By Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang

Source: Marcohk’s flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.

On January 26, 2015, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released the seventh annual China Press Freedom Report, titled China’s Media War: Censorship, Corruption & Control. According to the report, on the one hand, the population of internet users in China has been increasing rapidly; on the other hand, internet censorship has been more restrictive than ever in the past year. Since China’s Internet Security and Information Leading Group was established under the directive of President Xi Jinping himself directly, in the group’s first meeting, Xi asserted that “efforts should be made to build our country into a cyber-power.” As the IFJ report notes, several measures of internet control have been implemented by the government. For example, 2,200 websites were forced to shut down and at least 20 million messages were deleted on social media platforms, such as WeChat, without reasonable explanation to the public. In fact, on January 13, 2015, China’s State Internet Information Office officially announced that the Chinese government has been enforcing the regulation of Internet Content Provider (ICP) license permitting China-based websites to operate in China since the start of 2015.

In order to reach Xi’s goal of building China into a cyber-power, the approach of internet censorship mentioned above is seen as a monumental task in achieving his goal. Such internet control may be a means to eliminate any possible “cyber nationalism” against the government on the internet. Cyber nationalism refers to a nationalism complex unleashed and communicated via various electronic media, such as emails, websites, instant messages, SMS, and mobile devices. It also can be employed in cyberspace to mobilize people and disseminate information on certain political issues. In this way, China’s new cyber nationalism is best understood in relation to the old school ‘People’s War’ in the traditional Chinese strategic outlook.

According to the latest report of China’s Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), by the end of 2014 Chinese netizens numbered 649 million in total, up nearly 100 million from just two years before. However, the Chinese internet user population is still only about 47.9 percent of China’s total population. The scale of cyberspace itself has also expanded exponentially: for example, the number of distributed TCP/IP addresses in China reached 332 million in 2014 per CINIC. With the present growth rate in internet access and scale, it is believed that China will become the world’s most networked nation.

Like other countries, China’s cyberspace has been utilized in various purposes of national development as a whole national information infrastructure, including banking systems, public transportation, resources supply chain, telecommunication, and government administration. China’s is by no means unique in this and China’s internet is certainly not monolithic. However, such online platforms can also be easily used to mount populist pressure in real life, especially when a nationalism complex has been indoctrinated in the massive Chinese populace from one generation to another. The indoctrinated nationalism of the masses, coupled with the ease and speed of circulating political information due to the features of cyberspace, namely permeability, anonymity, and transcendence of territory, may allow for a new formation of nationalism in the case of certain political triggers. Such triggers can be set off not only by the Chinese government but also by the people themselves.

Additionally, China’s cyber nationalism is likely to be manifested in two types: internal and external. The Deng Yujiao incident of May 10, 2009 is a significant example of internal online nationalism. Discussion of this incident spread nationwide via cyberspace, and netizens decried the government, some even setting up websites to support Deng. Incidents such as these make the Chinese government truly aware of the concentrated power of netizens.

An example of the external type of cyber nationalism is the response to an attack on a Chinese ship in the Mekong River in Southeast Asia on October 5, 2011, which resulted in the murder of 12 Chinese crew members. The incident set into motion a wave of the cyber nationalism as the news spread rapidly in cyberspace. Chinese netizens strongly urged the government to get involved in the international investigation of the incident. In addition, one online comment stated, “This incident may represent contempt and derision of China due to her weakness for a long time.” This shows that cyberspace offers a perfect medium for Chinese nationalism to be unleashed, facilitating the phenomenon of online nationalism.

In terms of the massive population in China, this leads to another question of how Chinese government can manage to discipline people in order to avoid the information power generated by the netizens against the government. In other words, in addition to internet control and censorship, in the modern era it is vital for the government to make a seamless transition from oppressing its populace in social movements to indoctrinating its people through education systems. Read Part II of Dr. Hwang’s analysis on the re-purposing of an old idea: the People’s War, to new effect in cyber, to learn more.

Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang is a visiting fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS.