China Since Tiananmen: Online Activism

Issue Date July 2009
Volume 20
Issue 3
Page Numbers 33-36
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Online activism is an integral part of the broader landscape of citizen activism in contemporary China. It assumes a variety of forms, from cultural and social activism to cyber-nationalism and online petitions and protests. Technological development and social transformation provide the basic structural conditions. A fledgling civil society of online communities and offline civic associations, the logic of social production in the internet economy, and the creativity of Chinese internet users combine to sustain online activism under conditions of growing political control of the internet in China.

About the Author

Guobin Yang is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009).

View all work by Guobin Yang