The individual as consumer

Interest in buying and personal pleasure is the most common feature of Chinese blogging. Ideologically, this has been called “consumerism as economic individualism”. Chinese bloggers are self-managing consumers rather than free citizens. Their embrace of consumer values is a striking feature of China's cyberspace. The Chinese blogosphere contains relatively few political blogs compared with the mainstream blogs, which feature individual pursuits and the purchase of material goods.

The five key characteristics of the Chinese blogging community that emerge from the case study analysis and which this chapter critiques are:

1. Individualist and consumerist ideologies can be distinguished in the majority of Chinese bloggers' writings.

2. Although political blogs do exist in China's blogosphere, they are mainly part of the nationalistic narrative.

3. Blogs expressing political dissent exist in China's blogosphere, but the readership is rather small.

4. Political-satire blogs criticizing the government have a relatively large numbers of readers, but their interest-value is entertainment.

5. Censorship is mainly self-implemented, that is, enforcing mechanisms are rarely needed.

Statistical and thematic analyses of the Chinese blogging community in this chapter comprise the case study that supports these statements. First, however, I offer some contextual background for these analyses.