Rights Defence (weiquan), Microblogs (weibo), and Popular Surveillance (weiguan)

The rise of China’s rights defence movement has occurred in tandem with the rapid development of the Internet in China. Various forms of rights defence inside and outside of the courtroom have emerged and developed alongside changes to China’s ideological, political, and legal systems and social structure. Similarly, Internet technology such as microblogs and other social media are enriching the modalities of activity in the rights defence movement, enhancing the mobilisation capacity of activists, and accelerating the systematisation of popular rights defence, profoundly affecting China’s ongoing political transformation.