The internet’s role in promoting civic engagement in China and Singapore: A Confucian view

a. Confucian political order

Confucianism is the focus of this article. But what is Confucianism? Confucius (551 BC-479 BC) developed a comprehensive system of philosophy and ethics covering morality, politics, economics, family life, and education. Throughout the history of China, most dynasties respected, emphasised, and developed Confucianism as the official ideology to regulate the activities of citizens and governments in the public and private spheres of social life. Confucianism continues to have a significant impact on the thinking and actions of Chinese citizens. Confucianism is conceptualised by its five virtues: benevolence [rén ^仁] (how people should express love and sympathy for others), righteousness [yì ^義] (how one’s thoughts and behaviours should conform to one’s own beliefs, and that one should resist temptation), propriety [lĭ ^禮] (how to respect the behavioural norms that maintain the social structure, such as hierarchy), wisdom [zhì ^智] (how a person should develop knowledge about what is right and wrong), and fidelity [xīn ^信] (how one’s own words and deeds support the collective good).

Confucianism centres on personal virtues, adopts a paternalistic governance model, and relies on political leaders to lead by example to reflect virtues. Confucianism entrusts the government with considerable responsibilities and obligations and emphasises that the government should govern by virtue and put the people first. Confucianism has had a significant impact on the political beliefs and values of contemporary Chinese citizens. Chinese citizens use Confucianism to understand politics and democracy as a paternalistic model (Shi & Lu, 2010). Confucianism also emphasises the stable hand of the elite in governance. Confucianism believes that the ability of the leader is more important than procedural arrangements such as fair elections. Confucianism limits the scope of ordinary citizens’ political participation in conveying their concerns to political leaders. Political leaders should make decisions based on their own judgment. Ordinary citizens will only oppose the government in extreme situations, such as when political leaders significantly deviate from expected norms and Confucian virtues.

The traditional Confucian political order is an obstacle to civil society development (Metzger, 1993; Tong & Lei, 2013; Yu, 1993). As mentioned previously, civil society refers to a bottom-up political order in western tradition; civil society should be voluntary and bottom-up in order to minimise intervention from the state and market. However, in ancient China, people truly believed in the emperor and officials, based on their capability and morality; people did not dare to oppose the government (or the emperor). Yu (1993) believed that civil society is not possible in China, as Metzger (1993) echoed, the Confucianism idea is deeply rooted among the Chinese, making people desire a top-down political order. For example, the Analects of Confucius Book 8 says, ‘One should not discuss the affairs of an office one does not hold’. Professor Hsiao-Tung Fei, in his book From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society, also suggested the Differential Mode of Association by pointing out that the mode of association in China is all about selfishness and family interests, which is different from Western society:

Selfishness is the most serious shortcoming of country people. That is the opinion of those intellectuals who advocate rural reconstruction. When we think of selfishness, we think of the proverb ‘Each person should sweep the snow from his own doorsteps and should not fret about the frost on his neighbour’s roof’. No one would deny that this proverb is one of the Chinese creeds. Actually, this attitude is held not only by country people but also by city people [...]

The basic structure of Chinese rural society is what I have called a ‘differential mode of association’ [chàxù géjú ^差序格局]. This pattern is composed of distinctive networks spreading out from each individual’s personal connections. It is quite different from the modern Western organizational mode of association [tuánt ^ǐ géjú ^團體格局]. In such a pattern, personal relationships depend on a common structure. People attach themselves to a pre-existing structure and then, through that structure, form personal relationships. The concept of the citizen, for example, necessarily follows the development of the state. (Fei, 1992, pp. 60, 70)

The comparison suggested by Metzger still applies to Chinese society nowadays. In China, many people still do not dare to criticise the government and the Chinese Communist Party; in Singapore, people always follow the direction of the government and the People’s Action Party. Some scholars have commented that people do not dare to publicly criticise the Singaporean government in Singapore, even if they are dissatisfied, as they do not want to be prosecuted by the Singaporean Government (Ortmann, 2012, 2015a). The top-down political order strongly influences China and Singapore; thus, civic engagement and political participation are weak in both places. People rarely want to change the country themselves, but through the authorities; they believe the government will fix everything. Due to the lack of the tradition of bottom-up political participation, it is hard to encourage people to participate in social movements, even though the Internet provides a two-way, intense, and informative communication platform. The top-down political order in Confucianism contradicts the basic idea of civil society, making it difficult to achieve a civil society.

Yang (2019a) believes that China’s civil society and the Internet are interdependent, and that the Internet can produce ‘grassroots democracy’. However, China’s civil society is entirely different from other places because China’s market economy model is not entirely free, and there is no plural democratic system. These elements are necessary conditions for civil society affirmed by Western academia. Another point to note is that in Yang’s discussion, the government is in a passive position, trying to control public opinion only when it is out of control. However, in reality, the Chinese government not only tightly controls public opinion, but also actively ‘guides’ it. Topics such as ‘the Chinese Dream’ and ‘Anti-Corruption’ are all actively guided by new media with official backgrounds, especially after Xi Jinping came to power. We must admit that such issues can indeed win the people’s hearts, so that the government can get more support from the people to carry out more online propaganda.

China’s active dominance of public opinion is a manifestation of the traditional top-down political structure. Faced with the government’s propaganda machine, people rarely have negative feelings; many of them even often agree with the propaganda machine, resulting in minimal space for the practice of grassroots democracy.

A similar situation also occurs in Singapore. The top-down elite political structure has existed in Singapore for many years. As the People’s Action Party has been in power for a long time, the People’s Action Party has always mobilised the national propaganda machine to conduct political propaganda online and offline. Professor Yu Yingshi, a well-known historian and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, commented on the governing philosophy of the former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, on 8th April 2015:

At the beginning of 1980, Lee Kuan Yew had a plan to establish a Confucian ethics plan in Singapore. He believed that the Chinese needed social support for his politics [...] As a result of this mobilisation, his People’s Action Party has indeed received the support of more than 2 million people [...] We must admit that although he opposes democracy, or even criticises democracy, he actually borrowed the form of British democracy to establish his country. He did not fight the world by force. The most important point is that he had a special situation when he founded the country. At that time, he initiated mobilisations to let people in the society follow him [...]

The Singapore model is a political tool on the one hand and a reduction in the people’s personal freedom on the other. This phenomenon does exist, but it was acceptable to everyone under the circumstances at the time. At that time, the majority of the Chinese believed that the country should be established first and the economy should be improved, so under these conditions they followed Lee Kuan Yew [...] The People’s Action Party believes that the value of Asia is different from Western democracy and freedom from the West, but the country can be established by means of political unity and political control (Yu, 2015, pp. 151155).

Owing to Singapore’s weak opposition parties (although the government has never banned opposition parties from participating in elections), Singaporeans (especially Singapore Chinese) have had no opinion on governance for a long time, and the space for grassroots democracy is minimal.

b. Internet censorship

Internet censorship is enforced in both Singapore and China. The two countries have a similar purpose in enforcing Internet censorship: maintaining effective administration and political legitimacy. However, the reasons and approaches to censorship are slightly different in the two places.

In China, according to King, Pan and Roberts (2013), there are three types of censorship, which are the 1) Great Firewall of China, 2) keyword blocking, and 3) manual censorship. Most people believe that censorship in China aims to eliminate all negative comments towards the Central People’s Government and the China Communist Party, in order to maintain legitimacy. However, King, Pan and Roberts (2013) discovered something different from our general view of censorship in China. King, Pan and Roberts (2013) tried to post political posts on over 1000 websites from January to July 2013, and kept tracking when and what type of posts were deleted because of the censorship. In the end they found that not all the posts criticising the Chinese Government or the Communist Party were deleted; most of the deleted posts involved gathering people. This finding is crucial as it shows that the Chinese government somehow allows people to criticise the government, although this must be very minimal and controllable by the government. The primary purpose of censorship is not to eliminate criticism of the state, but to reduce the possibility of mobilisation and collective movements, which are likely to cause revolutions and damage the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.

As for Singapore, the primary purpose is not suppressing collective movements, although Singapore wants to maintain legitimacy. Singapore is a multi-ethnic country with six ethnicities. When Singapore was still a part of the Federation of Malaya, Chinese and Malay always had severe conflicts. As a result, the Singaporean government needs to ensure harmony between each ethnic group, in order to maintain social order (Liu et al., 2002). Therefore, when the Internet was introduced into Singapore in 1994, the government had already set the rules. All racial, sexual, religious, terrorist, and ethnic related websites would be controlled or even banned (Lee & Kan, 2009)

The Singaporean Government also censors information which negatively affects the People’s Action Party, the ruling party since the establishment of the Republic. The only purpose of this censorship is to maintain the People’s Action Party’s reputation to ensure the party can maintain its power. As mentioned in the previous part, the Singaporean government always prosecutes people who negatively comment on the government. This censorship and lawsuit discourage this civil society and civic engagement. The Singapore Government also suppresses collective movements by limiting protests in Hong Lim Park, a small park in Chinatown.

Internet censorship is not unique in Asia. It happens in other parts of the world as well, such as Cuba. Why is internet censorship in Asian Confucian countries different from that in other countries? This article suggests that the failure of the Internet in promoting civil society must combine with these two features: On one hand, the governments enforce censorship for political reasons. On the other hand, people do not resist, or they do not dare to resist, because of Confucian political culture. Since people look for a top-down political order, they might not think the political censorship imposed by the government is a problem. As long as there is social and economic stability, people are happy to sacrifice their political rights. Amos Yee and Roy Ngerng, as mentioned above, are an example, as in general Singaporeans found that they deserved to be jailed. This ‘impose and accept’ relationship is a chemical reaction and completely limits the role of the Internet and the overall civic development in the two countries.

From a Confucian perspective, we can understand this censorship system as government leaders making Internet censorship decisions for the public good. For example, the Great Firewall is the main technical means of restricting information access at the infrastructure level. It blocks foreign websites that the government considers dangerous, such as Facebook and Twitter, to regulate access and content, and to monitor citizens’ Internet use. At the national level, the government controls the gateway to the international network and licences the operation of the Internet service providers. These paternalistic practices are manifested in several ways. For example, citizens must register with an Internet service provider using their real names (Liang & Lu, 2010).

Governments often cite practical reasons for implementing Internet censorship. For example, Singapore censors information on online platforms that may cause the public to panic. At the same time, the Chinese government has formulated censorship strategies that vary from region to region. For example, Bamman et al. (2012) researched China’s practice of deleting content on social media. They found that Tibet and other remote provinces have stricter censorship, as the government believes that the regions are unstable.

Previous studies define censorship as a top-down suppression tool adopted by governments. However, there is very little research to understand how people view the Internet censorship system. Although in China, websites or software such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Whatsapp are banned by the Great Firewall of China, people can still use these websites or software through circumvention tools. However, a study conducted by Roberts et al. (2011) estimated that very few users use censorship circumvention tools – likely less than 3 per cent. Even if the Western apps and sites make it into China, they may face apathy from young people. Many Chinese feel that there is no need to use these websites. This is because China has corresponding software or websites to fulfil the roles of Facebook, Google, and Twitter, such as Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), WeChat (the Chinese equivalent of Whatsapp), and Baidu (the Chinese equivalent of Google). Moreover, a lot of information on these Western websites is in English, so Chinese people have no interest or even ability to browse these websites.

Many young people in China have little idea what Google, Twitter, or Facebook are, creating a gulf with the rest of the world. Accustomed to the homegrown apps and online services, many appear uninterested in knowing what has been censored online. Recently, Chen and Yang (2019) conducted research and provided nearly 1000 students at two Beijing universities with free tools to bypass the censorship. They found that nearly half the students did not use them. Among those who did, almost none spent time browsing foreign news websites that were blocked. The research of Kou et al. (2017) also found that the online censorship system does not pressurise Chinese people, and Chinese people believe that they can still find information or communicate under the online censorship system. Kou et al. (2017) added that it is more important for the Chinese to maintain a harmonious and non-confrontational relationship with other people and the government; many interviewees even often cited Confucius to answer the questions. For example, ‘one should not impose on others what he himself does not desire’ (benevolence and righteousness) and ‘we should maintain the social structure and support the collective good’ (propriety and integrity) (Kou et al., 2017, p. 383).

The results of Kou et al. (2017) show that Chinese people have a high degree of tolerance and compliance with the online censorship system, which is in sharp contrast to the research that assumes that Chinese citizens should resist the online censorship system. In China and even Singapore, certain cultural and socio-historical dimensions existed before the censorship system, such as Confucian values ​and beliefs. Confucianism is the root cause of the failure of civil society in Asia, and the Internet censorship system is the ‘catalyst’ making the problem worse.

Confucianism also complements the Internet censorship system – under the longterm immersion of Confucianism, people have little opposition to, or even agree with, the Internet censorship system. Perhaps this is, as suggested by Fei (1992), out of selfishness – people are just not bothered by the political and social problems, as long as their personal needs are fulfilled. These observations differ from previous studies that only focused on the Internet censorship system and ignored the cultural and socio-historical dimensions. If we understand these cultural and socio-historical dimensions, we can know why so many people in China or even Singapore still support the ruling party, and why so many netizens in China, no matter whether they are Internet commentators (also known as the 50 Cent Party [wŭmáo dăng ^五毛黨] in China) ^[1] or normal netizens, support the Chinese government.