• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 8, 2011

China's government is terrified of social media because of its potential as a tool for spreading and organizing dissent -- and it turns out this fear is quite justified, as the Communist party faces its biggest external political challenge in twenty years, thanks in part to social media.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Chinese opposition politics is being revitalized by influential bloggers like Li Chengpeng, who aren't afraid to take openly adversarial positions against the government. Li's campaign statement for this year's local elections (unveiled on his microblog account at Sina Weibo) is typically confrontational, exhorting his followers to do the previously unthinkable: "You will never know the benefit of standing up if you always stay on your knees."

Another aspiring opposition politician profiled by CSM, Xu Yan, is an advertising executive in the city of Hangzhou; Yan is also using the Sina Weibo microblogging service and online video to drum up online support. Previously, politicians "never met voters, or communicated with us," he tells CSM, adding: "I want to change that." For political dissidents in Yan's position -- with almost no hope of gaining publicity in the government-controlled news media -- social media is far and away the most effective channel for raising awareness, recruiting supporters, and communicating campaign goals.

Of course, the Chinese government probably isn't just going to sit idly by while a nascent political opposition forms -- and social media is undoubtedly in the crosshairs. In what may be a bit of an understatement, one academic expert notes that the rise of social media campaigning "makes some parts of the government a little nervous, and likely to claim that maybe there are enemies out there using the elections as a way to create instability in China."

In July 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released a report, titled "Development of China's New Media," sounding the alarm over the subversive potential of online social media, which the authors warn is being used by Western governments (including the United States) to foment political unrest inside China. Among its key suggestions: "We must pay attention to the potential risks and threats to state security as the popularity of social networking sites continues to grow. We must immediately step up supervision of social networking sites."