Web-based backpacking communities and online activism in China: Movement without marching

Contesting civil society

Scholarly interest in locating possible sites of Chinese civil society has grown dramatically in the last two decades – from a special issue of Modern China (1993) dedicated to studies on the emerging public sphere and civil society in China to hundreds of new publications each year a decade later. ⁷ Historically, the development of a market economy gave rise to the emergence of capitalism as a distinct economic system as well as to the separation between state and society in the West. The notion of civil society was developed in 18th-century Western Europe at the inception of capitalism for the new bourgeoisie to come together against the absolutist state. Civil society in this sense should exist above and against the state, autonomous from it, including those dimensions of social life that cannot be confounded with or swallowed up by the state. ⁸

Because the notion of civil society posits a social space independent of the state, and because it is inextricably connected to the rise of the bourgeoisie and tied to a particular historical setting in the West, many scholars have struggled with the legitimacy and sufficiency of applying the term to an understanding of China. ⁹ Wakeman contests the extent to which the intermediate associations found in China were autonomous and separate from the state. ¹⁰ White et al. also admit that the development of many social organizations studied in their research in fact reflected a process of incorporation, that is, the state’s penetration into and control of social organizations in various ways. For example, each social organization had to be affiliated with a supervisory body which ‘acted as a sponsor and was responsible for supervising the day-to-day affairs of its dependent associations … thus the relationship between the affiliated social organization and its supervisory department is one of both control and co-operation’. ¹¹ In her field research in China in the late 1980s, Mayfair Yang also pointed out that, although the Chinese constitution guaranteed citizens ‘the right to form associations’, in reality the Party did not allow truly independent organizations, and any social group formation had to be supervised by a responsible branch of the state organization. ¹²

In order to solve this dilemma, some scholars tend to treat civil society as a term of social practice so that it can be universally applied to give a better understanding of China. ¹³ Other scholars argue that the term signifies not so much a descriptive empirical task but a performative act ‘in which to search for its traces is at the same time to invoke the non-state sphere and make it a conscious project’. ¹⁴ While these studies are useful in qualifying and contextualizing the application of the notion of civil society in China, they have nevertheless reinforced the dichotomous understanding of an autonomous civil society: it must be either the Habermasian model of a public sphere completely independent of the state or the state corporatism model. ¹⁵ The most recent studies of state–society relationships in China contend that using the level of autonomy to assess associational life in China is often misleading and inconclusive when state and society are constantly competing and negotiating in a dynamic social field. In line with this critical reflection, Huang argues that the binary oppositions between state and civil society, and public and private, upon which notions of civil society and the public sphere are predicated, are not appropriate for China. He proposes a ternary conception, the third realm between state and society within which both parties participate. ¹⁶ In a similar manner, Teets suggests re-envisaging civil society as an action-based category, as she explains:

First, the state–society relationship is theorized to be dynamic and contested, and thus not dependent on autonomy as the primary determinant of the relationship but rather allowing for a relational view that includes varying degrees of partnership and collaboration. Second, an action-based definition focuses on the ability of civil society organizations to create social trust, collective action and civic participation. ¹⁷

Teets’s reconceptualization of civil society has provided a useful conceptual tool for the study of online activism in China. Despite the fact that China still lacks a legal system to protect free association, the last decade has seen the relationship between the state and society change as a consequence of the retreat of state control from many realms of public life since the early 1990s. ¹⁸ Scholars have called the radical socio-economic transformation that took place in post-socialist China a ‘revolution of consumption’. ¹⁹ A thriving market accompanied by the development of technology has not only affected material realms of everyday life, but also transformed social relationships and nurtured new metropolitan subjectivities.

These transformations have significantly changed the ways society engages the state, and the ways citizens engage the systems of authority, which have been borne out by the proliferation of new contentious forms in the new era, one of which is online activism. Yang points out that popular contention since the 1990s tends to be more frequent, more diversified in its causes and forms, less disruptive, and more modest in its goals. ²⁰ China’s new civic activism no longer seeks to oppose the state but rather it deals with more urgent and down-to-earth issues such as environmental injustice, consumer rights, wealth disparity and rural education. The flourishing of online interest groups and clubs has reflected these features. Unlike traditional types of association, which were more vertically embedded in relations of incorporation, online communities have fostered the formation of horizontal ties and voluntary associations of like-minded people outside the state. Through online exchanges and offline gatherings, members of web-based communities can engage in various public expressions and discussions of topics ranging from celebrity gossip to social justice, focusing on their genuine experience of self and others. The Internet, though subject to state surveillance in a number of ways, provides a useful channel to inspire thoughts and endorse organizational initiatives. Online communities thus constitute a fluid social space conducive to the development of civil society that Teets has foreseen, a form of civil society that generates social trust, mutual understanding and civic participation of like-minded people in both online and offline contexts.

Contesting online/offline dichotomy

Given the primary reliance of the Chinese backpacking community on the Internet, this study takes a close look at the role of the Internet for the backpacking community in urban China. The numerous travel websites and Internet forums have not only provided grass-roots channels to obtain travel information but also fostered coalitions among like-minded people beyond their immediate social sphere. Moreover, the presence of neologism, etiquette, and behavioural codes seems to further distinguish this online community as a cultural group distinct from traditional offline interests groups such as the Mountaineering Association of Peking University, which is supervised by the responsible institution. Having said that, a nuanced understanding of web-based backpacking communities cannot be achieved if offline contexts are not taken into consideration. In fact, online activities and offline practices are closely connected, reinforcing and feeding each other to create a new social force that constantly challenges, violates, and calls into question the system of authority. Online communities not only constitute a variegated and fluid imagined space, but they also sustain the dynamics of associational life and transform relations between social organizations and the state in offline settings.

Therefore, the proliferation of web-based communities must be understood in asocio-political context in which the state has increasingly withdrawn from society, thus allowing new metropolitan subjects to seek resources and networks beyond such traditional spheres as family, school, and work unit. Decades after the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989 there has been a rapid growth of urban associations. Many of them often choose to bypass the complicated and time-consuming registration process with the Ministry of Civil Affairs by operating as an informal group or a business. The latter only needs to register with the corresponding industrial and commercial bureau, which requires a minimal management structure and allows a high degree of autonomy. ²¹ These informal social organizations or business organizations are extralegal entities under such names as ‘clubs’ (俱乐部), ‘social circles’ (圈子), ‘forums’ (论坛) and ‘salons’ (沙龙). Set against this background, an inevitable consequence of the development of the Internet in China in the mid-1990s was the quick emergence of web-based Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and discussion forums. Many former informal organizations and business organizations quickly adopted this new technology and transformed themselves into online communities. ²² Online associations operate through loosely established networks of like-minded people, informed by and informing a widespread cyberculture encompassing new vocabularies, codes of behaviour, etiquettes, and ethics.

In his insightful work, Anderson argues that the middle years of the 18th century in Western Europe saw the decline of religious communities and the emergence of a new mode of imagined community – the nation. The old sacred religious communities were imagined through the medium of the sacred language, ruled by persons deemed to have divine connections and characterized by the conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable. ²³ By contrast, the new form of imagined community – the modern nation – was made possible by the convergence of capitalism and print technology – ‘print-capitalism’ – which laid bases for national consciousness and allowed people to relate with others in radically new ways. ²⁴

The advent of the Information Age has also enabled new sorts of imagined communities and communicative practices based on the Internet, fostered new types of social relations, and cultivated new values and ethics. Much of the early literature applauded the new technology as revolutionary in its social and political implications. ²⁵ Marshall McLuhan tends to see this new world as a ‘global village’. ²⁶ In his seminal work, Appadurai suggests that Anderson’s imagined communities were only ‘modest precursors to the world we live in now’. ²⁷ He has replaced Anderson’s concept of imagined community with that of ‘imagined world’, arguing that today’s world is more deterritorialized, that national boundaries are shaken, and that the relationship between states and nations is strained more than ever.

These scholars view the emergence of cyberspace as a watershed phenomenon that has created new imagined subjectivities and imagined communities, often assuming a radical distinction and disruption between the offline and online, real and virtual worlds, with the former representing the bounded, constraining, and disciplining and the latter representing the deterritorialized, egalitarian, and emancipatory. Departing from this dichotomous approach, Constable has studied virtual communities of men and women involved in international correspondence marriages, and she discovered that some online communities sprang from localized groups and others served as a ‘space of contestation’ which reinforced offline power relations and social boundaries. ²⁸ By the same token, Wilson and Peterson argue that ‘the Internet is not growing apart from the world, but to the contrary is increasingly embedded in it’, and therefore it is necessary to ‘bring research back from cyberspace and virtual reality into geographical, social spaces’. They suggest that we should further examine ‘how offline social roles and existing cultural ideologies are played out … in online communication’, and ‘how online interactions are influenced by offline power relations and construction of identity’. ²⁹

More in keeping with this line of thinking, I argue that online and offline interactions are both crucial in the development of online activism, and in creating solidarity, commitment and mutual trust in online communities. The Internet facilitates new imaginings of translocal identities and communities. The development of a new set of vocabulary, behavioural codes, and ethics on the Internet has constantly called into question those everyday boundaries shaping and controlling local groups and local identities. Virtual communities allow their members to cross many boundaries in terms of gender, class, geography, and sociocultural background. Having said that, we should not overlook the significance of offline interactions, which help to strengthen the bond between members and their loyalty to the community. This is particularly true for members of online backpacking communities as they not only chat online but also spend time together on the road. Ethnographic research in both online and offline contexts is thus necessary in order to understand the complexity and dynamics of computer-mediated communication, which does not take place in two separate and isolated spaces – online and offline – but in the fusion of the two. This new social space created by both online and offline experiences constitutes a field of contestation of ideas, values, and practices, allowing its participants to create new expressions and imaginings of subjectivity, social responsibility, and collective initiatives.

Ethnography of two online backpacking communities

This ethnographic research has employed both traditional participant observation in face-to-face context as well as virtual ethnography on the Internet in order to reveal the complexity of associational life online which often leads to offline alliances and practices. Different online communities are created for different reasons, but their tactics and strategies for organization and practices are often similar. The two online communities studied here are backpacking communities, but the dynamics of their associational life can also be found in other online communities, be they pet owners’ clubs or Internet forums of movie aficionados. No matter what form an online community may take, similarities in alliances and practices feed on an incipient civil society and simultaneously open up new social spaces for public expression and collective action.

According to the most recent statistics ³⁰ released by the China Internet Network Information Center, by the end of June 2013 there were 591 million people using the Internet, accounting for 22.7 per cent of the total population of China. The Internet penetration was 44.1 per cent, an increase of 2 per cent compared to that at the end of 2012. Of the new netizens, up to 70 per cent of them used mobile phones to surf the Internet, outnumbering those netizens who used other means to surf the Internet. For 82 per cent of Chinese Internet users, the Internet rather than television and newspapers was the main channel for acquiring information. Major online activities included browsing news, searching for information, sending and receiving emails, posting on discussion forums or BBS, and chatting online.

Just as exchanging letters and poems in cafes and salons was commonplace in 18th-century Europe, participating in public discussions by posting on the Internet has also provided the ‘training ground for critical reflection’ and facilitated ‘a process of self-clarification of private people focusing on the genuine experiences of their novel privateness’. ³¹ The Internet has become an indispensable part of the new urban lifestyle, and it has fostered a plurality of interests and multiplicity of links through and across social, economic, and political realms. Since the late 1990s, increasing numbers of voluntary groups based on the Internet have emerged and developed at an accelerating speed in urban China. Among the participants of online communities, backpackers were the first to use online communities for both information sharing and collective action.

The rise of online backpacking communities

At the end of the 1990s, the newly coined term ‘donkey friend’ (驴友) was a widely used self-identifier among China’s backpackers – particularly those who organized themselves into virtual communities on the Internet – who had become acquainted with opportunities for recreation and leisure which were previously unheard of, examples of which include mountain climbing, hiking, and mountain skiing for wilderness adventures, and touring the Old Town section of Lijiang in northern Yunnan’s Naxi areas for more urban and ethnic experiences. The term donkey friend may be somewhat opaque in meaning, as it is a pun on a pair of near homonyms, with donkey (lǘ 驴) sounding similar to and even identical in some dialects to travel (lǚ 旅). Unlike the animal’s less-than-flattering image in the West, in the eyes of Chinese backpackers the donkey possesses a desirable set of qualities and associations, such as perseverance, endurance and amiability; hence the quick adoption of the donkey as an icon for Chinese backpackers. Styling themselves as not only donkeys but also friends, Chinese backpackers stress the elements of companionship and fellowship by building communities and forming long-term relationships.

The majority of donkey friends were born in the 1970s and 1980s and came of age in the reform era. The emergence of backpacking tourism reflected the radical social and economic changes that took place in all areas of people’s lives in urban China. A market economy took off in regions with more favourable natural endowment and state subsidy, resulting in an increasing number of Chinese becoming affluent enough to travel for pleasure, a status marker indicating a style of life which was their own and an alternative to the undifferentiated humdrum of everyday life. The new economy grew symbiotically with new cultural values, which became an important ground for identification and competition among young Chinese who were born after the reforms and raised in affluent urban nuclear households. With the loosening of the hitherto all-important social and economic ties with work units and familial obligations to the older generation, China’s urban youth are eager to abandon conventional parameters of life in search of new styles, spaces and values, with which they can distinguish themselves as members of the new middle class. It is against this socio-economic background that online backpacking communities have emerged and flourished.

From the very beginning these young backpackers represented an important social force in constituting China’s new cosmopolitan subjectivities with their newfound mobility, individualistic sensitivity and capacity for critical thinking. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Bourdieu described how the new petite bourgeoisie rose along with new occupations and job positions in Europe. ³² Likewise, avid backpackers are mainly associated with many newly established occupations ‘involving presentation and representation (students, sales, marketing, advertising, public relations, fashion, decoration and so forth) and in all the institutions providing symbolic goods and services’. ³³ For them, travelling with a backpack is a rallying point for both distinguishing themselves from the mainstream and associating with like-minded people. Their intentional pursuit of maximum cultural profit (rich experience) at minimum economic costs (low budget) represents a subversive tendency that implies ‘renunciation of all ostentatious expense and all gratifications other than those given by symbolic appropriation’ of their endeavours. ³⁴ In addition to their constant quest for distinct tastes with regard to a new lifestyle and culture, they also manifest a keen tendency of association. In other words, the backpacking culture in urban China is not so much fuelled by some individuals’ desire for conquest and adventure but rather by their evolving relationships with each other, their commitment to communities of like-minded people, and the common experiences and memories they have collectively created and shared as companions and friends.

Therefore it is not difficult to see that the development of the Internet has significantly impacted the popularity of backpacking among urban Chinese. The Internet has provided Chinese backpackers with both the knowledge of outdoor activities and the opportunity for companionship in their newfound mobile opportunities. Members of backpacking communities are more attracted to the social function of the travel websites. BBS and forums provide a public space for backpackers to exchange information, organize trips, seek out travel companions, and post travel stories. Therefore these websites have become the primary bases for communication and collective practices among backpackers. Before the Internet came into existence, those who took part in backpacking tourism and outdoor activities had very few opportunities to meet, not to mention form communities. They were professional or semi-professional athletes, members of official sports clubs, and staff of outdoor gear stores. Sanfo, a Chinese outdoor gear chain store, started to organize travel and outdoor activities among its members as early as 1996. At that time their scope and size remained small, and information was circulated by word of mouth within private circles. The groups or individuals who loved backpacking and outdoor activities were mostly isolated and unaware of the existence of one another. The crucial change took place in the late 1990s. In 1999 and 2000 the Travel Forum (旅游论坛), hosted by China’s biggest web portal, Sina.com, and Lvye Outdoor Club (绿野), hosted at the independent domain Lvye.org, were established around the same time. Since then, travel websites and communities have flourished. The size of these online communities varies. Lvye’s website had more than 100,000 registered users by the end of 2004, and their posts received more than 10,000 hits per day. Smaller sites such as TP Club had around 1,000 registered members in 2005, and their posts received far fewer hits per day.

The emergence of these outdoor websites and communities indicates a new trend in the formation of associations in China. The Travel Forum at Sina.com, for example, was the first web-based community to allow members to post travelogues and share photos. Through these exchanges, an individual was able to enter a whole new world in which he/she was no longer alone but among a legion of enthusiasts who shared similar ideas, values, and goals. Community members were eager to seek out friends in the same camp with whom they could socialize and share life experiences. Backpacking tourism could not have emerged if not for the state’s ardent promotion of the tourist industry. However, it would never have gone beyond private circles and become a nationwide trend if not for the prevalence of the Internet. The proliferation of travel websites and forums has not only fostered the spread of this newfound leisure activity – backpacking – outside professional or semi-professional circles, but also drawn travel enthusiasts out of their private and isolated circles to form larger communities of like-minded people who might otherwise have been total strangers outside their immediate social spheres.

I will draw upon my ethnographic study of two backpacking communities – TP Club and Lvye – to further demonstrate the social function of the Internet and its potential for organization and mobilization. Both these online communities can be seen as virtual and physically real. Their daily operations mainly take place on the Internet, and their discussion forums are the primary places where members actively participate and exchange ideas. At the same time, members meet and get to know one another in face-to-face contexts when they travel together, have group dinners, host exhibitions, and organize reunion gatherings. In the case of TP Club, its founders had opened a cafe that was used to accommodate offline activities and events.

During my research, I first signed up and became a member of both clubs. Then I made known my intention – of conducting research on the culture of online communities – in their discussion forums. Expecting people to express doubt and to question my motives, I was surprised and relieved by a lot of members’ greetings and welcoming messages. Many of them were eager to help. Right after I posted my research objectives on the discussion forum of Lvye, I immediately received a number of responses such as ‘welcome aboard’, ‘interesting’, ‘willing to help’, and so on. All comments were supportive and encouraging. Some also added me to their Microsoft Network Messenger contact list so as to offer me personal help.

On reflection, the easy entry I gained testifies to the social function of these online communities. In fact, my fellow members were pleased by my research because it demonstrated that, even though their communities occupy a grey area in China’s associational life, they were recognized as legitimate social groups in the academic world. On another note, the warm welcome I received is typical of the open and free atmosphere in online communities. During the course of my fieldwork, I observed that netizens were indeed more open and outspoken on the Internet than those I met in face-to-face contexts. The dynamics of the Internet has less to do with the sudden change of people’s temperament than with the change of the milieu of social interaction. Borrowing from Victor Turner’s idea of liminality, ³⁵ the Internet seems to serve as a liminal space where everyday laws and obligations are temporarily suspended and individuals feel greater freedom to speak with less caution and suspicion, which are common in face-to-face interaction such as in work units, schools, and neighbourhoods. These particular features of China’s Internet culture are crucial for the emergence of the new form of online activism I discuss in the following sections.

Contesting collective action

Both Lvye and TP Club promote a strong sense of community and belonging among their members. Despite their heavy reliance on the Internet, both clubs have adopted very different strategies for promoting solidarity, facilitating online discussion, and implementing offline practices. They also differ in their agenda and vision. While both were founded by backpacking enthusiasts and have attracted large numbers of like-minded people, Lvye uses the Internet mainly for information sharing and backpacking-related discussions, whereas TP Club uses the Internet as a means to facilitate reasoned debates and implement collective actions. Where Lvye tries to promote a lifestyle, TP Club aims to promote social change. Their differences seem to represent two ends of the spectrum of the ways in which online communities use the Internet: on the one end, the Internet serves as an information reservoir where members exchange knowledge – in this case, knowledge about backpacking – and organize outdoor activities; on the other end, the Internet functions as a repository of public opinion and collective action. In this article I will focus on the latter. But this does not mean that peer sharing of travel stories is insignificant. In fact, a lot of information shared by backpackers at Lvye is loaded with criticism of the government’s environmental policies and a lot of travel stories disclose writers’ concerns about social justice issues they see and hear on the road.

River Fish and Dan (both web IDs) ³⁶ are the two founders of TP Club. They opened a backpackers’ cafe in 2001 when backpacking travel was only known to a small number of people in Beijing. As this style of travel became more popular, the club’s membership grew from 100 to 2,000 in 2006. The club’s web portal serves two primary purposes: facilitating online communication, and posting announcements of activities and events such as seminars, exhibitions, and volunteer projects.

Since it was difficult to register the club as an official social group (社会团体) without a supervisory work unit in China, River Fish and Dan decided to open a cafe instead. Under the cover of this cafe, they registered the club as a business with the local industrial and commercial administration bureau. In China, it is not uncommon to register a social organization as a business and then run it as a social club. TP Club uses an independent domain name for an online community and it has a cafe as an offline business. The dual status of TP Club provides an online space for public discussion and a physical place for gatherings, seminars, and other events.

I attended the club’s seminars several times, and each time I had to call to reserve a seat in advance. The speakers ranged from experienced backpackers to journalists, environmentalists, photographers, and writers. The topics covered a wide variety of themes, from survival skills in the wilderness to environmental issues. Besides the diversity of speakers and topics, these seminars also had a transnational dimension as a result of personal connections and media channels. River Fish graduated from Peking University – the most prestigious university in Beijing, which also sends out large numbers of graduate students overseas each year. Many of his previous teachers, classmates and colleagues were working and studying in the United States, and from time to time they sent River Fish books, magazines and other media items that were not sold in China. He once proudly showed me a complete collection of National Geographic magazines sent to him by his friends abroad. These overseas connections made it easy for River Fish to invite foreign personalities to speak at the cafe seminars. He once invited a British speaker who was on the production team of the Hollywood movie Vertical Limit to give a talk about rock climbing. On another occasion, two American authors gave a talk about their new book. The cafe came to life on these seminar nights. People filled the place quickly, the cook would be busy serving food and drinks (yes, the cook and the waitress were the same person), and the speakers were occupied with setting up laptops and projectors.

Most of the time the seminars were dialogues rather than monologues. Speakers and audience sometimes shared light-hearted jokes and at other times engaged in more serious discussions. Politics was not an uncommon topic here, albeit subtly dealt with. For example, the two American authors just mentioned showed many photos they had taken on the road. William, one of the speakers, showed a photo in which some villagers had written the slogan ‘people need freedom’ (人民需要自由) on the outside wall of their house. He said that the Hong Kong version of the book included this photo, but the mainland publisher warned him that the book would be banned if the picture was included. The audience laughed and got the message immediately. There were heated debates when members engaged in discussions on issues close to home such as pollution, inflation and the level of unemployment. Seminar participants always engaged in the discussions and were eager to share their opinions. To them this cafe was a safe haven where they could freely express themselves without worrying about state surveillance or judgement by family members and colleagues. People were excited about attending these seminars, as one member wrote on the Internet: ‘Last night on my way back from attending a seminar at the Travel and Photography Cafe, I got caught in a thunderstorm … A few members and I sought refuge at the same shelter, and we were just eager to carry on the discussion we had earlier in the evening. We were all drenched, but we were all very excited.’

When River Fish talked about the history of TP Club, he referred to the club as a ‘grass-roots NGO’. He told me that he gained inspiration from Wikipedia. Volunteers around the world write Wikipedia’s articles collaboratively, and anyone who has access to the Internet can edit most articles. To River Fish, Wikipedia was a perfect model that he wished to follow as it ‘promotes no-threshold (无门槛) collaboration and interaction of free individuals who can act on their own initiatives and working goals’. He believed that his club should become such an organization that incorporated free communication and collaboration in their travel and non-travel practices. The cafe seminars bear out his vision for the club. Even though he and Dan needed to keep the size of gatherings small to avoid interference by the local police, they believed that the seminars could have a snowball effect and affect a larger audience through the people who attended the seminars. ‘We are sowing seeds,’ Dan once told me confidently. ‘Even if we can’t see the immediate results we believe that the seeds will grow and bear fruit sooner or later.’

During my field research, besides seeing the public discussions/seminars initiated and carried out in both online and offline settings, I also witnessed several endeavours that materialized in civic participation and collective action, such as raising funds for the sick, recruiting volunteers to teach the children of migrant workers, donating goods to rural schools, and so on. In this article, I draw upon the case study of a charity sale for petitioners (访民) ³⁷ to demonstrate how an online backpacking community used new tactics to initiate and participate in online activism, hence constituting a significant force facilitating the development of civil society in urban China.

In December 2005, a notice posted by club member Ant (web ID) about a charity sale for the peasant petitioners caught my attention. Most of these petitioners were homeless; they slept on the street even in the winter months because they had no money for lodging. Sometimes hundreds of petitioners assembled on the southern outskirt of the city, built temporary shelters close to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls (国家信访局), and waited for their cases to be heard and petition letters to be read by the officials. Their very presence constituted a threat and brought shame in the eyes of the local authority. They were constantly subject to harassment from law enforcement and they had to endure severe weather in the winter months.

Petitioners and their cases were never reported in official media, so many backpackers admitted that they first heard about these people when they read Ant’s post. Ant wrote:

Winter has come, they need coats. They are petitioners, and they are not welcome in Beijing, but they are our sisters and brothers. While you are sitting comfortably in your heated office, enjoying your warm coffee, dreaming about skiing in the snowy mountains, think about these people, who are dying in the freezing winter wind. They need your help. You can donate clothes, quilts, and sleeping bags. We will soon organize a charity sale, and the profits from the sale will be used to buy coats and quilts for the petitioners. If you want to know more about our country’s shangfang (上访) policy, you can google it, but make sure to set up your proxy first because these words are normally blocked in mainland China.

Following Ant’s initial post, a number of backpackers responded: ‘Strongly support! They might be the poorest people in the world. I will donate my sleeping bag.’ ‘I once caught sight of these people on my way home. Most of them were in rags. I saw them dragged away by the police. What can I do for them? Just let me know!’ ‘I can call upon my students to donate, too. It’s such a good educational opportunity.’ ‘I live in another city. Can I send clothes by mail?’ This post received 1,176 hits and 23 responses within 24 hours.

In the following days, Ant kept posting itemized summaries of the donated goods on a daily basis. A few days later, Ant rounded up a few members to visit the petitioners in order to understand the real needs of the petitioners as well as to give the members the opportunity to see for themselves the conditions under which the petitioners lived and to report about their plight. Eleven people showed up for the visit, including Ant, River Fish, Dan, and myself. It was a warm and sunny winter day, and the wind was mild. I met the group at a parking lot a few blocks from where the petitioners congregated. Other members had already parked their cars and brought out two bundles of donated coats. Besides the people I already knew, I saw a couple of new faces: two women and three men in their early 30s, appropriately dressed in their warmest winter coats. And then we went off to have lunch at a nearby restaurant where we exchanged web IDs and became acquainted with one another. I got to know that the guy who wore the black leather coat was a photographer, who was there with his wife, a freelance writer; the other woman was a high school teacher, and the other two men both worked in the IT industry. At the lunch table we tried to figure out the best way to give away the items. After some brainstorming, we decided that in order not to draw unnecessary attention, we had to locate the petitioners most in need, and then give them each an identification card so that they could go to the parking lot and receive the coat individually.

It proved to be an effective method. After lunch, two members stayed with the donated coats in the parking lot; others went to look for deserving petitioners, gave them the identification cards and asked them to pick up the coat at the parking lot. Within a few hours, all coats were given away. In addition, the members took 50 or so photos for online posting. The petitioners were all eager to have their pictures taken and asked us to publish their photos on the Internet in the hope that exposure could pressure the officials to process their cases. The participants of this event not only helped the petitioners to gain non-conventional exposure on the Internet, to which they had no immediate access, but also, wittingly or unwittingly, criss-crossed and challenged the traditional vertical relationship between the state and people, the privileged and underprivileged, and the powerful and powerless.

On their return, the members posted photos on the Internet. Perhaps in response to these photos, more than 100 people showed up at the charity sale. In collaboration with an outdoor equipment store, TP Club had purchased a large quantity of outdoor equipment, clothing, and boots at very low prices. That night, members and non-members made their way to the cafe from different places in the city; some lived close by while others had driven for two hours, some came alone and others brought friends and family. The cafe was packed. Hiking boots were scattered on the shelves, fast-drying pants were hanging on the walls, and sleeping bags were still unpacked and in boxes. The place was so crowded that I had to reach over someone’s shoulder to grab a pair of shoes and pay the cashier. Everyone was shouting; I could hardly distinguish the shouts inquiring about the price and the shouts of friends chatting. At the end of the night, the sale had raised RMB 13,480 (circa US$2,000), and another RMB 5,000 (US$620) were collected from direct donations, making a total of RMB 18,480, which far exceeded Ant’s estimation. The following day, Ant posted:

It was already half past 10 when I left the cafe, and it was 1 a.m. when I arrived home. Almost all members had showed up tonight. It was crowded and loud. I used to be shy and quiet in public, but this time I had to shout so much at the top of my lungs that I almost lost my voice. The result of the charity sale was beyond my expectations. Except for a few pairs of shoes and pants, everything was sold out. With the money we received, we can buy more than 100 sets of winter coats and hats, and even some quilts. We will give them away this Saturday, and hope to help to relieve the petitioners’ misery this winter.

By the time the winter had passed, Ant and his team had given away numerous coats and quilts to the petitioners. Ant was satisfied with the result, as he told me: ‘Of course, our purpose was not to ask the government to abolish the petition system. We were not that naive. Our goal was simple: to help petitioners survive the winter. It is in this sense that what we did was meaningful and successful.’

During the course of my fieldwork, I frequently heard people employ such words as help (帮助), support (支援) and change (改变) to describe their goals and agenda. They have replaced the traditional catchwords such as protest (抗议), confront (对抗) and overthrow (推翻), and they have created a new vocabulary in social movement and online activism. Helping the homeless, tutoring the children of migrant workers who had dropped out, and donating goods to those in need are the most common causes that I have seen in this new online activism. All of these practices are informed by the common motivation to resolve immediate social problems and implement real social changes. The goal of these activities is not to directly oppose or challenge state authority, or to promote radical political change, but to address social justice at the grass-roots level and bring about slow but steady social change.

Discussion

As many scholars of governmentality have pointed out, China’s neoliberal market reforms have dramatically changed state–society relations since 1989, testifying to the Chinese state’s retreat from a number of social spheres. ³⁸ One of the changes we see in this trend has been the widespread development and expansion of social organizations in a variety of social spheres. ³⁹ The rise of web-based voluntary associations is part of this new trend and has to be understood in this sociopolitical context. Like most post-Tiananmen offline social organizations, online communities aim to perform certain social functions and provide certain services to society, rather than directly opposing the state. It is in this sense that this new online activism is consistent with the general pattern of how social organizations relate to and engage the state in the neoliberal era. Having said that, online activism has also displayed some important features that are not typical of ‘face-to-face organizations’.

As demonstrated in the charity sale discussed earlier, the first feature of online activism is that there is no central leadership in collective actions. There is no vertical hierarchy often found in face-to-face organizations. Collective action initiated online relies heavily on horizontal ties between members rather than vertical ties between a leader and his/her followers. Because Internet forums and BBS are the major platforms for communication and interaction, any registered member can initiate an activity simply by posting on the forum. In most online backpacking communities, any member can use the forum to organize a trip, seek travel companions and share trip details. Because the first poster has the means to edit and remove his/her own posts, as well as other members’ responses in the same thread, the first poster is often referred to as the ‘master of the thread’ (楼主). Power in the Internet forum is diffused since each master of his/her thread is responsible for the world that he/she has created in the thread, no matter how tiny it is. The size of this world depends on how many clicks and replies his/her post receives. The master of the thread oversees the exchanges of information, interactions of members, and implementation of collective actions he/she has called for in this thread. It is true that there are moderators in each Internet forum managing and controlling the flow of information, but they rarely interfere with discussions and interactions taking place in each thread. The said charity sale is a case in point. Ant was an ordinary member of the club. One day he posted an ordinary message on the club’s forum, and this was the beginning of one big collective action that drew large numbers of participants and materialized in the form of a charity sale. There was no top–down decision-making process, no central leadership from the club, and no job assignment among the participant members. If there was a leader, the leader was Ant because he was the master of the thread, not because he was the leader of the club. In other words, this leader can be Ant today, River Fish tomorrow, and member X the day after tomorrow, and so on. This mechanism of creating posts through one’s free will and autonomy on the Internet has effectively decentralized power relations and leadership in the new online activism.

The second unique feature of online activism is spatial flexibility inherent in collective action initiated by online communities. Unlike TP Club, most online communities do not have a fixed meeting place. But to many people’s surprise, this has created more benefits than inconvenience. First of all, members of online communities do not need to worry about financial issues that often cause anxiety to face-to-face organizations. Second, members can choose their meeting places more freely and flexibly. Online backpacking communities are unique in this respect as travel produces spatial mobility and flexibility. Therefore their meeting places are often at the bus or train station, on a mountaintop, in the wilderness or on off-the-beaten-tracks, far from power centres such as family, school and work unit. For most interest-based online communities, restaurants are the most popular place for offline gatherings; members’ houses and apartments are secondary but not uncommon among close members. I described earlier how the restaurant provided us with an ideal place for meeting and planning before distributing donated coats to the petitioners. A typical Chinese restaurant is always packed and loud – no one would pay attention to what you are discussing. Even mentioning such sensitive terms as democracy, government, corruption and so on will not arouse any attention. Spatial flexibility and mobility found in online communities is an important feature of this public space for dialogue, participation and information dissemination.

The third and fourth features of online activism deal with the deterritorialization of online and offline spheres. The third feature is anonymity in the online world and the fourth feature is collaboration with traditional media in the offline world. In online communities, members address one another by web IDs, and nearly all identification information is intentionally or unintentionally withheld from fellow members. Most members do not enquire about the details of other members’ age, education, marital status and employment status. Going by nickname and web ID, members of online communities are no longer subject to the immediate surveillance of authority and can easily keep separate their newfound social world and their everyday life. At the same time, online communities also actively seek collaboration with traditional media for support and social recognition. In order to provide concrete service to the people who need special care – for example, the poor, the sick, school dropouts, and laid-off workers – web-mediated social groups often have to comply with government policies, and sometimes even seek support from local authority and official media channels to achieve their goals. More than once, reports in newspapers, on radio talk shows, and on television news programmes have brought public attention to the volunteer projects of the members of backpacking communities, including environmental protection campaigns, photo exhibits, and charity programmes in rural schools. Although they are not recognized as official social organizations, the term grass-roots NGOs has nevertheless been employed in these news reports.

To conclude, all these features demonstrate that online communities are dynamic in their associational life, rich in tactics and resources for galvanizing and participating in collective action, and hence constitute a significant force facilitating the development of civil society in urban China. Travel and the Internet and travel clubs and charity sales are seemingly incongruous, but in today’s China increasing numbers of young people join online communities and are changed by the relationships and practices they are engaged in on the Internet. It is not uncommon for an urban citizen to donate money or to volunteer to teach in a rural school through voluntarily formed online communities.

This new social channel demonstrates several notable features. The first is their unofficial status and voluntary nature. Because online communities are not registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, they are less subject to state regulation and supervision. They are economically independent, as their financial needs are often met by voluntary donations of their members. Second, a new consumer culture has sparked the need to assert a newfound individualism and to form associations with like-minded people outside traditional communities. The emergence of a more mobile, heterogeneous, and economically independent urban population has increasingly given shape to new types of interpersonal relationships and associational styles. These people have demonstrated an urgent desire to articulate their newfound identity and to share their private experiences. The emergence of new horizontal ties between urban citizens, accompanied by the rise of new types of interactions and communications on the Internet, has become part of a repertoire of collective actions described in the above. Lastly, the web-mediated collective practices have demonstrated new tactics and goals of online activism. Members of online communities aim to raise public awareness, disseminate knowledge, and mobilize collective action to solve immediate social problems. This new form of online activism no longer relies on centralized leadership, no longer mobilizes large-scale mass demonstrations or calls for radical political change; instead, it emphasizes collaboration, civic participation, and social and cultural change, as demonstrated by the charity sale discussed in this article.