The power of disengagement and mass entertainment

6.3.3 The power of political disengagement and mass entertainment

Participants’ accounts provide empirical evidence that the Party and State was no longer the exclusive provider of information and interpretation of what was happening, because the Internet offered them alternatives.

Another easier way for authoritarian governments to rationalise their mobilisation of societal resources, suspension of personal liberties, or initiation of an unpopular policy is to ‘claim evidence of a tangible threat emanating from a demonized domestic group, foreign state, or international organization’ (Taubman, 1998, p.257). A way for them to legitimise the unsatisfying domestic situation is to let their public see worse situations in foreign countries. The two tactics have been skilfully employed by CPC online to legitimise its claim to power (see Chapter 5, 5.2.1). For example, Japan, Indonesia, NATO, Taiwan, and the United States have all been demonised and claimed as threats to China. web-based grassroots nationalism protests against those countries have been organised (Qiu, 2003). For example, when asked if she compared war reports with the current situation in China, P05 said, “I did a little bit. But I have a feeling that we are now in peace when I compare. With comparison, well, (I think that) the Party is very useful. At least we are living a peaceful and safe life” (see Table 82).

However, the Internet makes it more difficult to manipulate understanding of different social groups or foreign states. The study finds that participants knew and understood better different social groups, foreign states, or the outside world in general through various channels and they developed confidence and skills to search for needed information and make their own judgement. For example, P01 compared news on the domestic situation with news on the situation in foreign countries, he said that ‘news on foreign countries showed more the bad sides, probably sometimes beautified reports on domestic situation, and the situation in foreign countries seemed unstable or in bad order’ (see Table 16). P01 reveals a picture of the world painted by the party-state’s propaganda, better called ‘mass persuasion’, system through selective news reporting and information filtering to legitimise its rule (Brady, 2008). The party-state strategically demonises countries like the United States (Brady, 2008) and portrays China as stable and harmonious (see Table 16, P05; Brady, 2008; Liu & Yang, 2014, cited in Marolt & Herold, 2014) with ‘positive’ news and ‘no bad news during holiday periods or sensitive dates’ (Brady, 2008, p.96).It portrays some foreign countries as chaotic and unstable in order to engineer consent (Brady, 2008). The strategy works in some ways. Damm (2007) found that Chinese Internet users interviewed tended to describe the democratisation processes in Russia and democracy in Taiwan as chaotic and problematic. The influence of such a strategy is also evident in P05’s understanding of news reporting in China (see Table 16).

However, it is found that such a strategy does not achieve unified results and it is challenged by easy access to different information sources online. P01 said that ‘he did not think foreign countries were as unstable as reports said because news focused on dramatic happenings’ (see Table 16). And he would investigate when making a decision on whether or not work in the reportedly unstable countries. It is evident that P01 believed there was a difference between news on the domestic situation and news of foreign countries and had his own understanding of that difference. Moreover, he did not rely solely on news when decision-making was concerned. Common users’ bicycling blogs provided P01 with knowledge and understanding of places or people he did not know. P01 also got to know and meet two people from a different social group who were older than him and with income, through an online bicycling forum (see Table 46).

Another example is P06, who made friends with different music fans and tour pals through the Internet. They arranged lots of activities like hanging-out, short trips, attending concerts, and visiting each other’s cities together through the Internet. The Internet provides P06 an enjoyable way to know different people and places. For example, he witnessed an anti-Party demonstration in Hong Kong when visiting his couchsurfing friend in Hong Kong and claimed to be inspired by the power of democracy (see Tables 36 & 54). He regularly climbed over the Great Wall to access Twitter for information about incidents of emergency (see Table 59), professional news websites like CNN for details of the incidents (see Table 13), and the Facebook of several close friends who then studied abroad for information about the countries where they stayed (see Table 60). This means it is much harder to lead the opinions of Internet users like P06 and also much easier for P06-like users to doubt and challenge the government’s claims. The Internet does not work alone in exerting such an influence. It interplays with other changes in China like the rapidly increasing number of Chinese overseas students and those who returned to China after their graduation (see Table 2).

The so-called ‘liberation by gadgets’ theory (Morozov, 2011, p.59) can explain another important influence of political disengagement and mass entertainment, the latter in particular. Socioeconomic comparisons with the lives of other people generates dissatisfaction with the current system, since ‘livelihood satisfaction constitutes one of the major sources of regime legitimacy’ (Han, 2012, p.920). How do socioeconomic comparisons work to produce dissatisfaction with the current system? As discussed in Chapter 2, 2.4.1, economic growth has been taken as the cornerstone of party legitimacy since 1978. Moreover, Chinese people’s attitude toward the one-Party state since 1978 has been quite pragmatic and their willingness to support the one-Party regime has been based on the Party’s ability to deliver economic benefits (Han, 2012). With information monopoly, it is possible for the Party and State to declare that the economy grows faster and life is better, safer, and more prosperous in China than in other countries (Taubman, 1998) as the Party and State had done with songs like “Socialism is Wonderful”. Loss of the information monopoly makes this impossible. China’s Internet censorship makes a clear distinction between the open area of apolitical arenas and the taboo area of political communication (Qiu, 1999/2000). Beautiful pictures and videos of other places and countries’ sceneries, life, food, commodities and so on are widely available online to boost consumption, especially travelling. Consumption of such information constitutes a considerable part of participant’s online activity (see Tables 33 & 54). The easy access to such apolitical information already poses a notable threat to the Party and State’s justification of its legitimacy.

To make the situation worse, people compare. And their comparison leads to dissatisfaction with their material or political well-being and thus discontent with the current system. In his study of the causes of internal political violence, Lawrence Stone concluded, ‘human satisfaction is related not to existing conditions but to the conditions of a social group against which the individual measures his situation’ (Urry, 1973, p.86, cited in Taubman, 1998, p.258). Social cognitive processes are believed to affect people’s life satisfaction more than objective circumstances (Han, 2012). Several studies have found that ‘positive self-evaluations’ in ‘social comparison with relevant reference groups can elevate the level of satisfaction’ (Han, 2012, p.921). Therefore, it is plausible to assume that negative self-evaluations leads to a decline in the level of satisfaction. Mass entertainment and networking online exposed participants to the lives of famous and rich celebrities, stars, friends, classmates, people of common interest, and people who travelled a lot (see Tables 31, 33, 54 & 60) and plenty of information and images of happy leisure time. This supports Leibold’s (2011) finding of China’s blogosphere as an ‘individualized, ephemeral, and lifestyle-based pool of infotainment’ (p.13). Exposure to others’ happiness, enjoyment, and leisure stimulates participants’ desire for a better, happier, and freer life as P01 said, “I want to go travelling after reading their blogs” (see Table 47).

Comparison across different countries or areas of different economic or political arrangements challenges ‘the prerogatives, policy direction, and even legitimacy of the ruling government’ by providing alternatives (Taubman, 1998). People’s knowledge of alternatives is considered as an important factor for political change (Taubman, 1998). The study finds vivid evidence for such a comparison. For example, when she talked about how watching American TV series like Desperate Housewives influenced her, P05 expressed a longing for a better life. She said, “there is certainly a longing for their living environment.… that is to say, when I watch their life, I probably may think that I could live such a life in the future” (see Table 56). P06 was much more explicit with this topic and gave rich details of good examples. He posted a microblog about comparison between children’s welfare in America and that in China when viewing a child beggar. He implied a comparison between Hong Kong people’s political well-beings and that of mainland China by saying, “they (Hong Kong people) have the environment and conditions to express what they really think.”(see Table 36) And also one of his former classmates posted on his/her Facebook a comparison between commodity prices in the UK and those in China (see Table 60). He also read someone’s comparison of income in China and America and concluded that the rising of commodity prices and inflation in China is a bit scary. He believed that the person just ‘stated a fact’ and ‘it was the real situation in America’ (see Table 86). When he talked about his online news reading, he said, “it (The Internet) allows me to see news reports at home and abroad to compare Western and Eastern cultures, or ideologies, or world views, or values so that I know what best suits me and I will choose news that stresses the values I choose... I tend to believe Western values. Firstly it is democracy and freedom” (see Table 82).

P08 also made the comparison when talking about the political influence of the Internet in China. She said, “in China there is no medium which is as powerful as Aljazeera that could expose the dark side of the government and find out the truth. In China, no entity or individual is powerful enough to counterbalance the government.” P10 observed that watching political satires whose content was against the Party and Western culture raised his doubts about the current political system in China and led to his favour of Western democracy. He said, “after viewing, I began to question my old opinions. Before I thought the policies in our country are very good. After viewing those videos, I think that policies in Western countries are better than ours. The doubt arose. By comparison, I think, I have such an idea that we should adopt the Western policies.”

Other participants of the focus group did not explicitly express their preference for Western democracy over the current system. Their attitudes were still apparent when they talked about the influence of the Internet on the current political system. Five participants, all except P09, believed that it was impossible to change while only P09 worried that the result might not be democracy but instability if the changes happened too fast. Their belief and worry indicates that no participants thought that the current system was good enough. No participants questioned why China should be democratised. It indicates that participants all wanted to change and they believed that democracy is a better system. The people who want to change, have been recognised by Lerner and Pevsner (1958), as an important factor promoting modernisation, and by Schramm (1964) as one of the key factors for national development. They believed that mass media promoted people’s need to change by showing them how other people live. Following the logic of Lerner and Pevsner (1958) and Schramm (1964), the researcher argues that people who want democracy are critical to democratisation and the Internet facilitates people’s need to change.

To conclude, P06 believed that the Internet worked in the political changes in Egypt, he said, “take Twitter revolution in Egypt for example. Almost through the Internet, they showed the good side and the democratic aspects of Western countries to people in an undemocratic country and aroused their doubt about their political system and values. And the people were swayed” (see Table 74). Such discontent, longing for a better life, and belief in a better alternative did not result from massive political information consumption, political debates, or political participation, but from little politics and mass entertainment. The Internet might not increase its users’ political knowledge as it fails to do so in democratic countries. However, it ‘stimulates an appetite for the American way of life’, which can pose a genuine threat to the government that is unable to provide it. This is the power of political disengagement and mass entertainment. P09 held the belief that the direction of the influence depended on the majority who knew little and cared for nothing more than their own interests, like the other participants (see Table 84).

,It is important however to note that the seemingly diversified sources of information or ideologies are not so diverse at all. The information and ideas the participants encountered are generated overwhelmingly by people at and above the middle class level, people who should be called the bourgeoisie in China. These people do not represent the majority of people in China. The content they generate reflects a bourgeois ideology, not ‘many different ideologies’ at all in that sense. The participants care more about the bourgeois lifestyle than the political, economic, and social arrangements that make such a lifestyle accessible to the vast majority of a society. Therefore, it may be safer to argue that the participants’ Internet use reflects the winning of the bourgeois ideology over that advocated by the party-state, rather than that the Internet creates an ideationally plural environment for them.

The inclination for the bourgeois ideology and lifestyle is arguably a reflection of the reality rather than a challenge to the party-state. Some scholars (see Chapter 2, 2.4) maintain that the party-state has been taking the liberal and neoliberal path in its field of economy with its political system largely intact since 1978. It does not pose a genuine threat to the regime of the party-state as long as there is not any economic crisis that badly affects the bourgeoisie’s pursuit of such a lifestyle and such content and ideology does not reach or affect the lower class in China. At the same time, it is plausible to argue that China is maybe heading towards a bourgeois democracy. Maybe the situation is best summarised by the metaphor a writer for The Times of London used to describe what happened to some of the former communist countries - China maybe will escape ‘the grip of dictators to fall instead under the spell of Louis Vuitton’ (Morozov, 2011, p.68).

At the same time, it is worth noting that the participants came from a specific cohort of the Chinese Internet users. Firstly, it is ungrounded to assume that what they chose to expose themselves to is the full picture of the online world. Secondly, more evidence is needed to argue that their choices of content and values represent those of other Chinese Internet users.

6.3.4 Control or liberation: Huxley vs. the gadget theory

Aldous Huxley’s (1894-1963) version of political control is one of ‘powerful and yet strikingly different visions of how modern governments would exercise control over their populations’ in the twentieth century (Morozov, 2011, p.75). The other vision is developed by George Orwell (1903-1950) which describes a way of control by ‘pervasive surveillance and mind-numbing propaganda’ (p.76). In Brave New World (1932) and Brave New World Revisited (1958), Huxley portrays a world in which:

‘science and technology are put to good use to maximize pleasure, minimize the time one spends alone, and provide for a 24/7 cycle of consumption. Not surprisingly, the citizens lose any ability to think critically and become complacent with whatever is imposed on them from above.’ (p.76)

As for mass media like television and the Internet, they provide a great variety of entertainment and pleasure tailored to individuals’ needs cheaply to their audience or users. Media entertainment works as cheap opium which gradually and unnoticeably deprives its audience or users of their ability to think critically and act. Moreover, it produces increasing support for the current regime among its audience and users. According to Morozov (2011), modern authoritarian regimes use both methods of control.

The participants studied demonstrate evident orientation toward entertainment and lifestyle content in both information consumption (see, for example, Tables 33, 54 & 55.) and expression online (see Table 66), and also wide political disengagement. P01 explicitly expressed his news-reading habits as ‘read without deep thoughts and forget when shutting the page’ (see Table 14) and his inability to describe how he felt about what he read (see Table 85). There is not any proof that his news-reading habits and his inability to express himself was a result of his Internet use, but clearly his Internet use did not promote the development of his ability for critical thinking.

Contrary to Huxley who sees media entertainment as a way of control, the gadget theory sees media entertainment as a way to liberate. The gadget theory is one of the two theories that ‘explain exposure to Western media could have democratized the Soviets’ (Morozov, 2011, p.59). The ‘liberation by facts’ theory assumes that Western media liberate the Soviets by showing their citizens the facts about their governments’ misdeeds they did not know before. The gadget theory maintains that Western media ‘made citizens living under authoritarianism dream of change and become more active politically’ by ‘spreading images of prosperity’ and ‘fuelling consumerist angst’ (p.59). How the gadget theory works in China has been elaborated on in the above section, the power of political disengagement and mass entertainment.

The two contradictory theories invoke one question. Is entertainment a method of control or a way to liberate? The answer to this question lies in the answers of another two questions. Does the establishment of liberal democracy need at least most of the population to be equipped with the ability of critical thinking? There are lots of scholars who believe that the ability to rule including critical thinking ability is the gift of democracy, not a precondition for it. If their belief holds water, then there is still a possibility for liberal democracy to emerge in a nation with most of its population unable to think critically. However, there is never a want of theories going against that belief. Democracy without rational participation of its able citizens still favours those who know how to benefit from the system and thus is not true democracy at all (Chapter 2, 2.2.2 & 2.2.6). If the answer to the question is yes, entertainment could be an effective method of control.

Secondly, does entertainment generate strong discontent and longing for a better life that the current system is unable to deliver? If it does and the citizens of a democracy do not need to be capable of critical thinking, entertainment can be a way to liberate. If it does and the citizens of a democracy need to be able of critical thinking, it is highly likely to reproduce another form of, or just another, authoritarian regime. On the contrary, if entertainment satisfies the citizens and the citizens find no reason to shift to a liberal democracy, they will need other reasons for change. Of course, the whole inference is based on the assumption that entertainment disables its audience or users from critical thinking and action. Actually, some entertainment could be enlightening, like travelling. Therefore, it is hard to define whether entertainment is a method of control or a way to liberate. It depends on so many other conditions including the other conditions for democracy (see Chapter 2, 2.2), the capacity of authoritarian regimes to meet the increasing needs of their citizens, the nature of the entertainment the citizens enjoy, the living conditions of the citizens, and so on.

To sum up, the Internet can play a complex and ambiguous role in an authoritarian regime. Like citizens in democratic countries or democratising countries, citizens in authoritarian regimes prefer soft news and entertainment to politics. They long for the lifestyle that democracy enables more than the norms or institutions democracy requires. Nobody gives much thought to what else democracy should mean other than ‘affluence’ (Morozov, 2011, p.67).

‘When the popular Czech cartoonist Rencin draws his vision of what freedom will bring, he draws a man blissing out on a sofa, surrounded by toys and trophies – an outdoor motor, a television set with VCR, a personal computer, a portable bar, an LP grill. There is not a trace of irony in it: this is what freedom means’ (p.67).

That may be the picture many Chinese people draw when asked what democracy means. They are likely to embrace any political form democratic or undemocratic that makes that picture their real life and oppose any that fails to do so. China has been embracing the free market and consumerism since 1978 and it seems to have strengthened rather than undermined its regime (Morozov, 2011).