Who watches over the party-state? In this engaging analysis, Maria Repnikova reveals the webs of an uneasy partnership between critical journalists and the state in China. More than merely a passive mouthpiece or a dissident voice, the media in China also plays a critical oversight role, one more frequently associated with liberal democracies than with authoritarian systems. Chinese central officials cautiously endorse media supervision as a feedback mechanism, as journalists carve out space for critical reporting by positioning themselves as aiding the agenda of the central state. Drawing on rare access in the field, Media Politics in China examines the process of guarded improvisation that has defined this volatile partnership over the past decade on a routine basis and in the aftermath of major crisis events. Combined with a comparative analysis of media politics in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, the book highlights the distinctiveness of Chinese journalist-state relations, as well as the renewed pressures facing them in the Xi era.

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Despite efforts to control these activities, online activism has been an agent of immense social change, allowing common citizens to disseminate content and openly challenge the authority of political and economic elites.
Guobin Yang’s pioneering study follows the rise of this dynamic protest and the forces that keep it relevant and unique. Online activism encompasses an innovative range of rituals, genres, and styles, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Internet businesses have encouraged these contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between capitalism and civil organizations that sponsor critique. Based on ten years of meticulous research and grounded in theories of social movements and the public sphere, Yang’s study emphasizes the mutual shaping of technology and society and highlights the important role of a transnational diaspora in the making of a Chinese Internet culture. In conclusion, Yang argues that online activism reflects important structural changes in contemporary China and points to a new era of informational politics.