Users, not netizens: Spaces and practices on the Chinese internet

The main advantage of the Chinese economy leading to its rapid rise was the importance of low-priced labour. The author has held hundreds of in-depth interviews with gold farmers and soldiers of water armies, as well as conducted extensive participant observation in the sites of their work during the past 6 years. The water army in which the author worked as an undercover soldier has a team that focuses on maintaining good relationships with leading Internet forums and that contact forum administrators if posts by their water army's soldiers get deleted. Water armies are employed both to promote the products of a company as well as to criticise the products of competitors. Gold farmers and soldiers of water armies create new meanings and practices out of their work by re-establishing their autonomy using skills and connections from their work to carve out their own communities both online and offline.