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Asia Times: China’s Internet Debate: Beijing Spring or Digital Cultural Revolution?

Ren Zhiqiang
Ren Zhiqiang / AP
March 21, 2016

Fifty years after the tumultuous upheaval known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, China appears on the verge a new information age battle between communist party hardliners and reformers.

Unlike Mao Zedong’s rampaging zealots of that era, China’s new Red Guards are lurking in cyberspace, promoting a hardline communist agenda against party reformers who appear to favor less rigid media and other controls and who seem to be questioning the supremacy of the all-powerful Communist Party of China.

A potentially major split within the Chinese leadership surfaced amid the ongoing political drama over popular real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, a privileged Communist Party member and outspoken social media critic widely dubbed the Donald Trump of China.

Read the entire article at Asia Times.