Department of Sociology, Peking University, China.
This paper starts with analyzing some characteristics of the social-economic status and demographic characteristics of netizens in China. Based on profiling the netizens, this paper analyzes the emergence and popularity of online political discussion in the historical context of economic reform and urban residence reform. It indicates that online political discussion should be understood from a threefold perspective–first, as a successor to Neo-Enlightenment thought; second, as a replacement of former political discussion in everyday life; and third, as political participation being transformed from ritual to articulation of interests. This paper illustrates that the emergence of online political discussion changes people's political participation in two ways: first, it offers a new way to articulate personal political ideas more freely and bargain with the government more efficiently; and second, the experience itself in the online community cultivates new ideas and dispositions toward political participation. Thus, it indicates that people in urban areas are experiencing a new political order. Furthermore, this paper indicates that online political discussion maps out a new pattern of state-society relationship.
