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100 Jack Linchuan Qiuservice, ChinaNet, in January 1995. 4 These were more efforts of emulationthan homegrown innovation, though: the World Bank provided partial fundingfor the NCFC; a foreign telecom firm, Sprint, operated the first internationalchannels of both the NCFC and ChinaNet. 5 Global actors were instrumental inthe genesis of the new technology in the PRC.Since 1995, China’s Internet has been developing rapidly, demonstratingthe potential for the country to become a world leader in the Internet industry.According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), 6 onaverage, the number of Internet users in China has been increasing by 262percent every year from less than 40,000 in December 1995 to 59.1 million inJune 2003. 7 By the end of 2002, there were more than 20.8 million onlinecomputers, 371,600 registered World Wide Web sites, and a total internationalconnection capacity of 9,380 megabytes directly linking up China with othercountries. Acknowledging that official statistics are flawed, 8 there is generalagreement on the extraordinary rapidity of Internet growth in the country.Although China’s huge population suggests that the scale of technology diffusionremains quite limited, the speed of development is remarkable consideringthat, when ChinaNet opened for business in 1995, the country had less thanfive telephone sets per hundred population, comparable to the US teledensitylevel of 1905. 9 China’s Internet boom appeared to be little affected by theslowdown in the information technology (IT) industry worldwide at the turnof the millennium.What accounts for this swift take-off? Although the dissemination ofWestern technologies was a key element from the beginning, the explanatorypower of a diffusion model is no longer sufficient as the Internet materializesinto the centerpiece of China’s new economy and societal transformations.More causes therefore need to be sought in the peculiar sociohistorical contextof China: from state policies to commercial rationale, from guanxi and familynetworks to the emergence of grassroots identities, to the competition ofmodernity projects, whether communist or capitalist, nationalist or globalist,and the alternative social movements arising. These factors all shape andbecome constituents of what might be called “informationalism with Chinesecharacteristics.”One thematic concern constantly accompanying the question of theInternet, which underlies most discourse on technology and globalization inthe PRC, is a strong sense of humiliation for the atrocities inflicted upon thenation since the Opium War (1839–1842). The memory of China being themost technologically advanced nation on the planet lingers (Needham, 1981),so its fall from the throne hurts. As a result, restoring China’s technicalsupremacy, and thereby reviving the Middle Kingdom, has been a constantgoal for Chinese leaders since Dr Sun Yat-sen (who gave up his presidency ofthe Republic of China to become the Minister of Railways from a belief in the