| This study examines the current Internet cafe phenomenon in a modernizing country---the People's Republic of China. Internet cafes emerged worldwide in the 1990s, and the use of Internet in cafes varies from country to country. This investigation adopts a critical and cultural studies framework to explore the complex relationships among information and communication technology (ICT), the nation state, and the individual user of Internet cafes. Chinese language interviews, observations, and survey research are used to collect data, in addition to the collection of Chinese media and telecommunications policy documents. The Chinese government tries to monitor individual use of the Internet through different means, including technical design, monitoring software, regulations, administrative and legal measures, and continuous political education. Local zoning actions, such as limiting "net bar" business hours, imposing age restrictions on Internet users, running fire prevention programs, "sweeping" bars frequently, and posting regulations in these bars, are used to control and regulate net bars. In the bar environment, most users, especially youth, perceive the new medium as a way to pass time and to socialize with others. They use the Internet primarily to send email, to play computer games, to chat with others, and to watch movies. Their attitudes toward regulations are ambivalent and ignorant. Additionally, net bar owners and managers serve double roles as regulators as well as the regulated. These contradictory behaviors perhaps reflect a transitory time, when the Chinese Communist culture is in conflict with and co-existing with new capitalist social forms. There is a widened gap between patterns of state use of the Internet technology and of civilian use of the Internet in net bars. The control over and monitoring of Internet use has reinforced the unquestioning compliance with authorities and with the status quo of existing social, economic, and political systems. This may have helped produce political apathy among Internet users, especially young people, whose use of the Internet is largely entertainment oriented. |
