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AbstractHow does communism as an ideology fare in the post‐reform digital age China? What are the implications for China's ideological governance? Through online ethnographic work and text analysis, this paper identifies and analyzes how communism as an ideation and a practice is (re)memorized, (re)presented, and (re)interpreted in popular online fictions. In doing so, it reveals how such "communism nostalgia" passes on the "red genes," shaping citizens' understanding of history, the communist ideology, and their expectations toward the current regime. The popular trend creates a predicament of ideological governance for the Chinese regime by allowing it to garner historical legitimacy while also questioning the very nature of the regime today—to what extent has it deviated from its ideological root? By focusing on everyday politics of digital experiences, the article approaches authoritarian ideological governance from a nonconventional perspective, highlighting the agency of ordinary citizens in the process.

The article aims at offering a bird's-eye overview of the evolution of cyber politics in China in the past 30 years, tracking real-world developments while surveying the main trends in the scholarly field. It periodizes the past three decades into three phases with a focus on the changing state–society relations. It reveals that cyber politics in China has evolved from the period of an empowering Internet with the state adapting to catch up to one of authoritarian resilience when social participation and state control reached a balance, and ultimately to the "authoritarian dominance" phase with the state attempting to dominate the society and platforms. The article concludes by discussing the future trends of cyber politics in China, arguing that "authoritarian dominance" is detrimental to the Party-state's rule, thus will hardly be sustainable despite the state's strong capacity and will to control the Internet.

This article examines popular nationalism and regime support in the Xi era by evaluating news comments from a major overseas Chinese website on the 2018 constitutional amendments removing presidential term limits. It finds that the event was not only contested among overseas and domestic Chinese, but also has alienated many nationalists who previously supported the regime. Even the subsequent pro-regime discourse is less focused on support for Xi or the regime, and more about distrust of the West and dissidents. However, some citizens have become less critical toward the regime out of the concern of external threats. The findings confirm the Xi Jinping effect on nationalist regime support, and show how China's international and domestic environments may activate nationalist sentiment differently. (J Contemp China / GIGA)

AbstractRecent studies on internet politics in China have gone beyond the once dominant control–liberalization perspective and directed intellectual attention to the varieties of online activism. Based on extensive in-depth online ethnographic work, this project explores the pluralization of online expression in Chinese cyberspace. Following a constituency of internet users who identify themselves as the "voluntary fifty-cent army," the paper explores how these users acquire and consolidate their identity and combat criticism that targets the authoritarian regime. Analysis of the confrontational exchanges between the "voluntary fifty-cent army" and their opponents suggests that a perspective that goes beyond state censorship and regime-challenging activism is required in order to gain a better understanding of online expression in China. Close examination of why and how internet users may voluntarily defend the authoritarian regime also reveals how the dynamics in online discourse competition may work to the authoritarian regime's advantage.