The U.S.-China relations blog, MeiZhong Guanxi, has published a translation on the prospects of a Chinese democracy through the lens of the Internet.
The Internet is China’s most democratic area in which anyone can express their own viewpoint with a great deal of freedom. In fact, the Internet has become the testing ground for Chinese democracy. Unfortunately, the conclusions we have arrived at from this experimental forum are not all that optimistic.
Although the Internet has played a very positive role in a series of events and its positive influence has received more and more attention, China’s internet culture is still not healthy. The most prominent manifestation of this unhealthiness has been the saturation of violent language online. When online, a person who is normally gentle and refined may treat others unscrupulously, partake in baseless verbal attacks, and fearlessly employ poisonous, barbaric language. The deep digging of the ‘human flesh search engines’ and the ubiquity of false accusations against supposed Chinese traitors causes great harm to those involved. Furthermore, the degree of this kind of injury has already greatly exceeded what these people should have to bear. This kind of destruction of human rights, which is in complete opposition to democracy, is a classic example of the despotic rule of the majority, and this is exactly what countless democratic theory experts fear the most.
