Page 32 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

has also enabled computer-mediated communications (CMC), which provided a broad-

er access for ordinary citizens and catered for traditionally marginalised and isolated
groups, promoted proactive engagement at a global level.

2.2.3 Civil society in China

The concept of civil society is indispensable in the discussion of the public sphere.
Since these two concepts emerged and developed during the same period in China, they

have attracted extensive discussion. Civil society is the aggregate of non-governmen-
tal organisations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens (Castells,
2008). Wang (2013) indicated that the bourgeois public sphere appeared in the period
of laissez-faire capitalism. Along with the emergence of the modern state and advance-

ment in commercial trade, the modern type of public sphere was formed (Wang, 2013).
A new social stratum involved judges, doctors, priests, teachers, merchants, bankers,
publishers, manufacturers and other professionals in society, who are represented as the
core force in civil society. They gathered together in the form of reading groups and

openly expressed their views on public affairs.
Tai (2006, p.51) defined civil society as a concept that is ‘functional rather than
normative, and it must be understood in dynamic terms by taking into consideration

the different socioeconomic, political, and historical conditions under which it is used’.
Schak and Hudson (2003) extended the concept to Asian societies and argued its ap-
plicability: ‘civil society is not all or nothing, either existing or not existing’. In other
words, the pattern of civil society varies with the degree of authoritarianism in the

societies concerned: ‘it may advance, stop, or even go backward’ (Schak and Hudson,
2003, p.1-2). Convergence is embodied in the process of developing civil societies, but
each will have its own properties and characteristics (ibid).

This section will discuss the possibility of civil society in China. Chinese scholars
tend to use the term minjian to indicate a similar meaning to civil society. It is difficult
to find an English equivalence for minjian; it is often used as the opposite to the term
guanfang, which means ‘official’. Hence, minjian might be translated as ‘private’, ‘non-

official’ or ‘unofficial’, with connotations of ‘independent’, ‘marginalised’ or ‘outside

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