Discussion of Promoting the Healthy Development of Citizens´ Political Participation via Internet

Citizens´ political participation via Internet has now become the important form of citizens´ political participation, which not only supplies powerful drive to development of democracy, but also has many shortcomings and faces large risks which are mainly embodied in: Firstly, obvious imbalance exists in citizens´ political participants via Internet and their abilities due to the imbalance of Chinese economic and social development, Internet democracy may dissimilate to be “Internet nobility democracy”. Secondly, the existence of prevalence of individual liberalism as well as excessive-popularity of citizens´ globalization idea in China´s society makes the supervision for citizen´s political participation via Internet in out of control. Thirdly, information explosion, information crowd and group polarization phenomenon also leads non-rationality, extremity of citizens´ political participation via Internet. In view of this, China´s government shall firstly be committed to eliminate “digital gulf”, and supplies equal opportunity of political participation via Internet to citizens; meanwhile, China´s government shall insist to governing Internet with laws, enhance control and management for Internet information nodes, purify information network space; moreover, government shall actively perfect the systems such government´s information issuance on Internet, governmental officials´ direct on-line communication with citizens, and strives to form good “appeal-response” mechanism of interaction between officials and citizens; finally, government shall further improve citizens´ political quality and ethical quality, cultivate citizens´ political participation culture, and perfect Internet ethic criterion systems.