This article examines the recent rise of Islamophobic narratives in the Chinese cyberspace. Using content analysis of social media headline articles, this article argues that key Islamophobic actors in the Chinese cyberspace have constructed a 'victims and villains' narrative to effectively 'other' Muslim populations in China. By implying that non-Sinicised Muslims are under Arab fundamentalist influences, religious autonomy becomes political betrayal and Islamophobia is legitimised. Elements of Islamophobia is then subsumed in the official narrative calling for ethnic loyalty to the Chinese nation, which presents a unique challenge to the Chinese Party-state as Islamophobic discourses both legitimises statesponsored autocratic control in Muslim regions, but also could potentially bring destabilisation to an already fragile ethnic relationship between Muslim minorities and the Han majority.
The current debate on populism is mostly Euro-American centric. Less attention is paid to how the rise of populist ideas echo and reverberate in other regions of the world. This paper examines how the core concepts to populism, namely 'the people', 'the elite' and 'the other', is constructed and contested in China. I show how the netizens contextualise the rise of populist right in America in relation to China, and how they construct a narrative of 'must learn lessons' for China out of the American experience, with identifiable populist elements. I argue that although non-establishment populist leaders or parties are unlikely to emerge under the one Party rule, the grassroot political narratives in China harbour significant latent populist tendencies, and the potential for populist rupture is real.
As the digital age expands and evolves, the challenge of digital governance has become greater. This paper explores new developments in cyber content management strategies in China.In particular, this paper highlights the rise of participatory, peer-to-peer censoring practices, where users are incentivised to report on each other through offering of special privileges and monetary rewards. This paper then goes on to examine how the People's Daily have responded to the contentious events in the top 20 public opinion incidents of 2016, to illustrate how official media uses different types of management strategies to mediate and demobilise contention, on top of information containment strategies such as censorship.Finally, I discuss briefly the creation of a Digital United Front which seeks to incorporate social influencers and cyber elites into mainstream political institutions such as the CPPCC.Not only do these strategies further undermine the formation of a political locus opposite the state, they continue to subsume previously oppositional narratives into grander narratives of stability, rationality, and national progress. Online political participation in Chinese cyberspace must seek further paternalistic protection from Party authorities, often in forms of socio-moral grievances, in order to legitimise their contention. Although this strengthens the Party-state's claim to legitimacy, ultimately this weakens the emergence of civil society in China as the only form of contention that can survive is those that are legitimised by the Party-state, and the political space oppositional to the state remain closed off.
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