On The Chinese Characteristic Cyber-democracy

Thanks to the vigorous promotion by the government, we have witnessed the great development of China's internet since 1994. The developing and applying of internet have posed a deep influence over China, as well as in the Chinese socialistic democracy. The cyber political participation is now an ordinary political phenomenon in China. As a result of the government actively works to built institutional mechanisms to accommodate the cyber political participation, a Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy is burgeoning and growing. Presently speeking, Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy is at its primary stage,.to give its a theoretical and practical research to reveal the generative process, internal logic and basic nature, will not only contribute to the evaluation of its influence to Chinnese socialist democracy, but also help us to the understand the special logic of the Chinese political development.This dissertation uses a trinity analysis framework which emphasizes the interaction between technology, society and state. The basic theoretical paradigm is:the Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy is the result of the co-constructing of technology, society and state. The developing and applying of technology generates a new cyber public space, the social political use of technology forms a social spontaneous cyber political participation, and while the state's integration of this social spontaneous cyber political participation gives birth to Chinese characteristic cyber democracy, whose essencial meening indicated by the cyber political participation in institutional ways. This dissertation deploys its mainly body in three parts, following the three clues of technology, society and state.The first part (Chapter Three) reviewed the developing process of China's cyber public space, which was seen as the technologic foundation of Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy. The process was consisted of three steps:the initiation (1994-1998), the expanding (1999-2002), the booming (2003-2010). The logic of the growing was clear:the updating of technology, the active participating of society and the deep intervening of the state.The second part (Chapter Four) mainly discussed the generative mechanisms, the form of expression and the limitation of the function of spontaneous cyber political participation, the booming of cyber political participation was influenced by two institutional factors:the accumulated structural participating pressure during the social reforming and the structural participation advantage of the cyber public space in technology. IN the mean time, the elite cyber citizen's leading and innovation, the ISP's promote which based on the commercial interest brought about the demonstration effect, both of them made the concrete mechanisms which pushed the growing political participation. There are four types of spontaneous cyber political participation:the cyber public discussion, the cyber supervision, the cyber virtue association and the cyber collective action. This spontaneous cyber political participation not only released the participation pressure, but also empowered the society:the strengthening of social voice, the rising of the level of social self-organization and the ability to struggle, the upgrading of the ability of social supervision. However, there are two critical disadvantages in this kind of participation:the disordering development of the participation due to the lack of the self-regulation mechanism, and the question of representativeness because of the inequality in participation process.The third part (Chapter Five) explored the state logic of the generating of Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy which took the institutional cyber political participation as its nature. To the state, the spontaneous cyber political participation caused a certain impact, in terms of political legitimacy, social order and the government's decision making. Facing with these impacts, the state firstly tried to deal with the participation through the normal cyber regulation, in order to evade the negative influence brought by the participation. However, this kind of direct integration model has serious disadvantages in many ways. Recently, the state tried an indirect integration model which featured with the method to institutionalizing social cyber participation. The new integration model not only helps the state to maintain the social cyber participation in a controlled situation, but also generates an important consequence, that is non-institutional social cyber participation has transformed into a institutional cyber democracy.The generating and developing of Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy help in improving the governments'ability of governance in the new era, and it complement much to the development of China socialistic democracy, such as the tenderness enhancment. The formation process of Chinese characteristic cyber-democracy reveals a unique political development pattern of China:under the social pressure, and consider the rationality of rule, the state would actively and positively to make selected institutional innovations to absorb the social political demands, which result in a benign political integration between the state and the society.