ChinaFile presents:

On the occasion of the publication of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground, join author Emily Parker, along with Andrew McLaughlin and Orville Schell, to discuss how the Internet and social media are transforming China.

Authoritarian governments try to isolate individuals from one another, but in the Internet age, this is impossible. Or as one blogger put it: "Now I know who my comrades are." Social media helps people overcome feelings of powerlessness, leading to the rise of a new kind of citizen. Join the discussion on how prominent dissidents and ordinary citizens are using the Internet to expose injustices and challenge authority.

Andrew McLaughlin is a partner at betaworks, and CEO of Digg and Instapaper. He worked at the White House as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and is former Director of Global Public Policy at Google, leading the company's work on issues surrounding freedom of expression, censorship, and national security.

Emily Parker is a digital diplomacy advisor at New America Foundation. She was previously a policy advisor at the State Department, focusing on digital diplomacy, Internet freedom, and open government; and was a former staff journalist at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Orville Schell is the Asia Society's Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the former Dean of U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and author of 15 books, 10 of them on China.

Can't make it to this program? Tune in to AsiaSociety.org/Live at 6:30 pm ET for a free live video webcast. Viewers are encouraged to submit questions to [email protected] or via Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #askasia.