The Body without Organs: How a Chinese Youth Community Becomes Decentralized and De-Organized Using Web3

In their seminal work A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari introduced a new social imagination: "Be rhizomes, not trees; be minority, not majority; and be a body without organs (BwO)." They challenged traditional modes of organizing communities and social movements. Decades later, we have observed changes in how social collectives have been organized in China, in the example of 706 Youth Community. Since its inception, "decentralization" has been a central theme for 706 Youth Community, although they initially adopted a "tree" structure, in Deleuzian terms. However, various events—such as urban management policies in Beijing, the Covid-19 pandemic, and cryptocurrency restrictions in China—have propelled the community to abandon the "tree" and embrace a rhizomatic structure. Additionally, the rise of Dali (Yunnan) as a "nomad's heaven" and advancements in Web3 and blockchain technology have further enabled the community to approach the ideal of a BwO.

This paper, through document analysis, ethnography and interviews, examines the evolution of 706, the largest Chinese youth community, to understand its transformation over the years. In particular, the research focuses on understanding how Web3 and crypto became the facilitating tool of its organizational change.

But how close are they to the ideal BwO as envisioned by Deleuze and Guattari? This paper seeks to explore this question, shedding light on the complex and dynamic nature of contemporary Chinese youth communities.