China has lived with the Internet for nearly two decades. Will increased Internet use with new possibilities to share information and discuss news and politics lead to democracy or will it to the contrary sustain a nationalist supported authoritarianism that may eventually contest the global information order This book takes stock of the ongoing tug of war between state power and civil society on and off the Internet a phenomenon that is fast becoming the centerpiece in the Chinese Communist Partys struggle to stay in power indefinitely. It interrogates the dynamics of this enduring contestation before democracy by following how Chinese society travels from getting access to the Internet to our time having the worlds largest Internet population.