internet - Nationalistic sentiments outflank calls for democracy

The Wall Street Journal of today (subscription required) illustrates a tendency I have noted before. While some hope and other fear that the internet will hasten the emergence of a democracy in China, the main visible force on the internet is heavy-handed nationalism.
While pro-democracy activists are now and then rounded up, this much more dangerous direction is tolerated, and sometimes accepted as a legitimate 'vox populi'. "Dozens of nationalistic sites now dot Chinese cyberspace, with targets far beyond Japan's brutal 1931-45 occupation of parts of China. Some sites savage the U.S. as a bully pursuing China's containment. A few call for boycotts of foreign-made goods. And others encourage Taiwan to unite with China and threaten military action if the island refuses..," writes the WSJ.
A development worth while monitoring.
(The picture is from an online action group urging China not to grant the building of the Beijing-Shanghai railway to a Japanese consortium.)