ABSTRACT
Online fora and social media in China are generally seen as new input channels that allow the articulation of public opinion and enable people’s indirect political participation. This chapter provides an overview of the use of microblogs by Chinese civil society in both online and offline protests, based on a selection of moments of contestation between 2009, the launching of Sina Weibo, and early 2015/2016, when Xi Jinping presented China’s revised e-governance strategy. The decision to allow Chinese companies to re-open microblogs might thus also stem from strategic economic calculations. The political potential of microblogs is hence in reality much more limited than was initially believed. In Western media, the decline of the number of individual microblogs on Sina Weibo and other Chinese platforms after 2012 was interpreted as being ultimately the result of Chinese people’s increasing uncertainty regarding the tightened regulations and control mechanisms.
