| This study investigates social and political implications of Internet-based communities for China's democratic future. These communities are new horizontal civic associations that originate from Internet forums and whose members hold regular offline meetings.; Methodologically, this study relies on interviews with community members and online posts they have written as well as a survey with non-probability sampling of 594 people in Zhengzhou City.; Internet-based communities, as the primary type of voluntary civic association in China, are found to be forming an alternate civil society. They also significantly generate social capital and facilitate cultural shifts toward post-materialist values among members.; The findings indicate that non-political, small, local and informal horizontal associations exemplified by Internet-based communities may have the same potential as traditional civic associations for nurturing democratic culture and solving collective action problems of Chinese society. |
