3/04/2015 @ 9:36PM
Pro-Beijing rally in Hong Kong. Photo: Johan Nylander .
Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, Chinese netizens have seen their rights to write, read and interact online diminish gradually. The crackdown comes as Beijing aims to tighten up socio-political control and take on its critics.
But despite the tightening of access to the Internet, unfettered access to the web may not be a threat to patriotism, academics say.
“There are plenty of Chinese outside of China who use Google GOOGL +0.54%, Facebook and Twitter TWTR -0.46% on a daily basis, and who read the New York Times, listen to western music and are just as every bit as nationalistic – and perhaps as jingoistic – as some Chinese who live in China,” said Victor Teo, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who is an expert on Asia-Pacific relations.
For those Chinese outside of China there is a strong will to stand up for their country, especially in the face of criticism, research by a PhD student at the University of California, Henry Chiu Hail, has shown.
His research — based on quality interviews and open-ended surveys with Chinese students and scholars at a university in the US — indicated that Chinese students in the United States often felt that the status of China or Chinese people was being attacked or threatened in their host country.
As such, many Chinese students felt it was important to demonstrate loyalty to China, his article “Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters with Criticisms of China”, concluded.
For detail please visit here