Panel presentation :

In this panel, we study the specificities of public expression and political participation for the Chinese as well as the impact of their more and more intense interaction with the outside world, whether in China, online, or when travelling, studying or working abroad. We investigate the strategies they adopt to express their opinions and participate. In the context of heavy censorship in China, we wish to open this collective discussion to papers studying Chinese citizens residing in Europe. This allows us to test widespread theses of a Chinese “political culture” and its supposed incompatibility with democratic practices. Our main objective is to investigate upward forms of participation and how Chinese youths or youths of Chinese descent navigate – especially online – between different political environments with a more or less critical stance as regards the authorities. This panel also focuses on the governments' response to these various forms of participation. Last of all, this panel is a contribution to larger debates on the question: how to be a political scientist and a sociologist in authoritarian context, with a controversial use of statistical sources, limited access to official, institutional and private archives and available sources in the public sphere, specific interview and observation conditions and discursive tactics.