From The Washington Post (link):
They’re known as Internet evangelists — the people who have unwavering faith in the democratizing power of the Internet. It’s a term coined by James Mulvenon, deputy director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, to describe those who cling to the belief that the Internet “leads to ‘tulip’ and ‘orange’ and every other possible color and flower of revolutions around the world.”
Then there’s China.
The Chinese Communist Party, long expected to be a victim of economic modernization and the transformative powers of technology, has instead been learning how to use those powers to its own ends. This isn’t merely a matter of the widely publicized blocking of the Internet; the CCP has been learning how to use the Internet as a tool for surveillance.