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Ramsey Ismail
China After Mao
Professor John Osburg
5/10/2013
Online Justice and Public Participation in China
Thirteen years ago, Bill Clinton said that trying to control the internet in China would be
like trying to “nail Jell-O to the wall”. His statement seemed obvious at the time. By nature, the
internet was uncontrollable, coming from so many sources, and reaching so many more; by
Western expectations it seemed impossible that China would be able to control the internet.
Providing access to immeasurable amounts of information, the way sites like Wikileaks and
factcheck.org have become publicized information in the United States, and thus increasing the
amount of democratic demands the public would make on the Chinese government, the
introduction of the internet was expected to catalyst China's democratization.
Thirteen years later, as has become the norm, China has confounded western expectations.
Popular websites like Google and Facebook have been blocked and replaced by China's own
versions such as Baidu and Renren. In order for websites to be accessible in China, they must
play by the communist party's rules. Blocking access to net elements that might be deemed
harmful to the party or its agendas, Google played this precarious self policing game until 2010,
until Chinese hacks of Google's search engine caused the company to give up and be blocked by
the Chinese government.
Where "the internet was supposed to democratize China, it has actually allowed the
authoritarian state to grab a firmer hold on the nation," said Gady Epstein in a recent April 2013

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article published in the Economist. Epstein argues that, " the party has achieved something few
had thought possible: the construction of a distinct national internet. The Chinese internet
resembles a fenced-off playground with paternalistic guards." Epstein's Foucault-like argument
has its merits. There are indeed very national characteristics about China's internet, but not in the
way Epstein would think.
True, state-run search engines might filter unwanted news from reaching the citizens of
China, but for all the talk of the possibilities of the internet, the main activities of Chinese
internet users are the same innocuous ones as those found anywhere else in the world. The
majority of people in China do not use the internet for activist and political purposes. Chinese
people use the internet for the same purposes as most others; mostly porn, dating, job-hunting,
video games, and social media. The West failed to account for this in its predictions for the
Chinese internet, which is partially the reason why the internet has not totally transformed
China's authoritarian state.
In fact, the image of the fenced off playground denies the actual political potential of
Chinese internet users. The image of the paternalistic guards masks a state vulnerable to the
public opinion of the users of the internet it has tried so hard to control. In September 2003, the
rampant, doors-open sexual activities of a group of Japanese businessman having an orgy (with
female Chinese prostitutes) at a top hotel in the Southern Chinese city of Zhuhai offended Zhou
GuangChun, a Chinese pharmaceutical executive staying at the hotel. When Zhou called the
police authorities, his complaints fell on deaf ears, as China's bustling "red light district" is
illegal, but only half-heartedly legally enforced. After being ignored by authorities, Zhou broke
the news to three Chinese newspapers, which resulted in various web postings of the matter. As
Zixue Tai, the author of The Internet in China says, "The immediacy and scale of public outcry

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online made it hard, if not utterly impossible for authorities to ignore the fermenting public
sentiment. Fourteen people were eventually charged, and the executive in charge of the hotel
was given the death sentence, an unprecedentedly harsh sentence for a crime that usually
demands a simple fine as legal penance," (Tai, xvi). The punishment was only so harsh, arguably,
because the public outcry was so strong. China and Japan's relationship has been tense for
decades over the number of war atrocities committed towards Chinese people by Japanese
soldiers. This orgy just so happened to begin on September 18, the anniversary of the first day of
Japan's brutal occupation of Manchuria, which only added to the fervor. Not only were these
Japanese businessmen with Chinese prostitutes, such an event was taking place on a day where
in the past Japan had already offended China, a fact which sent Chinese netizens into uproar.
Chinese authorities could ignore a single offended executive, but not the voices of the millions of
upset people who use the internet every day. In the case of the Japanese businessman, it seems
the internet guards were policed by the playground kids. The guards were kicked off the
playground, not the playing children, a striking difference from the internet portrayed as recently
as Epstein's article. In fact, what the internet in China looks like today defies many expectations.
The power of Chinese netizens today is unexpected. Two or three years ago no one took internet
forums or postings like the one that brought the Chinese hotel executives to trial seriously. But
due to their recent success of policing perceived injustices, according to Yongnian Zheng, , "a
small civic body (Chinese Netizens) has grown a large public head," (185). As a friend of mine
described it to me, "You do not want to do anything too public in China. Most of the time you
can get away with things, but if the human flesh search engine (a term to describe netizen led
internet manhunts) finds you, your life is over."

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Human flesh search engines (Rénròu Sōusuǒ) are another unexpected technology of the
Chinese internet. Devices of online vigilante justice, Human flesh search engines arose out of
public outcry for against anonymous net individuals. A human flesh search engine classic is the
video of the Kitten-Killing woman in 2006, in which a young woman smashes a kitten to death
with the sharp point of a high heel shoe. After this video was posted, Chinese netizens posted
comments on forums along the lines of "this is not human" and "does anyone know this woman".
The video, and word of it was circulated until a woman recognized the woman in the video four
days after the search began. The woman who recognized the killer told netizens that the killer
lived in her town, but that was all she could say. Two days later, the woman's hometown was
revealed, and she and the cameramen were fired from their government jobs. The vigilante
search had prevailed. Justice was served. Indeed, the term human flesh search engine had been
around the internet since 2001, as a crowd-source way of answering trivia questions. However,
as Tom Downey argues in an article in the New York Times, modern interpretations of the word
by Chinese are nowhere near as benign: the search for the kitten-killer and others subsequent
changed the meaning of the word.
The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans,
initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences. Searches have
been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government
officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic,
journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the
Chinese system (Downey).
It is indeed this search by humans for humans that was employed to prosecute Chinese mafia
boss Liu Yong in 2003.
As the story goes, in early 2002, Liu Yong ordered his henchman to beat up a tobacco
shop owner he had had an argument with. The beating led the shop owner to die of internal
bleeding and Liu Yong was sentenced to death with a two year reprieve and a two million dollar

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fine (with the implication that he would be able to use his connection network to find a way out
of the sentence within the two years, he could easily afford the fine) . Public outcry was
immediate. According to Zixue Tai,
The internet quickly became the court of public opinion, ... an almost one-sided
condemnation of what most believed was a mistrial... In response to Internet public
outcry, the Supreme court held an open trial of Liu Yong and gave Liu the death sentence
for his crimes. Liu's attornet, while facing the media, charged that Liu, "was executed by
public opinion." Over a dozen public officials were also sentenced to varying prison
terms in connection with the case (xiv).
Indeed, the human flesh search engine has come to be recognized hand-in-hand with images of
internetnet vigilante justice. Contrary to Epstein's reductive portrayal of the internet as a fenced
in playground - China's internet today has the guards answerable to the playground denizens,
especially when it comes to issues of corruption.
Corrupt alliances between criminal figures and authority figures are no secret in China.
Relationships between Chinese mafia bosses and party officials come with mutual benefits to
both parties. As anthropologist John Osburg notes in his ethnography, Anxious Wealth,
"entrepreneurs and underworld leaders cultivate relationships with members of the state to obtain
protection, insider access, and government privileges... elite networks are thus the social
formations that organize corruption and govern its transaction through their "unwritten rules"
(32). While these elite networks provide unbounded perks for the elite that participate in them,
the privileges and opportunities afforded by guanxi (human connections). Osburg goes on to
establish that this guanxi social system is not some after-effect of China's rapid transformation,
this is the de-facto way that China functions today. When China reformed after the death of Mao,
there was no legal infrastructure to accommodate China's abrupt entry into the capitalist
economy. Guanxi was the system by which Chinese society was able to reorganize.

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However, as Osburg posits, the rules of guanxi are "unwritten", and thus from an
outsider's perspective are often abused to give the elite unfair privileges. As we saw before, the
trial of Liu Yong over the murder of a citizen risked utter ineffectuality because of his social
connections. In such a system of an impervious elite class, internet vigilante justice posits
promising possibilities. Once again, Yongnian Zheng offers explanation for the rise of a
politically active netizen, saying that because "courts often collude with government officials,
Chinese netizens may understandably redress what they perceive as unfair and justified by taking
issues into the virtual court of appeal, (xix)". Quite contrary to Epstein's conclusion, the internet
seems to be one of the only places where the Communist party is vulnerable to the public.
Perhaps the most striking example of this vulnerability is the way Chinese netizens have
shifted from reactive to active operation. A recent article on TeaLeafNation titled, "Chinese
Social Media's Guerrila War Against Army Privileges", describes a campaign in which Chinese
citizens post pictures of China's People's Liberation Army vehicles that have blatantly broken
traffic laws in order to achieve some short term result, but with the long term intent to "chip
away the privileges and mystique enjoyed by the PLA in Chinese society," ("Chinese Social
Media’s Guerrilla War Against Army Privileges | Tea Leaf Nation."). The choice of the word
mystique is a good one; it accurately captures what the privileged lifestyles of China's elite look
like to the common citizen. The article begins with a telling anecdote as well, presuming a
common experience, "All drivers in China probably have had the experience... While one waits
dutifully in front of a red light... another car bearing a special white license plate marking its
status as a vehicle belonging to the Armed Police cruises by and brazenly breaks all traffic rules.
Police overlook the transgressions. Toll collectors open a designated lane. Fellow drivers fume, "
("Chinese Social Media’s Guerrilla War Against Army Privileges | Tea Leaf Nation."). The

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social campaign against army vehicles has effected real results in China. In an effort to reduce
corruption, the Chinese military reissued military plates in May, largely banning them from
being used on luxury vehicles (Wong). The military's doing so proves that internet participation
enacts real results. For Chinese citizens, this "sensation of justice" will work to temporarily
diffuse public tensions. Public opinion via social media provided an effective vessel through
which to demand a sort of fairness or justice, one not subject to the amoral or shifting moral
landscape of guanxi ethics. However, to assume that Chinese internet justice operates in
opposition to the Chinese state simply because internet campaigns often target corrupt
government institutions and officials, like the military would be a mistake.
The criminals that these human flesh search engines surface are subject to state methods
of prosecution, tried within government legal structure. Zixue Tai makes an important distinction.
In a model he calls fragmented authoritarianism, he acknowledges that "while mass media have
been vigorously conducting investigative reports to expose official corruption and social
malpractices, this is done within well orchestrated domains. Mass media rarely, if ever, challenge
the powers that are directly above it," (116). At least for now, Chinese netizens are not screaming
"Down with the Communist Party" (though the party is fully aware of the public's ability to do
so). Bringing a single to a dozen party officials to justice is not a threat to stable social order.
Making official complaints about high ranking Chinese elites is precarious business.
Public reports to and of officials are often met with illegal and suppressive backlash. Photos of
government officials conducting corrupt business deal and other forms of evidence may never
make the physical drive to the newspaper or government office. Nor might the messenger
carrying them. Thus, Chinese internet justice is a mechanism predicated on participant
anonymity. Posting on anonymous messaging sites keeps netizens from becoming the targets of

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retaliation. Anonymous and en masse, Chinese citizens hold significant sway in government
policies and activities.
This is a fact not unnoticed by the Chinese government, which has attempted to break
through the fog of netizens' anonymity. In 2005, the Chinese government attempted to make
Tsinghua University's BBS system require students to register for forums with their full names.
Identities revealed, the system would put anonymous users at risk of social retaliation for net
activities. Once again, Chinese students protested the decision. Tsinghua reposted the websites
on non Chinese domains and the government has since backed off from the issue.
In a way, Chinese Internet Justice is traditional at its core. Rebecca Mackinnon, quoted in
Downey's NYT article, posits that China’s central government may actually be happy about
searches that focus on localized corruption, claiming “the idea that you manage the local
bureaucracy by sicking the masses on them is actually not a democratic tradition but a Maoist
tradition". During the Cultural Revolution, Mao encouraged townspeople to publicly denounce
closet bourgeois and corrupt officials. In many ways, human-flesh searches and social media
guerrilla warfare are simply modern technological adaptations of Cultural Revolution practices.
This stands contrary to Yongnian Zheng's statement that the internet produces enormous effects
which are highly decentralized and beyond the reach of state power (75), the internet in China is
actually neither. In reality, Chinese Internet Justice operates largely under the umbrella of state
power.
Responding to the fact that human-flesh searches have begun to be critiqued for the
severity of their repercussions, called the Red Guard 2.0 by some, Mackinnon continues, "It's
easy to denounce the tyranny of the online masses when you live in a country that has strong rule
of law and institutions that denounce public corruption," but in China, the human-flesh search

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engine is one of the only ways that ordinary citizens can hold legal officials accountable
(Downey). I do not mean however, to misrepresent Chinese internet justice as some dramatic all
powerful agent of social transformation. It has its limits. Human flesh search engines and internet
justice will never replace a proper legal system in China for a number of reasons.
The internet in China reaches many more urban users than rural, thus centralizing it in the
same geographic spaces as guanxi social power (Capone, 34). Since the majority of internet users
are middle-class urbanites, Chinese internet justice has a possibility to be equally as exclusive
(both geographically, and socioeconomically) as China's current guanxi and official legal system.
Secondly, posting a human-flesh search engines is not a guaranteed way of bringing
anyone to justice. For every search that gets picked up, countless more go unnoticed on the web.
Since the system is predicated on a coincidental chance that someone else on the web will
recognize a posted picture or fact. There are no systemized characteristics of a search or web-
posting that are more likely to have the masses pick it up than others - thus internet campaigns
are far too unreliable to provide a legal base in place of China's legal code.
And lastly, the system itself is not based on any written legal standard, subjecting it to the
same criticism as the guanxi social system. In fact, without a standard for operation or
prosecution, human flesh search engines have often been criticized for their propensity to go too
far, like in the case of Grace Wang, the Chinese Duke University Exchange student whose
involvement in a trying to mediate an on-campus Free Tibet and Pro-China
counterdemonstration garnered her and her family the hate and harm of nationalist Chinese
netizens. Playing the middle, was snapshotted writing "free Tibet" on a friends shirt. Net uproar
was violent. Netizens called her a traitor to China, and the tracking of her identity led to stones
and feces being thrown at her home. This all because she was mistaken as a traitor, when in

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reality Wang trying to play mediator in the debate and bring both groups to fruitful dialogue. The
fact Wang's actions were mistaken as anti-national and not actually illegal brought much
criticism to the Chinese netizens who had sparked the response, and to Chinese internet justice as
a whole. The violent internet backlash is widely acknowledged to have damaged the national
image of China as well and the internet community still hold's Wang in contempt, over a single
photograph (Capone, 43). Indeed, what this case proves is that internet vigilante justice can go
just as wrong as it goes right, and thus cannot be a proper legal substitute. Indeed, if Chinese
internet justice is not a proper legal substitute, yet possesses judicial capabilities in positive to the
state, then how can we think of it? What is it? With so many possibilities for both positives and
negatives, how do we interpret internet justice in China?
It is here that I look to the parameters Danny Hoffman's outlines in his ethnography War
Machines in order to interpret the operations of Chinese internet justice and human flesh search
engines. Hoffman positions war machines as alternate positivities to the state. They are their own
creative, productive force, propelled by the existence or possibility of the state (15). And because
"they offer a way to think about social forces without an implicit references to states or existing
social orders as the ultimate positive measure of social institutions, they allow us to [re]imagine
citizenship, regulation," war machines provide an effective framework for us to contemplate the
possibilities of Chinese internet justice today. Human flesh search engines only function in China
because there is a Chinese legal system to prosecute crimes brought to light. Internet justice
positions itself not in opposition to the Chinese state, but alongside it. Yes, there are points at
which the two come into conflict, but the political structure of China does not stand in direct
opposition to the existence of Human flesh search engines.

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For now, the Chinese internet justice fills a populist hole in China's authoritarian state
structure, providing a "steam valve" for public tension while China's legal system struggles to
catch-up to the rapidly changing country. In a country where the public regularly observe the
stratified perks of elite status, as well as their perceived immunity to any sort of universal legal
code, human-flesh search engines and web campaigns that produce real world results at least
give people the sensation of justice, loosening the public opinion steam valve when necessary.
As the social justice mechanism of a single urban class, without its' own written legal code, a
reliable means for pursuing cases, nor a sufficient system of checks and balances, Chinese
internet justice poses no possibility of replacing the judicial or guanxi legal system of China.
With rules as unwritten as those of guanxi, and no systematic way of addressing grievances
internet justice in China poses no chance of ever being more than an informal social mechanism.
It simply stands as a promising check to the "unfair" privileges enjoyed by China's elite, and an
opportunity to hold individuals accountable against the mask of anonymity provided by living in
a country of over a billion people.
As of now, Chinese people have two means of voicing grievances. In addition to internet
postings, with "responsibility systems", Chinese people have ability to create a mass petitions,
airing grievances against accused officials. Designed to curb the increasing amount of public
protests in China, on the surface, the petition system seemed like an effective public participatory
mechanism. However, as Carl Minzner notes, this system has only served to exacerbate local
tensions. He writes, "since these systems link the career prospects of local Party officials to the
incidence of citizen petitioning and protests, they create ncentives for local officials to employ a
range of abusive tactics against petitioners who try [to] express their discontent publicly...," (4).
This conflicting system of incentives has created incentives for both increased govrnment

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repression and increased social unrest. Like internet justice, the responsibility system is also too
limited in scope and too unlikely to bring real practical results to be likely to become an official
formal mechanism of law anytime soon. Both are poor substitutes for real legal reform. Indeed,
for all of the public criticism of guanxi, the guanxi social system posseses a characteristic that
that neither Chinese internet justice or the responsibility system have. Though perceptibly unfair,
it regularly and systematically actualizes tangible results in the lives of Chinese citizens.
For the future, no effective predictions can be made about the state of Chinese political
participation, its legal system, or the internet. It is obvious that China desperately needs much
legal reform. We can only predict that that in true Chinese fashion, Chinese internet will
continue "to prove to be a direct contradiction to any optimistic proclamation of the internet as
one of emancipation empowerment, and transcendence of physical boundary - much like the
PRC's state capitalist system is often described as Capitalism with Chinese characteristics," (Tai,
116). Chinese internet will continue to remain distinctly Chinese.

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Works Cited
Capone, Vincent. "The Human Flesh Search Engine: Democracy, Censorship, and Political
Participation in Twenty-First Century China." N.p., May 2009. Web. 8 May 2013.
<scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=ghc>.
"Chinese Social Media’s Guerrilla War Against Army Privileges | Tea Leaf Nation." Tea Leaf
Nation. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 May 2013.
Downey, Tom. "China's Cyberposse." The New York Times 3 Mar. 2010: n. pag. Web.
8 May 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-
t.html?pagewanted=all>.
Epstein, Gady. "China's internet A giant cage." The Economist 6 Apr. 2013: n. pag. Web.
8 May 2013.
Hoffman, Danny. The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print.
Minzner, Carl. "Social Instability in China: Causes, Consequences, and Implications." Web.
Osburg, John. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich. N.p., 2013. Print.
Tai, Zixue. The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Print.
Wong, Edward. "Fighting Corruption in China, One Special License Plate at a Time." New York
Times 1 May 2013: n. pag. Web. 9 May 2013.
Zheng, Yongnian. Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China.
Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2008. Print.