Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Characteristics and Implications.

Chinese cyber nationalism is a non-government sponsored ideology and movement that has originated, existed, and developed on China’s online sphere in the past decade (1994-2005). It is a natural extension from China’s century-long nationalism movement, but it is different from the CCP’s official version of patriotism. Taking advantages of the online technology, Chinese cyber nationalism has been utilizing the Internet as a communication center, organizational platform, and execution channel to promote the nationalism causes among Chinese nationalists around the world. In this research, the author reviewed the theoretical construct of this new concept by examining its three components (Chineseness, cyber sphere, and nationalism) and the three derivative concepts (cyber nationalism, Chinese nationalism, and Chinese cyber sphere). An online survey was conducted among Chinese online discussants to obtain information regarding their media use habit, nationalism belief, leadership evaluation, and demographic data. The statistical results showed strong correlations between people’s online media use and their nationalism tendency, and between online discussants’ nationalism sentiment and their leadership evaluation. The political implications of these results were also discussed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]