Information Technology and Grassroots Democracy

A Case Study of Environmental Activism in China

Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Kent State University Symposium on Democracy

Guobin Yang

Globalization raises many new questions about democracy. One central concern is the relationship between democracy and the Internet-centered new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The networked nature of these new technologies gives them the capacity to link citizens and citizen groups together as never before. What kinds of linkages are formed and with what consequences for democratic participation in public affairs? I explore these questions through an empirical analysis of the emerging environmental movement in China.¹ The study seeks to ground an understanding of the bundled relationship among democracy, ICTs, and globalization in the analysis of local experience. It is perhaps no coincidence that the rise of what may be called global studies comes with a renewed fascination with the local.

The environmental movement in China emerged in the early 1990s. Its development coincided with the development of the Internet. One consequence of their parallel development is the adoption of the Internet by persons and organizations in the movement. In several Eastern European countries, the coevolution of ICTs and civil society organizations has led to new organizational forms (Bach and Stark 2002). Are similar transformations taking place in the field of environmental activism in China? This article explores these transformations. I will show that ICT use by individual citizens has given rise to discourse communities and Web-based environmental groups, while ICT use by existing environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has created mega-NGOs and online resource networks. The rise of these new organizations and organizational forms indicates how ICTs have enabled new forms of voluntary citizen action. It suggests that the wedding of ICTs with civil society organizations may strengthen the institutional and technological infrastructures of citizen participation in public affairs. In discussing the implications of this analysis, I caution that these institutional and technological infrastructures will remain weak unless their construction is complemented with the building of a strong citizenry.

Theoretical Approaches to the Political Analysis of ICTs

Traditional studies of environmental security assume that environmental degradation will lead to conflict. Recently, scholars have argued that environmental change impinges on security through interactions with institutional factors and therefore analysis should focus on the interactions between environmental change and institutional transformation. Rayner and Malone (2000) call for more attention to the voluntary associational activities in a society, because these activities provide the infrastructure for making strategic choices about environmental problems. Barnett’s notion of human-centered environmental security emphasizes the importance of democratic institutional change for environmental security. In Barnett’s words, “more participatory forms of governance mean more environmental security.” (2001, 149)

The initial wave of social science research on the Internet uncritically applauds the Internet as a new tool of democratization. Yet some classical and more recent media theories provide little support for the view that new information technologies will have a linear benign effect on democratic development (see Barney 2000 and May 2002, for critiques of this literature). As researchers become more sensitive to the broader contexts in which technologies are used, they begin to emphasize the interactions between technology and institutions, much as scholars of environmental security stress the interactions between environmental change and institutional transformation. Arguing that information technology (IT) shapes discourse, identities, and collectivities, Calhoun (1998, 2002) nevertheless emphasizes that IT is introduced into a world of existing social relations, culture, capitalism, inequalities, and the creativity of engineers, designers, and users. In other words, information technology is shaped by society even as it changes it. Sassen (2004) argues that local actors can contribute to global politics through the use of new ICTs, yet ICT use depends crucially on the hard work of civil society organizations and individuals. Similarly, the authors of an edited volume on digital democracy argue that ICTs are only an addition to, not a replacement of, existing practices, and that deeper understandings of the nature of politics, political institutions, community, and citizenship are necessary for understanding the political roles of ICTs (Hacker and van Dijk 2000). In their work on NGO use of the Internet in Eastern Europe, Bach and Stark (2002) argue that NGOs and the Internet follow a coevolutionary path, leading to the rise of new institutional forms to creatively confront the uncertainties in new times. For the political analysis of ICTs, a crucial lesson from these studies is that more attention should be given to the coevolution and interactions of technological and social structures. The coevolutionary model of interactive technology and NGOs developed by Bach and Stark (2002) provides a good starting point.

A Coevolutionary Model of ICT and Civil Society Development

The basic argument in Bach and Stark’s coevolutionary model of ICT and civil society development is that nongovernmental organizations may undergo change in their organizational forms in the process of using Internet-centered interactive technologies. This has to do with the nature of the new technologies, which have powerful capacities to link, search, and interact, but it also is related to the nature of civil society organizations and the larger context in which they operate. In their case, Bach and Stark focus on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in several post-Socialist Eastern European countries, which provide “an extraordinary laboratory” (2002, 4) for exploring their coevolutionary thesis, because in those regions the emergence of NGOs coincides with the digital revolution. Furthermore, both developments have been taking place under conditions of uncertainty as these countries adapt to a rapidly changing global economy. Under these conditions, NGOs find in the new ICTs both a resource (such as for accomplishing basic communication tasks) and an experimental arena in exploring organizational innovation, partly because ICT use may lead into unexpected avenues. In one situation, for example, Bach and Stark (2002, 16) find that ICT use by NGOs “often leads to the creation of networks of communication beyond its purview.”

In the empirical part of their study, Bach and Stark show the emergence of three new organizational forms in NGOs’ use of interactive technology. The first type is called “hybrid NGOs,” namely, NGOs “that combine social and business ventures . . . where revenue-generating is separated from the NGO”s social mission (2002, 11). Such hybrid NGOs approach information as a commodity even while they work to promote the democratic use of information. The second new organizational form, NGOs as knowledge sources, is a derivative of the first. Here Bach and Stark focus on new media arts organizations, arguing that these organizations treat users as producers of knowledge rather than mere users. They serve as “knowledge sources” by running collaborative and interactive projects with “users as producers.” The third organizational form is meta-NGOs, that is, organizations whose “primary purpose is to provide information and assistance to other NGOs, including databases and online services . . . and serve as clearinghouses for a country’s NGO community in whole or in part.” (2002, 15)

Bach and Stark’s model fits the Chinese context well. As in Eastern European countries, NGOs and the Internet have developed in a parallel fashion in China. China was officially linked to the Internet in 1994, which coincided with the founding of Friends of Nature, China’s first environmental NGO. Thus, like the NGOs in Eastern Europe, the Chinese environmental NGOs also provide an almost natural laboratory for analyzing its coevolution with the new information technologies. What is absent from Bach and Stark’s analysis but is significant in the Chinese context is that ICTs not only can play a role in transforming existing organizations but also give birth to new organizations. As I will show below, in China’s environmental movement, loosely organized discourse communities and Web-based groups are new organizations made possible by ICTs, whereas pre-existing NGOs may grow into mega-NGOs and online resource networks after they begin to use the Internet.

The Internet and Environmental Activism in China

The environmental movement in China is spearheaded by NGOs. There are different types of environmental NGOs. Some are not officially registered. Others are registered as business enterprises but operate as NGOs (Jin 2001). Many are student environmental associations in higher education institutions. There are no complete statistics on the number of environmental NGOs in China. A survey conducted in 2001 shows that there were 184 student environmental associations in Chinese universities (Lu et al. 2001). I calculated the number of nonstudent environmental NGOs based on the most recent sources (Young 2001; Turner 2002; NGO Research Center 2002; Friends of Nature Web site, http://www.fon.org.cn) and came up with a list of sixty-seven such organizations. The list does not include the numerous government-organized NGOs (GONGOs).¹

My data indicate that the environmental NGO movement took off in the mid-1990s and accelerated in the late 1990s. Two years, 1996 and 1998, seem to be especially fertile periods for the founding of environmental NGOs. Of the sixty-seven environmental NGOs in my data, thirteen were founded in 1996 and ten in 1998. The trend is slightly different with university student environmental associations. The number of student environmental associations began to increase steadily in 1997, with eleven founded that year, thirteen in 1998, twenty-one in 1999, and twenty-six in 2000.

The growth of environmental NGOs coincided with Internet development in China. Although the number of environmental groups increased significantly in 1996, 1998 and 1999 jointly had an increase bigger than any other two years combined. This trend is particularly clear for the student groups. In addition, 1998 was the year the Internet became popularized in China. When China was connected to the Internet in 1994, there were only 10,000 users, who were mostly specialized personnel involved in computer technology development. The number of Internet users had jumped to 2.1 million by December 1998 and 59.1 million by December 2002.²

With the parallel development of the Internet and the environmental movement, it is not surprising that China’s environmentalists have found new spaces for environmental action on the Internet. Environmental Web sites have been set up by individual persons as well as by environmental NGOs. The popular ones among them attract daily hits by the hundreds.³ In this coevolutionary process, new organizations are born while existing organizations undergo change. I now turn to discuss four new organizational types.

Discourse Communities

One peculiar product of the coevolution of the Internet and the environmental movement in China is discourse communities. These are virtual communities in online bulletin board systems (BBS). They are at most only loosely organized, usually with the moderators serving the informal role of an organizer in attempts to guide online discussions. Environmental discourse communities are found in many different types of Web sites. Web-based environmental groups (see below) almost always have bulletin boards. The Web sites of some environmental NGOs, such as Friends of Nature, have bulletin boards. Some Web sites of international environmental NGOs with offices in China have bulletin boards. An example is the Web site of the China Program Office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (www.wwf.com.cn/). The online communities operated by commercial portal sites often include environmental forums. For example, Netease.com has a “Green Forum” (http://knl.bj.163.com/cgi/main?guest=1). Some personal Web sites devoted to environmental issues have bulletin boards. One example is a personal home page called Green Globe (http://theglobe.ep.net.cn/greentea.html). It was set up on December 31, 1999, by a high school girl and has attracted a lot of media attention. Finally, even the Web sites of some government institutions have discourse communities devoted to environmental protection. For example, the popular China Youth Daily newspaper has a special environmental Web site called “Green Net” (www.cyol.net/gb/cydgn/note_593.htm), which publishes a lot of environment-related information and runs an online bulletin board.

Environmental discourse communities provide spaces for public communication about environmental issues. Such communication may involve information sharing, announcing activities and events, networking, and sometimes even socializing, but it may also involve the articulation of environmental problems and serious debate. Just to mention one example: On February 27, 2003, a detailed summary about a campaign to protect a small plot of wetlands in the suburbs of Shanghai was posted in one of the bulletin boards run by the China Program Office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (www.wwfchina.org/bbs/bottomtest.shtm?channelid=9&id=116773). On March 4, 2003, another message was posted containing the Chinese translation of an English article published in Shanghai’s English-language newspaper Shanghai Star regarding the same issue. As of March 7, 2003, just several days after the posting of the messages, the bulletin board system indicates that the first message had been accessed 182 times and the second one 130 times. In other words, a local environmental issue was brought to the attention of the above-mentioned discourse community and then attracted a great deal of interest.

Web-based Groups

Web-based environmental groups are loosely organized citizen groups that use the Internet to promote environmental protection. Some Web-based groups have evolved from discourse communities. Others are organized off-line first. Often unregistered and short of resources, they identify themselves and operate as NGOs. For these groups, the Internet is a primary space for conducting and organizing environmental activities, some of which also take place off-line. Their Web sites and associated bulletin boards serve multiple purposes. They are used to disseminate information in order to raise public environmental awareness. They help the organizations recruit volunteers for implementing community projects and display their activities. They also give these groups public visibility. For groups of volunteer environmentalists with no official status, an online presence is a key sign of their existence.

One of the most active Web-based groups is Green-Web (www.green-web.org), which was launched in December 1999. Its main founder previously had spent two years as a volunteer webmaster for the “Green Forum” of the influential portal site Netease.com. The idea of launching this independent environmental Web site first arose from discussions on the “Green Forum.” As of July 2002, Green-Web had about twenty core members in three cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing) and about four thousand registered online users. The Web site functions as a space for online discussions and exchange on environmental issues. Green-Web volunteers have begun to organize community environmental activities. One recent activity was a community education initiative called “Green Summer Night.” Usually with borrowed audiovisual equipment, Green-Web volunteers go into parks in Beijing to put on environmental exhibits or show environmental documentaries. Green-Web also organizes bird-watching, recycling, and tree-planting activities. One of the most “aggressive” actions it organized was the launching in February 2002 of an online petition campaign to protect some wetlands in Shunyi County in suburban Beijing. Between February 2 and April 12, 2002, the campaign collected hundreds of online signatures, sent petition letters to about ten government agencies, and was reported by the media. Together with a media campaign and the efforts of other environmental organizations, Green-Web helped put an end to the development plan.

Mega-NGOs

Bach and Stark consider mega-NGOs as organizations whose “primary purpose is to provide information and assistance to other NGOs.” (2002, 15) China has its own mega-NGOs in the environmental field. They are mega-NGOs in the sense that they also try to serve as information clearinghouses for the larger NGO community, yet their operations are not confined to this function. While providing assistance to other NGOs, the most influential environmental NGOs in China run their own projects and programs.

The main example of a mega-NGO in China’s environmental movement is probably Friends of Nature (FON). Friends of Nature made its name before it went online, thanks to its charismatic founder and leader Liang Congjie, who has become an icon of China’s environmental movement. In 1998 he was selected to meet with U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair during their respective visits to China. Liang has won many international awards, including the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2000.

Friends of Nature is a member-based organization. In its first years, its members were mostly middle-aged intellectuals and professionals. After launching its Web site in September 1999 FON began to accept online applications. This induced a change in its membership composition. Because China’s Internet population is relatively young, the number of applicants below age thirty-five increased significantly. A staff member of Friends of Nature estimates that about 80 percent of the online applicants are below thirty-five, while 60 percent of its total 1,500 membership are below thirty-five (e-mail correspondence with FON staff, November 13, 2002).

Friends of Nature are mainly engaged in environmental education activities and projects. It operates an environmental education van that tours schools to conduct environmental exhibits and lectures. It also runs a “Better Environment Scheme” in elementary and middle schools, organizes bird-watching activities, and provides technical and educational support for other environmental groups. In this last function, Friends of Nature comes closest to the mega-NGOs in Eastern Europe. One of FON’s main resources of environmental education and support is its Web site and online newsletters. As of March 2003, its home page has a sophisticated Chinese version and a simple English version. The Chinese version contains detailed information about projects and activities, environmental news, a listing of other Chinese environmental NGOs, a listing of FON’s library resources, collections of members’ environmental writings, an electronic newsletter, an online edition of FON’s print newsletter, links to domestic and international NGOs, and a bulletin board system (BBS) with sixteen online forums on different environment-related topics. As of March 10, 2003, FON’s BBS had 1,207 registered users with 7,204 messages posted. Besides showcasing FON’s own activities and projects, the Web site serves as an information clearinghouse for China’s larger environmental NGO community. One recent example was FON’s extensive coverage of the Second Assembly of Global Environment Facility (GEF) held in October 2002 in Beijing. The assembly provided a special forum for China’s environmental NGOs to network among themselves as well as with international funding agencies. FON’s online coverage includes an introduction to GEF, a list of Chinese NGOs that participated in the Assembly’s NGO forum, and the complete texts of the main speeches made by China’s environmentalists at the Assembly and its NGO forum.

Online Resource Networks

Craig Warkentin (2001) describes a peculiar type of NGO that he calls online resource networks (ORNs). Unique products of the Internet, these ORNs function as gateways to many NGOs, offer Internet-based tools and services, provide means for communication among NGOs, and serve as information sites for the public. To some extent, the mega-NGOs discussed above provide some such functions. Yet, mega-NGOs like Friends of Nature do not primarily depend on the Internet for their existence, while ORNs exist primarily on and because of the Internet. Warkentin analyzes two ORNs, Institute for Global Communication (IGC) and OneWorld. As yet, there is no online resource network in China that can compare with IGC or OneWorld in size or influence, yet some small ORNs are emerging. Greensos is a good example.

Greensos is a Web site (www.greensos.org) run by the Sichuan University Environmental Volunteer Association (SUEVA), one of the most influential student environmental associations in China. It was founded in 1995 by Lu Hongyan, then a graduate student specializing in environmental planning and management. In 1997 Lu joined the faculty of the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering in Sichuan University but continued to influence the growth of the organization as faculty adviser. In 2000, Lu won a minigrant from the Elisabeth Luce Moore Leadership Program for Chinese Women on Environment and Community, which allowed her and SUEVA to build the organization’s Web site into an information clearinghouse for university student environmental associations nationwide. At present, Greensos is a network that seeks to integrate the Internet with project implementation, training, and volunteering. The Web site is run by student volunteers. As of March 2003 it features many resources, including: (1) news and activities about student environmental organizations, (2) environmental resources and information, (3) mini-grant applications (funded by Ecologia), (4) study reports, (5) a bulletin board system, (6) a listing of student environmental associations in China, and (7) a downloadable survey report about the development of university student environmental associations. Greensos is as yet the best online resource network both for student environmental associations and for those who wish to understand current student environmental activism in China.

Environmental Activism, the Internet, and Politics in China

The parallel development of the Internet and environmental NGOs in China is more than a coincidence. Both the Internet and environmental NGOs are subject to the pressure of similar political conditions. They are in a structurally similar position vis-à-vis the Chinese state. Generally speaking, the Chinese government has played a leading role in building a new information economy, part of which involves the construction of data networks for the Internet (Harwit and Clark 2001). At the same time, however, the Chinese government has been developing a regulatory framework to regulate and control Internet content (Harwit and Clark 2001). While the Internet opens many new possibilities for communication and socialization, it is neither without nor beyond control (Yang 2003). Individual and organizational users of the Internet often find themselves walking a fine line between what is permissible and what is not.

The Chinese government has taken a similarly ambivalent approach to environmental and other types of NGOs. Given serious environmental degradation, it puts high priority on environmental issues, has promulgated a comprehensive set of environmental laws and policies (Alford and Shen 1998), and has explicitly encouraged the growth of a “third force” in handling China’s growing social problems, including environmental problems. On the other hand, the government also seems to be reluctant to give full rein to NGO development. Two regulations were promulgated in 1998 on the registration and management of social organizations and nonprofit organizations, which turn registration into a difficult and taxing process. One article, for example, stipulates that in order to register a social organization, the applicant must have a sponsoring institution before it can register with the local civil affairs bureau. Finding a sponsoring institution is not an easy thing, because an NGO is considered a liability not an asset to its sponsoring institution (Jin 2001). Under these conditions, some environmental groups have registered as businesses in order to evade the regulations but have operated as NGOs. Several prominent examples include Global Village of Beijing, the Institute of Environmental Development, and Green Plateau Institute. These organizations have been called nonprofit enterprises (Jin 2001). One product of the coevolution of ICT and NGOs in Eastern Europe, according to Bach and Stark, is hybrid NGOs. “Nonprofit enterprises” are China’s hybrid NGOs, but they are the products of China’s peculiar political condition, not of the new information technologies.

Transnational Connections

Within the constraints and opportunities of Chinese politics, the coevolution of ICTs and environmental NGOs in China is facilitated by many factors. One such factor is the increasing number and types of connections between Chinese environmental NGOs and transnational civil society organizations (TCSOs). First, many TCSOs have significantly influenced the development of China’s environmental NGOs by providing funding, organizing workshops and meetings, and assisting Chinese NGOs in capacity-building. All the organizations studied above have received some form of funding from TCSOs. For example, a study of Friends of Nature carried out in 2000 finds that 52 percent of its funding came from international sources while membership dues account for only 3 percent of its funding (Hu 2002). Its sponsors include Ford Foundation, Save Our Future, and Caritas-Hong Kong. Green-Web has received funding from an unnamed Hong Kong–based foundation as well as Global Greengrants Fund. In the case of Greensos, it received international funding specifically for developing its Web site into an information clearinghouse for student environmental associations. Greensos has also received funding from the ASA Foundation in Germany and Ecologia in the United States.

Second, Chinese NGOs actively seek to network with TCSOs. Thus, many of their Web sites have English versions to target English-language readers, though these English sites are usually underdeveloped. Third, some TCSOs are directly involved in creating environmental discourse communities in China. The best example is the Web site run by the China Program Office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a transnational environmental organization whose work not only targets regional environmental problems but also contributes to what Wapner (1996) calls “world civic politics.” The WWF’s China Program Office supports environmental protection and sustainable development through many projects. Its Chinese Web site functions as a major information and organizational hub for environmental volunteers in China.

Digital Challenges for Environmental NGOs in China

While my analysis shows that Internet use by environmental NGOs in China has produced new forms and possibilities of organized citizen action, it must be emphasized that China’s environmental NGOs face many challenges in their efforts to harness new ICTs for more extensive and effective grassroots environmental action. One challenge is the overall shortage of resources (both material and human). Although several flagship NGOs fare somewhat better, the problem is common to all NGOs in China. In many cases, the Internet helps overcome such resource shortage, for example by enabling the organizations to recruit volunteers online to do virtual volunteering or by conducting cost-effective online campaigns. Yet, many organizations are poorly equipped with computer facilities. I interviewed the principal organizers of four Web-based groups in Beijing in June and July, 2002, namely, Green-Web, Greener Beijing, Tibetan Antelope Information Center (TAIC), and Han Hai Sha: A Volunteers Network Devoted to Desert in China. Of these four groups, three had one computer each while the last one did not have even one. Although all four groups have Web sites, none has its own server. Their Web sites are run on either rented or donated server space.

Another major challenge for environmental NGOs with regard to ICT use is the low computer literacy in China’s interior and rural regions. This reflects the digital divide in China, where coastal and urban areas are much more wired than the interior and rural regions. Many environmental NGOs seek to build networks with local communities inflicted with serious environmental problems, to implement projects there, and to bring local environmental problems to national attention. They hope to be able to communicate with local communities via the Internet, e-mail, or other network services. Yet, environmental degradation is often linked with poverty, so that the regions where environmental NGOs concentrate their work often happen to face poverty. For example, in some regions in Qinghai where the Tibetan Antelope Information Center works for the protection of endangered species, “Some people have no idea about what going online means,” as one of my respondents said (interview, June 22, 2002).

China’s environmental NGOs face other problems in the use of ICTs, but the two challenges discussed above are sufficient to show the divided realities. While new information technologies enable more citizen action and organizing, citizens and citizen groups are not equally equipped with the facilities or the skills necessary to take advantage of the digital revolution. A digital divide hinders the realization of more extensive grassroots participation in public affairs.

Information Technology and Grassroots Democracy in an Age of Globalization

There are many well-founded fears about the fate of democracy in an age of globalization. One such fear is the growing domination of media and public spheres by corporate interests and political power and the new networks of political and economic power made possible by new information technologies (Lyon 1994; Lessig 1999). Yet, the age of globalization is an age of contradictions and opposites. Thus, while new information technologies are exploited by the powers-that-be, they also have been harnessed so as to enhance organized citizen action at the grassroots level.

My analysis provides concrete evidence of the conditions and consequences of the interactions of information technologies and grassroots citizen organizations. The analysis has several broader implications. First, it shows that new information technologies may serve as infrastructures for organized citizen participation in public affairs. Discourse communities, Web-based groups, and online resource networks are the unique products of the Internet, and it would be hard to imagine their existence without the technological infrastructures. Second, the use of ICTs by civil society organizations may lead to changes in organizational forms or the emergence of new organizational forms. This suggests that ICT use may have gradual transformative effects on social institutions. The message is of great import for the construction of democratic institutions. On the one hand, it means that democratic institutional building should take into account the building of communication infrastructures, because in crucial ways, democracy is a system of institutions for communication.⁴ On the other hand, given the well-known dangers of building surveillances and control into the architectural codes of technologies (Lessig 1999), it also means that the construction of communication infrastructures for democratic institutions must itself be based on democratic ideals. To citizens, communication technologies may be more or less open and interactive. To the extent that openness and interactivity are positive attributes of democracy, making communication technologies more open and interactive becomes essential. In the political analysis of ICTs, however, what features of ICTs are especially effective for what kinds of democratic practices remains little known. This should be an important area for future research.

Finally, the building of communication and institutional infrastructures for democracy is insufficient on its own. I have already pointed to the reality of how political and economic forces control and manipulate communication infrastructures in explicit or hidden ways. Insofar as communication infrastructures are subject to control by powerful interests, they are only weak infrastructures for democracy. One of the most important ways of confronting this challenge is to bring citizenship back in. Nowadays, it is no longer common to talk about citizens except in order to exclude (as it often happens in the field of immigration). Citizens have been transmogrified into consumers, taxpayers, and voters. Yet citizenship, with its associated rights and responsibilities, is the very basic foundation of democracy. In an age of globalization and information, to bring citizenship back in means, among other things, that citizens are entitled to information and the access to information technologies and that they have the responsibility to master new information technologies and use them for democratic participation. It also means that social and political institutions have the responsibility to help citizens achieve this goal. Here is where citizenship interfaces with civil society. Civil society organizations are not mere users of new information technologies, they also teach these skills to citizens and mobilize citizens to become active producers of knowledge through the use of new technologies (Bach and Stark 2002). Critics of the information revolution thesis have argued that information technologies do not automatically lead to more democratic politics. As one such critic puts it, “We can recognize the possibilities and potentiality of the information society, but we have to make it happen, there is no ‘natural’ development path” (May 2002, 160–61). “We” are citizens. The burden of achieving the democratic potentials of the new technologies rests on a strong citizenry equipped with democratic communication infrastructures and anchored in civil society institutions.

Notes

1. The research for this article was conducted as part of a larger study of the relationship between technological change and institutional transformation in China. Initial research for the project was made possible by a grant from the University Research Council of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The writing was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Grant No. 02–76177–000-GSS). Special thanks are due to Eldon Wegner for unfailing support and to Jennifer Turner for providing contact with environmental organizations in Beijing.

2. GONGOs have an important role in environmental protection and may evolve into NGOs. Yet GONGOs are not representative of the environmental movement because they are primarily government initiated and supported. See Wu, 2002, for a study of GONGOs.

3. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) defines Chinese Internet users as Chinese citizens who use the Internet at least one hour per week. For statistical information on China’s Internet development, I rely on CNNIC’s survey reports. These biannual reports are accessible at its Web site: http://www.cnnic.net.cn.

4. A hit refers to a visit to a Web page. Technically speaking, a hit is a single file request in the access log of a Web server. Thus, a visit to a HTML page with a graphic image will count as two hits.

5. Habermas once defines democracy as “the institutionally secured forms of general and public communication that deal with the practical question of how men can and want to live under the objective conditions of their ever-expanding power of control.” (1970, 57)

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