Analyzing the coexistence of emerging transparency and tight political control on Weibo: Case study of Weibo broadcast of the Bo Xilai trial

The trial of China's former official Bo Xilai is a significant benchmark for social media's role in increasing transparency in the Chinese justice system, at least when it comes to the trials of Party officials. In thinking about the correlation between governmentality and the Bo Xilai trial in China, this paper argues that it is problematic and insufficient to equate the conduct of the trial with Western liberalism. The continuous enforcement of Weibo regulation and other types of control in the new media era indeed made the Chinese Government more authoritarian. However, this article argues that the party-state is deliberately taking a number of sophisticated strategies and calculations through moderating and censoring Weibo service to reduce the risks on the controversial issue of the trial.