Last year the China Internet Network Information Center, the official body assigned the task of monitoring Internet security in the People's Republic of China (PRC), announced that the number of Internet users in China had eclipsed the half billion mark.1 Over that same period, Chinese state media published several articles comparing Google to the British East India Company; microblogs, in particular Sina's popular Weibo service, were used to spread information and outrage in the wake of a horrific train crash and botched cover-up in July 2011; and more recently a spirited online debate forced the Beijing municipal government to begin releasing detailed reports on that city's epic air quality problems.
It is not surprising then that international coverage of Chinese netizens has focused on the Internet as a space for confrontation and negotiation between state and society, but this is far from being the only—much less the entire—story of...
