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Books and Arts

Nature 461, 731 (8 October 2009) | doi:10.1038/461731a; Published online 7 October 2009

Open Innovation Challenges

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China's unofficial democracy

Li Gong1

BOOK REVIEWEDThe Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online

by Guobin Yang

Columbia University Press: 2009. 320 pp. $29.50, £20.50

In July this year, a 20-year-old university student in the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou was sentenced to three years in prison for driving recklessly and killing a pedestrian. This would have been a sad but unremarkable case, except that it was only brought following a huge national outcry.