Swimming against the tide: Tracing and locating Chinese leftism online

This thesis explores the resurgence of Chinese leftism online, its historical rationale, characteristics, scopes of influence, space for survival, contributions and limitations, and prospective implications. Through documentary analysis, participant observation and interviews, it identifies, describes and analyzes Chinese leftism’s contradictions and shifting characters since 1976, during which capitalist restoration and rightwing market authoritarianism have accelerated economic reforms, diversified social contentions and complicated the leftist heritage of the postrevolutionary state. Continual resistance from an increasingly united front of leftists at elite and popular levels has elevated and renewed China’s suppressed ideological debates online, notably since 2003. Their rapid growth and increasing support notwithstanding, online leftists’ involvement in cybersphere alone does not fully unlock much emancipatory potential. Yet their persistence indicates the intensity of struggles within the allegedly socialist country whose government has attempted to wave goodbye to its revolutionary legacy and support of the counter-bourgeois publics that made its governance possible.