourse would contribute to sweeping away the dam
represented by the Party s monopoly on political power. Since domestic politics always trumps
foreign policy, it is important to understand social media effects in this domestic context.
Overall, the always shifting boundaries of the chaotic interplay between personalized, networked
politics at the center with massive social media mobilization at the distal ends increases the volatility
and turbulence of policy making processes, not least because social media accelerates propagation
of errors, thereby increasing uncertainty. Top-level officials and political figures are driven by this
dynamic to seek ever-broader social and political bases in order to share risk and diversify their
sources of legitimacy and to demonstrate the breadth of their support.
Already observable trends in social media may affect the interaction processes. Chinese social
surveillance, and direct regulation of behavior in time-critical situations that arise from non-state
populations in the first place such as criminal networks moving drugs, trafficking in humans, or
smuggling nuclear weapons related knowledge or items. Many of the leaders of Chinese social
media, including elite security analysts and officials, are already networked with external parties,
and receive constant infusions of information and analysis in spite of the Great Firewall.[35] How
these new players affect China s foreign policy and security calculus is a critical variable in
governing the future security challenges that will confront its neighbors and competitors. In this
regard, civil society networks that communicate directly and effectively with social media in China
may be far more influential in helping China shape its policies than governments, especially in the
arena of security conflicts where governments are at loggerheads.[36] These networks provide
important channels for communication to prevent crises. When crises occur, they can also play
important roles in crisis management by moderating online responses, extending the amount of time
before a hot issue reaches crisis level, providing leaders more time and more options to resolve a
situation and resorting to dialog rather than threats of military force.
III. References
[1] K. Brown, China: What We Think We Know is Wrong, Open Democracy, May 15, 2013, at:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/kerry-brown/china-what-we-think-we-know-is-wrong
[2] Xiaowen Xu ascribes these categories to Guobin Yang,The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen
Activism Online, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, p. 13.
[3] See, for example, Chinese Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament: Principal Players and PolicyMaking Processes, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2009, at:
http://www.cns.miis.edu/opapers/op15/chart_11x17_china.pdf For a distinctly written by and for
Chinese view see: Xufeng Zhu and Lan Xue, Think Tanks in Transitional China , Public
Administration and Development, Vol 27, 2007. For a European overview of Chinese foreign policy
think tanks see: Pascal Abb, China s Foreign Policy Think Tanks: Changing Roles and Structural
Conditions , German Institute of Global and Area Studies, No 213, January 2013.
[4] China Internet Network Information Center, Statistical Report on Internet Development in China,
January 2013,at: http://www1.cnnic.cn/IDR/ReportDownloads/
[5] Ibid, pp. 4-5.
[6] China Internet Network Information Center, The Internet Timeline of China, 2012, at:
http://www1.cnnic.cn/IDR/hlwfzdsj/201305/t20130508_39415.htm
[7] China Internet Network Information Center, Statistical Report, 2013, op cit, pp. 18, 36.
[8] China Internet Network Information Center, Statistical Report, 2013, op cit, p. 47.
[9] Z. Tan, X. Li, W. Mao, Agent-Based Modeling of Netizen Groups, op cit, p. 39.
[23] At, for example, http://news.163.com/11/1121/11/7JCM79DL00014JB5.html
[24] Xiaowen Xu, Internet Facilitated Civic Engagement in China s Context: A Case Study of the
Internet Event of Wenzhou High-speed Train Accident, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
Columbia University, Master of Arts, Thesis, December 2011, unpaginated, at:
http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:143148
[25] Z. Tan, X. Li, W. Mao, Agent-Based Modeling of Netizen Groups in Chinese Internet Events,
Quarterly SCS M&S Magazine , (journal of Society for Modeling & Simulation International) April
2012, pp. 39-45, at: http://www.scs.org/magazines/2012-04/index_file/Articles.htm Tan et al refer to
Tecent, but the proper name
(from the website http://t.qq.com/) in English is Tencent, which is used here instead.
Social Media Usage, Resonance, at:
http://www.resonancechina.com/2010/05/11/china-social-media-usage-statistics/chinasocialmediausa
ge/
[35] In China, on-line adults fall into the following categories (individuals can be in more than one):
creators (40%), critics (44%), collectors (34%), joiners (23%), spectators (71%), and in-actives (25%).
See China Social Media Usage, Resonance,
at:
http://www.resonancechina.com/2010/05/11/china-social-media-usage-statistics/chinasocialmediausa
ge/
[36] J. Melissen, Concluding Reflections on Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in East Asia, in J.
Melissen, S.J. Lee, ed, Public Diplomacy and Soft Power in East Asia, Palgrave MacMillan, New York,
2011, p. 261.
IV. NAUTILUS INVITES YOUR RESPONSES
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Recommended Citation
Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos, "Internet Events, Social Media and National Security in China",
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http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/internet-events-social-media-and-national-securit
y-in-china/
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