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In this article, we join an ongoing debate among Western scholars on political representation and argue that political representation is undergoing a transformation stimulated by the rapid proliferation of the new information and communication technologies. We propose that in China, the new social media have stimulated a shift from representation by official organizations to bottom-up self-representation, and from mandate political representation to embodiment. To grasp this change, we select private entrepreneurs as our focus of study and propose the concept of "connective representation." Drawing on fieldwork in China from 2015 through 2019 and on analysis of online materials, we demonstrate how private entrepreneurs in China form and advance their collective interests through online connectivity. The concept of connective representation adds to the conventional perspectives on political representation, particularly in the authoritarian setting.

This article traces the evolution of representative claim-making by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 up to the present day. Based on the analysis of official political discourses on the mass line, the Three Represents and more recent ongoing discourses on digitalization, we demonstrate the change and continuity of claim-making by the CCP. We show that while representative claim-making has undergone a significant transformation from the CCP as the representative of the working class to the sole representative of the Chinese people and nation, the CCP has been consistent throughout decades in maintaining its hegemony over representative claim-making.

This article traces the evolution of representative claim-making by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 up to the present day. Based on the analysis of official political discourses on the mass line, the Three Represents and more recent ongoing discourses on digitalization, we demonstrate the change and continuity of claim-making by the CCP. We show that while representative claim-making has undergone a significant transformation from the CCP as the representative of the working class to the sole representative of the Chinese people and nation, the CCP has been consistent throughout decades in maintaining its hegemony over representative claim-making.

This paper provides a literature review and preliminary field observations on the topic of political representation in the Chinese cyberspace. The authors demonstrate that multiple new communication platforms are being established in the Chinese cyberspace. These new platforms not only transform conventional forms of political representation but also create new representative patterns, such as in cases of interactive and connective e-representations. They conclude that the proliferation of new communication technologies has been transforming the relationships between representatives and represented as well as between the state and society. Furthermore, in this paper the authors take their analysis beyond the description of the Chinese case and argue that the Chinese case also contributes to the Western theory of political representation. More specifically, they question the performative nature of claim-making and the role of "performer" and the "audience". They propose two concepts of interactive and connective e-representations and further claim that the current developments in the Chinese cyberspace may signal a new digital turn in the theory of political representation.