Informed nationalism: Military websites in Chinese cyberspace

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 14, Issue 44, 2005, Pages 543-562

  Yongming, Zhou ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INTERNET; NATIONALISM;

EID: 22144440174     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670560500115481     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. See Edward Friedman, 'Chinese nationalism, Taiwan autonomy and the prospects of a larger war', Journal of Contemporary China 6(4), (2000), pp. 5-32;
2. Alan Liu, 'A convenient crisis: looking behind Beijing's threats against Taiwan', Issues & Studies, (September-October 2000), pp. 83-121;
3. Suisheng Zhao, 'Chinese nationalism and its international orientations', Political Science Quarterly 1, (2000), pp. 1-33.
4. See Suisheng Zhao, 'A state-led nationalism: the patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China', Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31, (1998), pp. 287-302;
5. Zhang Xudong, 'Intellectual politics in post-Tiananmen China', Social Text 16, (1998), pp. 1-8.
6. Yu Huang and Chin-Chuan Lee, 'Peddling party ideology for a profit: media and the rise of Chinese nationalism in the 1990s ', in Gary Rawnsley and Ming-yeh Rawnsley, eds, Political Communication in Greater China: The Construction and Reflections of Reality (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 41-61.
7. Other works on contemporary Chinese nationalism include Suisheng Zhao, 'Chinese intellectuals' quest for national greatness and nationalistic writing in the 1990s', China Quarterly, (1997), pp. 725-745;
8. and Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
9. See Christopher R. Hughes, 'Nationalism in Chinese cyberspace', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 13(2), (Spring-Summer 2000), pp. 195-209;
10. Kim-An Lieberman, 'Virtually Vietnamese: nationalism on the Internet', in Rachel C. Lee and Sau-ling Wong, eds, AsianAmerican.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 71-97;
11. Ravi Sundaram, 'Beyond the nationalist panopticon: the experience of cyberpublics in India', in John Thornton Caldwell, eds, Electronic Media and Technoculture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), pp. 270-294.
12. See Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas, Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment Working Paper No. 21, 2001);
13. Nina Hachigian, 'The Internet and power in one-party East Asian states', The Washington Quarterly 25(3), (Summer 2002), pp. 41-58;
14. Nina Hachigian, 'China's cyber-strategy', Foreign Affairs 80(2), (March/April 2001), pp. 118-133.
15. As the reader-response school in literary criticism has pointed out, the reader of a text plays an active role in deciphering and reinterpreting the meaning of an extant text. Different readers may have different responses to the same text, depending on readers' tastes and literary connoisseurship that are conditioned by various factors at the time. The text itself is not an edified entity and it alone cannot dictate the responses it will get from readers. For a more detailed discussion, see Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
16. Initially these websites did not attract too much attention from the authorities, until a posting revealing details concerning China's development of the J-10 new generation jet fighter was circulated on several military websites in 1999 and resulted in the subsequent arrest of a young engineer who had tried to show off to his peers in cyberspace. After the incident, popular military websites started to feel pressure from the authorities and increased their self-censorship efforts accordingly. For details, see 'Jianshi xierman zhenpoji', at http://chinaha.myrice.com/military/commentary/2001/019/comment-3810.htm.
17. Nicholas D. Kristof, 'The chip on China's shoulder', The New York Times, (18 January 2002).
18. James Kynge, Edward Cheng and Chris Bowie, 'China says bugs found on president's plane', published on FT.com, (18 January 2002, 21:41).
19. James Kynge, 'Chinese presidential jet bugged', Financial Times, (19 January 2002);
20. John Pomfret, 'China finds bugs on jet equipped in US', The Washington Post, (19 January 2002). In addition, CNN.com put the news as the default front page of its website, and the television network ABC also did a report on the event. The plane-bugging incident therefore was covered by both traditional and new media.
21. The Strengthening-China Forum was established by the People's Daily Online on 9 May 1999, one day after the US-led NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Though the forum is officially sponsored, it was an instant attraction to Chinese Internet users to voice their anger toward the US and has remained one of the most influential political BBSs in Chinese cyberspace.
22. CNN, 'China downplays Jiang's jet bugging', http://www.cnn.com/2002/ WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/22/china.bugs/index.html.
23. The message was posted at 13:10:43 on 20 January 2002 (Beijing time). Since the Qiangguo Forum keeps an archive on its server, it is easier to find the old message by tracing back its original posting time, as long as the message is not deleted by the forum monitors.
24. Posted in the Qiangguo Forum at 21:30:17 on 19 January 2002.
25. Posted at 21:44:51 and 21:35:47 on 19 January 2002.
26. 'Jiangzong zhuanji bei anfang qietingqi-geng xiangxi de shuofa', http://www.v-war.net/cgi-bin/bbs/bbs.cgi?menu=show&id= 200109192313&slttitle=200201191. Posted at 15:25:47 on 19 January 2002.
27. http://www.v-war.net/cgi-bin/bbs/bbs.cgi?menu=show&id= 200109192313&slttitle=200201201, posted at 13:22:18 on 20 January 2002.
28. 'Kan CNN wulai jiaobian: its common!!!', http://www.v-war.net/cgi-bin/ bbs/bbs.cgi?menu=show&id=200108092357&slttitle=200201201, posted at 18:45:15 on 20 January 2002.
29. This was not the first time that strong anti-US sentiment in Chinese cyberspace was noticed by Western media, as shown by the title of a Cox News Service report by Christine Xiaoting Xu 'Chinese chat rooms are teeming with anti-Yankee venom', during the days following the collision between a Chinese jetfighter and a US reconnaissance plane off Hainan Island on 1 April 2001. See Christine Xiaoting Xu, 'Chinese chat rooms are teeming with anti-Yankee venom', Wisconsin State Journal, (4 April 2001).
30. There is a shortcoming in this quantitative criteria system because some members can constantly post a large quantity of 'garbage' messages just for the sake of accumulating enough postings to be promoted to higher ranks. It is usually the webmasters' job to discourage such behavior. If repeated warnings are not effective, the webmasters can decrease one's accumulated points for each 'garbage' posting one has posted, and even resort to the ultimate punishment of banishing the offender by blocking the individual's IP address and not allowing the offender to log on to the V-War site again.
31. The Hope Project is China's biggest charitable program, supporting school-aged children in poor areas. Irregularities in the program management were broached earlier, but have since been a forbidden topic for public discussion in official media.
32. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 937749&ID=937749.
33. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 775965&ID=775965.
34. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 576207&ID=576207.
35. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 888203&ID=888203.
36. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=20&RootID= 542733&ID=542733.
37. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=42&RootID= 933542&ID=933542.
38. Huang Shoufeng, On Comprehensive National Power (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science Press, 1992).
39. The 'yellow' and 'blue' civilizations were terms popularized by the then influential television documentary River Elegy.
40. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=42&RootID= 1019950&ID=1019950.
41. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 1005331&ID=1005331.
42. Jie Chen, Popular Political Support in Urban China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004).
43. Based on the interview conducted with Li Shenzhi on 20 August 2001. Li mentioned the introduction of the concept of 'national interest' in an article published under the pen name Zhizhi in the Wanxiang magazine [Panorama Monthly] the same year. For details, see 'Shiji zhijiao de zhanqian guhou' ['Reflections at the turn of the century'], Wanxiang 3(6), (June 2001), pp. 102-119, especially pp. 105-106. Mr Li Shenzhi passed away in April 2003.
44. Deng Xiaoping, Selective Works of Deng Xiaoping (Beijing: Renmin chubanshi, 1993), p. 330.
45. See Strategy and Management no. 3, (2001), pp. 53-60.
46. For a detail discussion, see Deng Yong, 'Chinese conception of national interests in international relations', China Quarterly 154, (June 1998), pp. 308-329.
47. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 831660&ID=831660.
48. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RooLID= 561028&ID=561028.
49. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 538589&ID=538589.
50. Interview with He Jiadong, 19 August 2001.
51. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=20&RootID= 956344&ID=956344.
52. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=12&RootID= 1010943&ID=1010943.
53. http://www.tiexue.net/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=20&RootID= 993081&ID=993081.