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The Internet in China 115lifestyle of the 1970s for the periodic anti-materialism campaigns of the 1980sand then for the flourishing of hedonism today. In this sense, Chinese cyberspace,infused with symbols of money-making and pleasure-seeking, probablycaptures the most dazzling snapshots of consumerist culture in contemporaryChina. From the beginning, buying computers and going online have beenadvertised as fashionable entertainment, as “surfing,” an imported (and thereforepricey) pastime. Pop-up windows, flashy banner ads, and tinkling promotionssometimes occupy half of the browser space when one opens the homepage of a major Internet service provider, probably because of users’ remarkabletolerance of commercials. 32 Broadband service providers are now sellingJapanese hentai cartoons and the latest Hollywood blockbusters to high-endusers. Those with a more modest budget, including rural residents (Bolande,2003), also demand online gaming, driving up the stock price for dot-comslike Netease, the biggest gainer of any company on the hi-tech Nasdaq in2002, which climbed 1,500 percent from 75 cents to US$ 11.45 (Ghahremani,2003).To illustrate the seductive transience of China’s consumption-oriented newmedia culture, consider the short messaging system (SMS), a new aspect ofChina’s network society. Designed to enhance communication among China’s207 million cellular phone subscribers, SMS service relies on the Internet forfiber-optic channels and for content, including personal messages (for example,e-mails) as well as text, ring tones, and images provided by dot-coms(Clark, 2003). Like NTT Docomo in Japan, SMS has been a huge commercialsuccess. This has special implications for China because, by allowing chargesto be added to the phone bill, it bypasses the problem of online payment forthe majority of Chinese who do not have credit cards. In 2002, the largest SMScarrier in the country, China Mobile, transmitted 80 billion short messages(Murphy, 2003), generating US$ 1 billion in revenue. Besides exchangeswithin existing personal networks, SMS dating applications, made possible byonline clubs and QQ, 33 are popular. Instant messaging which links Internet andcell phone chatting is also a success. To increase SMS circulation, Chinesedot-coms like Netease have hired a team of “SMS authors (duanxin xieshou)”to write jokes, hoaxes, erotica, and congratulatory greetings that are crisp,condensed, and fleeting (Chen, 2002).Just as the early diffusion of the telephone reinforced existing inclinationsamong Americans (Fischer, 1992), the rise of the Internet and new networkedmodes of communication is strengthening certain propensities in China’s transitionalsociety. It also excludes alternative perceptions, such as the “hackerethic” (Himanen, 2001), as most Chinese versions of Linux are sold for a feeand few in China protest. 34 The dominance of consumerism in shaping experienceswith the Internet is only matched by the wide appeal of online nationalism,the political discourse underlying everyday discussion among the