Do Circumvention Tools Promote Democratic Values? Exploring the Correlates of Anti-Censorship Technology Adoption in China

Abstract

China is one of the world’s most sophisticated internet censoring countries. Internet users who wish to visit blocked websites will have to use circumvention tools to get around the Great Firewall, a censoring system inspecting, filtering, and blocking content online. Using a nationally representative survey dataset, this study tries to compare circumvention tool users and non-users in terms of their demographic difference, internet use motivation, media trust, and most importantly, their political attitudes and behaviors. We found that more than 11 percent of the Chinese internet users were circumvention tool adopters, who were most likely to be young and well-educated. Compared to non-users, circumvention tool users exhibited a mixture of politically conservative attitudes and pro-civic motivations and behaviors.

Keywords: internet censorship, censorship circumvention, internet freedom, democratic values, China