ABSTRACT
A university student user is even more involved with the Internet than an average young Chinese Internet user. Fifty-four percent of university student users are willing to comment on the Internet, and two-thirds report themselves to have developed Internet dependency. The research concentrates particularly on university students, which comprise a digitally savvy segment of the Chinese population, and attempts to comprehend how the Internet affects Chinese people and the political system. Two public universities were selected for the survey by adopting the stratified cluster sampling technique. The characteristics of the educated youth greatly reflect the influences of the one-child policy, rapid economic development and globalization, advancement of information communications technologies, and a liberal social atmosphere. The political and socioeconomic backgrounds of university students imply that this group of educated youth tends to be the winners of the system or at least come from winning families. University students are highly exposed to horizontal and vertical communications online.
