This essay aims to explore the characteristics of China’s network society under the Xi Jinping era and makes discussion under the background of management of network society for this purpose.
Since the inauguration of the Xi Jinping era, China’s n...
This essay aims to explore the characteristics of China’s network society under the Xi Jinping era and makes discussion under the background of management of network society for this purpose.
Since the inauguration of the Xi Jinping era, China’s network society has seen many new changes. On the one hand, numerous unstable factors exist in online society, reflected mainly in five aspects, namely, (1) foreign internet attack and hacker invasion, with representative event of American PRISM Gate, (2) personal information leakage and cyber-porn, infringement of intellectual property rights, illegal websites, internet fraud and other network crimes, (3) decline of position of mainstream public opinion, (4) abruption between mainstream public opinion field and folk public opinion, (5) internet rumors. On the other hand, offline society still has a multitude of social problems. Since 2000, China has maintained amazing economic growth rate worldwide. However, with economic development, various unstable social factors increase by years, such as household registration issue of migrant workers, deteriorative labor relation, environmental pollution, severe corruption, forced demolition and consolidation of social hierarchy and the relevant mass disturbance also takes place frequently. In addition, online and offline unstable factors are always mixed and become more complicated. In short, China has made huge economic achievements in an extremely short time yet with a huge cost, which is non-sustainable development pattern.
Given many unstable factors existing in online and offline society, the Xi Jinping-led government made important instructions by putting forward a slogan of comprehensively deepening reform. Among these instructions, social management in society domain that receives much attention is as important as network social management as its secondary range. Therefore, in order to study the management system of network society, the framework of this essay is as follows. Namely, network society is divided into online society and offline society. Among these, this essay focused on public opinion guidance as by approaching the management system of online society, which is divided into red public opinion, gray public opinion and black public opinion according to the characteristics of internet public opinion. Offline society focused on grid management mode raised in recent years, and discussion of Taoyuan mode of Taoyuan Street of Shenzhen as a case. Moreover, because connection between online society and offline society is the internet, this essay also studies safety control of this kind of connection, namely, internet security problem. Therefore, internet security, public opinion guidance and grid management are three cores of this essay and also three pillars of management system of network society in the Xi Jinping era.
First, in the aspect of internet security, in order to improve responsive ability of internet to hacker attack and protect personal information from being leaked, the Chinese government releases a series of laws and regulations. And in order to fight against cyber-crime, the Chinese government takes a series of particularly special actions to make rectification. Through this series of measures, the Chinese government greatly enhances defense capability of internet and simultaneously also intensifies control and management of internet. However, this kind of action is legitimated and systemized in a manner of legislation.
Second, red public opinion refers to China’s mainstream ideology, socialist core values, patriotism and love for national leaders. The way of the Chinese government towards red public opinion is certainly propaganda. However, spontaneous propaganda of cyber citizen is much more effective than traditional indoctrination and inculcation official media takes. In the aspect of gray public opinion, this essay takes Dongguan eliminate pornography and illegal publications as a case to make discussion. When abruption between mainstream public opinion field folk public opinion field, official media takes numerous mechanisms to lead the direction of public opinion to mainstream public opinion instead of blind control. For black public opinion, the Chinese government takes multiple measures to sever or filtrate illegal information, including (1) public opinion of attacking the Communist Party, (2) topic of advocating independence of ethnic minorities, (3) Falun Gong and other sensitive topics. Besides, after the Xi Jinping era comes, management and control of internet rumors is also more stringent. But the Xi Jinping-led government also provides this kind of management and control with basis of law in a manner of legislation, in other words, the trend that management and control of internet is legitimated and systemized through legislation becomes extremely obvious.
Third, it’s about offline society. During the past 10 years, China has gradually shifted its development focus from economy to social construction. Under this background, China raises social management, and later turns social management with strong implication of management and control gradually into social governance stressing mutual participation of members of society. Therefore, in order to respond to this policy, basic-level government proposes many innovative social management modes, one of which is grid management. Grid management refers to a kind of mode that community as a center is divided into grids for management. However, because many problems exist, grid management is not separated from fixed thinking of stringent management and control as well as safeguarding stability yet. Even so, the reason why the Chinese government does not give up safeguarding stability is that it does not take mass disturbance as general meaning of social security problem but as the incidents shaking the ruling foundation of the Communist Party. Therefore, grid management mode without separation from safeguarding stability has to be deviated from mutual participation of members of society emphasized by social governance. Although society is networked by grid management mode, its management tools are not networked.
It’s found through this essay that the economic sphere in the Xi Jinping era is relatively open; however, it is impossible to introduce western-style democracy into China’s political sphere. In the social field, on the one hand, it has carried out much more rigid control than ever within the Chinese government’s impermissible scope. On the other hand, the Chinese government has given cyber citizens sufficient political participation right within the scope of its permission. Therefore, it is hard to say that the Chinese government is controlling the Internet unconditionally.