ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the role of the mobile phone in today’s social structures in Beijing. China is in a unique historical movement. According to the data provided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of the PRC, Beijing is not only at the heart of the movement but also in the leading position in terms of Internet penetration (69.4 per cent) and mobile phone adoption (121.4 per cent) in China (MIIT 2011). New media communication has become part of the daily lives of Beijing residents. Against this backdrop, it is interesting to know how social relationships are changed in Beijing in an age of mobile communication. In the West, we are told how the new media communication resulted in the emergence of ‘networked individualism’ and ‘imagined privacy’ in human experience, but how does the Chinese context read this epoch? In order to answer the question, the focus is on analysing what kind of social ties are strengthened or weakened by the spatial change brought about by the diffusion and use of the mobile phone. Such enquiries have rarely been explored in the urban Chinese context. As such, this is going to have significant research value for those who would not want to overlook the Chineseness of cyber China.
