The development of Internet is both a formidable challenge for China’s single-party State and a powerful means of control and regulation, in a context where order and harmony are values that have triumphed over more than twenty years of frenetic pursuit of wealth. While the disqualification of the totalitarian ideology and the explosion of the new information technologies have clearly helped to loosen former restraints on civil society, the State’s means of control have never been seriously put to the test. In fact, the Chinese government is now using the “consultative” and “participatory” resources of these technologies to reinforce a system of governance that is allowing it to sideline political reforms that would effectively place citizens at the heart of the matter.