Revolution postponed: The limitation of the internet in promoting democracy in China

China is the leading country with the largest population of internet users. While the internet is considered effective in spreading democratic values, creating civil societies, and bringing down authoritarian governments, its role might be overestimated. Traditional and officially controlled media such as TV are still the main source of information for most Chinese. The internet is only used by a small population who are educated, wealthy, young, and urban residents. This chapter explores how new and traditional media compete to affect political attitudes (including political trust, nationalism, pro-democracy orientation and civil disobedience) in China, and how political attitudes in turn affect media use, using data from the 2008 China Survey and 2012 World Values Survey. Preliminary analysis has shown that political attitudes affect TV use but not internet use. However, the internet, instead of TV, exerts significant influence on political attitudes. Instrumental variable regressions were employed to deal with the problem of endogeneity between media exposure and political attitudes.