Hong Kong's Chinese press and the BBC (Chinese online version) reported that the Communist Youth League is trying to recruit over 10 million volunteer young netizens by the end of June from universities and other sectors across the country. The idea is to nurture more positive energy on the internet and to balance against the spread of biased or false information and ideas.
Apart from some sporadic reporting here and there, it is perhaps surprising that this bombshell has not created a storm in the international press. It is only too easy for it to be seized upon as yet another example that President Xi is clamping down on dissent and as evidence that he wants to be Mao. Click here
At the outset, the growing influence of the internet in shaping hearts and minds in China can no longer be treated lightly. See Social Media Activism: All the Rage in China, a blog of the China Policy Institute of Nottingham University. The following extract is instructive -
"For instance, QQ, the leading instant-messaging service across PC and smartphone platforms, now boasts over 800 million active user accounts. Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform, has an active user base of over 280 million and is being accessed by 76 million individuals on an average day. Weixin, the fast-rising smartphone-based text and voice messaging social networking service, reaches over 600 million users, 100 million of whom are outside of China. The magnitude of the network size poses an enormous challenge for state censors, and makes it possible for various contentious activities to exist and thrive across Chinese network space".
Another blog The Reawakening Rebelliousness of Chinese Youth shows how much more independently-minded China's youths have now become.
China's national mouthpiece China Daily hastened to clarified that -
"the increasing number of critical appreciations that netizens have been coming up with shows that they are paying greater attention to public affairs and have higher expectations of social progress. Their increasing numbers have made netizens an important part of public supervision over government work."
"Therefore, there is no need to worry about their straightforward views and criticisms. The praise and criticism as long as they abide by law, both pass on positive energy in the increasingly plural society."
Nevertheless, Beijing has seen fit to recruit over 10 million young "good" netizens quickly so as to ensure that China's cyberspace is at least not dominated by what is perceived as negative energy.
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