The Rising influence of Chinese Social Media

It is worth noting that with the wider use of internet and social media, the social media and its users obtain stronger influence in China, both domestically and internationally. The Chinese social media users, especially the young generation who are born after the 1980s, are more in favor of expressing themselves and their ideas online publicly. Even though there are online speech regulation and strict limitations of accessing Western social media and internet, the Chinese social media users still demonstrate impressive power on many issues. Domestically speaking, the Chinese social media users have launched more thousands of anti-corruption campaigns online and deeply changed Chinese political environment, now even the Chinese government itself relies on information provided online to inspect bribed government officers. While from an international aspect, events like “March to Facebook Event” in 2016 and boycott of D&G (an Italian fashion brand) show a completely different Chinese young generations, who are more confident and dissatisfied with the Western bias towards China. This article aims to introduce several political and social events which are heavily influenced by Chinese social media and demonstrates the importance of Chinese social media when conducting studies on China.