An Emerging Online Public

This chapter focuses on the emergence of an online public in China and delves into its relationship with the party-state and various intermediary actors, as well as its interaction with legal and media institutions. It argues that netizens' everyday practices and participation in public opinion incidents facilitated the rise of contentious culture and China's contentious public sphere. Because the late 2000s were critical to the rise of an online public and the contentious public sphere, the analysis focuses mostly on this period. To depict a more comprehensive picture of Chinese netizens, the chapter first draws on statistical data to describe their demographic background, social networks, political attitudes, and political behavior. Next, it describes their everyday practices and participation in public opinion incidents. It then examines the case study of a public opinion incident involving food safety, and shows how netizens interacted with the Chinese party-state and various intermediary actors to make what happened a “public opinion incident.” Finally, the chapter draws on in-depth interviews with ordinary citizens to understand how netizens' everyday practices and participation in public opinion incidents contribute to politicization.

Introduction

This introductory chapter reveals that a nationwide contentious public sphere has emerged in China. It is an unruly sphere capable of generating issues and agendas not set by the Chinese state, as opposed to a sphere mostly orchestrated and constrained by said state. Over time, China's contentious public sphere has been increasingly recognized by the Chinese state as a force to be reckoned and negotiated with. Starting around 2010, official media of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), such as the People's Daily, began to warn of a threatening public sphere mediated by cell phones, the Internet, and even some unruly voices within state-controlled media. The state's awareness of these developments, however, means that one must not overstate the stability or permanence of the newly emerged contentious public sphere. Indeed, this provocative public arena has encountered serious opposition and setbacks, particularly since 2013. Seeing the rise of such a sphere as a threat to national security and an indication of ideological struggle between the West and China, the Chinese state has taken comprehensive and combative measures to contain it.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter offers some reflections on the rise of China's contentious public sphere. It argues that examining the public sphere in China provides valuable insights that extend beyond the Chinese case alone. The chapter thus discusses each of these insights in turn. The first is the development of the contentious public sphere in China, which is essentially a narrative about modernization—specifically, the unintended consequences of the Chinese state's modernization project. Second, the study of China's contentious public sphere is also relevant to what can be referred to as “the problem of emergence.” Finally, the chapter also sheds light on the relationship between the state's fragmentation and adaptability and the public sphere.

The Chinese State Strikes Back

This chapter discusses how the Chinese state has strategically responded to a rising contentious public sphere in China. Throughout, the chapter highlights the novelty and significance of these developments. The emergence of a contentious public sphere in China is a remarkable event—one that warrants further investigation precisely because its future remains so unclear. The chapter focuses on the Xi Jinping's leadership techniques and their consequences. It also compares the rationalities of rule underpinning his and the previous administration as it helps to make sense of why the Xi regime has been so aggressive in its attempt to curb the contentious public sphere.

Critical News Reporting and Legal-Media Collaborative Networks

This chapter details how the state's use of media to disseminate law and report on certain local problems, paired with political fragmentation and the marketization of the press, provided conditions for certain media and legal professionals to build networks and collaborate. Such collaboration pushed the boundaries of critical news reporting and expanded the concept of rights beyond socioeconomic issues. The chapter first demonstrates the rise of critical news reporting in the mid-2000s. Next, it describes how media marketization—a process that accelerated starting in the early 1990s—reshaped the political, economic, and professional environment in which Chinese newspapers were embedded. After briefly describing a parallel process in the transformation of the legal profession, the chapter then shows how the national process of media marketization and law dissemination programs unfolded differently in localities with dissimilar political and market conditions.

Extending Liberalization from the Press to the Internet

This chapter examines the connection between the press and the Internet sectors. It discusses how and why the major Internet companies providing news service and social media in China became a thorn in the side of the Chinese state, despite the state's efforts to control them. Existing studies of rising public opinion in China tend to focus on how technological properties of the Internet can empower citizens to bring about social change and how the Chinese state has attempted to forestall such change. Such work tends to pay less attention to the ways in which particular contexts mediate and moderate the technological effects of the Internet. The chapter traces the restructuring of the media field in China, especially the development of the online news market, following the state's decision to connect the country to the Internet. As the chapter demonstrates, preexisting conditions in the newspaper market played a key—but often neglected—role in shaping China's online news market and discursive arena.

The Chinese State’s Turn to Law and Rights

This chapter illuminates the contentious culture and practices based on the law and rights, discussing why and how law and rights became a critical part of China's political culture and a central theme in China's contentious public sphere. First, the chapter briefly situates the PRC government's turn to law and rights, as well as the rise of legal and rights consciousness, in a longer historical context. Then it traces how a series of problems that emerged following the Cultural Revolution motivated the government's turn to law and rights, as well as its campaign to transform Chinese people into legal subjects. Finally, the chapter describes law dissemination on the ground and its consequences. Because the chapter serves to explain the rise of China's contentious public sphere in the post-2005 period, the focus is primarily on developments in China's legal system before the mid-2000s.

The Rise of a Nationwide Contentious Public Sphere

This chapter establishes the starting point: the rise of a nationwide contentious public sphere in China, a development which can be traced to the mid-2000s. Here, the chapter aim to address challenges and questions regarding the rise of public opinion in the Internet age. It also seeks to gauge how public opinion has been affected by the Chinese state's sweeping attacks on the Internet and various actors, such as lawyers and journalists, since 2013. Tracing the historical patterns of public opinion in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a formidable task given the compounded difficulty of finding direct measurement and longitudinal data. Examining reports regarding public opinion in the People's Daily as well as interview data related to that coverage provides one way to access and assess historical patterns of this otherwise elusive phenomenon.