spread among local Communist Party bosses, into the ranks of propaganda department, municipal police departments, and even the provincial party chief in Xinjiang province.38 This strategy has been encouraged by individuals such as Chen Tong ( ), the executive vice president and editor in chief of Sina.com, which is the largest website in China and also host to the country’s most popular weibo. Thanks to his advocating for party officials to embrace this trend, he reportedly convinced one hundred members of China’s parliament to launch their own weibo accounts during their most recent annual meeting in March, indicating that this strategy is gradually making its way into higher levels of the Communist Party.39 Despite these increased efforts by the Party to infiltrate the weibo, government officials’ prominence in the so-called “blogosphere” pales in comparison to that of other public figures, such as athletes, singers, and other entertainers.40 These highly popular accounts have been known to accumulate as many as ten million followers each.41 However, whether or not such immensely popular blogs can serve as a boon for civil society is much more uncertain. China’s Communist leaders seem to be well aware of the rise of virtual civil society in China, and of the potential threat that this might pose to their regime. Their understanding of the internet and its rising influence in China was exemplified in a speech on February 19, 2011 by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡 涛), in which he instructed a rovincial-level Party cadre that the Communist Party as a whole must do a better job controlling the growth of the internet and the xuni shehui (虚 社会), or “virtual society,” that it is creating.42 In the same vein, he went on to say that China’s leaders must work to
Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies!
strengthen their mechanisms for “guiding” public opinion. This speech by President Hu is particularly noteworthy because it took place so soon after the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned as leader and relinquished power under pressure from weeks-long protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere throughout Egypt. This event in turn also prompted an emergency meeting of the Chinese Politburo to address the surging wave of similar uprisings throughout the Middle East, and to discuss what ramifications this might hold for China.43 Coming from the absolute highest level of the Chinese Communist hierarchy, Hu’s speech demonstrated a profound understanding of the potentially revolutionary power of the Chinese internet, and expressed a surprisingly frank admittance that the internet was well on its way to developing an alternative avenue for Chinese people to associate with each other besides the Communistsanctioned channels. OUTSIDE ADVOCACY Since 2010, microblogging has exploded on the Chinese internet as one of the most popular forms of alternative association among Chinese people, naturally making the Chinese government extremely nervous and increasingly aware of the threat posed by the growth of a virtual civil society in China. The rise of microblogging does not comport with the story of triumphant Chinese nationalism under the Communist Party, and has revealed a number of underlying social problems that are indicative of the void left by the absence of a full-fledged civil society in China. The internet as a whole, and microblogs in particular, provides the best means for spreading awareness of these kinds of social issues, since it is the 13!