Communications in Contemporary China: Orchestrating Thinking (Routledge Studies on China in Transition) [1 ed.] 1032505745, 9781032505749

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Communications in Contemporary China

Using the analogy of an orchestra, the book looks at the ways in which the Party-state conducts communications in China. Rather than treating China’s communications system as purely one of centralised top-down control, this book proffers that it is the combination of the government through its state policies, the propaganda bureau’s campaigns, commercial consumer culture, digital and traditional media platforms, celebrities, entertainers and journalists, educators, community interest groups, and family and friends, who all contribute to the evolution of how ideas are perpetuated, enforced, and legitimised in China. Covering themes such as censorship, surveillance, national narratives onscreen and in everyday life, political agency, creative work, news production, and gender politics, this book gives an insight into the complex web of conditions, objectives, and challenges that the Chinese leadership and commercial interests face when orchestrating their visions for the nation’s future. As such, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, Chinese politics, and Chinese Studies. Nicole Talmacs is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Malta, Malta. She is an interdisciplinary researcher, whose research interests lie in the intersections of studies in media and communications, social theory, political science, international studies, and cultural studies. She is the author of China’s Cinema of Class: Audiences and Narratives; and co-editor of The China Question: Contestations and Adaptations. Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and Media International Australia. Altman Yuzhu Peng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests lie in the intersections of feminism, public relations, and media and cultural studies. He is the author of A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere, co-editor of China, Media, and International Conflicts, and has published over 20 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Asian Journal of Communication, Convergence, Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse, Context & Media, and Television and New Media.

Routledge Studies on China in Transition Series Editor: David S. G. Goodman

For a full list of available titles: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-on-China­ in-Transition/book-series/SE0082 53 Governing HIV in China Commercial Sex, Homosexuality and Rural-to-Urban Migration Elaine Jeffreys and SU Gang 54 China’s Housing Middle Class Changing Urban Life in Gated Communities Beibei Tang 55 China’s Architecture in a Globalizing World Between Socialism and the Market Jiawen Han 56 Local Elites in Post-Mao China Yingjie Guo 57 Public Participation and State Building in China Case Studies from Zhejiang Dragan Pavlićević 57 Social Relations and Political Development in China Change and Continuity in the “New Era” Dragan Pavlićević and Zhengxu Wang 58 Suzhou in Transition Paul Cheung and Beibei Tang 59 Communications in Contemporary China Orchestrating Thinking Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng

Communications in Contemporary China Orchestrating Thinking

Edited by Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Talmacs, Nicole, editor. | Peng, Altman Yuzhu editor. Title: Communications in contemporary China : orchestrating thinking / edited by Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng. Identifiers: LCCN 2023014842 (print) | LCCN 2023014843 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032505749 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032505770 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003399124 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Propaganda, Communist—China. | Communication— Political aspects—China. | Information technology—Political aspects—China. Classification: LCC JQ1512.Z13 C554 2024 (print) | LCC JQ1512.Z13 (ebook) | DDC 320.95101/4—dc23/eng/20230603 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023014842 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023014843 ISBN: 9781032505749 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032505770 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003399124 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1 Orchestrating thinking: communications in China

vii viii xi xii 1

NICOLE TALMACS AND ALTMAN YUZHU PENG

2 Internet censorship in China: a functioning digital panopticon

11

GUANYING LI

3 Political control, media marketisation, and news production

27

XIANWEN KUANG

4 The American Other and China’s big screens

41

NICOLE TALMACS AND MICHAEL D. HIGH

5 Public relations, persona-building, and national identity construction in China: a case study of ‘The Chinese Dream’

56

JENNY ZHENGYE HOU

6 Constructing a discourse of ‘Red merit’: the orchestrated communication of China’s ‘Red Collectors’

72

EMILY WILLIAMS

7 The construction of patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks FUQIN PAN

87

vi

Contents

8 Orchestrating opinions: a case study of mainland Chinese responses to Hong Kong’s mass protests

102

MAGDALENA WONG

9 The discursive battle over public participation in China

115

CEREN ERGENC

10 “Our sugar daddy can never control us”: how television professionals negotiate with market forces in Chinese entertainment shows

130

WENNA ZENG

11 Digital business governance: the algorithm design of the short video-sharing application – TikTok

143

ALTMAN YUZHU PENG

12 Male anxiety and self-victimisation: Chinese young men’s perception of gender dynamics and intimacy

159

YANNING HUANG

13 Neoliberal femininities in China: the conflicting gender discourse of transgender celebrity, Jin Xing

173

PEIQIN ZHOU

Index

187

Figures

2.1 3.1 5.1 5.2 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4

Hubei F4 Orchestration of news media production in China Billboard at a bus stop in Beijing Propaganda wall in Beijing Time spent on TikTok per day Videos recommendation and extra time spent on TikTok Anxiety addiction and TikTok use TikTok use and privacy concerns

21

28

65

65

148

149

151

152

Contributors

Ceren Ergenc is Associate Professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. She previously held positions as Assis­ tant Professor and Visiting Researcher at Middle East Technical University, Turkey, Peking University, Renmin University, and Fudan University, China. Her research interests include state–society relations in contemporary China and East Asia, urban politics, public participation, political efficacy, as well as com­ parative methodologies in area studies and debates on global history. Her recent work has appeared in Antipode, East Asia, Journal of Chinese Political Science, and Territory, Politics, Governance. Michael D. High is Assistant Professor in Film Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. His research interests vacillate between Hollywood film and television, digital cul­ ture, and media piracy. He is the author of several book chapters and articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Jump Cut: A Review of Contempo­ rary Media and the International Journal of Communication. Jenny Zhengye Hou is Senior Lecturer in Strategic Communication at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She studies on strategic communication in the digital age, public relations theories and practices, and transmedia sto­ rytelling in disasters. Jenny’s work has appeared in Public Relations Review, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Tech­ nical Communication, Public Relations Inquiry, Communication Research and Practice, and PRism. Jenny was awarded twice Legacy Scholar Grants by the Arthur W. Page Global Research Centre. She is also co-editor of The Global Foundations of Public Relations: Humanism, China, and the West. Yanning Huang is Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Xi’an JiaotongLiverpool University, China. His research interests lie in the intersections of digital cultural studies, gender studies, rural–urban divide in China, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics. He has published articles in both Western and Chinese peer-reviewed journals such as Popular Communication, Cultural Studies, and Communication & Society (传播与社会学刊). Xianwen Kuang is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Commu­ nication at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. His research interests

Contributors

ix

include news censorship and production, media framing, and collective action in China. He has published articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Journalism, The China Quarterly, International Journal of Communica­ tion, Problems of Post-Communism, Chinese Political Science Review, Global Media and China, and SAGE Open. Guanying Li is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Journalism at Fudan University, China. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of online pub­ lic opinion analysis and digital stratification, particularly with the assistance of big data analytics. Fuqin Pan is Senior Lecturer in teaching English as a foreign language at Renmin University of China’s Suzhou campus, and a PhD candidate in the Department of International Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. Fuqin’s research interests include preschool children learning to read in China and Chinese university students reading in English. She has com­ piled an English–Chinese language book on financial terms and published several academic articles in both Chinese and English academic journals, such as Humanising Language Teaching, Studies in Literature and Language, and the Science Education Article Collects. Altman Yuzhu Peng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguis­ tics at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests lie in the intersec­ tions of feminism, public relations, and media and cultural studies. He is the author of A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere, co-editor of China, Media, and International Conflicts, and has published over 20 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Asian Journal of Communi­ cation, Convergence, Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse, Context & Media, and Television and New Media. Nicole Talmacs is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Malta, Malta. She is an interdisciplinary researcher, whose research interests lie in the intersections of studies in media and communications, social theory, political science, international studies, and cultural studies. She is the author of China’s Cinema of Class: Audiences and Narratives; and co-editor of The China Question: Contestations and Adaptations. Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Asian and African Stud­ ies, and Media International Australia. Emily Williams is Associate Professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. She is a cultural historian of modern China. Her research interests include the transnational lives of Maoist mate­ rial culture as well as the collection of these objects in contemporary China. Her book, Collecting the Revolution: British Engagement with Chinese Cultural Revolution Material Culture, is published with Rowman & Littlefield. Magdalena Wong is an independent scholar who transitioned to academia as an accomplished practitioner in marketing research. She graduated with a PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science in

x

Contributors 2017. Before pursuing her interests in anthropology, Magdalena founded and managed a research company providing insight and consultancy services. She teaches part-time at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and was Honorary Assistant Professor in the School of Chinese, the University of Hong Kong (2018–2019). She now focuses her effort on a new book project about the con­ struction of consumer society in China.

Wenna Zeng is Assistant Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Shenzhen University, China. Her research interests include ethnography, televi­ sion production, and media and cultural studies. She has published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Media, Culture & Society, Interna­ tional Communication Gazette, Television and New Media, and International Journal of Digital Television. Before joining academia, she worked as a jour­ nalist for almost seven years in a Chinese satellite TV channel and won several national awards for her reporting. Peiqin Zhou is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Dean’s Assistant of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University, China. Her main teaching and research fields lie in gender and media studies. Her current research focuses on LGBT in China, including a documentary on an LGBT choir with her students, and research on Chinese parental acceptance of their gay and lesbian children.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we, the editors, would like to extend our gratitude to the con­ tributors to this volume, who showed patience and understanding during the process of bringing this volume together. The chapters in this volume were the result of an international workshop hosted by the Department of International Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China, in December 2019, only weeks before the world was turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pro­ ject brought together a group of academics who have set in stone friendships and opportunities for further research collaboration into the future. It goes without say­ ing, the financial support provided by the Department of International Studies was invaluable in bringing this project to life, and for this we are truly appreciative. We would also like to sincerely thank the Editor of China in Transition Book Series, Professor David S. G. Goodman, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on early versions of our book chapters. Professor Good­ man’s support and advocacy for young academics in the field of China Studies is relentless, and we are thankful for his generosity of time in providing feedback on earlier iterations of the book chapters and supporting this project through to publication. Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng 11 May 2023

Abbreviations

ATM BRI CCP CCTV CEO CPPCC GFW IAP ISP IXP KOL MOE MV NDRC NGO NPC PEP PLA PR RMB SBS SCMP SOE TCM UK UNDP VPN WHO WTO ZSTV

Automated Teller Machine Belt Road Initiative Chinese Communist Party China Central Television Chief Executive Officer Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Great Fire Wall Internet access provider Internet service provider Internet exchange point Key Opinion Leader Ministry of Education Music video National Development and Reform Commission Non-Government Organisation National People’s Congress People’s Education Press People’s Liberation Army Public Relations Renminbi Seoul Broadcasting System South China Morning Post State-owned enterprise Traditional Chinese Medicine United Kingdom United Nations Development Programme Virtual portal network World Health Organization World Trade Organization Zhejiang Satellite TV

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Orchestrating thinking Communications in China Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng

Introduction Chinese society today is a diverse and fragmented complexity of personal and collective values and desires. Despite this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to have unchallenged political power, and relative social stability has been maintained among the nation’s 1.4 billion people during a period of intense social and economic change. While the status quo is always shifting in China, the nation’s news media, television and film industries, digital infrastructure and com­ mercial operations, state propaganda campaigns, community groups, and political processes all carry the responsibility of the broader commitment to the nation’s goals of the Chinese dream, which prioritise national rejuvenation and economic prosperity. Creating a new status quo is vast, ranging from encouraging a con­ sumer society, managing narratives of the historical past, moulding gender norms, redefining political agency and legislation, and engendering a national identity and nationalistic instincts, and in doing so, necessarily ensuring these understandings characterise a uniquely Chinese (and thus exclusive to the Chinese people) idea of the Chinese people vis-à-vis that of the foreign. While studious oversight, and in some cases direct control by the Party-state of the communications networks and opportunities that inform, entertain, and facilitate the exchange of ideas among its people, there are also private and personal interests at play that also necessar­ ily contribute to propelling thinking about the status quo in mainstream Chinese society. Historically, scholars have approached China’s communications systems as that of centralised top-down control in the form of “thought management” (Brady, 2008; Fang, 2022), or analysed the processes within which the political economy of the media have been commercialised and practised as an expres­ sion of the Chinese authoritarian system (Zhao, 2008; Stockman, 2013). In doing so, control over China’s communications (mediated or otherwise) has always assumed either a direct, omnipresent influence through state involvement or as projects of direct influence. It has also assumed that different types of messaging are uniquely placed and somewhat separate from other channels by which infor­ mation is shared and consumed. State control and intervention, however, are only part of the story as to who shapes and informs the broad range of communications DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-1

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Nicole Talmacs and Altman Yuzhu Peng

in China. These state interventions oftentimes sit alongside people-oriented and commercial objectives that are themselves informed in light of opaque signalling by the state for what is at the time acceptable behaviour, identities, and national mythologies. It would be, as the contributions to this volume reveal, naive to assume that in the context of the vastness that is contemporary Chinese society and the communications that it contains, with its private and state-owned media industries, globalising population and trade flows, changing society and economy, communications in China today are a unified messaging from a topdown approach under the absolute control of the Party-state. Or that the media is the only element at play in how communications contribute to thinking in China today, and that the state has the power to control all ideas. No longer can it be argued that across the board, messages are the same or that blanket understand­ ings by the Chinese of these very messages are the norm or even anticipated by media producers and/or China’s leadership. Indeed, communications today in China is necessarily a collective phenomenon, with multiple varying interests informing the end results. Assuming generalisations of power in the way think­ ing occurs in China overly emphasises the control and oversight the leadership has over China’s communications system, and it overlooks the fact that Chinese people and businesses are active players within the system, who also leverage off and contribute to the Party-state’s practice of communicative power or form their own cultures and practices – albeit all the while recognising the limitations such cultures may have in encouraging broad-sweeping political change, and/or the precarious longevity of these cultures that may or may not be deemed “suitable” for broader thinking among the Chinese public. The Chinese Party-state needs its societies, institutions, businesses, and indi­ viduals to play their role in achieving the nation’s end goals. As such, it is the combination of the government through its state policies, the propaganda bureau’s campaigns, commercial consumer culture, digital and traditional media platforms, celebrities, entertainers and journalists, educators, community interest groups, and family and friends, who all contribute to the evolution of how ideas are perpetuated, enforced, and legitimised in China. While the state may indicate the expectations and parameters of behaviour and/or ways of thinking, and in some cases intervene, mass acceptance involves numerous sections of society for social engineering to be effective. As this volume suggests, the mechanics of which are similar to that of a musical orchestra – with the majority of society working relentlessly in step to the directions of their conductor and alongside each other to achieve these goals in contemporary China. Communications in China: orchestrating thinking The subtitle of this book, Orchestrating Thinking, has not been chosen without reason. As Gaunt and Dobson (2014: 298) suggest, orchestral musicians have to embrace an intense process of working together in order to be able to perform on stage. They share a clear purpose and develop a foundation of

Orchestrating thinking 3 trust that enables them to respond to one another in the moment and support each other in taking artistic risks. Political trust in the central government’s leadership in China ranks consist­ ently among the highest in the world (Zhong and Chen, 2013). This is not simply because the Chinese public are forced to trust, but because the messaging they encounter of the everyday in their social, professional, mediated, and commercial experiences encourages and reinforces such thinking. As this volume illustrates, the state’s involvement in enforcing censorship over the Internet (Chapter 2), jour­ nalistic practice (Chapter 3), and foreign film imports from the “West”, namely the films of Hollywood (Chapter 4), arguably creates ideas and understandings of the Chinese experience that in turn lay the foundations for how the Chinese public may respond to big picture slogans and campaigns from the propaganda bureaus (Chap­ ter 5), indicators for where parameters lie in historical narratives (Chapter 6), and the reading materials prescribed for China’s children through the schooling system (Chapter 7). By extension, these impressions may inform family discussions at the dinner table or among community groups and between people in casual passing about Chinese domestic politics (Chapter 8), or have an impact on the agreeabil­ ity or expectations that the general public have in the ever-changing policies and discourse about political rights of the individual citizen – and where the param­ eters of agency may lie in the public consultation process at the community level (Chapter 9). China’s shift to a consumer society further broadens the influences of thinking from simply that of the state too. Indeed, for many, the government and CCP may be a distant concept, and rather worldviews are preoccupied with advertising and highly popular entertainment TV (Chapter 10), or perhaps that of short video-sharing platforms and the communities formed on social media (Chap­ ter 11). Indeed, the anxieties young Chinese adults feel today to be tuned into their social media accounts and the algorithms that prescribe what videos to watch may also impact how they interpret the chatter and buzzwords they encounter in online forums about shifting ideas about gender norms in a changing society (Chapter 12). This may also provide foundations of understanding to other messaging about gen­ der norms then espoused by respected celebrities and Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) that, coming full circle, ultimately reinforce the neoliberal shifts made by the Chinese state in the Reform Era (Chapter 13). With the Party-state in the conductor’s role and thus in an advantageous posi­ tion over orchestral direction, these various actors in society that may have on the surface little to do with each other similar to the diversity found in an orchestra can be found to complement each other rather than create discord in order to meet the conductor’s requirements. For example, the film and news industries may professionally overlap very little, but both pay heed to the directions given by the state and in what they observe each industry broadcasting to the Chinese public. Similarly, the individuals circulating in the community either in family networks or in established interest groups, too, take their lead from what they observe in the media, in online discussions or town hall meetings, and tailor their narratives and opinions to complement what they may understand where the

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Party-state’s bottom line is. Not only does this contribute to a harmonious society domestically, but also on the global stage, where China and Chinese people are judged among their international peers. Efforts to orchestrate thinking allow for perceptions of modernity, class, consumption, and society, the individual, order and control, nationalism, globalisation, and – more recently – even public health standards in light of the Covid-19 pandemic to proliferate for domestic and inter­ national objectives and to complement each other. The orchestra metaphor by no means rejects the role agency plays in China’s sociopolitical processes. For example, between 2007 and 2014, we witnessed a series of anti-PX (para-xylene) protests in Xiamen, Dalian, Ningbo, and Maoming that overturned part of local governments’ unpopular infrastructure-building plans (Zhu, 2017); and more recently, protests across major cities against the Zero Covid policy were conjectured to have contributed to the leadership’s sharp and seemingly spontaneous reversal on the war against the virus in 2022. Amid China returning to the world’s centre stage, public debates over international conflicts have also offered an area for subtextual critiques of the state government’s foreign policy and, by extension, the Party-state polity, with dissent being observed on not only international social media platforms but also their domestic equivalents (Zhang and Peng, 2023). The existence of such dissent problematises an “empowered­ society-versus-repressive-state” dichotomic narrative of the Chinese public sphere, where members of the Chinese public constantly invent creative means to project critical voices and the state government simultaneously develops resilient methods to sustain the authoritarian polity (Han, 2018: 27). However, with years of political propaganda that repeatedly exploits Sino-foreign geopolitical frictions to energise its nationalist bases, the CCP has created generations of Chinese people who align their own fate with the future of the Party-state (Zhang and Ma, 2023). In this process, China’s authoritarian system has increasingly incorporated a participa­ tory dimension, which is tellingly revealed by how members of the public selfvoluntarily promote official rhetoric (Repnikova and Fang, 2018) and facilitate, for example, the policing of dissenting voices on social media (Luo and Li, 2022; Song, 2022). It is the participatory nature of the Reform Era Party-state system that underlays our prescription of orchestration as an anchoring concept to foreground China’s contemporary communications system. The question must be asked then, what makes a good orchestra? As it is, not all orchestras are as professional, cohesive, or in tune as the others. We have all heard of orchestras where the strings have rivalled the brass, and of compromises more talented players have had to make to accommodate their less able peers. China’s challenge in the new millennium has been developing, informing, experimenting with, and arguably tracking, a communications system within the reality of uneven social and economic development across its nation, and sometimes arguably mis­ matched objectives and desires. Ultimately however, good orchestras share not only the qualities of trusting and talented musicians, but they also are typically led by effective conductors – conductors who know when to intensify particular musical themes at the appro­ priate time, maintain a constant and steady tempo, and are responsive to changes

Orchestrating thinking 5 or fluctuations within orchestral actors that may result in the unravelling of a per­ formance. In a similar manner, China’s leadership, particularly with a renewed interest in personality politics under Xi Jinping (Shirk, 2018; Han, 2021), for bet­ ter or worse, is intensely committed to avoiding any unravelling of the national performance either in front of its own domestic audience or on the global stage. The new Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for example, has placed China even more firmly within the attentions of the global community, where their reinvig­ oration of historical trade routes have tarnished their reputations for geopoliti­ cal bullying, neocolonialist objectives, and exploitation (Li, 2019; Ding et al., 2022), and many nations at a local level have had to adapt, willingly or not, to the seemingly ubiquitous presence of China in international affairs (Pavlićević and Talmacs, 2022). Building a deep trust and dedication among its nation’s people to the advance­ ment of the Chinese nation despite local or global criticism, while also devel­ oping a legitimacy among the Chinese people to lead the advancement of these ambitions, requires the development of a national trust, a suppression of (or distractions from) questioning minds, and in many ways, the orchestration of a worldview that places Chinese values and approaches, as developed and reflected upon by the Party-state, at the forefront and as superior. This may occur through digital forums (Zhang, 2020a, 2020b; Zhang and Peng, 2023; Peng et al., 2021), entertainment production (Talmacs, 2017, 2020; Peng, 2022), delibera­ tive political participation (He, 2014), state-produced news (Repnikova, 2017; Kuang, 2018, 2020), or the educational tools that young children read in their formative years (Xu, 2021). And in doing so, develop a communications envi­ ronment that builds in assumptions among the Chinese people that encourages individual members of society to reach these conclusions seemingly informed by their own agency. As such, Chinese recipients of the communications that circulate in China today are not simply passive in their consumption of these messages, but do in fact engage in a sense-making process that draws on orches­ trated conditions that present assumptions to the Chinese public guided by both state and non-state actors – creating identities as consumers, media consumers, political (or non-political) subjects, and ultimately, citizens. Book outline To cover all facets of the communications network within China that contributes to thinking would be a feat too great for a single edited volume. The entry points of interrogation selected, therefore, function to provide as an initial step in the rethinking of what constitutes and informs thinking in China from a range of per­ spectives well-beaten as well as those new. To begin with, in Chapter 2, Guanying Li sets the foundation for the following chapters, by proposing Foucault’s panopticon as a framework by which to under­ stand the censorship and surveillance of China’s Internet, and the internalisation of discipline in the form of self-censorship among Chinese Internet users that are the result of this panopticon. Through in-depth interviews, Li reveals how young

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Chinese adults normalise their relationships with the surveillance system, or in some cases, seek to challenge it. This normalisation of surveillance and control continues into Chapter 3, with Xianwen Kuang’s study of the Party-state’s governance of China’s news media. Kuang provides a holistic understanding of the news media industry from the per­ spectives of news censorship, control over political information access, control over the media’s marketisation, and the nation’s journalism education programmes. Despite the efforts made to control and censor news media, Kuang, similar to Li’s study of China’s Internet, also argues that absolute control is impossible. Rather, Kuang argues, orchestration of the news media industry aims to create advantages for central and local governments while achieving commercial success. In Chapter 4, Nicole Talmacs and Michael D. High then argue that film import quotas on foreign – namely Hollywood cinema – traditionally thought of as func­ tioning to protect China’s cultural values and its domestic film industry, have coa­ lesced into opportunities rather than anxieties for China’s censors. Noting China’s shift to importing predictable and familiar Hollywood blockbuster franchises, they draw connections between the uncanny overlaps in this preference for franchise cinema and contemporary American geopolitical contexts and the current Chinese leadership’s own ideological positioning. Thus, they conclude that the images of the American Other on Chinese screens today may have little to do with aspira­ tions for cultural exchange and global imaginations among Chinese audiences, but potentially orchestrating ideas about what China can and should do as an evolving superpower. These arguments in turn set the foundation for Jenny Zhengye Hou’s study into the persona politics of the Xi Jinping and the China Dream campaign. In Chapter 5, Hou reveals that this campaign differs from the American Dream in that it aspires for a Chinese national identity and outlines the strategic communicative dimen­ sions of the campaign to elucidate how modern public relations models are gradu­ ally being incorporated into the Party-state’s propaganda in its attempt to appeal to both domestic and international audiences. In Chapter 6, Emily Williams continues with the theme of the national narra­ tives, in particular how niche communities work in developing and maintaining historical memories of China’s revolutionary past. This is in the form of “Red Col­ lectors”, a group that understands and recognises the sensitivities that their “Red Collecting” of revolutionary propaganda may entail. Williams argues that to avoid any potential perception of subversiveness, Red Collectors frame themselves as active community members who have been building their own cultural capital and social legitimacy. In Chapter 7, Fuqin Pan then offers a close reading of national narratives in media texts, focusing on Yu Wen’s textbooks used in China’s primary schools. Analysing three volumes for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, Pan argues for a balanced account of patriotic education in China, which is mindful of not only its function in civic society–building, but also its potential to create confusion or lead to state-perceived ‘distorted’ views.

Orchestrating thinking 7 Fuqin Pan’s chapter is followed by Magdalena Wong’s study in Chapter 8 that explores Mainland Chinese people’s responses to the mass pro-democratic protests in Hong Kong. This chapter is based on Wong’s ethnographical research in Nanchong City, Sichuan Province. By engaging Chinese people from the local community, Wong argues that the Party-state has orchestrated how mainland Chinese people interpret democratic politics. With alternative interpretations suppressed in their media consumption, the notion of democracy in the eyes of her subjects is inscribed with nationalistic so-called Chinese characteristics. The analysis points towards the political engineering of public opinion within the Chinese territory that creates limited space for the public’s political agency to be exercised. The issue of political agency is then explored further in Chapter 9. In this chap­ ter, Ceren Ergenc analyses the deliberative and consultative mechanisms in China’s political system, including public hearings, town hall meetings, and expert meet­ ings at the city level, and draws on interviews with organisers, meeting partici­ pants, and news media to explore the issue. In doing so, Ergenc provides insightful analysis into how political language and notions of political representation in polit­ ical discourse articulates the parameters within which Chinese citizens understand their legal and political agency in China today, and the limitations this creates for grassroots political agency. In Chapter 10, attentions then shift to Wenna Zeng’s study of television and advertising professionals behind the Chinese entertainment show, Running Man. Zeng explores the web of challenges creative workers face in trying to appeal to TV audiences, while aiming to balance financial pressures of advertisers and sponsors of the TV show, necessarily relied upon in the face of decreased state funding for TV production, and their own professional expectations for creative control as media producers. She argues that the notion of political correctness specific to the Chinese context still defines aspects of television show produc­ tion, but market forces are also significant players with which producers and broadcasters must cope. In Chapter 11, Altman Yuzhu Peng continues the focus on the commercial sector, discussing how social media applications facilitate Chinese high-tech companies’ regulation of the everyday practice of Internet users. Following a critique of the attention economy, he uses TikTok, the most popular Chineselanguage short video-sharing application as a case study to articulate how the interface and algorithm designs of social media applications constitute a form of digital business governance that allows Chinese high-tech companies to man­ age and control Internet users’ attention for profits. Through survey of Chinese university students, Peng reveals the acquiescence Chinese Internet users give to the form of governance in return for its use. This chapter sheds light on how the notion of orchestrating thinking plays out in the context of the high-tech sec­ tor, where the growth of commercial businesses and the exploitation of labour emerges as two pivotal pillars underling the Party-state’s neoliberal economic ambitions.

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In Chapter 12, Yanning Huang analyses young male responses to contemporary intimate heterosexual relationships as explicated through focus groups and inter­ views with young men about gendered online buzzwords. Contextualised amidst the rapid socio-economic changes in post-reform China, young Chinese men are found to express anxieties about romantic encounters with women inspired by these online buzzwords as a result of their perceived reduced position of power in today’s gender relations. Huang argues that this showcases how the public dis­ course about the relationship between gender and structural issues exists without critical scrutiny, and amid feminist activism suppressed by the Party-state, sup­ presses progressive values in Chinese society. In the final, Chapter 13, Peiqin Zhou also attends to gender issues, examining the gender politics embodied by the transgender reality television personality, Jin Xing. In particular, Zhou’s analysis focuses on the paradox embedded in Jin Xing’s discourse of femininity, which simultaneously stresses women’s self-autonomy and their submission to masculinist power in gender relationships. Such a para­ dox is specific to her experience of transgenderism in patriarchal Chinese society, where the market-led reforms have opened up the opportunity for social elites’ selfentrepreneurship but simultaneously subject them to the CCP’s gender politics, in which traditional family values are highlighted to scaffold its sociopolitical goals. In this way, the analysis adds another layer of evidence showcasing how orchestrat­ ing thinking shapes the representation of gender in celebrity culture. Together, these chapters produce an insight to a complex and challenging web of conditions, objectives, and challenges that the Chinese leadership and private industry face in times of orchestrating their visions for the nation’s future. And indeed, these contributions to this volume merely scratch the surface in light of additional issues not touched on in this volume, such as the substantial issue of the re-narration of China’s Western regions in light of the current situation in Xinjiang and dealings with Chinese minorities (Cappelletti, 2022) that go beyond the capac­ ities of this volume to address. China today appears to be at the cusp of another great social revolution as orchestrated by its leadership to navigate the new world order, and we the editors of this volume, look forward to revisiting the case studies and themes in this volume once more in the future as China enters into its post­ Covid-19 era. References Brady, A-M (2008). China’s Thought Management. Abingdon: Routledge. Cappelletti, A (2022). Renarrating the “western territories:” Training programs for college students in China’s Far West. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 16(1), 1–28. Ding, J, Ratz, C & Bergman, MM (2022). What do we see when looking at China’s engage­ ments in Africa? An analysis of mainstream academic perspectives. Journal of Contem­ porary China 31(135): 398–411. Fang, K (2022). Rumor-debunking’ as a propaganda and censorship strategy in China. In: H. Wasserman and D. Madrid-Morales, eds. Disinformation in the Global South. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 108–122.

Orchestrating thinking 9 Gaunt, H & Dobson, MC (2014). Orchestras as ‘ensembles of possibility’: Understand­ ing the experience of orchestral musicians through the lens of communities of practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity 21(4): 298–317. Han, R (2018). Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Han, R (2021). Cyber nationalism and regime support under Xi Jinping: The effects of the 2018 constitutional revision. Journal of Contemporary China 30: 717–733. He, B (2014). Deliberative culture and politics: The persistence of authoritarian deliberation in China. Political Theory 42(1): 58–81. Kuang, X (2018). Central state vs. local levels of government: Understanding news media censorship in China. Chinese Political Science Review 3(2): 154–171. Kuang, X (2020). Self-caging or playing with the edge? News selection autonomy in author­ itarian China. SAGE Open, 10. doi:10.1177/2158244020922980 Li, X, ed. (2019). Mapping China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Luo, Z & Li, M (2022). Participatory censorship: How online fandom community facilitates authoritarian rule. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/14614448221113923. Pavlićević, D. & Talmacs, N., eds. (2022). The China Question: Contestations and Adapta­ tions. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-981-16-9105-8_1 Peng, AY (2022). Gender essentialism in Chinese reality TV: A case study of you are so beautiful. Television and New Media 23(7): 743–760. Peng, AY, Hou, JZ, KhosraviNik, M & Zhang, X (2021). “She uses men to boost her career”: Chinese digital cultures and gender stereotypes of female academics in Zhihu discourses, Social Semiotics. doi:10.1080/10350330.2021.1940920 Repnikova, M (2017). Thought work contested: Ideology and journalism education in China. The China Quarterly 230: 399–419. Repnikova, M & Fang, K (2018). Authoritarian participatory persuasion 2.0: Netizens as thought work collaborators in China. Journal of Contemporary China 27(113): 763–779. Shirk, S (2018) China in Xi’s ‘new era’: The return to personalistic rule. Journal of Democ­ racy, 29(2): 22–36. Song, L (2022). Politics of fun and participatory censorship: China’s reception of animal crossing: New horizons. Convergence. doi:10.1177/13548565221117476. Stockman, D (2013). Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Talmacs, N (2017). China’s Cinema of Class: Audiences and Narratives. Abingdon: Routledge. Talmacs, N (2020). Africa and Africans in Wolf Warrior 2: Narratives of trust, patriotism, and rationalized racism among Chinese university students. Journal of Asian and African Studies 55: 1230–1245. Xu, S (2021). Ideology and politics in junior-secondary Chinese history textbooks: Compar­ ing two versions published in the 21st century. Compare 51(3): 448–468. Zhang, C (2020a). Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness, and global imaginaries in debating world politics online. European Journal of Interna­ tional Relations 26(1): 88–115. Zhang, C, & Ma, Y (2023). Invented borders: The tension between grassroots patriotism and state-led patriotic campaigns in China. Journal of Contemporary China 1–17. doi:10.108 0/10670564.2023.2167054. Zhang, SI (2020b). Media and Conflict in the Social Media Era in China. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Zhang, SI & Peng, A (eds.) (2023). China, Media, and International Conflicts. London: Routledge. Zhao, Y (2008). Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Zhong, Y & Chen, Y (2013). Regime support in Urban China. Asian Survey 53(2): 369–392. Zhu, Z (2017). Backfired government action and the spillover effect of contention: A case study of the anti-PX protests in Maoming, China. Journal of Contemporary China 26(106): 521–535.

2

Internet censorship in China A functioning digital panopticon Guanying Li

Introduction According to the China Internet Network Information Centre’s (CNNIC, 2020) report in 2020, China now has 904 million Internet users and its Internet penetration rate has reached 64.5%. Amid the widespread Internet access amongst the Chinese population, there are various forms of social media platforms launched in the Chi­ nese market, which contribute to the development of China’s digital infrastructure in terms of ‘technology, accessibility, tailor-made media applications and band­ width’ (Damm, 2016: 162). Nonetheless, this well-developed cyberspace faces the government’s multilayered regulation at both legislative and technological levels. Previous studies have examined different aspects of China’s Internet censorship, focusing on legislations relating to digital regulation (Du, 2020; Quinn, 2017), the technical structure of the Great Firewall (Chandel et al., 2019; Sari et al., 2017) and the wider social impacts of the censorship system (Hobbs and Roberts, 2018; Chen and Yang, 2019). However, it seems that studies of contestation and negotia­ tion between the Internet censorship system and Internet users are still lacking. As such, this study provides a systematic examination of the Chinese government’s control over the Internet, but also investigates Chinese Internet users’ responses to the government’s surveillance. To this end, interviews with 32 Chinese Internet users were conducted to shed light on their perceptions of the censorship system and the approaches they adopt to challenge it. In this chapter, Foucault’s reconceptualisation of ‘panopticon’ is employed to unpack how censorship functions on the Chinese Internet. It argues that, by launch­ ing the censorship system, the Chinese government has built an electronic panop­ ticon that has led to the internalisation of censorship of both Chinese citizens and Internet service providers (ISPs). This is accomplished by both enforcing direct regulations and imposing invisible stresses on these actors. Despite the State’s overreaching efforts to orchestrate a panopticon of the Internet in China, cracks are found by Internet users to subvert this structure. By analysing the approaches that Chinese Internet users employed to bypass the censorship, it is observed that this ‘cyber panopticon’ is not invulnerable; while the government consolidates the censorship system, Chinese Internet users are developing their own means to cir­ cumvent ‘watchers’ at the same time. DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-2

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The following sections of the chapter will be divided into two main parts excluding the conclusion. The first half will illustrate how the electronic panopti­ con works through an analysis of the development of China’s Internet censorship legislation, technical approaches and manual means adopted to complementarily monitor the cyberspace. This is followed by a case study, which explores Chinese Internet users’ opinions on the real-name registration policy to explain their atti­ tudes towards the censorship system more broadly. Subsequently, the latter seg­ ment will explore methods utilised by the Internet users to challenge the system. To be more specific, an interrogation into the phenomenon of online political satire will be conducted to delineate how Chinese Internet users confront censorship in a tactful way. The functioning of a digital panopticon in China Foucault (1991) uses the idea of the panopticon to illustrate how surveillance works in modern society. The notion of the panopticon originally describes an efficient model to practise prison and neighbourhood control (Bentham, 2008), which com­ pels its inmates to behave properly, as it makes them always feel as though they are being watched (Tsui, 2003). By using panopticon as a metaphor, Foucault (1991) explains how surveillance facilitates the exercise of power in the modern era by generating both visible and non-verifiable impacts on citizens’ behaviours. In such a mode of control, individuals seem to have autonomy but are indeed comply­ ing with a set of codes and instructions deriving from an institutionalised govern­ ing power (Navarria, 2006). Building upon Foucault’s claim, one may argue that societal members’ internalisation of subterranean social norms and regulations of discourse eventually results in self-censorship. In other words, people will spon­ taneously practise self-constraint based on their own interpretation of these covert restrictions before an external censor is ever needed to intervene (Baumgartner and van Renswoud, 2014). To a certain extent, the Chinese government’s Internet control provides an illustration of how panopticonist governance functions in the Chinese context. Internet censorship legislation

The start of the Chinese government’s Internet control could date back to 1994, when the country was officially recognised as having access to the Internet (Du, 2020). According to second version of Collections of Chinese Internet Laws and Regulations, which is published in 2020 and anthologised by Policy and Regula­ tion Departments of Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and Cyberspace Administration of China, there are at least 129 pieces of legislation particularly dedicated to regulating the Internet and 36 laws and administrative regulations that are applicable to the Internet. In addition, over 70 government departments have engaged in making Internet policies (Miao et al., 2021). Before 2000, China’s Internet regulations featured a top-down, hierarchical and direct pattern of power control (Cheung, 2006). Since 2000, the government has

Internet censorship in China 13 modified its approaches to regulating the cyberspace (Sukosd, 2014). The authori­ ties have made efforts to impose their regulatory power on every corner of the Internet, from its infrastructure to its content and safety (Zhang and Peng, 2023). The government tends to keep a closer eye on Internet intermediaries compared to ordinary citizens (Roberts, 2018). A series of stipulations were carried out after 2000 to specify Internet intermediaries’ responsibilities in controlling the content appearing in their territories. These regulations eventually resulted in Internet inter­ mediaries’ practices of self-censorship, whereby they adopt more comprehensive and severe censoring systems to maintain their operations (Liang and Lu, 2010). The government’s efforts to transfer liability of Internet content control to interme­ diaries reveals one of the government’s principal strategies in terms of dealing with the issue of ‘how control exists after decentralization’ in the Internet age, that is, ‘the decentralization of control’ (Zhao, 2008: 33). Nevertheless, during the 2000s, the Internet governance remained fragmented due to different authorities engaging with the Internet for different purposes (Creemers, 2017). It was not until 2012, after new leadership had taken over the government, that the government redesigned the Internet censorship system by solidifying regulatory bureaucracies and their responsibilities, intensifying Inter­ net legislation and centralising the regulatory structure, even though the Internet polices from previous leaderships were still kept in place (Du, 2020; Sukosd, 2014). In 2014, the government established the highest leading bureaucracy in the sphere of cyberspace control, the ‘Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs’, which is headed by President Xi Jinping (Qiang, 2019). In the same year, the gov­ ernment renamed the State Internet Information Office, which was formed in 2011, as ‘Cyberspace Administration of China’ (CAC) (Svensson, 2019). The CAC was then appointed to be the administrative office of the Leading Group to consolidate Internet control, as Xi was concerned that there were too many government bodies regulating cyberspace (Roberts, 2018). The key point of emphasis in the new leadership’s strategy to control the Inter­ net and design its legislative framework is national security, which is evidenced by four of the first five laws released by the new government after 2010 relating to cybersecurity (Du, 2020). President Xi made a statement in early 2014, stating: ‘No national security without cyber security’, which indicated that the nature of cyber­ security policies would be protectionist (Quinn, 2017: 413). Nevertheless, it was not until 2016 that the cybersecurity scheme crystallised with the enactment of the 2016 Cybersecurity Law (Quinn, 2017). This later became the basic law of Inter­ net regulation in China (Yu, 2018). In addition to streamlining Internet policies, the law was also significant in imposing heavier obligations on network operators and critical information infrastructure operators for ensuring cybersecurity by, for example, collecting, storing and protecting users’ personal information, assessing the security of data being transferred overseas and providing technical support to assist security departments’ activities (Qi et al., 2018; Lee, 2017). Although a number of stipulations have been implemented to control China’s cyberspace, these regulations usually appear to be surrounded by ambiguous and uncertain meanings, which grants the authorities a high degree of flexibility when

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interpreting and implementing them (Roberts, 2018). For instance, many points and terms mentioned in the Internet censorship regulations, such as ‘social order’, ‘national unity’ and ‘state honour’, lack a definitive explanation and detailed cat­ egories (Li, 2013). Moreover, the punishments for violating the Internet censor­ ship regulations are also ambiguous; both Internet intermediaries and users are uncertain about what types of illegitimate information elicit which degrees of punishment (Roberts, 2015). The United Nations Special Rapporteur specifies that regulating the Internet based on stipulations with vague terms and unclear mean­ ings, or even without legal justification, can result in a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression (Chen, 2020). In this sense, ambiguously worded stipula­ tions are a powerful tool for social control, as they leave legal boundaries unclearly defined, which has the effect of people gradually coming to cautiously self-assess what might be forbidden before they express themselves (Druzin and Li, 2016). In turn, the ambiguity of the Internet regulations is considered to functionally cor­ respond to the invisibility of the inspector in the central tower of the panopticon. In the panopticon, since inmates internalise surveillance, due to their uncertainty regarding the presence of the guard, they become their own censors and regulate their own behaviours (Foucault, 1991). Likewise, China’s ambiguous regulations promote both ISPs’ and users’ internalisation of censorship, effectively resulting in the self-regulation of their online behaviours. Technological approaches

In addition to imposing legislation to control Internet content, the Chinese govern­ ment utilises digital technologies to filter online content, control Internet accessi­ bility and keep a watch on the use of the Internet (Liang and Lu, 2010). There are two types of technological approaches that the government has adopted to practise Internet censorship: blocking access to websites outside the state’s jurisdiction and conducting content censorship on domestic websites (Taneja and Wu, 2015). One of the most significant pieces and well-known apparatus is the Great Fire­ wall (GFW), a primary subsystem belonging to the Golden Shield Project, initiated by the country’s Ministry of Public Security in 1998 (Chen and Yang, 2019). The GFW is a massive and sophisticated national censorship system, which can auto­ matically orchestrate and curb the stream of Internet communication coming in and out of China. Alternatively, it can slow down the loading speed of foreign websites instead of directly shutting them down, making them unfavourable to users (Rob­ erts, 2018). It is well-recognised that the primary technical methods that the GFW adopts are ‘IP blocking, DNS filtering and redirection, URL filtering, packet filter­ ing, connection reset and network enumeration to control web access throughout China’ (Powers and Jablonski, 2015: 169). It has been reported that over 3,000 for­ eign websites are currently banned by the GFW (Normile, 2017). These websites are varied, ranging from online foreign media outlets, websites that are politically sensitive, governmental, educational, religious, or deemed to be ‘cults’, entertain­ ment and social networking to pornographic, gambling and other criminal websites (Chandel et al., 2019; Lum et al., 2012).

Internet censorship in China 15 From a technical perspective, the structure of the GFW can be described as a top-down four-tier pyramid, enabling the operation of Internet censorship from the Internet backbone to Internet immediacies (Sari et al., 2017; Cheung, 2006). The technical structure of the GFW is highly centralised, presenting an effective illustration of how a government can regulate a decentralised digital environment (Zheng, 2013; Lee and Liu, 2012). On the top level are three state-controlled inter­ national exchange points (IXPs), which connect China to the rest of the world; they are located in the Beijing–Tianjin–Qingdao region, Shanghai and Guangzhou (Deibert, 2013). The second level comprises nine Internet access providers (IAPs) that are operated by state-owned companies that must go through the IXPs and reg­ ister with appointed bureaucracies. These IAPs are responsible for issuing licences to regional ISPs and granting ISPs’ access to backbone connections (Griffiths, 2019; Zheng, 2013). The third level comprises ISPs, which are required to install filtering hardware and software to prevent the penetration of inadmissible content (Lee, 2018; Cheung, 2006). At the bottom of the pyramid are Internet users who must purchase services from ISPs and also must register with them to obtain access to the Internet (Lee, 2018). The government attempts to make the Internet filtering system less noticeable to Internet users (Cheng, 2016). For instance, although it bans access to some con­ tent and sites, it does not affect Internet users’ access to other parts of the Internet. Hence, users may consider that the information and/or websites they are trying to search for may no longer be in operation or may have been changed, rather than suspecting that they have been censored (ibid). The uncertainty regarding whether deceleration or interruption outcomes are due to a technical issue or governmental manipulation offers the authorities plausible deniability (Roberts, 2018). It seems that the government’s efforts to limit its people’s awareness of the existence of the GFW have been successful to some extent; Roberts’ (2018) survey data revealed that 48% of Chinese Internet users have little knowledge of the Great Firewall. Another tactic used is the Government’s direct control over intermediaries rather than regulating Internet users, as intermediaries are more affected by pressure from the authorities than ordinary Internet users (Lee and Liu, 2012). In addition to the filtering mechanisms directly deployed by the government at the infrastructural level of the Internet, filtering systems and monitoring mechanisms are also volun­ tarily employed by intermediaries to control information so that they can maintain their operations (Yu, 2018; Liang and Lu, 2010). Keyword blocking and search filtering are widely employed by ISPs to conform to the government’s censorship requirements (Roberts, 2018). The ISPs are supposed to maintain a blacklist of words and URLs that are not allowed to be involved in postings and which are blocked from their search engines (Chen et al., 2013). These instruments effec­ tively help Internet companies to prevent users from publishing forbidden informa­ tion and from searching sensitive topics (Roberts, 2018). In addition, ISPs conduct censorship on published content by employing both human censors and sophisti­ cated software to detect posts containing keywords relating to politically sensitive topics, offensive language, pornography or false information (Chen et al., 2013). Sensitive posts are deleted upon discovery; the publishers’ social media accounts

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also face the risk of being blocked. This makes Internet users consider this a warn­ ing, and that the information they published may have crossed the government’s red line (Roberts, 2018). Manual enforcement

In order to facilitate the exercise of its regulations and to reinforce the censor­ ship system, all levels of the government employ a large troop of human censors, including uniformed Internet police (wangjing), Internet monitors (wangguan) and paid Internet commentators (nicknamed the Fifty Cent Party, wumaodang), to identify Internet crimes. They check information published on online platforms daily, monitor online expression and even guide public opinion (Pan, 2017; King et al., 2013). The Internet police and monitors are efficient in detecting and deleting prohibited content; they are capable of removing most inappropriate information within 24 hours of the original posting (Pan, 2017). These Internet forces act like invisible guards in the panopticon. Since Internet users are unsure about which websites are being monitored and when, they may feel that they are always being watched, which eventually increases their self-discipline in their online activities. In turn, this fulfils one of the core strategies of the Chinese government in regulat­ ing its cyberspace, that is, maintaining Internet users’ fear of expressing politically sensitive issues online (King et al., 2013). In terms of Internet commentators, the Fifty Cent Party is nicknamed thusly because they are supposedly paid 50 Mao (0.5 CNY) for making a pro-government post (Han, 2015). The ‘fifty-cent army’ are officially trained and qualified by the Minister of Culture, even though the government has never provided a definitive explanation of the qualification criterion for who can become an Internet com­ mentator and what their missions are (Zheng, 2013). These commentators are sponsored by various institutions, such as local propaganda offices, government departments, universities and state-owned enterprises (Han, 2015). It has been dis­ covered that the main objective of these commentators is to divert Internet users’ attentions away from subjects that potentially threaten the regime by, for example, changing the topic, publishing posts praising the government or recalling the glory of the Party (King et al., 2017). In this sense, actions taken by the Fifty Cent Party can be regarded as the state’s practice of political astroturfing in the cyberspace (Han, 2015) or ‘reverse censorship’ (King et al., 2017). These Internet commenta­ tors can assist the government by manipulating public opinion and distorting the truth by fabricating a grassroots voice (Zhou et al., 2020; Han, 2015). As blatant censorship could provoke user’s indignation, Internet commentators can facilitate the government’s active regulation of public opinion without directly censoring content (King et al., 2017). Hence, the Fifty Cent Party is an illustrative example of how the Chinese government adapts to move beyond censorship while still keeping watch on or even guiding Chinese people’s online speech. Adding to the panopticon, the government also encourages user surveillance of illegal information exchanged on the Internet. Since 2004, the government has

Internet censorship in China 17 set up a number of online reporting centres to encourage and reward citizens’ par­ ticipation in detecting unlawful information (Shao, 2012). The establishment of these apparatuses indicates the government’s intention to convert every Internet user into a potential post-publication censor (Zhao, 2008). Through setting up these societal surveillance mechanisms, surveillance among every kind of social conduit at every level on the Internet is mobilised, as opposed to surveillance only being the practice of government (Tsui, 2003). This has led to a dispersion of disciplinary power to confront the decentralisation of the Internet, as the establishment of these surveillance mechanisms has produced censors that penetrate into each node of the network (ibid). Chinese Internet users’ attitudes towards online censorship: the real-name registration policy as a case study One of the most significant compositions of the government’s censorship mecha­ nism is the real-name registration policy. In 2015, a nationwide implementation of the real-name registration system was made obligatory with the release of the Internet User Account Name Management Regulations, even though the gov­ ernment had already carried out real-name registration at different levels and in several regions since 2003 (Qi et al., 2018). Article 24 of the Cybersecurity Law implemented in 2016 further stresses the network service providers’ obligations of gathering and storing Internet users’ real identification information (ibid). As Fou­ cault (1991: 196) noted, ‘surveillance is based on a system of permanent registra­ tion’, the Chinese government’s requiring of its citizens’ registration with the ISPs enables the visualisation of the Internet users, making them more liable to control. Furthermore, employing real-name registration systems to facilitate Internet con­ trol could be an instance to present how the government’s censorship strategy is contested and negotiated with the Internet users’ right of privacy and the right to free speech (Lee and Liu, 2016; Yang and Kang, 2016). Instead of responding to public concerns about the possibility that the real-name policy will violate Internet users’ privacy and right to free expression and security, the government has adopted several approaches to divert attention away from these concerns and to persuade its people of the rationality of the policy (Jiang, 2015). These approaches include propagandising this policy’s efficiency in preventing ‘pornography, rumours, slander, fake identities that threaten network security and social stability’, promoting the false claim that this policy is common in other parts of the world and silencing reporting on South Korea’s failure in promoting realname registration (Jiang, 2016: 42). Although the government maintains that the purpose of the policy is to control the spread of false information and rumours, it is transparent that this policy will expose Internet users’ personal information to the authorities, thereby facilitating the government in detecting certain users and eventually causing users’ self-regulation of online speech. Eventually, this has the potential to lead to a decrease in the communication of sensitive political and social issues online, which could fuel offline collective action (Caragliano, 2013).

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In terms of Internet users’ attitudes, in addition to supporting the government’s decisions, the interviewees as part of this study agreed they tended to exercise self-regulation when posting online. Taking Gao as an example, he/she considered the policy to be ‘fú yún’ – a phrase literally meaning ‘floating clouds’, commonly adopted by Chinese people to describe things that were of no consequence and were not worth deliberating upon (Zhu, 2013). In this case, it means that for Gao, the policy did not personally affect her/him at all. He/she further sided with the government by agreeing with the significance of the policy for controlling people while not considering the possible threat it posed to her/his own privacy and per­ sonal security. He/she explained that: Ordinary Internet users can easily make a mistake: once the authorities and the policy have opened a platform allowing free expression, every­ one will actively engage in it, but it cannot control what can be said. . . . [S]ince these people have been repressed for a long time, their expressions became aggressive, whereas they should have paid attention to the moral­ ity of what they were saying and the truth of their words. So, it needs to be regulated. The conversation with Gao might be an example of the state having achieved a degree of success in governing people through moral advice instead of exercising more visible deterrents. As it is, the majority of the interviewees expressed apathy towards the policy, as they believed that their postings did not violate social norms. Opinions expressed included: For me, it does not matter whether these regulations are enacted or not, as I never spread rumours. (Zhou) It won’t affect me as I do not insult or slander others. (Huang) No, I take responsibility for every word I say. (Zhao) I will censor my words prior to posting them and I will continually post only if it is the truth. (Wang) These responses from interviewees reflect their internalisation of the orchestra­ tion of Internet surveillance norms, thereby determining what they post and what they refrain from posting, even though they maintain that they are indifferent to the policy. They also indicate that although regulatory censorship has been imposed by the state, users were already practising self-censorship prior to any external censorship mandate. This reasoning also reflects a significant feature of constitutive censorship, namely that social members internalise unspoken social norms that lead them to exercise self-censorship (Baumgartner and van Renswoud, 2014). While some interviewees supported the policy or were indifferent to it, others were found to express concerns about the policy’s effect, namely the constraining of freedom of expression. However, the latter were few in number. Although one

Internet censorship in China 19 of the interviewees considered that the regulation did not affect them personally, they went on to explain: It is because I rarely deliberate over sensitive issues online; however, I still feel that this policy results in a lack of free speech to some extent, especially when I intend to post subsequent comments about some sensitive events. (Zhang) Although Internet users such as this interviewee is aware of the threat to their right to free speech posed by the real-name registration policy, they still believe that they are not affected by the policy, as they are cautious about posting messages online. This again demonstrates that the government’s implicit and explicit approaches to orchestrating regulation of its Internet users have successfully created a chilling effect on them, resulting in the self-regulation of their online behaviours and even­ tually hindering online expression. Can an electronic panopticon be resisted? The virtual panopticon constructed by the Chinese government has arguably hindered the development of public spheres in Chinese cyberspace through its imposition of severe surveillance over Chinese people’s online activities and expression. Neverthe­ less, the Internet is more than a realm in which Chinese Internet users suffer from government censorship; it is also a place in which users can adopt technologies that enable them to bypass such censorship. The GFW can be circumvented by employ­ ing technological tools such as proxy servers and traffic data encryption (e.g. virtual portal networks [VPNs]). The cost of these tools ranges from free to affordable; paid VPNs are usually more stable and secure compared to unpaid ones and proxy servers (Lum et al., 2012). Based on their analysis of Chinese Internet users’ activities before and after the blocking of Instagram, Hobbs and Roberts (2018) discovered that sud­ den censorship could adversely foster information access, as people seek tools to access the censored information, and, by employing these tools, they are gradually exposed to other forbidden information. Moreover, by adopting these tools, Chinese Internet users are more likely to access information beyond their expectations. Nevertheless, technological tools are not exempt from the government’s juris­ diction. In addition to developing technologies to detect and block VPNs, since 2016, the government has enacted several regulations to control the VPN market from a legal perspective (Chandel et al., 2019). After the enactment of regulations on VPNs, some people were put in jail and fined because they provided VPN ser­ vices without official permission and/or using VPNs, such as Xiaoyang, famously arrested in 2017 and Daimou, who was arrested in 2018 (ibid). Indirect strategy for bypassing the censorship: online political satire

When viewed from the perspective of New Censorship Scholarship, which con­ siders censorship in terms of Foucault’s idea of power as ‘productive’ (Butler, 1993; Post, 1998; Müller, 2004), the government’s practice of censorial power is

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understood to define the boundaries of discourses while contrarily Internet users could develop their own language when recognising what words would be cen­ sored. It means that although the strict censorship has resulted in self-regulation in China, Internet users have also invented indirect strategies to avoid publishing potentially sensitive content, based on their knowledge about what information might be censored. This is because people’s internalisation of censorship can also increase their awareness of what might cross the government’s red line. Accord­ ingly, users adopt solutions to circumvent the censorship, instead of directly con­ fronting the government. This is similar to Scott’s (1989) argument that subordinate groups and peasants adopt techniques of exercising everyday forms of resistance, which ‘arise from the knowledge of surveillance, a realistic fear of coercion and a past experience that encourages caution’. The most effective way for Internet users in China to avoid being censored is making their online speech and communication difficult to detect, read and comprehend with their common knowledge. In this context, online political satire has become one of the main forms of subtle resistance facilitated by self-censorship that occurs in China’s cyberspace. It is usually adopted as a way to speak truth to power within an existing power struc­ ture or establishment, particularly when challenging the authorities in an orthodox way is less attainable or when the space for political communication is diminished (Momen, 2019). Lu and Lu (2017) believe that e’gao was the first stage of online satire accelerated by the flourishing of social media platforms in China, especially Weibo. E’gao can be translated as ‘evil jokes’, ‘reckless doings’ or simply ‘spoof­ ing’ (Nordin, 2016: 81–82). In practice, e’gao is a grassroots, spontaneous and sub­ versive invention that involves the recreation of existing materials that are familiar to the public, such as movies, public figures and important notions, social rumours and current affairs, in a comical and dramatic way by taking advantage of multi­ media technologies such as digital video-editing and graphic editors (Zhang, 2010; Lin, 2014; Peng et al., 2022). For instance, Figure 2.1 shows Chinese Internet users’ satirical postings of the four officials from the Hubei Government who are accused of misconduct during the coronavirus pandemic. These four officials are ironically described as a group; in the middle of the picture, the moniker of the group is pre­ sented as the ‘Hubei F4’. F4 is an abbreviation for Flower Four, which are originally four leading characters from a Japanese manga series called Boys over Flowers; it can also refer to a well-known four-person male group from Taiwan, whose mem­ bers all played in a TV drama based on the manga series. Specifically, each official is sarcastically titled using an attribution relating to their wrongdoings during the pandemic: Secretary Sun, who posed for photos when visiting citizens (摆拍慰问 孙书记, top left), Governor Wang, who claimed to have enough supplies (物资充 足王省长, top right), Secretary Ma, who never came forward (查无此人马书记, bottom left) and Mayor Ma, who held an annual mass banquet with thousands of citizens (万家宴会周市长, bottom right). As illustrated by this example, e’gao is usually presented in an entertaining way and in its visual form, an alternative approach that delivers the Chinese digital generation’s individual voice, expressing their satirical views on the power by deconstructing the orthodox seriousness and providing comic criticism and comic relief (Gong and Yang, 2010).

Internet censorship in China 21

Figure 2.1 Hubei F4.

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Nevertheless, nowadays, online political satire is far more than the practice of e’gao. For instance, Yang and Jiang (2015) identified five forms of networked prac­ tice in online political satire: duanzi (段子) or jokes, national sentence-making, multimedia remix, online performance art and online news comments. Lee (2016) distinguished three forms of online political satire: ironic, parodic and hybrid. By conducting comparative case studies, Lee (ibid: 1064) discovered that, when using the parodic form, it was more likely to survive government censorship because its tactics mainly rely on transplanting and recontextualising its targets, that is, applying powerful groups’ ‘language, institutional logic or practice to a different context’. In other words, the parodist form of political satire criticises the powerful by mimicking and following their logic rather than generating an obvious sign of resistance, thereby making it more difficult for algorithms and human sensors to detect (ibid). Conclusion China’s strategy to practice Internet censorship cannot be simply described as direct, authoritative or compelling; authorities have tactically developed approaches to cultivate Chinese citizens and network operators’ self-regulation. This complex Internet censorship system may illustrate how panoptic power has evolved in the modern age, especially in the digital realm, which has been a com­ paratively free space. As Internet users are unsure if and when their behaviours and expressions would breach the intrinsically vague regulations, trigger the content-filtering system, arouse human censors’ attention and be reported by fellow users, they are cultivated to internalise surveillance and self-regulate behaviours. Moreover, the existence of the Fifty Cent Party also reveals the government’s attempts to develop an alternative approach to control online speech other than censorship. It reflects that surveillants have orchestrated themselves to integrate into those who are being watched, exerting a subtle influence on them. Neverthe­ less, China’s censorship system can produce resistance as well, as demonstrated by Internet users’ efforts to get around the Great Firewall using proxy servers and VPNs, or to subtly bypass the content-filtering system in humorous ways, which was also explored in this chapter. By scrutinising how Chinese government orchestrates regulations and tech­ nologies to distribute its power on the Internet, this study epitomises the orches­ trated thinking of the state in governing a comparatively innovative and loose space in contemporary China. To some extent, the chapter argues that the govern­ ment has successfully turned the majority of Chinese people into self-regulators. On the other hand, the study also exemplifies a number of Chinese Internet users’ orchestrated adoption of techniques to bypass the system differentiating from those being ‘cultivated’ to behave ‘properly’ on the Internet. In future studies, it might be worth investigating whether the methods the Chinese government uses to exert panoptic power on the Internet are applicable in different media envi­ ronments. For instance, in Chapter 3, Xianwen Kuang explores how the govern­ ment’s censorial power affects news production. Moreover, in addition to hiring

Internet censorship in China 23 Internet commentators, it may be beneficial to further discover alternative means the government has employed to manipulate public opinion beyond censorship, such as social media bots. References Baumgartner, C. and van Renswoud, I. (2014). Censorship, free speech and religion. In: Paul, H. ed. Controversies in Contemporary Religions: Education, Law, Politics, and Spirituality (Vol. 2, pp.123-152). Santa Barbara: Prager. Bentham, J. (2008). Panopticon; Or, the Inspection-House. Dublin Printed; London reprinted: T. Payne, at the Mews Gate. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge. Caragliano, D. A. (2013). Real names and responsible speech: The case of South Korea, China and Facebook. In: Liberation Technology Program at Stanford University. The Right to Information and Transparency in the Digital Age: Policy, Tools and Practices, Stanford, 11–12 March. Chandel, S., Zang, J., Yu, Y., Sun, J. and Zhang. Z. (2017). The golden shield project of China: A decade later – an in-depth study of the great firewall. In: 2019 International Con­ ference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed Computing and Knowledge Discovery (CyberC), Guilin, 2019, pp. 111–119. Chen, I. (2020). Government Internet Censorship Measures and International Law. Münster: Lit Verlag. Chen, L., Zhang, C. and Wilson, C. (2013). Tweeting under pressure: Analyzing trending topics and evolving word choice on Sina Weibo. In: Proceedings of the first ACM confer­ ence on Online social networks (COSN’13). New York, NY: ACM, pp. 89–100. Chen, Y. and Yang, D. Y. (2019). The impact of media censorship: 1984 or Brave new world? American Economic Review, 109(6): 2294–2332. Cheng, D. (2016). Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Opera­ tions. Santa Barbara: Prager. Cheung, A. S. Y. (2006). The business of governance: China’s legislation on content regula­ tion in cyberspace. International Law and Politics, 38: 1–38. CNNIC. (2020). CNNIC released the 45th report about the Internet development in China. www.cnnic.cn/gywm/xwzx/rdxw/20172017_7057/202004/t20200427_70973.htm [Accessed on 30 April 2020]. Creemers, R. (2017). Cyber China: Upgrading propaganda, public opinion work and social management for the twenty-first century. Journal of Contemporary China, 26(103): 85–100. Damm, J. (2016). Social media in China: Between an emerging civil society and commer­ cialisation. In: Iwabuchi, K., Tsai, E. and Berry, C. eds. (2017). Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 158–164. Deibert, R. (2013). Trouble at the border: China’s Internet. Index on Censorship, 42(2): 132–135. Druzin, B. and Li, J. (2016). Censorship’s fragile grip on the Internet: Can online speech be controlled. Cornell International Law Journal, 49(2): 370–414. Du, J. (2020). Constructing the Internet panopticon-fortification: A legal study on China’s Internet regulatory mechanism. In: Kumar, V. and Malhotra, G. eds. Examining the Roles of IT and Social Media in Democratic Development and Social Change. Hershey: IGI Global, pp. 211–249.

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Internet censorship in China 25 Müller, B. (2004). Censorship and cultural regulation: Mapping the territory. In: Müller, B. ed. Censorship & Cultural Regulation in Modern Age. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., pp. 1–32. Navarria, G. (2006). The three faces of government in the age of the Internet and the future of activism within a condition of shared weakness. Eastbound, 1(1): 124–152. Nordin, A. H. M. (2016). China’s International Relations and Harmonious World: Time, Space and Multiplicity in World Politics. New York: Routledge. Normile, D. (2017). Science suffers as China plugs holes in great firewall. Science, 357(6354): 856. Pan, Y. (2017). Managed liberalization: Commercial media in the People’s Republic of China. In: Schiffrin, A. ed. In the Service of Power: Media Capture and the Threat to Democracy. Washington, DC: CIMA, pp. 111–124. Peng, A. Y., Kuang, X. and Hou, J. Z. (2022). Love NBA, hate BLM: Racism in China’s sports fandom. International Journal of Communication, 16: 3133–3153. Policy and Regulations Department of Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commis­ sion and Policy and Regulations Department of Cyberspace Administration of China. (2020). 中国互联网法规汇编（第二版）[Collections of Chinese Internet Laws and Regulations, 2nd ed.]. Beijing: China Legal System Publishing House. Post, R. C. (1998). Censorship and silencing. In: Post, R. C. ed. Censorship and Silencing: Practices of Cultural Regulations. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute, pp. 1–16. Powers, S. M. and Jablonski, M. (2015). The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Qi, A., Shao, G. and Zheng, W. (2018). Assessing China’s cybersecurity law. Computer Law & Security Review, 32: 1342–1354. Qiang, X. (2019). The road to digital unfreedom: President Xi’s surveillance state. Journal of Democracy, 30(1): 53–67. Quinn, J. (2017). A peek over the great firewall: A breakdown of China’s new cybersecurity law. Science and Technology Law Review, 20(2): 407–436. Roberts, M. E. (2015). Experiencing censorship emboldens internet users and decreases government support in China. Working Paper. Roberts, M. E. (2018). Censored, Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sari, A., Qayyum, Z. A. and Onursal, O. (2017). The dark side of the China: The govern­ ment, society and the great cannon. Transactions on Networks and Communications, 5(6): 48–61. Scott, J. C. (1989). Everyday forms of resistance. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 4(89): 33–62. Shao, G. (2012). Internet Law in China. Cambridge: Chandos Publishing. Sukosd, M. (2014). Inverse intranet: The exceptionalism of online media policies in China. In: Liu, Y. and Picard, R. G. eds. Policy and Marketing Strategies for Digital Media. New York: Routledge, pp. 170–191. Taneja, H. and Wu, A. X. (2015). Does the great firewall really isolate the Chinese? Integrat­ ing access blockage with cultural factors to explain web user behavior. The Information Society, 30(5): 297–309. Tsui, L. (2003). The panopticon as the antithesis of space of freedom: Control and regulation of the Internet in China. China Information, 17(2): 65–82. Yang, G. and Jiang, M. (2015). The networked practice of online political satire in China: Between ritual and resistance. The International Communication Gazette, 77(3): 215–231.

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Yang, K. C. C. and Kang, Y. (2016). Real-name registration regulation in China: An exami­ nation. In: Orwenjo, D. O., Oketch, O. and Tunde, A. H., eds. Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 61–87. Yu, W. (2018). Paradigms of Internet regulation in the European Union and China Internet intermediaries’ liability for online illegal hate speech. Frontier of Low in China, 13(3): 342–256. Zhang, L. (2010). Carnival in cyberspace: Egao as a Chinese internet subculture. In: The Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, Suntec City, Singapore, June 21, 2010. Zhang, S. I. and Peng, A. Y. (Eds) (2023). China, Media, and International Conflicts. Lon­ don: Routledge. Zhao, Y. (2008). Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. Lan­ ham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publisher, Inc. Zheng, H. (2013). Regulating the Internet: China’s law and practice. Beijing Law Review, 4(1): 37–41. Zhou, Y. J., Tang, W. and Lei, X. (2020). Social desirability of dissent: An IAT experiment with Chinese University students. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 25: 113–138. Zhu, W. (2013). Everything is ‘FUYUN’. The World of Chinese [online]. Available from: http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/06/everything-is-fuyun/ [Accessed 5 April 2016]

3

Political control, media marketisation, and news production Xianwen Kuang1

Introduction Political authorities have enormous influence over news media. Even in demo­ cratic settings, such influence is inherent because political institutions are the prime sources of information for news reporting (Bro, 2010). Especially for journalists covering a particular beat in the government, they rely on politicians for com­ ment and access to information and press conferences (Habermas, 2006; Lecheler, 2008). In non-democratic settings like China, the influence of politicians is more overt. This is particularly important because although many Chinese readers are clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposes political intervention on the printed press, the public still overwhelmingly trust in their state’s newspapers to guide their thinking on national and international matters. Chinese news consumers have been found to consider state-owned newspapers as more credible than usergenerated online news (Zhang et al., 2014; Li and Sligo, 2012), and national news media more likely to win people’s trust than local outlets (Liu and Bates, 2009). Despite this, readers have been found to use party newspapers to learn about gov­ ernment current policies, and turn to non-party newspapers for what they believe is “real news” – or news the party papers may not wish to report (Stockmann, 2010). Such composition of news consumption by the Chinese citizens also reflects the capacity of the Chinese Party-state to orchestrate the provision of news to meet the needs of both the news organisations for profits and the citizens for informa­ tion. This chapter will thus explicate this perspective to understand the orchestrated thinking of the Chinese Party-state in its governance of the news media. Control over the media is essential to authoritarian rule as systems of sophis­ ticated media control helps maintain regime stability (Brady, 2008; Stockmann, 2013). In a diverse nation like China, regime stability in the face of marketisation is an exceptional challenge, and a range of balancing acts and factors of influence have been installed in order to orchestrate information production and flows that originate from the Chinese press rooms to the broader general public. Building upon this theoretical assumption, this chapter highlights how the orchestration of news production contributes to the Chinese Party-state’s management of the entire media sector. A review of scholarly literature addressing the political control over Chinese news media indicates that the systems for control are indeed sophisticated. DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-3

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This includes processes of news censorship, control over political information access, control over the media’s marketisation, and the nation’s journalism educa­ tion programmes, all of which in combination, create a system by which a fine line between political control and leniency is achieved. In short, the present approaches to media control symbolise a sophisticated approach to the orchestration of news media in China today – not only through the thinking of the Chinese Party-state in its approaches to media governance, but also through the agency of news media practitioners in the face of control that both disables and enables their capacity to undertake professional reportage. Major forms of political control over the news media The orchestrated control over the news media in China is characterised in Figure 3.1, and the dynamics of it will be explained in details that follow. News censorship One important way for a government to control the news media is through the mechanism of censorship. In political science, political censorship is considered a means of governmental social control over the media (Siebert et al., 1963). While democratic governments typically use media censorship in critical periods, for example when the nation is facing external enemies, in a national crisis or war, authoritarian regimes consistently resort to it. This is thought to be not so much

Figure 3.1 Orchestration of news media production in China.

Political control, media marketisation, and news production 29 to protect public interest as to safeguard the stability of the regime (Nossek and Rinnawi, 2003). Political news censorship in authoritarian regimes is also con­ sidered much more institutionalised, extensive, and “neurotic” than in democratic regimes (Liu, 2011). While there is the perception that the media control in China is absolute, scholars studying Chinese media control and propaganda strategies have argued that coercion and repression are no longer the main theme of media control following the transformation of the CCP from a revolutionary party to a governing party (e.g. Brady, 2008). Instead, both the media control strategies of enabling and restraining are adopted and there is an “emphasis on persuasion rather than repres­ sion” (Reny, 2010: 139). The administration of censorship over the media is expected to display a similar development. Despite having the ability to censor every item of news that is con­ sidered negative to the state and government units, the propaganda authorities in fact allow some types of negative news to appear in the media. The expansion of the print and broadcast media industries, and their increasing competition within the industry for audiences, has however presented an unprecedented challenge for media control (Liu, 2011). Similarly, the increasing importance of the Internet has rendered total censorship impossible (ibid). Although the state can still use fire­ walls and information filtering systems to control the Internet, as Guanying Li discusses in Chapter 2, the use of homonyms by netizens and rapid transmission of such information have made absolute control over the news media redundant. A recent example of this was the leak from eight doctors in Wuhan of a new strain of coronavirus, Covid-19, through the social media platform, WeChat. The death of Dr Wenliang Li, one of the eight doctors originally involved in the leak, was particularly telling. As the local government intended to cover up the outbreak, the state news media reported Dr Li was alive and receiving full medical care. Doctor Li’s colleagues, however, used WeChat to announce his passing. Facing public indignation, the state media was forced to backtrack and concede Dr Li had in fact passed away. The availability of alternative views is, however, not the only reason that abso­ lute censorship of the media today is unfeasible. From the perspective of the politi­ cal economy too, the state has to evaluate whether the costs of censorship exceed the gains (Shadmehr and Bernhardt, 2012). History has shown that the threat of revolt increases when news censorship is tightened and suspicions are raised about party control that easily become popularised. Furthermore, the Chinese public has grown propaganda-weary and deeply suspicious of the CCP ideology, especially the younger generations, who are unaccustomed to brainwashing practices of the past (Lee et al., 2006). The reality is, however, that absolute control over the news media is not only impossible, but it is also no longer the ambition of the state. The state-led marketi­ sation of the media industry has meant that regulations have had to be relaxed to some degree for the newly commercialised news media to be commercially viable (Huang, 2000; Stockmann, 2011). Furthermore, the decentralisation of the Partystate following the economic reform in the 1980s led to a rise in dysfunctional bureaucracy at a local level. At first, local governments, which were given more

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autonomy in making economic policies, used the news media under their control to cover up the wrongdoings of the local cadres (Zhao, 2000a). Consequently, the central state promoted the watchdog role of the media at a local level to hold local cadres accountable, as dysfunctional bureaucracies were widespread and seen to challenge the CCP’s ruling legitimacy (ibid). Accordingly, the central government’s orchestration of control over the overall ideological direction of the media differs from that of local governments (de Burgh, 2003; Brady, 2009). In earlier work, I have shown how the central authorities have focused more on news detrimental to state legitimacy, for example news related to national guidelines and policies and the image of the central state and leadership; whereas local authorities censor news considered harmful to social stability and the image of local government (Kuang, 2018). Despite these differing censorship priorities, both the central and local governments in China have undoubtedly been able to orchestrate news production that works to their advantages. Approaches to censorship today support market and central and local government interests in a similarly focused objective to ensure political credibility, while simultaneously enabling market viability through consumption, and ultimately, providing reader­ ship satisfaction and reducing discontent. Restriction of political information access The politician–journalist relationship in Western democracies is considered to resemble a “tango” or “tug of war” (e.g. Gans, 1979, 2003; Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). Journalists report on what their sources tell them, and often involve more the views of the political leaders than other sources such as ordinary citizens on a number of issues. This is known as indexing (Bennett, 2003). In China, gov­ ernment officials who are also politicians yield direct control over the restriction of political information access. As such, government-disseminated political and policy information is now a precious resource over which news agencies compete. In most cases, though, governments only make such information accessible to the news organisations they trust. Vertically speaking, all levels of government, for example central, provincial, city, or district level, have one or a few news organisations that they trust the most. More often than not, these are the party news organisations at the same level. For example, the news organisation that the central level of government trusts the most is the People’s Daily as it is considered the mouthpiece of the CCP Central Com­ mittee. When the central government wants to release certain political information, it often chooses the People’s Daily to disseminate its news over other publications such as the Global Times, which is also a central-level newspaper but a non-party outlet in terms of political affiliation. At the provincial level, this is the same. For example, provincial authorities in Guangdong trust the party newspaper Nanfang Daily more than the non-party outlet, Southern Metropolis News. Having a closer relationship with the senior management of these newspapers directly appointed by the central government also makes for greater faith in the working relationship between the government and the media. Since most party

Political control, media marketisation, and news production 31 newspapers are less commercialised than the non-party ones, with their operations largely supported by government funding and revenue accrued from their nonparty sub-news outlets, scandalous news reporting is less pervasive. Accordingly, government authorities feel confident that using the party media outlets to dissemi­ nate their political information or policies, such information will not be distorted or misinterpreted. Despite such control on access to political information, though, journalists in non-party news organisations have developed effective strategies to negotiate access too, which will be discussed later in this chapter. Journalism education Journalism and communication schools and universities in China are considered as semi-official as they are under direct supervision of the Ministry of Educa­ tion (Guo and Chen, 2017). They are structurally ranked as equals to government institutions and are increasingly forging closer partnerships with local propaganda authorities and party news outlets (Guo and Chen, 2017; Repnikova, 2017). This is due to the “joint model” campaign initiated in December 2013, whereby coop­ eration agreements between propaganda departments and universities to jointly run journalism schools were initiated (Xu, 2018; Han, 2017). Today, many for­ mer propaganda officials and high-ranking state media journalists are appointed as deans and official gatekeepers at top journalism schools across the country (Rep­ nikova, 2017). While the rank of a university president is equal to a government bureau director, a journalism school dean parallels that of a division head (Guo and Chen, 2017). These semi-officials within the journalism education system have in essence become state agents that oversee curricula design, recruitment, and promo­ tion of faculty members and enrolment of students (ibid). Besides the appointment of school deans and the sustained control on the curriculum, the CCP also rein­ forces its influence by sending representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Central Propaganda Department to visit journalism schools. In doing so, they dis­ cuss with faculty staff the importance of following Marxist principles of journal­ ism and actively pursue the censorship of journalism teaching (Repnikova, 2017). Not surprisingly, such developments have profound implications for the inte­ gration of ideological instruction into the teaching curricula of journalism training (Repnikova, 2017). This has, however, always been a focus for China’s leadership, with political indoctrination an indispensable part of journalism education. As Hao and Xu (1997) have argued, this may indeed reflect the CCP’s anxieties over the political orientation of its future journalists. Although journalism training in China has diversified with the introduction of US-led traditions in journalistic practice and professionalism, the CCP still proactively ensures that the dominant ideolo­ gies of the time feature heavily within the teaching agenda (Repnikova, 2017). All journalism students have to take mandatory courses on Marxism and Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory (Repnikova, 2017; Hao and Xu, 1997). And after graduation, this ideological education continues to play a role through training and exams for the necessary press card to work as a journalist (Florcruz, 2013).

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Alongside the moderation of the next generation of journalists, the Chinese authorities train and recruit academic teaching staff in journalism schools into the Party’s Think Tank network. Both the central and local levels of government offer financial support to journalism schools to establish public opinion research cen­ tres (Xu, 2018). These think tanks are expected to analyse online public opinion and help government detect public opinion and remove potential risks (Xu, 2018). Despite this, it is believed that educators do not entirely lap up all that is required of them within the political context. While journalism professors acknowledge that the Chinese press is not independent under the shrouding of the communist ide­ ology, they have been shown to agree that the news media should meet public and market demands to monitor government activities (Hao and Xu, 1997; Brady, 2017). Accordingly, both educators and students are expected to engage in perpet­ ual active reinterpretation of the CCP principles on news production (Repnikova, 2017). The propaganda authorities also appoint editors-in-chief at the respective news­ rooms and send top government officials to disseminate direct instructions in their educational training sessions for incoming journalists (Zhang and Fleming, 2005). As a result, journalists who have been to these training sessions engage in selfcensorship when they encounter sensitive news issues in their understanding that either formal or informal penalties will be applied in their reporting of the subject by the relevant authorities (Kuang, 2017). In some severe cases in which editors­ in-chief have annoyed the authorities with consecutive bold reports, the changing of editors occurred (Zhang and Fleming, 2005). Political control, media marketisation, and news media practices So far my discussion has indicated not only the pervasiveness of political control over the news media in China today, but also how perceptions of this control con­ sider it less repressive than the pre-Reform Era. Even with the media marketisation of the 1980s, researchers believe that the state authorities have succeeded in keep­ ing the news media within their orbit (Zhao, 2000b; Akhavan-Majid, 2004). They acknowledge the substantive changes in the Chinese media, but regret that these changes have not resulted in Western-style press freedom and democracy (Huang, 2000). Instead, media marketisation and commercialisation are argued to promote the stability of the authoritarian regime (Winfield and Peng, 2005; Lee et al., 2006; Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011). Here, the institutional design of the state seems to decide the consequences of media marketisation (Stockmann, 2013). These findings contradict the experience in Western democracies, however, that commercialisation tends to weaken the ties between the media and political actors, foster liberalisation, and deepen democracy (Wu, 2000; Hallin and Mancini, 2004). Based on the Western experience with media commercialisation, a more diverse media ownership structure and more open media market should have led to a more independent media system (Huang, 2007a), but the state and market have converged in the Chinese case. In fact, commercialisation has enforced state intervention in the media, as the commercialised media market provides further

Political control, media marketisation, and news production 33 opportunities for the state to deepen its control over the media (Hadland and Zhang, 2012; Li, 2013). This is because media marketisation has contributed to the merging of media organisations from the same locality into a media group, the top management of which would uphold the state stability rules, as it is under CCP control (Lee et al., 2006). Moreover, the monopoly of such media groups in a single locality is secured by the Party-state to drive out competitors. This results in a concrete connection between the media and the state, as the CCP pulls the strings and lets the press groups control the market while the media toes the CCP line and maximises economic gains at the same time. In other words, the overall goals of the Party-state overlap considerably with the interests of the press groups (ibid). The Chinese media system, therefore, could be described as becoming a hybrid of political authoritarianism and capitalism (Winfield and Peng, 2005). Some have even claimed that China’s media have developed into a state-controlled capitalist corporation model, with the Party-state as the majority shareholder of media cor­ porations (Huang, 2007b). What such a discussion indicates is that despite the fact that China has undergone media marketisation, which could theoretically lead to more independent news media, the Chinese news organisations continue to have strong connections to the state, which further indicates that the political control over news production remains effective in China. It is thus interesting to explore how autonomous the news organisations can be and to what extent and how they can negotiate the reporting boundaries in such an environment. Autonomy of news organisations If media commercialisation has provided a range of opportunities for the state to intervene more deeply, it goes without saying that media autonomy would be, as a result, limited. But this does not mean that the news media have not gained any autonomy since the market reforms. As discussed earlier, the propaganda authori­ ties place emphasis only on highly sensitive topics while at the same time granting the news media more freedom to cover less sensitive topics, allowing them to meet market demands (Stockmann, 2011). Such increases in news media autonomy can be observed when comparing the news reporting in different types of news outlets (i.e. party and non-party) on different issues (Stockmann, 2013: 30–31). The increasing autonomy of the news media in the reporting of less sensitive issues is also a result of the increasing bargaining power of the media, the mar­ ket, and society in general against the state. Although the Party-state continues to monopolise the political power, media regulation is no longer a one-player game as before, but rather a game with non-state actors engaging in the negotiation of policymaking and expansion of news reporting boundaries on various issues (Akhavan-Majid, 2004; Huang, 2007a). Meanwhile, the commercialisation of the media also requires that journalists incorporate the notions of audience appeal and news value, promoting a sense of professionalism (Liu, 2011). This sense of expanded autonomy has mainly been brought about by the emer­ gence and development of non-party news outlets, although the party news outlets have also gained greater autonomy in their reporting of less sensitive issues. In

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China, all newspapers are state-owned and the government has complete powers on the issuing of journalistic licenses and appointment of news workers (Qin et al., 2018). Party newspapers are typically regarded as the mouthpiece of the CCP. Serving as loudspeakers of CCP’s policies, the party papers shoulder the responsi­ bility to establish close rapport between the Party and the public (Shirk, 2011: 7). In contrast, the non-party news outlets are more market-oriented and are usually the “commercial media spin-off” of state-owned newspapers (Qian and Bandurski, 2011: 41; Zhao, 2000b). Studies indeed indicate that news selection autonomy could differ across news organisations with the party publications receiving greater self-censorship on the part of the journalists and editors, and complying with more orders and/or notices from the propaganda authorities, than their non-party counterparts (see, e.g., Zhang, 2010, 2011; Kuang, 2020). In most cases, the non-party news outlets would use bold layouts, sensational headlines, and report on hot topics, including those exposing official wrongdoings, which could cause controversy and make them more popular outlets than the party outlets (Liu, 2011). Also, when a propaganda notice or censorship order on a sensitive issue has not reached the news organisa­ tions, the more commercialised and less self-censored non-party news organisa­ tions can be often seen to take advantage of the time gap to publish the story first (Kuang, 2020). Additionally, news outlets with different administrative ranks can also be expected to vary when it comes to reporting political issues with different degrees of sensitivity. For example, to monitor and discipline local cadres, news organisa­ tions at the central level are allowed to report on local negative news, for example official misconduct in government units at lower administrative levels, which is sensitive only to a particular local government (Liu, 2011; Kuang, 2018). Similarly, news organisations from one province have less pressure to report and censor nega­ tive news from other provinces. Nevertheless, the general impression regarding the autonomy of Chinese news media is still limited due to the fact that not a single news organisation would ques­ tion the CCP legitimacy or criticise high-ranking officials (Lee et al., 2006). This is so because the Chinese Party-state, like any other authoritarian regime, punishes journalists and news organisations severely if they cross the Party’s bottom line (Stockmann, 2011). Self-censorship among journalists, especially those from the party organs, is widespread when it comes to the critical coverage of the govern­ ment (Lo et al., 2005). This also implies that the Party-state control over news production remains highly effective, as news organisations will follow the state’s instructions when reporting on highly sensitive issues. In the face of the digital era, the autonomy of news organisations has not grown but shrunk. The proliferation of the Internet and social media has resulted in the decline of newspaper circulation, and attracted both readership and adver­ tising revenue away from the printed press. Statistics show that the expenditure on advertising in the printed press fell from about RMB 40,000 million in 2010 to about RMB 10,000 million in 2016 (Sparks et al., 2016; Wang and Sparks, 2018). In turn, this has resulted in newspapers publishing more paid content, that

Political control, media marketisation, and news production 35 is articles written for advertisers which look like a professional news report, to maintain their commercial viability. Facing the slump in advertising revenue, some party newspapers have turned to their local governments for support. In return for more money on paid content by local governments, though, party newspapers agree to give positive coverage of local government, such as high efficiency of the government, the positive social trend, and economic development in the region (Wang and Sparks, 2018, 2020; Han, 2017). In order to demonstrate achievements to the central government, the local authorities are willing to pay for news coverage, which is a win-win situa­ tion for both sides (Wang and Sparks, 2018). The increasing significance of paid content has diminished the autonomy of journalists. In order to obtain funding, journalists in these papers have to spend their time on the production of paid con­ tent and flatter the local governments without considering much for news values (Wang and Sparks, 2020). Negotiation of news reporting boundaries The impotence of news organisations to report on highly sensitive issues that potentially threaten the CCP legitimacy stands in stark contrast with their flexibil­ ity to report on less sensitive issues. As such, journalists, especially those from the non-party outlets, are competing with one another to expand the reporting bounda­ ries of these news issues so that their news organisations can attract larger audi­ ences. Expanding news reporting boundaries of many issues with a certain degree of sensitivity is also possible due to the fact that there have never been journalistic laws of regulations in China that define what are the boundaries for the reporting of certain issues (Wu and Yun, 2005). The competition to push the expansion of news reporting boundaries is expected to contribute to a shift in the dominant message transmitted by the tightly controlled news media (Stockmann, 2011). There is evi­ dence that the taboo with respect to reporting on various types of issues considered negative to the image of the state has been broken (de Burgh, 2003), for example the reporting of the SARS outbreak which was covered up by the government but breached by some bold news organisations like Caijing (Liu, 2011). Such devel­ opments also suggest that the autonomy of the Chinese news media has in some respects increased. Although journalists usually follow the government rules in order to avoid losing access to information under the control of politicians, they do disregard these rules in some cases, thus expanding their reporting boundaries and promot­ ing freedom of information (Liu, 2011). Investigative journalists have particularly deployed various tactics to expand their reporting boundaries, such as lobbying higher level officials to override censorship (de Burgh, 2003), choosing “safe” themes and avoiding taboo subject matter (Tong, 2007), and giving the impression that they are the friends of the state, not the enemies (Liu, 2011). Beat journalists who only focus on one area of reporting, for example a sector or an organisation over time, would find themselves familiar with these tactics, but they are in need of even more creative strategies to expand the news reporting

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boundaries due to their dependencies on the political authorities for news informa­ tion. In order to maintain a good relationship with the government units while at the same time fulfil their media responsibilities, they have to serve as “opportunists” by not only pleasing politicians with positive reporting about them and even receiv­ ing material rewards for such reports, but also seizing the opportunity to be watch­ dogs when other journalists have revealed the negative news about the authorities (Kuang, 2017). In order to publish more sensitive news without being punished by the government unit they cover, beat journalists also adopt the following tactics: (1) sending out other colleagues to report the sensitive news while pretending to not know about it; (2) appearing on the news scene but asking another journalist to join without attracting the authority’s attentions; (3) leaking information to col­ leagues to write the news story without signing themselves in the published report; and (4) sharing news information with journalists from other media organisations to co-share the risks (ibid). Chinese journalists, including both investigative and beat journalists, try to pull all the “tricks” to do their jobs well. Such practices are both strongly motivated by market demands and encouraged by the higher-up governments as a way to monitor local level governments. However, Chinese journalists also clearly know that they are neither expected nor allowed to report on matters relating to higherrank officials that could potentially ruin the legitimacy of the Party-state. These dual roles of journalists to please both the top (the higher-level leadership) and the bottom (the public), while attacking those in the middle of the Chinese power structure (lower-level state officials), have distinguished them from their Western counterparts (Zhao, 2000a). This pressure on Chinese journalists, on the one hand, best displays the nature of the political control over the Chinese news media and its effectiveness in limiting the autonomy of journalists on reporting sensitive issues. Yet, on the other hand, it also highlights the agency that Chinese journalists have. Moreover, the fact that the journalists go between the two roles of pleasing both the top and the bottom reflects the enabling and disabling orchestration of media control practised by the CCP. By extension, such orchestration by the Party-state and of the journalists determines how the news is received every day by the Chi­ nese public. The increasing popularity of digital media, however, has affected the circula­ tion and revenues of the legacy media, making paid content a routine task for newspaper journalists. In order to secure advertising revenue from the local gov­ ernments, journalists publish positive content to please them (Wang and Sparks, 2018, 2020). Therefore, there is less chance for newspapers to report on the nega­ tive news of local governments. This special relationship between news outlets and local governments imposes challenges for journalists to expand their news reporting boundaries. These strategic practices as a result of both political and market control have substantially influenced what news issues could or could not be reported, that is the news media agenda, how the news issues are reported, and by extension, the news frames and discourses used in news reports. This in turn informs readers what they should and should not be thinking about, or should and should not know.

Political control, media marketisation, and news production 37 Conclusion With a critical review of the existing studies on political control and its influences on the production of news in China, this chapter provides a comprehensive account on why various issues are produced and presented in a particular way in the Chinese context and how information is orchestrated for the Chinese public. It has identi­ fied the key factors, for example censorship, restriction of political information access, and journalism education that shape news reporting in China, and explained how these factors could be moderated by the market forces. The chapter argues that the control and tensions among journalists and the state ultimately determine the type of content that is produced and deemed as newsworthy for the Chinese public. This in turn means that the public encounter certain perspectives of their leadership and the leadership’s activities. These both work to the benefits of the ruling party’s maintenance of legitimacy and stability. Such orchestrated thinking is not only seen among readers, but also in the journalists themselves who are inculcated into the news industry with certain principles and rules about news production to adhere to. While the chapter has informed the more direct and explicit forms of political control, it has not touched upon the more subtle and implicit issues of coercion and unification which are less studied and discussed in the existing literature. Accord­ ingly, this points to the need for more studies on the topic to further develop the present theoretical model proposed in Figure 3.1. Note 1 This chapter is part of the research output from the research project funded by the Jiangsu Bureau of Education Philosophy and Social Sciences Programme, China, under Grant 2015SJD616.

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4

The American Other and China’s big screens Nicole Talmacs and Michael D. High

Introduction During the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese restrictions on imports from the world’s lead­ ing film industry, Hollywood, were driven by a fear of “Americanisation” (Mu, 1999; Wang and Ren, 1999) and a pragmatic economic need to develop China’s domestic film industry (Su, 2014). Today, however, the continued quotas on revenue-sharing foreign films accessing the Chinese market must be understood within the evolving dynamics through which Hollywood, as the main importer of foreign films to China, produces cinema. While the original factors regarding cultural and industry protectionism continue to play a role in China’s restrictions on imported foreign films, much has changed – both politically and cinematically – within China, America, and Hollywood since the import restrictions were first put in place. These changes have coalesced to create opportunities rather than anxieties among China’s censors, significantly reconfiguring the relationship between the Hollywood and the Chinese leadership. As cultural anxieties in China have evolved, an increasingly ubiquitous national consciousness has arisen in social, political, and mediated discourse and cultural production, and Xi Jinping’s “New Era” has witnessed the unwinding of many of the democratic reforms and foreign institutional innovations, as well as the increased ideological openness, of the earlier Opening and Reform Era. Amidst these shifts, China’s film industry has become the second largest film market in the world, mak­ ing it a major target for big budget film productions. Whereas Hollywood films used to dominate the Chinese box office, however, of the current top 50 highest box-office earners in China’s history, only 20 were in fact produced in Hollywood (China Box Office, 2019). Parallel to China’s rise, America’s international stand­ ing has also been questioned. In the same time frame, America has demonstrated a disastrous ambivalence between multilateral international engagement and unilat­ eral action. Geopolitically, this has resulted in the questioning of America’s moral authority as the leader of the democratic and free world (Moghaddam, 2014). With Hollywood understood to play a role in supporting America’s ability to attract oth­ ers through the “legitimacy of U.S. policies and the values that underlie them” (Nye, 2004: 16), elements of Hollywood messaging over the past two decades have surprisingly not evolved to reflect changing American priorities. Thus, shifts DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-4

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in the world’s leading film industry and the political shifts in both America and China raise new possibilities in understanding Chinese foreign film importation. Namely, the question must be asked whether the restrictions on film imports to China continue to reflect only cultural and market protectionism on the part of the Chinese? And how might China’s role as an importer of Hollywood productions from a newfound position of cultural and economic power, and thus as a controller of “American” messaging, be understood? This chapter argues that American film imports no longer “threaten” Chinese society. Rather, Hollywood and China’s selective imports into China support the objectives of the Chinese leadership. While it might be convenient to understand the relationship between Hollywood and Chinese film distribution networks as pri­ marily commercial in nature, the role of ideology and messaging should not be downplayed. The role of cinema in Chinese modern history and the arguments posed during World Trade Organization (WTO) consultations with America in the late 2000s related to film import restrictions indicate that ideology is still a strong consideration for Chinese censors. The current ideological supervision is achieved in multiple ways: firstly, America’s own evolving foreign policies reflected in the films support rather than undermine China’s continued advocacy for authoritarian political organisation; secondly, the prioritisation of some films over others results in the cultivation of America and Americans as culturally hollowed out abstrac­ tions; and thirdly, through Chinese investment into the very Hollywood produc­ tions imported into China. What follows is, first, a contextualisation of China’s history of resistance to Hollywood. This is then followed by a contextualisation of the structural changes to the Hollywood studio system that have impacted American film production. Our analysis then draws on these contexts to analyse the Hollywood productions approved for import into China during 2013–2019. In doing so, this chapter iden­ tifies a generic dominance of science fiction, fantasy, action, and animated films that, in their repetition, come to symbolise a version of America and American values distorted from a reality comprehensible to a Chinese audience. Further­ more, the ideological values encompassed within the high-concept films theatri­ cally released in China arguably complement the authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s presidency (2012–present) rather than pose a cultural threat of Americanisation. We find that Hollywood franchise cinema and China’s current political aims have converged in mutually beneficial ways. Chinese resistance to Hollywood During Mao Zedong’s leadership (1949–1978), cinema was actively employed to mobilise the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) revolutionary objectives. A defin­ ing feature of the communist revolutionary film industry was the consistency in the narratives of communist and anti-bourgeois zeal, allegiances to the CCP and Mao as supreme leader, and devotion to the country’s workers, soldiers, and peasants, so much so that Yomi Braester (2008) argues that China’s revolutionary cinema should be understood as a genre in its own right. Cinema in China during this

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 43 period was produced to reinforce and make predictable and consistent the ideolo­ gies of the social and political consciousness of Maoism. This was most extremely felt during the Cultural Revolution, when the revolutionary opera productions known as the yangbanxi (otherwise known as the “Eight Model Operas”) domi­ nated theatres and film production. Film imports during Mao’s leadership were limited to that within the Soviet block and North Korea (Clark, 2011), completely cutting off Chinese audiences from America and European film-making trends and cinematic narratives. Encountering Hollywood during the early Reform Era of the 1980s and espe­ cially in the 1990s was, not surprisingly, an exciting revelation for many Chinese audiences. During the 1990s, exposure to Hollywood cinema reportedly caused cultural anxieties in the form of “embarrassment” at the quality lag between Chi­ na’s domestic production and that of America’s (Wang and Ren, 1999). Debates about Hollywood’s influence on Chinese society and values were thus particularly rampant during the 1990s (Lu, 1999; Wang and Ren, 1999; Bai, 1999). American cinema presented not only the desired democratic land of the free, but also the epitome of what modernity could offer. So alluring was America considered to be that calls were made for diversity beyond Hollywood cinema to ensure a broader variety of cultural experiences among Chinese audiences (Wang and Ren, 1999: 9). By late 1990s, resistance to Hollywood had evolved from an elite discourse to that of a sustained counterhegemonic cultural policy implemented by the Chinese Government. This was most acutely felt from 1994 to 2000 when efforts were made to undermine democratising and liberal values in the aftermath of the Tianan­ men Square Incident. For the privatising Chinese cinema industry, this presented a conundrum: without Hollywood box-office sales dropped, yet Hollywood imports raised cultural and political anxieties. China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 raised hopes for greater export opportunities for America, and Hollywood in particular. According to the WTO rules, it was anticipated that China would open its film market to free trade from around the world. Rather, China continued to restrict the importation of foreign films on a revenue-sharing basis, known as fenzhang pian, to 20 films per year (an increase over the previous restriction during the 1990s of 10 such agreements per year). By 2007, America had raised consultations with China through the WTO in light of China’s trade restrictions. China’s response was particularly telling: calling on Article XX(a) of the 1994 GATT, which allows for a nation to take “relevant measures necessary to protect public morals”, Chinese representatives claimed that “film” as in movies (dianying) traded in intangible memories and moralities and thus was not a “Good” subject to WTO rules (World Trade Organization, 2009: 9). They argued that “film”, interchangeably used in English to also refer to film stock (jiaojuan), was actually not restricted by Chinese import and exports controls and therefore China was not in violation of its WTO entry agreement (ibid.). The consultations ended with China’s appeal being rejected and China being given a grace period of five years to both develop the strength of its local market and compromise on increased access for foreign films. The Memorandum of Under­ standing signed between China and America in 2012 allowed for an increase of

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14 additional “enhanced format” films (3D and IMAX formats) under the revenuesharing scheme (U.S Department of State, 2012: 1). The agreement and China’s opening up of its film industry were to be revisited in 2017. Since then, however, the US administration has not pursued re-negotiations. Similarly, although infor­ mally a slight increase in foreign film imports has occurred, the Chinese appear little inclined to relax such restrictions. China’s request for a grace period to strengthen its domestic market has borne fruit, with domestic productions now successfully able to compete with Holly­ wood’s in the Chinese market. Recent domestic blockbusters such as Wolf Warrior 2 (Wu: 2017), Wandering Earth (Guo: 2019), Operation Red Sea (Lam: 2018), and My People, My Country (Kaige et al.: 2019) are indicative of this increasing capacity for large-scale blockbuster production in China. And while these films have little appeal outside the domestic market, their appeal to all Chinese filmgo­ ers regardless of socio-economic background has meant that these films can rival Hollywood films within the country and counter the attraction of the American “Beautiful Imperialist” (Gries et al., 2015). China’s domestic film industry now offers a range of drama, comedies, romance, and, more recently, highly successful science fiction and war/action films. These contemporary Chinese films tell Chi­ nese stories in Chinese language and appear, overall, much richer and culturally relevant to an increasingly identity-conscious Chinese public. While the Chinese state has slowly retreated from producing exclusively politi­ cal cinema, the Chinese leadership has never, as Yang (2016) argues, ceased to recognise the political potential for cinema to mobilise the Chinese public. Most tellingly, in March 2018, oversight of the Chinese film industry was moved from the administrative jurisdiction of the State Council to that of the propaganda bureau of the CCP itself. Current administrative and ideological oversight also includes the careful selection of films approved for theatrical release in China. It is difficult to say with authority exactly how the censorship and imports processes work and how films may be approved for the coveted theatrical release across China. Chi­ nese censors are not transparent about the process and Chinese film-makers them­ selves are often hesitant to reveal the conditions by which their films are censored for domestic distribution (Su, 2016: 105). Despite the uncertainty, the potential profit that China’s box office can offer Hollywood is great. A changing Hollywood and more confident China A comparison of unique box-office admissions in the United States and China reveals the importance of the Chinese box office to Hollywood. Unique admissions in the North American market (including Canada) indicate that on average every individual (of all ages) may visit the cinema at least four times a year (MPAA, 2016). In comparison, the figures for Chinese unique admissions suggest that only 60% of the Chinese population may visit a cinema once a year (China Box Office, 2019). Prior to the global pandemic, mainland China was already the second larg­ est single market box office in terms of revenue and was projected to surpass the United States in the next few years (Associated Press, 2018). China passed the

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 45 United States in 2016 in terms of total movie screens, and by 2019 had 20,000 more screens (60,079 to 41,172), yet still having only 1 screen per 23,000 peo­ ple compared to the 1 to 7,971 in the United States (Shuangshuang et al., 2019; Statista, 2020). In 2018, China’s box office grew by 9%, which was 2% more than the United States and Canadian combined growth, while the rest of the globe flatlined (Li and Erchi, 2019). The enormous, yet arguably still underserved, Chinese market has thus become the secondary and at times primary target of Hollywood film producers, as well as an important lifeline. Several recent Hollywood films have even had larger open­ ings in China than in the United States, and films such as the remake of 1990s clas­ sic thriller Point Break (Core: 2015) and the DC action spectacle Aquaman (Wan: 2018) were released in China before the United States. Furthermore, films such as Warcraft (Jones: 2016), a film adaptation of the Blizzard Entertainment MMORPG, which performed poorly at the American box office, earned back almost its entire budget in its first five days in China (Beech, 2017). Sequels, video game adapta­ tions, and remakes that are critically lambasted and generally ignored in the United States often find surprising and, from the Hollywood studios’ perspective, much needed success in the Chinese market (O’Brien, 2016). The success Hollywood films have at the Chinese box office could be assumed to derive from Chinese audience preferences for the films themselves. A brief sur­ vey of films imported into China and the box office revenues earned in the recent decade would suggest Chinese audiences simply have a penchant for Hollywood studio–produced “action”, “science fiction”, and “animation/3D” blockbuster films. Scholar Wendy Su (2016: 138) argues that Hollywood imports are selected based on “global influence and box office records”. The historical success of Hol­ lywood dramas during the 1990s in the Chinese (and global) market, however, sug­ gests that preferences are not simply about global demand and local tastes, but also about supply. The popularity of dramas such as Titanic (Cameron: 1998), Forrest Gump (Zemeckis: 1994), The Fugitive (Davis: 1996), Saving Private Ryan (Spiel­ berg: 1998), and the recent box-office success of other foreign dramatic films from Bollywood, such as Dangal (Tiwari: 2016), Hindi Medium (Chaudhary: 2017), and The Toilet (Singh: 2017), suggest that Chinese audiences are indeed open to a variety of film genres. This includes films that would otherwise be considered cul­ turally specific narratives not transferrable in the global market. What has changed over time in China has not simply been the demand, but arguably the audience’s access to such films. Hollywood’s business transformation throughout the latter 20th century is responsible for much of today’s presumptions about the Chinese audience and like­ wise, the CCP’s selective approach to film importation has influenced Hollywood production. In particular, Hollywood’s morphing from the making of discrete films primarily aimed at the domestic market to the making of films as the lynchpins of mega-franchises for the entire globe has helped to shape the film watching behav­ iour of both international and Chinese audiences. Hollywood’s desire to access the Chinese market has motivated the recent inclusion of many “Chinese elements” in Hollywood films, such as the additional scenes starring Li Bingbing and Chinese

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milk brand, Yili, in Iron Man 3 (Black: 2013); the Chinese warship that humanity evacuates on in 2012 (Emmerich: 2009); the setting of Shanghai in Transformers: Age of Extinction (Bay: 2010); and the Chinese laboratory that Robocop (Padhila: 2014) awakes in only to escape to fields of rice paddies reminiscent of Guilin in Southern China. Yet such overtures towards Chinese audiences are just the most salient, recent aspects of a multi-decade process in which marketing and transna­ tional appeal have come to dominate Hollywood production. The roots of Hollywood’s transformation from a film to an entertainment business stretch back to the post-war period. In the 1960s, after the household adoption of the television and the American governments dismantling of the film industry’s vertical control, non-entertainment companies began purchasing major studios and ushering in an era of studio conglomeration previously unseen in the industry (Schatz, 2008). The new owners of the studios introduced many rationalised business practices that would become standard in the industry today, such as decision-making based on market research and the active expansion into ancillary markets. These new conglomerates were also better able to weather box-office flops, which allowed for even more gambling on bigger, less frequent productions (Tzioumakis, 2006). Around this time, the US trade publications also began to use the term “block­ buster”, which originated in the Second World War to describe big budget films. By the 1970s, the term became associated with not only large budgets, but also a particular kind of thrilling, spectacular film (Hall and Neale, 2010). In the 1980s, Hollywood studios pivoted to mainly producing “high-concept” films: films with a premise that can be easily conveyed, often in a single sentence long pitch. Highconcept films utilise Hollywood star power for financing and marketing purposes, matching stars with projects that are similar to their previous work; they recom­ bine successful premises or build off previously successful properties as sequels, franchises, or adaptations; and they are premised on recent, popular trends or sentiments (Wyatt, 1994). The reducibility of such narratives allows them to be understood and marketed across the globe more readily than the more complex, culturally specific films of Hollywood studios in the past. This is essential, as the most successful Hollywood films since the 1990s have earned more overseas than from the domestic market (Schatz, 2008). High-concept films are primarily genre films and, more often than not, action/adventure films as these feature “a mutually familiar cultural grammar that can be easily recognised, understood and assimi­ lated in a diversity of contexts and markets” (Osgerby et al., 2001: 28). These films also capitalise on the developments of digital technology, particularly computergenerated special effects, which have become synonymous with the blockbuster. While film-makers often tout the possibilities created by digital film-making, the industry’s move to digital has been motivated primarily by financial consid­ erations. The more recent developments in IMAX format, digital 3D technology, and digital projection (for which audiences pay a premium), as well as the deploy­ ment of digital sound systems in theatres, have all been adopted to entice ticket sales. These technologies also enable new corporate alliances, synergies created by media convergence, and efficiencies and cost-savings as digital production

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 47 and distribution replace costlier, analogue methods (Belton, 2002). Viewed cyni­ cally, these developments drain the creativity out of film-making. As Marco Cucco (2009: 218) claims, the appeal of the blockbuster is “a promise of novelty dictated by conservatism, where novelty means the use of technology because there is no advancement in the themes, content and style”. Arguably, for the ideologically sen­ sitive leadership of contemporary China, Hollywood’s emphasis on novelty and style rather than themes and content make importing Hollywood productions politi­ cally and ideologically palatable. As it is, the Hollywood films imported into China today are those developed to leverage intellectual property through mediated franchising. The 2000s expe­ rienced a significant spike in franchised content produced in comparison to the number of new franchises launched (Filson and Havlicek, 2018). Take for exam­ ple the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformer franchises, in which intellectual property is leveraged to create films that provide mega-texts from which other texts like video and mobile games, novels, stage shows, and television shows can proliferate. All of these then feed into merchandising, licensing, and product tie in agreements, as well as sequels, prequels, and spinoffs, which create a selfreinforcing matrix of cross-promotion. In order to facilitate the global spread of such franchises, Hollywood blockbusters have become distinctly less “American” in design, set in locations that could be anywhere, and devoid of realistic impres­ sions of everyday American life that serves to transnationalise any cultural spe­ cificities that may have informed earlier Hollywood productions (Lee, 2008). This is not to say that the American film industry has ceased to make such culturally specific films – rather Hollywood’s largest studios have divergent interests from America’s broader film-making community that continues to produce quality dra­ matic, comedic, and science fiction cinema. Within this context, however, superhero films have become the site through which such culturally devoid cinema can manifest. The acquisition of Marvel com­ ics by Disney in 2009 and, earlier, DC comics by Warner in 1989 both allowed for the financial security to construct comics-based franchises. Hollywood superhero films are prototypically high-concept films: they are simplistic in their conflicts, build on previous properties, allow for various kinds of cross-promotion and syn­ ergy, and feature riveting action/adventure sequences that translate easily across cultures. Through the entity of the franchised superhero, predictability in values, action, and even narrative are made possible for global audiences that understand who and what superheroes such as Superman, Iron Man, and Batman are. In the last two decades, the superhero has served numerous purposes for Amer­ ica’s shifting political values and foreign policy foci. The Superhero film perfectly aligns with America’s War on Terror, as it adapts and updates the mythological thrust of the once dominant cinematic genre, the Western. The myth of the West­ ern, which Lawrence and Jewett (2002) have called the “American monomyth”, tells the story of an Edenic community destabilised by an external evil against which the community’s institutions are impotent. Then enters a Christ-like, self­ less vigilante hero that defeats the evil and, upon restoring order, removes himself from the redeemed paradise. This scenario secularises the Judeo-Christian belief in

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community redemption and blends it with the mythos of the American frontier. It is also politically ambivalent, simultaneously portraying the compulsion to act out­ side the law to destroy evil and the desire for the rule of law to be equally applied to all. Jewett and Shelton (2003: 28) have named this neurotic conflict the “Captain America complex”, which they recognise as “employing non-democratic means to democratic ends” in recent popular culture. Since 9/11, the Captain America complex has been the main feature of Holly­ wood big blockbuster productions. The Captain America complex frames terror­ ism or other assorted political obstructions as unprecedented and existential threats that create the need for the revoking of civil liberties to contain and defeat such aberrations. As Douglas Kellner (2007: 625) states, post 9/11, “corporate televi­ sion and radio in the United States allowed right-wing militarist zealots to vent and circulate the most aggressive, fanatic, and extremist views, creating a con­ sensus around the need for immediate military action and all-out war”. The recent Bush (2001–2009) administration used this rhetoric to not only launch two separate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as targeted, extrajudicial killings throughout the Middle East and north Africa, but also place new limits on organised political protests, to stifle efforts to increase government transparency, and to extend cov­ ert cybersurveillance throughout the globe without Congressional oversight. The importance of Hollywood’s role in promoting these new intrusions on personal liberties, democracy, and the “free” world became a matter of diplomatic interests. As Paul Moody’s (2017) analysis of leaked US diplomatic cables through Wikile­ aks from 2003 shows, Hollywood regained its importance to American embassies around the globe as they pushed for consensus on America’s War on Terror and made a global US cultural hegemony paramount. While counterarguments exist – that superheros of the post-9/11 Hollywood continue to use their powers to overcome evil and do so without abusing their power (Yogerst, 2017) – the films themselves often question whether such abuse is inevitable. Speculation about the “fascist” nature of contemporary Superman and Batman has even spread beyond the academy to the industry (Howard, 2016), with American film-makers publicly expressing their concerns. The movement of the American monomyth beyond the frontier to the entire globe has cinematically answered the call for a global War on Terror and made the once minor, though per­ ennial, superhero subgenre into the dominant production trend of the new millen­ nium. It has also paved the way for expectations and familiarity of content among audiences worldwide through the franchise model. Thus, for a growingly authori­ tarian and commercially minded China, Hollywood’s transitions appear to comple­ ment rather than undermine the Chinese leadership’s objectives in terms of both the values made attractive by the Hollywood blockbuster and in the predictability of impressions these franchises give of who Americans and American values are. Genre cultivation, ideological messaging, and the Chinese box office Historical approaches in China to repetitive film exhibition for the purpose of solidifying and clarifying revolutionary messaging and political behaviour suggest

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 49 contemporary genre biases towards American film imports, and a preference for franchised content may not be entirely un-orchestrated – nor undesirable to Chinese censors. Previously, the exhibition of repetitive revolutionary messages attempted to satisfy particular political outcomes. Today, repetitive messages and visualisa­ tions of America and American values as a homogeneous entity based in exotic lands among violent robots, alien gods, or technologically enhanced übermensch arguably lend to the orchestration of the “American” as recognisably different to that of the Chinese. Similar to that of political propaganda, Western scholars have long been fasci­ nated by the power of cinema and fictional narratives in other media, like litera­ ture and television series, to alter and inform the worldview of cultural consumers (Bandura et al., 1963; Gerbner et al., 1986; Hurley, 2006). Since Green and Brock’s (2000) seminal work into the relationship between narrative immersion and persua­ sion in what has become known as Narrative Transportation Theory, scholars have tracked the moment upon which audiences become so deeply immersed in the films they are watching that their worldviews change. Bilandzic and Busselle (2008, 2011) have further argued that the capacity to be transported by, or immersed in, a film’s narrative underlies not only an escapist pleasure from the realities of the everyday, but through repetitious consumption of particular film genres, positive associations are also made with genre-specific conventions. For film-going Chi­ nese audiences, cultivation is unavoidable, with the restrictions on film imports limiting the consumption of Hollywood films within the cinema environment to the majority of the filmgoing population that are not competent or interested enough to locate alternative cinema through other channels. As Jenny Zhengye Hou in Chapter 5, Fuqin Pan in Chapter 7, and Magdalena Wong in Chapter 8 discuss, the development of a Chinese national identity has played a particularly prominent role under Xi’s leadership. A growing Chinese national consciousness has been crucial to the stability of the Chinese regime dur­ ing times of intense economic and social change. In defining the nation, however, China has similarly had to define what it is not, and in doing so, create the notion of a non-Chinese “Other”. As Spencer (2006: 8) argues, the construction of an “Other” provides tests and measures for ideals and who the “We” believe them­ selves to be. While in recent years, China’s own film industry has undertaken this challenge with patriotic blockbusters such as Wolf Warrior 2 portraying a Chinese ideal in contrast to an African Other (Talmacs, 2020), the American Other contin­ ues to be communicated through imported American-produced entertainment. With research to date revealing the degree to which Chinese audiences utilise their own national cinema to make sense of China’s own evolving society (Fried­ man, 2006; Talmacs, 2017, 2020), as well as to perceive reality in American TV shows (Gao, 2016), there is a strong possibility that both inherent messaging and the presentation of an American abstraction have very real ramifications for how worldviews of America and Americans are formed through transportation of Chi­ nese audiences while watching Hollywood films selected for theatrical release. This is not to discount also the high number of animated films that are selected for import. Arguably, while abstraction from the everyday Chinese reality takes place

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within traditional high-concept Hollywood studio film-making, animated content takes abstraction even further, as realities are further removed from that of human experience. With dubbing in Putonghua common for animated film imports, Chi­ nese audiences could be forgiven for not knowing the origins of the animation they were watching at all. If genre cultivation, in this case Hollywood’s franchised series of action/adven­ ture films prioritised for import into China, develops positive associations that alter worldview understandings of the American Other, the inherent messaging of these films by extension are also arguably positively valued. Franchised productions reinforce for Chinese audiences a consistent narrative presented through the likes of similar superheroes and action heroes that, due to the nature of the franchise model, become familiar and predictable. For example, Iron Man (Favreau: 2008) depicts the abetting of Afghani warlords, while the villain of Iron Man 3 (Black: 2013) engages in multiple acts of terrorism. In the first Avengers (Whedon: 2012) film, an alien attack on New York city echoes the attacks on the Twin Towers and how revenge should be articulated, while Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon: 2015) is a prolonged meditation on the pitfalls of autonomous weapons systems, and Cap­ tain America: Civil War (Russo: 2016) is essentially concerned with the oversight of force, with these films ultimately advocating for authoritarian solutions to the problem of governance and coexistence. The films have likewise focused explicitly on the contradictions of unilateral, extra-legal measures to “save” democracy – often from “alien” intruders – and to do so with highly militarised fighters, some­ times unattached to national military entities, and advanced, deadly specialised weaponry placed in the hands of those deemed friendly to the cause. Other franchised series presented at the Chinese box office reinforce these themes, such as G.I Joe: Retaliation (2013), Justice League (2017), Pacific Rim (2013), Aquaman (2018), and Wonder Woman (2017). The X-Men franchise since X-Men: The Last Stand (Rattner: 2006), and in recent years, Logan (2017) and X-men: Dark Phoenix (2019), which depicts the forced de-evolution of mutants to protect humankind, and considers what to do if such mutants turn rogue. While newer science-fiction franchises, such as the Divergent series, depict the protag­ onists “liberated” from authoritarian society, the protagonists discover that such freedom comes at the cost of being ostracised from their families and social net­ works, and ultimately, that the alternative option is corrupt and evil while authori­ tarianism was in fact best all along. Of the 34 revenue-sharing agreements possible for import to China each year, almost all are exclusively shared between the top six Hollywood studios. These revenue-sharing films plus other American films imported on flat fee agreements for much less remuneration to producers are distributed by two state-owned film distribution companies: China Film Group Co. and Huaxia Film Distribution Co. In China, while the CCP has jurisdiction over what audiences view in theatres, the state also monopolises the revenue from such imports through its regulations limiting distribution of foreign films to only its state-owned companies. Based on data sourced from Box Office Mojo, arguably the top 40 American films at the

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 51 Chinese box office from 2013 to 2019 demonstrate the overlapping imperatives of the Hollywood studios and the Party-state under Xi Jinping’s presidency. As it is, from 2013 to 2019, 86% of the top ten yearly films and 63% of all Hollywood films were franchises. Of course, it would be misleading to present the Captain America complex at the Mainland Chinese box office as unique. Rather, the criticism must be that these films are prioritised at the expense of all other American films that might also be in contention for theatrical release among the 34 revenue-sharing agree­ ments in Chinese cinemas. In doing so, arguably the “American” in these con­ texts is reduced to that of a formulaic abstraction in opposition to the Chinese ideal. As an industry, Hollywood necessarily studies what will appeal to the Chi­ nese censors throughout the film-making process and considers which films to put forward for the lucrative and limited revenue-sharing agreements. By exten­ sion, films at the Chinese box office that reflect what America stands for and America is, while being reflective of America’s more recent foreign policies, also aligns with the objectives of the Chinese Party-state. Not only do the films thus advocate for a China that might need to “go alone” against the international com­ munity and invest in building a highly militarised and technologically equipped army, but they also advocate for the continuation of an authoritarian political organisation that allows for social stability. Chinese-invested American stories Perhaps the most telling aspect of the current cinematic synergy between Holly­ wood and China is the recent acquisition of American studios and Chinese invest­ ment in American films, which during 2013–2019 noticeably accelerated. In 2012, construction conglomerate Wanda Group purchased AMC Theatres, the fourth largest cinema chain in America. AMC theatres in combination with its rival, Regal Entertainment Group, co-owns the production studio Open Road Films. During 2013–2016, films produced by Open Road Films dominated the weaker ends of the Chinese box office. These include films such as Homefront (Fleder: 2013) and The Nut Job (Lepeniotis; 2014) and B-grade movies such as Sabotage (Ayer: 2014) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was in the latter half of the 2010s that Chinese investment into production really accelerated, with both Wanda Group’s next major acquisition in 2016 of Legendary Entertainment and the entrance of the tech giant, Tencent Pictures, into Hollywood film production. Known primarily for their smartphone application, WeChat, Tencent’s launch into the film production and distribution business was seen as a natural progression from their capacity to harvest big data from their digi­ tal subscribers, as well as leveraging their social media marketing capacities. Mir­ roring the Hollywood franchise model, Tencent Pictures explicitly stated that the company was looking to produce synergy across its media properties, beginning with films “celebrating patriotic themes and those that have a prototype in internet literature or comics” (He, 2019).

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So far, in combination, between 2016 and 2019, films released at the Chinese box office were produced or co-produced by either Wanda’s Legendary Entertain­ ment or Tencent Pictures, including DC comics’ Wonder Woman (Jenkins: 2017) and Marvel’s Venom (Fleischer: 2018), Transformer franchise spin-off Bumblee (Knight: 2018), Men in Black spin-off: Men in Black: International (Gray: 2019), Tencent’s ill-fated effort to revitalise the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Dark Fate (Miller: 2019), and the attempted reboot of the King Kong franchise Kong: Skull Island (Vogt-Roberts: 2017) (in conjunction with Wanda’s Legendary Enter­ tainment). This all while Legendary Cinemas was also behind the production of franchise science fiction and action films such as Pacific Rim: Uprising (DeK­ night: 2019), Skyscraper (Thurber: 2018), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona: 2018), which all received revenue-sharing rights to the Chinese market. While the aforementioned Chinese produced and invested American films are franchise fare, this is not to say that Chinese companies have only produced big spectacle, blockbuster content. Open Road Films and Tencent Pictures produced a number of acclaimed dramas during the same period that were not theatrically released in China (but were in Hong Kong). This included Academy Award win­ ner, Spotlight (McCarthy: 2017), about the Boston Globe newspaper’s unearthing of systemic abuse within the Catholic Church; dramatic thriller Snowden (Stone: 2016) about Edward Snowden’s revelation of US digital spying; and Jobs (Stern: 2013), the biographical drama about Apple founder Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, Leg­ endary Entertainment also produced Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman (2018), a film about a black police officer who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan. There are certainly examples of Chinese investment into quality American cin­ ema that would arguably serve to educate Chinese audiences about global and his­ torical issues that contribute to a more dynamic understanding of what is America and who are Americans. The lack of theatrical distribution of these films in China despite their Chinese investment reflects a conscious decision by either China’s censors or Chinese film producers to avoid screening American narratives about race, politics, cyber surveillance, and individual liberties in China. These films arguably present an alternative version of a politically, socially, and commercially vibrant America that contradicts or embellishes the abstract and indeed, the homo­ geneous authoritarian affirming narratives that most franchised content currently espouse. Whether consciously orchestrated or not, the threat of “Americanisation” appears no longer to drive the selection of films imported into China. Conclusion Restrictions over the foreign cinema approved for theatrical exhibition in China began as a response to the threat of “Americanisation”, yet now the threat of a Chi­ nese “takeover” of Hollywood occupies the imaginations of industry observers and has even caught the attention of the US House of Intelligence Committee (Beech, 2017). No longer the passive receiver of Hollywood imports, Chinese investors now have the financial strength to directly produce Hollywood cinema, the insight, and relationships and (arguably) trust to advocate for the import of the films they

The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 53 produce, and they do so within the franchise model established by the American film industry itself – in turn, proactively cultivating what Chinese audiences regard as American cinema and values. China has replaced the predictability and familiar­ ity of previous approaches to revolutionary film production with the predictability and familiarity of the Hollywood blockbuster franchise. Franchises, it should be noted, respond to a contemporary American geopolitical context wherein authori­ tarian, unilateral actions are excused and justified through security and global welfare – a logic that uncannily reflects the current Chinese leadership’s own ideo­ logical positioning. While the manner of film imports and how they orchestrate thinking in China has been the feature of the discussion – what is further worth considering is the transnational nature of such film distribution. China’s interest in Hollywood pro­ ductions has historically been argued to be outwardly focused, attempting to spread Chinese soft power globally (Su, 2014). If the values of these films do complement the ideological stance of the Xi leadership, albeit obscured as American produc­ tions, then China’s interests arguably appear to be twofold. Hollywood not only plays a role in shaping Chinese expectations about America and the abstraction of the American people, but also shapes worldviews globally that make palatable, by extension, a Chinese approach to sociopolitical organisation seemingly aligned to the same values of America. References Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross and Sheila A. Ross (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 66(1): 3–11. Beech, Hannah (January 26, 2017). How China is remaking the global film industry. Time. https://time.com/4649913/china-remaking-global-film-industry/, last accessed: 9 October 2021. Belton, John (2002). Digital cinema: A false revolution. October 98–114. https://doi.org/ 10.1162/016228702320218411. Bilandzic, Helena and Rick W. Busselle (2008). Transportation and transportability in the culti­ vation of genre-consistent attitudes and estimates. Journal of Communication 58: 508–529. Bilandzic, Helena and Rick W. Busselle (2011). Enjoyment of films as a function of narra­ tive experience, perceived realism and transportability. Communications 36: 29–50. Braester, Yomi (2008). The political campaign as genre: Ideology and iconography during the seventeen years period. Modern Language Quarterly 69(1): 119–140. China Box Office (2019). All time domestic box office rankings. Entgroup. www.cbooo.cn/ Alltimedomestic26th. Clark, Paul (2011). Closely watched viewers: A taxonomy of Chinese Film audiences from 1949 to the cultural revolution seen from Hunan. Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5(1): 73–89. Cucco, Marco (2009). The promise is great: The blockbuster and the Hollywood econ­ omy. Media, Culture & Society 31(2): 215–230. Filson, Darren and James H. Havlicek (2018). The performance of global film franchises: Installment effects and extension decisions. Journal of Cultural Economics 42: 447–467. Friedman, Sara L. (2006). Watching Twin Bracelets in China: The role of spectatorship and identification in an ethnographic analysis of film reception. Cultural Anthropology 21(4): 603–632.

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The American Other and Hollywood imports to China 55 Gough-Yates (eds) Action TV: Tough-Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 25–43. Schatz, Tom (2008). The studio system and conglomerate Hollywood. In Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds) The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, pp. 13–42. Shao, Lu (1999). Can we still make films? Chinese Sociology & Anthropology 32(1): 23–25. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSA0009–4625320123. Spencer, Stephen (2006). Race and ethnicity: Culture, identity and representation. London and New York: Routledge. Statista (2020). Number of movie screens in the United States from 2008 to 2019, by format. www.statista.com/statistics/255355/number-of-cinema-screens-in-the-us-by-format/ Su, Wendy (2014). Cultural policy and film industry as negotiation of power: The Chinese state’s role and strategies in its engagement with global Hollywood 1994–2012. Pacific Affairs 87(1): 93–11. Su, Wendy (2016). China’s encounter with global Hollywood: Cultural policy and the film industry, 1994–2013. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. Talmacs, Nicole (2017). China’s cinema of class: Audiences and narratives. Abingdon: Routledge. Talmacs, Nicole (2020). Africa and Africans in Wolf Warrior 2: Narratives of trust, patriot­ ism and rationalized racism among Chinese university students. Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(8): 1230–1245. Tzioumakis, Y (2006). American independent cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. U.S. Department of State (2012). TRADE: Films for theatrical release: Memorandum of understanding between the United States of America and China. www.state.gov/wp­ content/uploads/2019/02/12-425-China-Trade-Films-for-theatrical-release.pdf, last accessed: 9 October 2021. Wang, Yongzhi and Ren Yi (1999) The embarrassments caused by importing major films. Chinese Sociology & Anthropology 32(1): 8–11. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSA0009– 462532018 Wei, He (June 20, 2019). Tencent to shift into movie production. China Daily. www. chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/20/WS5d0ae3e1a3103dbf1432942b.html, last accessed: 4 June 2020. World Trade Organization (2009). China – measures affecting trading rights and distribution services for certain publications and audiovisual entertainment products (WT/DS363/ AB/R). https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds363_e.htm, last accessed: 8 May 2023. Wyatt, Justin (1994). High concept: Movies and marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press. Yang, Yanling (2016). Film policy, the Chinese government and soft power. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 14(1): 71–91. Yogerst, Chris (2017). Superhero films: A fascist national complex or exemplars of moral virtue? Journal of Religion & Film 21(1): Article 37. https://digitalcommons.unomaha. edu/jrf/vol21/iss1/37, last accessed: 9 October 2021.

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Public relations, persona-building, and national identity construction in China A case study of ‘The Chinese Dream’ Jenny Zhengye Hou

Introduction: a new era of ‘The Chinese Dream’ In November 2012, President Xi Jinping announced a new initiative ‘The Chinese Dream’ (zhongguomeng) when he visited National Museum’s permanent exhibi­ tion ‘The Road towards Renewal’ (fuxingzhilu). This exhibition features China’s ‘Century of National Humiliation’ from the First Opium War (1839–1842) through to the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1945. Reflecting on this history, Xi com­ mented: ‘To realise national rejuvenation is the greatest dream of the Chinese nation, as well as of every individual’ (Li, 2015: 506). In his closing speech at the First Session of 12th National People’s Congress in 2013, Xi further elaborated on ‘The Chinese Dream’. At the 19th National Party Congress in October 2017, Xi’s thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era was incorporated in the Constitution. Accordingly, his idea of ‘The Chinese Dream’ was integrated to the political doctrine as a grand vision of socialist modernisation. As a signature ideology of Xi’s administration, ‘The Chinese Dream’ embraces economic, political, sociocultural, and ecological aspects of China’s modern civi­ lisation. It is creative articulation of the burgeoning Chinese desire for revival and new framing of China’s development path ahead. In this new idea, Xi proposed that rapid economic growth of China should give way to fulfilling people’s new aspirations, namely to create a better life for normal citizens (Tsai, 2019). Through giving the public shared ownership of ‘The Chinese Dream’, Xi’s ideology covers issues that concern people most, ranging from legal protection, social participation, access to quality education, working rights, and military strength. All these strive to convince Chinese people that they are living in a great time, being able to enjoy a happy life, achieve one’s dream, and to thrive and prosper with the nation. To boost ‘The Chinese Dream’, Xi mobilises governments at various levels and the state media to develop a campaign that aims to build not only national pride internally, but also a powerful yet peace-loving international image. ‘The Chinese Dream’ has drawn scholarly attention from multiple disciplines, including political science, international relations, policy governance, and leader­ ship studies (e.g. Boc, 2015; Callahan, 2015a, 2015b; Wang, 2014). While these studies contribute rich insights into interpreting the multilayered strategic connota­ tion of ‘The Chinese Dream’, there remains a gap in revealing the construction and DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-5

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 57 conveyance of such an unprecedented (inter)national initiative. In other words, the pervasive and powerful role of state communication is still invisible and under­ analysed despite the government’s deliberate use of state media to advocate and promote ‘The Chinese Dream’. It still seems mysterious as to what communication devices, strategies, and approaches have been used to create a climate of public opinion, enlist popular support, and, eventually, to refresh China’s new identity that appeals to audiences at both home and abroad. To unpack this puzzle, this chapter delves into the strategic communicative dimension of ‘The Chinese Dream’. For this purpose, what follows next is a comprehensive overview of China’s govern­ ment communication, which historically relied on state propaganda but has gradu­ ally incorporated modern public relations (PR) to renew its political legitimacy (Brady, 2009). Transitioning China’s political communication: from propaganda to public relations Historically, China has been depicted by the French philosopher Jacques Ellul as one of ‘three propaganda blocs’, along with the Soviet Union and the United States (Zhang and Cameron, 2004: 307). Since the birth of new China in 1949, Mao’s top-down, directive, ideological indoctrination and thought work has laid a solid foundation for Chinese propaganda (Brady, 2006). Maoist propagandistic thinking is articulated in his journalism rhetoric, such as ‘politicians operate newspapers’, ‘unite ideological front’, and ‘go with The Mass Line’. Even in the post-Maoist era, this propagandistic tradition continues to shape China’s media and journal­ ism. In the 1990s, the Chinese government proposed to ‘guide people with correct public opinion’, which Chan (2002) translated as ‘agenda-setting’ – propaganda tells people what to think about. Only until recently has the state propaganda com­ menced to creatively massage public opinion, resulting in new-fangled propaganda (Bandurski, 2009). It is through the fusion with the state propaganda that West-introducing PR attains a way in China. As scholars (e.g. Chen, 2003; Yi and Chang, 2012) observe, the Chinese government is shifting slowly but definitely from tradi­ tional propaganda, targeting the whole mass, to modern PR that addresses vast yet specific and segmented publics. Manifold factors drive this shift: the marketoriented economy, increasingly commercialised media, maturing public, and the inexorable trend of globalisation. Facing various fissures (e.g. market vs. state, public vs. private, local vs. global) resulting from China’s transition, the Chinese government learns from the West to equip itself with quasi-corporate commu­ nication skill set and stakeholder mentality to market political ideas, reconcile social conflicts, and retain authoritarian legitimacy. PR was officially recognised by the appointment of Chai Zemin, the former US ambassador, as the founding President of China International Public Relations Association in 1991 (Chen, 2003). In 2004, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) called to capitalise on PR tactics to mobilise all positive forces on the broadest scale for China’s nationbuilding (He and Xie, 2009).

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There is no clear-cut boundary between propaganda and PR as the latter inher­ ited the former’s tradition to influence but stood more pressure to build democratic links with pluralistic publics in early 20th century (L’Etang, 2008). By nature, both propaganda and PR at a national level serve the state interest and dominant politi­ cal ideology. Nonetheless, the communication approaches, strategies, and tactics involved in PR appear more audience-oriented, engaging, and less monologic than propaganda. Theoretically, PR is defined by Western scholars (e.g. Grunig and Hunt, 1984; Ledingham and Bruning, 1998) as managing relationships or com­ munication between organisations and their strategic publics. The main purpose of PR is to help organisations gain legitimacy – a licence to operate in the market­ place of free opinions and ideas (Vercic et al., 2001). This contrasts to propaganda characterised by one-way, top-down ideological indoctrination without allowing free flow of information (L’Etang, 2006). Given its focus on specific publics, the toolkit of PR influence includes publicity, persuasion, campaigns, events, and the promotional mix (Hutton, 1999). With the impact from both the West and Maoist propaganda, Chinese PR shows somewhat ‘split characters’ – active in the commercial area yet confined to the Par­ ty’s line (Hou, 2016). On the one hand, the West-like, market-oriented PR prevails in business organisations and industries in China to meet consumer needs. Like­ wise, the Chinese government has also experimented with PR in major events such as 2008 Being Olympic Games, 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and 2011 broadcast of China’s publicity film in New York Times Square. On the other hand, Chinese PR carries a strong ideological imprint as it serves to uphold the CCP leadership. Commercial PR activities need to either align with government framework or not to touch on politics at all. As a master of PR in a transitional Chinese context, the government calls to construct a ‘Chinese model of PR’, or ‘Socialist public rela­ tions with Chinese features’ (Mcelreath et al., 2001: 7). In contemporary times, China’s marketisation and internationalisation pose great challenges to the Chinese government in a new era of development, for exam­ ple, how should CCP ideology be promoted as current and legitimate in large-scale institutional transitions? How should nation-building be strengthened as a result of the rising middle class and accordingly the widening wealth gap? How should a new and coherent identity of China appealing to the world be created? As a bold PR initiative, ‘The Chinese Dream’ offers the best chance to address these puzzles. To unveil the ‘strategic mask’ of PR and its role in the ‘The Chinese Dream’, personabuilding, which deals with image, identity, and values, is applied as a relevant and revealing framework within which to understand this new campaign. Introducing a new lens of persona-building Persona-building has emerged in the PR literature as a new lens to capture the growing PR practice that tries to put the ‘best face’ of an organisation forward. In a postmodernist era, organisations, especially corporations, need to articulate what they offer to the public, what they stand for, and what kind of order they desire within a society. Apart from profit-making, corporations now have to exhibit

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 59 human-like faces and personalities to present themselves as ‘corporate citizens’ or ‘friendly giants’ (St. John, 2017). By wearing personas, organisations strive to show understandings of citizen needs and public values (e.g. individualism, selfgovernance) (St. John, 2014). The main purpose of persona-building is to create a shared sense of reality between organisations and citizens who are, unwittingly, influenced to believe the ‘corporate soul’ as beneficial to society (St. John, 2017). Theoretically, Carl Jung (1933) defines ‘persona’ as the socially accepted face or public self-image of individuals, groups, or organisations. At the heart of personabuilding is identity construction, namely building specific identifying aspects of an entity through material means such as names, logos, catchy taglines, and dis­ tinctive slogans (Cheney, 1992). An identity tells the public about organisational values, positioning, and interests (Brown et al., 2001). In this regard, what con­ tributes to persona-building is overwhelmingly what PR does: to create ‘strategic masks of identity’ through manufacturing personas and meantime managing public perceptions of personas (Mackey, 2016: 84). Further, a persona is often multifac­ eted, embedding what Bauman and Vecchi (2004) call ‘liquid identity’ – multiple aspects of the psyche surfacing from different contexts – and arguably open to multiple interpretations of meaning too. Therefore, ‘persona’ is a concept ripe for elaboration or manipulation when PR plays an active role in researching, creating, and communicating organisational identities. Persona-building brings both opportunities and challenges to organisations. Through displaying human-like attributes, organisations look relatable to ordinary people. Persona-building assists organisations speaking with a collective voice, a unique personality, and an affectionate image (Herskovitz and Crystal, 2010). Nev­ ertheless, the challenge lies in how to minimise the risk of exposing ‘hidden or even unrecognised costs to society’ when organisations try to commingle both professed citizenship and their drive for market success (Waddock, 2007: 80). If not built appropriately, personas may impinge on public values and interests. Once that hap­ pens, persona-building will be seen as an attempt to maintain existing privileges or further goals ostensibly shared by organisations and citizens (Weaver et al., 2006). The ‘persona’ lens and accompanying identity work seems to provide a suitable framework to understand the evolving Chinese government PR. Historically, China has a tradition that rulers build their kingdoms in a way that serves and loves peo­ ple as they love their children. Such affinity-building and people orientation can be seen as a precursor of persona-building, to make the giant ruling system seem approachable by lay people. Under the influence of Confucianism and Taoism, Chinese emperors were expected to establish a ‘humane’, benevolent face to win people’s minds and hearts. As the old saying goes, ‘water can carry the imperial boat but also turn it over (shuinengzaizhou, yinengfuzhou)’. Here, ‘water’ indicates people and popular support, without which one dynasty can be easily replaced by another. Today, this phrase becomes imperative for the transitioning Chinese government to learn about and apply persona-building to maintain political legitimacy. Despite China’s remarkable economic achievements, the Chinese government now needs public affection – not just obedience – more than ever (Wang, 2014). Despite being

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the second largest economy, China is ranked lowly in key indicators on a global scale of comparison. For example, China is ranked 101st out of 186 countries and regions on the United Nations Human Development Index. As per Gallup’s 2010 Global Wellbeing Index, China was ranked 127th out of 155 countries and regions covered by that index (Zheng, 2014). It is pressing for the Chinese government to create a humanist persona through deploying orchestrated PR strategies, ranging from publicity, media advocacy, public engagement, and social mobilisation. There is another critical factor driving the Chinese government’s personabuilding in the global stage: the world is contemplating and wondering ‘Who is China?’ and ‘What kind of world does it want?’ (Callahan, 2015b: 219). Such iden­ tity politics necessitates China to position itself clearly with a robust international image. However, China is currently facing an ‘identity dilemma’ resulting from the broad, ongoing debate over a ‘moral vacuum’ or ‘moral decline’ – the absence or lack of core values and beliefs after more than four decades’ economic reform and opening up. As Callahan (2015b: 219) points out, public intellectuals from across the political spectrum, regardless of being liberals, socialists, traditionalists, or mili­ tarists, are concerned with the ‘values crisis’ in China’s new money-worshipping society. China has reached a turning point to create its national identity and upgrade a global image while experiencing high-speed development at crossroads. Case study under the spotlight Seen from a historical perspective, Xi’s political idea ‘The Chinese Dream’ has inherited former presidents’ thoughts to continue highlighting a consistent theme of ‘rejuvenation’. For example, Deng called for the ‘invigoration of China’ in the early 1980s to replace Mao’s class struggle and thought work with economic reform and opening up. In the early 1990s, President Jiang made ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ as the Party’s new mission. Later, President Hu’s ‘General Guidelines for the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation’ was written in the 17th Party Congress political report (Wang, 2014). Following these predecessors, Xi builds on national experience and collective memory of rejuvenation to paint a rose-tinted picture of future using ‘The Chinese Dream’. Albeit lacking a unified definition, ‘The Chinese Dream’ carries multilayered strategic connotations that reflect China’s domestic politics, international aspira­ tions, and the hard core of its political system. Domestically, this concept responds to the new ‘principal contradiction’, which refers to the tension between rapid economic growth and the ‘unbalanced and inadequate development and the peo­ ple’s ever-growing needs for a better life’. There is a great need of ‘well-rounded human development and all-round social progress’ (Tsai, 2019: 3). Internationally, ‘The Chinese Dream’ proposes to convey China’s desire of world peace, develop­ ment, and mutual benefit through integrating itself into the globe as a rising power. Instead of struggling for hegemony, China aspires to raise its international influ­ ence through playing an essential and positive role in the new world order. Regardless of internal and international aspirations, the hard core of ‘The Chinese Dream’ revolves around safeguarding the CCP ideology and its intact leadership

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 61 of the nation. By portraying itself as a hero of restoring China’s independence and unity, the CCP attempts to retain its ‘driver’s seat’ in pursuit of national pros­ perity (Wang, 2014). Attaining this renewed legitimacy will, in turn, reinforce its political ideology: a socialist development path with Chinese characteristics under Xi’s leadership (Zheng, 2014). More importantly, Xi strategically integrated the national and individual dreams to create a shared vision: only by conforming to the CCP’s guideline with Xi in the driver’s seat can everyone’s dream be achieved. Such in-built duality of ‘The Chinese Dream’ has not only given people hope to seek personal success and individual freedom, but also legitimised increased state control and navigation of a collective journey toward rejuvenation (Tsai, 2019). The construction and promotion of ‘The Chinese Dream’

As an innovative yet history-encompassing political idea, ‘The Chinese Dream’ has involved an array of orchestrated PR strategies to build the multifaceted per­ sona of the Chinese government in a new era. ‘The Chinese Dream’ affords a sali­ ent venue to contemplate and reflect on China’s liquid identity emerging from its economic, political, and sociocultural transitions, with a central question to be answered: ‘Who is China’? To demystify this, what follows next details how the dream project is being constructed and conveyed deliberately to audiences at home and abroad. Building a multifaceted persona of the Chinese government

What is evident is that the Chinese government has in recent years attempted to build affinity with people through creating or showing a multifaceted persona in response to both internal and external needs. ‘The Chinese Dream’ exemplifies such systematic efforts to make the CCP-led government look like the citizens’ trusted fellow while pursuing personal goals. As Xi asserts, ‘The Chinese Dream’ means ‘achieving a rich and powerful country, the revitalisation of the nation, and the people’s happiness’ (Callahan, 2015a: 984). Through such rhetoric the govern­ ment astutely captures the burgeoning sentiment of Chinese society. Arguably, the multifaceted persona manifests itself in the following three aspects. A human-oriented, capable, and benevolent authority

In Chinese official discourses, ‘people’ has always been a keyword in government messaging, such as ‘people first’ (yiren weiben), ‘serve the people’ (weirenmin fuwu), and ‘enhancing personal dignity’ (tigao geren zunyan) (Tsai, 2019). An incredibly popular Vox Pop video by China Central Television (CCTV) titled ‘Are you happy (ni xingfu ma)?’ was a telling insight into the psyche of the Chinese public and the state media’s selection of appropriate Vox Pop interviews to broad­ cast. The state media was presented in asking these questions as a social outreach activity reflecting a desire to understand what people’s needs are and how they are changing. This was in line with the government’s own increase into researching

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people’s attitudes, opinions, lifestyle issues, and appraisal of public policies. With this civic-mindedness and humanist outlook, the government intended to forge its caring image as a benevolent authority. As it is, the key message behind ‘The Chinese Dream’ is that the government wants people to believe ‘only the CCP can rejuvenate China’ (Wang, 2014: 7). Chinese people are presented with a bright future, where they can enjoy a suc­ cessful life as long as they accept and collaborate on national goals devised by the government. If looking back at the history, it is not surprising that the CCP govern­ ment keeps using national prosperity, especially the booming economy, to maintain its legitimacy or justify its continuing dictatorship and oppression. As Bernstein and Munro (1997: 60) reflect, ‘The Chinese government can expand freedom in economic life without losing controls in society and politics’. Aligned with this goal, ‘The Chinese Dream’ puts a much-needed responsive and benign face on the authoritative government. A responsible and peace-loving superpower on the global stage

In parallel to the well-crafted persona targeting internal audiences, the CCP gov­ ernment positions China as a rising superpower that loves and contributes to world peace and development. ‘The Chinese Dream’ conveys China’s wish to go beyond historical and political nostalgia, but regain global influence through a ‘peaceful rise’ (Zheng, 2014). China aims to lead in not only economic development but also knowledge production, shifting from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China’. The CCP government is striving for, more than ever, discursive power of a ‘China voice’ or ‘China perspective’ in the global media landscape. In the meantime, China wants to assure the world, especially their East Asian neighbours, that it would never ‘seek hegemony and world domination’ (Callahan, 2015a: 993). To that end, China has resorted to traditional cultural resources to reaffirm its philanthropic disposition. For example, China’s foreign policies have consciously incorporated thinking of ‘harmony-with-diversity’ (he’er butong) and ‘great/over­ all harmony’ (datong) that advocate peaceful coexistence of differences and main­ tain political stability. China also invokes its imperial history as a benefactor great power that protected peace in East Asia and assisted the regional development over hundreds of years (Callahan, 2015a). Even until today, China is echoing this core value in international events. As the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games’ slogan articulated – ‘One World, One Dream’, China intended to promote an international image of peace, unity, cooperation, and creating benefits for all. An ambitious political leader but also ‘a man-of-people’

Apart from persona-building for the CCP government, ‘The Chinese Dream’ also importantly represents President Xi’s personal branding as a visionary, ambitious leader but also a ‘man-of-people’. The ‘humane’ face is even more evident on Xi as an individual political leader than former politicians. Xi’s involvement in the inception of ‘The Chinese Dream’ emanates a layer of personal charisma that

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 63 demonstrates Xi’s extraordinary wisdom in such a short, compelling, and memo­ rable phrase. Necessarily, Xi’s persona is incorporated into the campaign that not only builds rapport and affection among the public in the CCP but also does so without compromising Xi’s personal authority. As it is, Xi put his personal ambi­ tions into actions such as waging war on corruption and government extravagance (e.g. ‘only four dishes and a soup’ for an official banquet), and these come with political risks. Xi’s much-discussed visit to a Beijing restaurant called ‘Qingfeng Steamed Buns’ (qingfeng baozidian) in 2013, for example, must be understood as a persona-building stunt within this context to solidify his gracious style as ‘a man-of-the-people’. Additionally, Xi clarifies that in contrast to the American (i.e. the middle class) Dream of material comfort (e.g. big house, big car), ‘The Chinese Dream’ supports personal success and happiness in a balanced fashion to narrow the wealth gaps between different social classes. Broadly speaking, ‘The Chinese Dream’ claims to realise sustainable development of China’s economy in line with the Chinese people’s ever-growing political, sociocultural, and environmental needs. Xi tries to flex his muscles as both a nationalist and a party believer. This image fits with the ‘dream’ rhetoric and resonates with citizens. Intriguingly, Xi leaves ‘The Chinese Dream’ open to interpretation so that people across all levels can engage in a lively debate over where China should be heading. Xi’s persona of listening and leverag­ ing collective intelligence assists Xi creating an emotional bond with the people, however vague this bond may be. In doing so, an individual politician’s persona adds value to its affiliated party, the CCP. Constructing narratives and promoting ‘The Chinese Dream’ nationwide

To enact the multifaceted persona-building the CCP government plays a role of a conductor to orchestrate different PR instruments to present the ‘The Chinese Dream’ as a grand piece that resonates with broad audiences. Their applied PR instruments range from narrative-building around government discourses, using a promotional mix, and mobilising social forces. Each PR instrument fulfils a dis­ tinct function to co-deliver the overarching theme and build empathy among the audiences. As one of the most subtle yet powerful PR strategies, narrative-building around government discourses is typically used in ‘The Chinese Dream’ to induce people to think positively and identify with the national initiative. As critical PR schol­ ars (e.g. Edwards, 2012; L’Etang, 2008) reveal, PR is essential to producing and advancing discourses that privilege certain interests, not others. PR practitioners are ‘discourse technologists’ who participate in ‘discursive struggles and create consensus among publics through strategically shaping and deploying texts, words, and symbols’ (Motion and Leitch, 1996: 299). The narrative-building of ‘The Chi­ nese Dream’ unfolds in two dimensions. Vertically, a strong narrative links back to Chinese history and people’s col­ lective memories of the difficult times and liberation experience. Associated with ‘The Chinese Dream’ are always stories about the nation intruded, bullied, and torn

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asunder by imperialists. National humiliation becomes integral to China’s identity construction (Wang, 2014). Horizontally, the master narrative of ‘The Chinese Dream’ revolves around generating a new vision of socialist modernity that covers all aspects of economy, politics, culture, and society (Li, 2015). For example, stories about ‘The Chinese Dream’ are centred on China’s development goals, national consensus, prospects, and plans for the way towards national rejuvenation. National pride here is used to appeal to the Chinese people, encouraged to link individual dreams and desti­ nies with that of the country. Through interweaving both vertical and horizontal dimensions, ‘The Chinese Dream’ reflects China’s evolving identity from what it was to what it will be. The ‘The Chinese Dream’ narrative also implicitly per­ suades the populace to willingly sacrifice personal interest for a grander national mission. To distribute government discourses around ‘The Chinese Dream’, a strategic promotional mix has been employed, including nationwide media publicity, advo­ cacy, and state propaganda. In recent years, there has been proliferating media cov­ erage, along with a national campaign called ‘Chase The Chinese Dream’. National newspapers, industry magazines, trade literature, and Chinese books surged to report on or discuss ‘The Chinese Dream’. The China-based English journal – Journal of Chinese Political Science – published a special issue in 2014, ensuring intellectual buy-in on the concept. Beyond traditional formats, the government also produced and broadcast political ads on national TV and used digital tools or out­ door electronic screens to promote this new initiative. The CCP government never fails to use its propaganda apparatus – its state media (see also Xianwen Kuang’s Chapter 3 in this volume) – to not only educate people about latest political man­ dates, but also to channel public opinion in its direction. In addition, the Chinese government has urged local authorities to mobilise social forces to engage in this new initiative. To achieve this, a strong feeling of nationalism is evoked among the public to call upon civic awareness (Peng et al., 2022) in support of nation-building. Patriotic education campaigns in schools and colleges are organised to foster nationalistic sentiments. Curriculum is deliberately loaded with Chinese ancient and modern histories, through which students learn both glorious ancient civilisation and achievements of the ‘Central Kingdom’ and recent humiliating experiences due to Western incursion (see also Fuqin Pan’s Chapter 7 in this volume). Some schools even host ‘The Chinese Dream’-themed speaking contests, museum trips, and cultural performances, or set up a ‘Dream Wall’ on which students can post their wishes about the future. At the community level, a range of tactics and artefacts are applied to repeat, spread, and infiltrate the concept of ‘The Chinese Dream’ into people’s everyday life. For example, the propaganda wall, billboards at main roads, big character posters, and calligraphic handwriting are vividly showcased in public space of most cities, towns, and villages (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2). Local artists like Ni Weihua photographed variations of ‘The Chinese Dream’ in Shanghai and other cities for such billboards. Ni’s photography captured the local cities’ nuanced translations and reinvention of ‘The Chinese Dream’ in real life, such as ‘The

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 65

Figure 5.1 Billboard at a bus stop in Beijing. Source: Photo provided by the author.

Figure 5.2 Propaganda wall in Beijing. Source: Photo provided by the author.

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Chinese Dream, my dream’ (zhongguomeng wodemeng), ‘China fulfils its dream and all families prosper’ (zhongguoyuanmeng jiajiayoufu), and ‘Beautiful Chinese Dream’ (meili zhongguomeng) (Wang, 2015). China also issued a series of postage stamps to celebrate its ‘Strong military dream’ (qiangguo junshimeng) (Callahan, 2015a). Citizens are inspired to talk about their individual dreams, regardless of it being a ‘dream house’, a ‘dream job’, or generally a ‘dream of good life’. In 2013, a movie called ‘Chinese Partnership’ (zhongguo hehuoren) was released in cinemas across China as representative of possible ‘entrepreneurial dreams’ the Chinese may have. Xi is not alone, however, in his role of persona-building into ‘The Chinese Dream’. Celebrities, role models, and influencers are also enlisted to advocate for ‘The Chinese Dream’. For example, Chen Sisi, a star of a song-and-dance group run by China’s nuclear-missile corps, performed a ballad ‘The Chinese Dream’ on CCTV against a video backdrop of jets taking off from China’s newly launched aircraft-carrier and bucolic scenery. More than 1.1 million fans followed her on twitter about the ‘The Chinese Dream’. Local model dreamers are selected from all walks of life to inspire peers to learn from them. Academics and intellectuals are invited to participate in debates over ‘The Chinese Dream’, to explore its mean­ ings, or collaborate with foreign scholars to research on ‘The Chinese Dream’. As such, ‘Dream’ was declared the Chinese Character of 2012 (The Economist, 2013). ‘The Chinese Dream’ has clearly been framed as a driving force for the national unity, and to shift public attention away from domestic issues to co-construct and achieve the nation’s future. Projecting an international image to publicise ‘The Chinese Dream’ externally

Lastly, while the nationwide promotion of ‘The Chinese Dream’ has given rise to nationalism and facilitated domestic cohesion, the campaign is also expected to project a new international image of China. After witnessing China’s significant economic growth in the past decades, the whole world is obsessed with one ques­ tion: Will China become more integrated to the world and remain a status quo power, or turn out to be a revisionist force aiming to remodel the global order? Some Asian countries have shown what could be described as distrust or anxiety about China’s rise and its intentions in the region. Many queries emerged around Xi’s ‘The Chinese Dream’, such as what does the ambiguity of ‘The Chinese Dream’ really entail? Is there only one dream or several different dreams? Is the ‘The Chinese Dream’ an individual, elite, or a collective project? What is the global implication of ‘The Chinese Dream’? In response to such speculations, China strives to establish itself as a responsible and peace-loving superpower instead of seeking hegemony or domination. Con­ tributing to the world and humankind is the key message intended for delivery in ‘The Chinese Dream’. To project this image, China has chosen to emphasise its his­ tory of being a benign country that never sought dominance, and also to highlight its core value to create a reciprocal world. China is trying to convince international

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 67 communities to read its rise as a win-win game. As Feng (2015) recommends, multilateralism should be clearly conveyed in ‘The Chinese Dream’ to raise global trust and support of China. Specifically, ‘The Chinese Dream’, Feng argues, should embed a goodwill of building a mutual interest community (liyigongtongti) and a mutual destiny community (mingyungongtongti) through facilitating construction of multilateral institutions. Only when China shows its commitment to multilat­ eral development can its image of being a leading yet peace-loving superpower be erected. International communication of ‘The Chinese Dream’ is mainly performed via centrally coordinated outbound publicity. For example, Xi’s official book The Chinese Dream (translated into English) devotes chapter 7 to explaining its political meanings to the world. And in December 2013, the State Council Infor­ mation Office, as China’s chief foreign publicity department, hosted an interna­ tional conference called ‘The Chinese Dream: Dialogue with the World’. Also, in outwards-facing mediated contexts, in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi has appreciated President Xi’s ‘The Chinese Dream’ as a conceptual innova­ tion in international relations, for which guidance of Chinese diplomacy turned out to be fruitful that year. State media too (e.g. CCTV) are replete with special programmes about ‘The Chinese Dream’ translated into different languages and broadcast to global audiences (The Economist, 2013). At the local level, govern­ ments used media publicity to spread the spirit of ‘The Chinese Dream’ towards foreign investors and residents in China. All these efforts have, to a certain extent, narrowed the international perception gaps of ‘The Chinese Dream’. As Li (2015: 507) noticed, a Dutch online platform neatly summarised ‘The Chinese Dream’ in relation to the world: The essence of ‘The Chinese Dream’ is a desire not to be westernized (Americanized) in a Chinese way, but rather for China to aspire to be itself (Sinicized) in an inclusive way. ‘The Chinese Dream’ is from China, but it belongs to the world (‘of China’). It is not only the Chinese people who should enjoy the dream but is also for the rest of the world to enjoy. ‘The Chi­ nese Dream’ is also to be achieved in a Chinese way (‘by China’). And while it is for the Chinese people, the Chinese nation and the Chinese civilization (‘for China’), its results will also benefit the rest of the world. Moreover, it is notable that the outbound publicity differs from state propaganda in using different tones and techniques of PR to reach out and engage with global audiences. Speaking in less slanted and dogmatic languages, the outbound public­ ity is often combined with cultural diplomacy – using cultural resources to build and improve diplomatic relations (Chen, 2009). Like in the case of ‘The Chinese Dream’, cultural festivals are one of the popular platforms to display the abundance of Chinese history, arts, customs, landscape and ethos, to win recognition and affection from international communities. It is not uncommon to find that cultural diplomacy often disseminates three key messages: (a) China is a great civilisation;

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(b) China loves peace, harmony, and collaboration; and (c) Chinese people are friendly, hard-working, warm-hearted, and patriotic. These elements amount to a human-oriented, benevolent persona of China in the new era. From what has been presented earlier, it is intelligible that the international communication of ‘The Chinese Dream’ appeals to universally accepted values and global citizen’s well-being. As the former ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ma Zhengang (potentially pre-emptively) declared, ‘China’s dream is the world’s dream’. Through showing its global horizon and humanistic concern, China endeav­ ours to convey that what is good for China is by extension good for the world, and vice versa. As one of the public intellectuals, Hu Angang, comments, ‘The Chinese Dream’ and the world dream of the 21st century resemble China’s traditional uto­ pian ideals: Great Peace for All-under-Heaven (tianxia taiping), the World Held in Common (tianxia weigong), and the World of Great Harmony (shijie datong). ‘The Chinese Dream’ discourse perfectly encapsulates China’s ancient civilisation, socialist modernisation, and the indisputable leadership of CCP. Whether the world interprets the persona China puts forward, however, and claims it as their own too is still to be seen. Conclusion As Black (1990–1991) predicted three decades ago, China is on the path to becom­ ing the next superpower of public relations. This claim seems to be validated today after reviewing all the strategies, techniques, and tactics used in the Chinese gov­ ernment PR in general and in ‘The Chinese Dream’ in particular – and in light of the uptake among the Chinese public of this campaign. Facing deepening marketi­ sation, modernisation, and globalisation, the CCP government has learned from its Western counterparts to apply sophisticated communication skills to address various social issues, relationships, and conflicts. Persona-building is one of their newly acquired PR skills. As unpacked in the ‘The Chinese Dream’, the CCP gov­ ernment attempts to create a multifaceted persona as its politically appealing and socially acceptable image, comprising the ‘faces’ of (1) a human-oriented, capable, and benevolent authority; (2) a responsible and peace-loving superpower in the global stage; and (3) Xi as an ambitious leader but also ‘a man-of-people’. The main purpose of such persona-building is to soften the traditionally iron-handed government image and present it as a ‘fellow of the citizens’ through showing understanding and orientation towards public needs, values, and interests. Detour­ ing away from an elite approach, ‘The Chinese Dream’ manufactures the widely shared ownership of the ‘dream’ between the state and individuals. Taken all together, it can be concluded that persona-building, along with the PR strategies applied in the ‘The Chinese Dream’, has collectively contributed to constructing China’s national identity, which evolves with various transforming contexts (e.g. economy, politics, socioculture, geopolitics). Persona-building of the Chinese government is still a work in process, just like the term ‘The Chinese Dream’ is open to interpretation. Yet, through conveying and promoting ‘The Chi­ nese Dream’, the multiple attributes of Chinese PR have surfaced as new-fangled

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 69 propaganda, market propeller, and social lubricant. The CCP government has shrewdly navigated PR to maintain its political legitimacy and stability, while rec­ onciling competing needs from both internal and global audiences. Despite being imbued with controversy, scepticism, or even misperception, PR is self-evident in the Chinese government’s communication efforts and everyday politics. With its potential to be further explored and its value to be widely recognised, PR is doomed to play a pivotal role in China’s multilayered, orchestrated communication landscape, and continue to shape what China is today and what it will become in future. References Bandurski, D. (2009). China and the “crisis” of public opinion. Retrieved from http://china mediaproject.org/2009/08/17/china-and-the-crisis-of-public-opinion/ Bauman, Z., & Vecchi, B. (2004). Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cam­ bridge: Polity. Bernstein, R., & Munro, R. H. (1997). The coming conflict with China. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Black, S. (1990–1991). Public relations in China today. Public Relations Quarterly, 35(4), 29–30. Boc, A. (2015). The power of language: Globalizing “The Chinese Dream”. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Science, 8, 533–551. Brady, A. M. (2006). Marketing dictatorship: Propaganda and thought work in contempo­ rary China. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Brady, A. M. (2009). Mass persuasion as a means of legitimation and China’s popular authoritarianism. American Behavioral Scientist, 53, 434–457. Brown, C., Waltzer, H., & Waltzer, M. B. (2001). Daring to be heard: Advertorials by organ­ ized interests on the op-ed page of the New York Times, 1985–1998. Political Commu­ nication, 18, 23–50. Callahan, W. A. (2015a). History, tradition and the China Dream: Socialist modernization in the World of Great harmony. Journal of Contemporary China, 24(96), 983–1001. Callahan, W. A. (2015b). Identity and security in China: The negative soft power of the China Dream. Politics, 35(3–4), 219–229. Chan, A. (2002). From propaganda to hegemony: Jiaodian Fangtan and China’s media pol­ icy. Journal of Contemporary China, 11(30), 35–51. Chen, N. (2003). From propaganda to public relations: Evolutionary change in the Chinese government. Asian Journal of Communication, 13(2), 96–121. Chen, X. (2009). Engineering the continuation of a nonjudgmental United States-China rela­ tionship in the tumultuous Post-cold War World: An overview of the 1990s Chinese public relations campaign in the United States. Journal of Promotional Management, 14(3–4), 327–353. Cheney, G. (1992). The corporate person (re)presents itself. In E. L. Toth & R. L. Heath (Eds.), Rhetorical and critical approaches to public relations (pp. 165–183). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. The Economist. (2013). Chasing the Chinese Dream: Xi Jinping’s vision. The Economist, 407(8834), 24–26. Edwards, L. (2012). Defining the “object” of public relations research: A new starting point. Public Relations Inquiry, 1(1), 7–30.

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Feng, Y. (2015). Multilateralism and the realization of the Chinese Dream: A possible way to nurture mutual trust. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Science, 8, 553–569. Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. He, C., & Xie, J. (2009). Thirty years’ development of public relations in China Mainland. China Media Research, 5(3), 1–6. Herskovitz, S., & Crystal, M. (2010). The essential brand persona: Storytelling and brand­ ing. Journal of Business Strategy, 31(3), 21–28. Hou, J. Z. (2016). The emerging “field” of public relations in China: Multiple interplaying logics and evolving actors’ inter-relations. Public Relations Review, 42, 627–640. Hutton, J. G. (1999). The definition, dimensions and domain of public relations. Public Relations Review, 25(2), 199–214. Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Routledge. Ledingham, J. A., & Bruning, S. D. (1998). Relationship management in public relations: Dimensions of an organization-public relationship. Public Relations Review, 24(1), 55–65. L’Etang, J. (2006). Public relations and propaganda: Conceptual issues, methodological problems, and public relations discourse. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public rela­ tions: Critical debates and contemporary practice (pp. 23–40). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. L’Etang, J. (2008). Public relations: Concepts, practice and critique. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Li, X. (2015). Interpreting and understanding “The Chinese Dream” in a holistic nexus. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Science, 8, 505–520. Mackey, S. (2016). Persona – An old public relations problem? Persona Studies, 2(1), 84–96. Mcelreath, M., Chen, N., Azarova, L., & Shadrova, V. (2001). The development of public relations in China, Russia, and the United States. In R. L. Heath (Ed.), Handbook of public relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Motion, J., & Leitch, S. (1996). A discursive perspective from New Zealand: Another world view. Public Relations Review, 22(3), 297–309. Peng, A. Y., Kuang, X., & Hou, J. Z. (2022). Love NBA, hate BLM: Racism in China’s sports fandom. International Journal of Communication, 16, 3133–3153. St John III, B. (2014). The “creative confrontation” of Herbert Schmertz: Public relations sense making and the corporate persona. Public Relations Review, 40, 772–779. St. John III, B. (2017). Public relations and the corporate persona: The rise of the affinitive organization. New York: Routledge. Tsai, C. (2019). The construction of the Chinese Dream. In P. Baines, N. O’Shaughnessy, & N. Snow (Eds.), The Sage handbook of propaganda (pp. 405–421). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vercic, D., Ruler, B. V., Butschi, G., & Flodin, B. (2001). On the definition of public rela­ tions: A European view. Public Relations Review, 27, 373–387. Waddock, S. (2007). Corporate citizenship: The dark-side of success. In S. G. May & J. Roper (Eds.), The debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 74–86). New York: Oxford University Press. Wang, M. (2015). Advertising the Chinese Dream: Urban billboards and Ni Weihua’s docu­ mentary photography. China Information, 29(2), 176–201. Wang, Z. (2014). The Chinese Dream: Concept and context. Journal of China Political Sci­ ence, 19, 1–13.

Public relations, persona-building, and national identity 71 Weaver, K., Motion, J., & Roper, J. (2006). From propaganda to discourse and back again: Truth, power the public interest and public relations. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public relations: Critical debates and contemporary practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Yi, Y., & Chang, T. (2012). Institutionalizing public relations in China: A sociological analy­ sis of the Chinese Premier’s Press Conference. Public Relations Review, 38, 711–722. Zhang, J., & Cameron, G. T. (2004). The structural transformation of China’s propaganda: An Ellulian perspective. Journal of Communication Management, 8(3), 307–321. Zheng, S. (2014). Rising confidence behind the “The Chinese Dream”. Journal of China Political Science, 19, 35–48.

6

Constructing a discourse of

‘Red merit’

The orchestrated communication of

China’s ‘Red Collectors’

Emily Williams

Introduction China currently has tens of thousands of what are known as ‘Red Collectors’ (hongse shoucangjia), and tens of thousands more casual Red hobbyists. They col­ lect objects, ‘Red relics’ (hongse wenwu), from China’s revolutionary past, par­ ticularly those to do with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Their objects range from Cultural Revolution posters and Chairman Mao badges to ration coupons and bank notes from the early Soviet base areas: essentially anything related to CCP history can broadly be considered ‘Red’. Motivations for collecting vary, but the majority of collectors see themselves as the protectors of China’s revolutionary heritage and recent history, and are active in researching and disseminating the his­ tory of their objects, especially to the younger generation. However, in a country in which control over the historical narrative is as sensitive as it is in China, even these undeniably patriotic collectors can find themselves having to navigate the at-times complicated desires of the Party-state in their self-representations, particu­ larly in the current era of Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is presiding over an increasingly wealthy and culturally self-confident China. While economic growth remains an important part of the government’s legitimacy, Xi has also foregrounded the importance of the Party in helping China achieve its century-long goal: national rejuvenation (Kaufman, 2015). Because the Party can only be constructed as a positive and progressive force, this return to his­ tory has been necessarily partial, downplaying or eliminating from public discourse large sections of the Mao era. While the collecting of Red relics might seem to align with the Party’s celebration of its history, the preponderance of Cultural Revolution objects within the field highlights a central tension in contemporary Red Collecting. The vast majority of collectors are supportive of the Party, many are Party members, and certainly most approve of Xi Jinping’s efforts to bring discipline and morality back to the Party through his anti-corruption campaigns. They are happy to see the Party’s revolutionary history, to which they have dedicated themselves, returned to national prominence. And yet, the presence of Cultural Revolution objects in the field, regardless of the motivations of the collectors in acquiring them, puts these collectors at odds with the desired historical memory of the CCP. The Party-state appears to take a somewhat ambivalent approach to Red Collecting: Xi Jinping has DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-6

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 73 called for the perpetuation of the ‘Red gene’ (hongse jiyin), but at a more local level, collectors have had a wide variety of experiences with officials, ranging from the supportive to the oppositional. My argument is not that there is an explicit opposi­ tion between the two sides; rather a more subtle set of negotiated relations is at work between the Red Collectors and the state, in which Red Collectors orchestrate a type of self-representation that avoids conflict by seeking a type of legitimacy that posi­ tions them as supportive social actors and patriots. Red Collecting is just one of China’s many niche communities: small or nonmainstream groups of people brought together by a shared passion. Regardless of the specific nature of the niche community, they share similar challenges in trying to navigate the limited space through which legitimacy as social actors can be achieved in China. Alternative understandings of China’s recent past must be nego­ tiated within the context of state-led narratives, in which the boundaries between what is and is not acceptable discourse is often changing or unclear. As such, this chapter suggests that foregrounding this tension can help us to understand the selfrepresentation of Red Collectors in their own writings, as manifestations of the ways in which, at a community level, the collectors are attempting to legitimise their activities within society. Red Collectors come from diverse economic, regional, and professional back­ grounds; they have different collecting practices and diverse views on China’s recent history. And yet, despite these individual differences, in collecting asso­ ciation publications, collection catalogues, and the myriad self-published online essays, a fairly coherent narrative of Red Collecting and Red Collectors can be discerned, which this chapter calls a discourse of ‘Red merit’. This discourse fore­ grounds the social respectability and moral strength of the Red Collector, as well as the contribution they are making to the collecting community, society at large, and to the nation. It is suggested that through this discourse of ‘Red merit’, the collec­ tors are working, consciously or unconsciously, to navigate the tensions outlined earlier, and to fit their own activities within the boundaries of the government’s narrative of history. There are three distinct but overlapping strands of this discourse that this chapter will explore, using collector publications as primarily sources: Chinese traditional culture; the CCP’s revolutionary heritage; and contemporary social and political expectations. The construction of this narrative can serve to remind us that commu­ nication in China is far more complicated than just censorship or resistance. Rather, the collecting community’s representation of their own activity can be seen as a fairly nuanced adaptation to the Party’s sensitivities towards collecting, history, and the social value of objects. Within the space allowed by the Party for historical discussion, then, collectors seek to find a way to mould their narratives to suit that of the state, while also building their own cultural capital and social legitimacy. Tensions in Red Collecting There have always been tensions surrounding the collection of Red relics. During the Cultural Revolution, police shut down the Mao badge swap markets that sprung

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up in major cities, concerned that collecting and trading would teach young people bourgeois attitudes of speculation and accumulation. In the early and mid-1980s, the government recalled much Cultural Revolution material culture and destroyed it. One collector, Zhou Jihou, estimates that 90% of Mao badges were destroyed in this period (Schrift, 2001: 181). This drive to destroy also, however, provoked the drive to collect, and many prominent collectors began collecting at this time, buy­ ing up bags of badges from recycling centres or collecting objects being disposed of by friends and family. Red Collecting emerged more fully in the late 1980s, at a time when the rapid changes brought by the Reform Era policies provoked nos­ talgia for the supposedly simpler and purer times of the Mao years. Its rise in the 1980s and 1990s, therefore, contained, for some, an implicit criticism of the move away from Mao-era socialism towards market-oriented policies that have made China rich, but also unequal. Collecting has become a widespread phenomenon in Reform Era China, with the return of a market economy and the commodification of goods (Anagnost, 1993: 597). But not all collections are created equal: jades, porcelain, calligraphy, coins, stones, and other ‘traditional’ collectibles have an immediate legitimacy that Red relics do not necessarily have. Indeed, existing literature makes clear that both the collectors and their objects are seen as potentially suspect. Michael Dutton (1998: 255) discussed the difficulties that Mao badge collector Wang Anting had in trying to get official approval for his small museum, which first opened in Chengdu in 1989. Similarly, Jennifer Hubbert (2006: 158 FN22) noted the presence of the Public Security Bureau officials and uniformed police officers at Wang Anting’s museum, and interprets this in light of the “suspicion with which his efforts to re­ enact Maoist history is sometimes regarded”. This uncertain relationship, then, is something that Red Collectors and collect­ ing associations are constantly trying to monitor. Melissa Schrift (2001: 180) has argued that collectors have campaigned to defend the legitimacy of their objects as ‘cultural relics’, backed up by an attempt to professionalise their own practices. They have ultimately been successful in this: according to Jingjun Ma (2002: 13), the then Director of the China Association of Collectors Badge Collectors Com­ mittee, as of April 2001, Mao Zedong badges were included in China’s official ‘Grading Standards for Collections of Cultural Relics’. Attempts to professionalise their practices have taken place primarily through collecting associations, which are subject to government approval. In 2011, the Red Collectors Committee of the China Association of Collectors (Zhongguo Shoucangjia Xiehui Hongse Shoucang Weiyuanhui) was established, replacing a previously approved badge collectors committee (China Association of Collectors, n.d.). This association comes under the purview of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, as does the second, rival national-level organisation, the Chinese Red Culture Research Association Red Collection Professional Committee (Zhongguo Hongse Wenhua Yanjiuhui Hongse Shoucang Zhuanye Weiyuanhui), which was founded in 2017 (Sina Collection, 2017). There are also a series of provincial and local Red collecting associations, most of which have an affiliation with one of these two national organisations. Professionalisation also entails the policing of unaffiliated

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 75 collecting associations. In 2011, for example, the publication Chinese Red Collec­ tions issued a warning to its members, reminding them not to participate in collect­ ing organisations that have not been given official government approval (Chinese Red Collections, 2011: 1). There are numerous examples of government support for Red Collecting. Prom­ inent Mao badge collector Huang Miaoxin emphasises that he was invited to open his Shanghai museum by the district government, due to his reputation as a collec­ tor (Yang, 2018). Similarly, in 2016, the China Association of Collectors Red Col­ lection Committee opened a year-long exhibition on land provided by the Tianjin Binhai District Municipal Propaganda Department, and there are other examples of collector–government partnerships. Collectors have worked hard to ease some of the tensions that surround their objects, and they have been fairly successful in this. There are examples of the government supporting both pre- and post-49 collections, but collectors of both periods have also complained about a lack of government approval or support as well. Clearly, the issues that surrounded Wang Anting’s first museum have not completely disappeared. Constructing legitimacy through self-representation: collector narratives Collectors have tried to use official routes to ensure government recognition of legitimacy for both their objects and their collecting practices, and they have been fairly successful. Another way that they have orchestrated opportunities to achieve such legitimacy is through their own writings. Reading through the vast output of collector biographies, there is a remarkably coherent narrative of who the col­ lectors are and what historical, social, and political purpose the collections share, despite differences in collectors’ personal backgrounds, geographical locations, experiences of the Mao and Reform Eras, and objects collected. This largely coher­ ent narrative can be understood as a discourse, in the Foucaultian sense of a histori­ cally contingent social system that produces knowledge and meaning. According to Stuart Hall (2001: 72): It [Discourse] defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. It governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about. It also influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others. Put simply, discourse provides a language for constructing and representing knowledge about a particular subject matter at a particular historical juncture. This knowledge is deeply enmeshed with politics and power. Foucault (1981: 52) wrote: [I]n every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.

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Foucault’s conception of discourse emphasises the key role of power relations in constructing subjectivity and knowledge. He (Foucault, 1979: 27) argued that ‘power and knowledge directly imply one another’, and thus discourse analysis in a Foucaultian sense is less attuned to the specifics of language and more to the ways in which this ‘power-knowledge’ dichotomy produces discursive formations. In thinking of Red Collector narratives as an orchestrated discourse, then, it is sug­ gested that the similarity between Red Collector narratives is not coincidental; nor is it the result of considered and coordinated action between the collectors. Instead, it is the product of the discursive formation of Reform Era China, in which the collector’s desire for legitimation as cultural actors takes shape within a system of legitimating knowledge and truth defined by the CCP as the dominant source of power. This is in part about the CCP’s ability to control speech, but it also goes far beyond just censorship. Rather, as Stephen Gill (2002: 126) has written, discourse is a set of ideas and practices which are more or less institutionalised, but which crucially, “may only be partially understood by those that they encompass”. Understanding Red Collector writings as an orchestrated discourse, then, helps to emphasise the play of agency at work. There is no doubt that the collectors are keen to portray their actions in a way that avoids conflict with the state; it is also the case, however, that their own understanding of their actions and subjectivity as collectors, as well as the knowledge that their objects represent, is a product of the discursive formation of post-Mao China, which has shaped the parameters within which they operate. I suggest, therefore, that their search for legitimacy has been driven by deliberate actions, such as that described earlier, and shaped by the inter­ nalised restrictions of this discursive space. It has resulted in the construction of a discourse of ‘Red merit’ that pursues paths of legitimisation that may seem distant from that suggested by their objects, but which orchestrates a community of actors acceptable to the Party-state. Collecting as a traditional Chinese practice The Red Collectors’ discourse relies on a number of legitimising strands. The first form of legitimacy they recall and rely on is a connection with Chinese tradi­ tion. China has a long history of collecting as an elite practice, and collecting has long been seen as both an act appropriate to cultured individuals and a method of self-cultivation. It was a way to construct elite networks across the vast landmass of China, as well as to build individual renown and fame. Craig Clunas (1991) explains that from the mid-16th century, it became an essential form of consump­ tion, necessary for the maintenance of elite status. Liscomb (1996) argues that imperial collecting was a deeply social activity, in which owners would display their works for selected guests, who might show appreciation for the deep learn­ ing of the owner by writing inscriptions and colophons on the objects themselves or in publications about the objects. Collectors of similar objects formed study circles and social communities together. For example, in early Qing China, a ‘fel­ lowship of the stone’ was formed by inkstone collectors in Fuzhou: they studied together, drank wine together, collected and wrote encomiums for each other (Ko,

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 77 2017: 157). Collecting brought honour to the family, and helped connect the present generation with more illustrious predecessors, but was also a way of constructing relations with peers and social betters through the demonstration of connoisseurship and culture (Ko, 2017). It required connoisseurship about the objects, but was also a way of “negotiating cultural status and fashioning a public persona” (Jang, 2015: 47). It was then a deeply personal, but also social activity. With the return of collecting in the Reform Era, collections have been sought not just for their financial value, but also for the cultural and social capital their owners accrue. Much has been written about the material nature of contemporary Chinese society, in which the ability to deploy wealth and power are the main routes to success (Hulme, 2014; Yu, 2014). But in a society in which the social and cultural norms are changing so quickly, the cultural capital of traditional pursuits can often hold an appeal. This is an appeal that the Party-state has tried to encour­ age and it has represented itself as the guardian and heir of China’s long history (Ai, 2015). Regardless of the Party’s motives in doing so, the return of tradition has been utilised by Red Collectors who conceive of and describe their collecting practices in terms of elite gentry-scholar behaviour, and thus as a socially valuable activity. One strand of the discourse of ‘Red merit’, therefore, is the collectors’ claim to the status of social elites. Collectors’ claims to their social elite status has three main elements: individ­ ual background, the collector’s connoisseurship, and the social respect they have accrued from both the collecting world and broader society. All three aspects fre­ quently feature in the articles published in the collecting association journal Chi­ nese Red Collections as well as in the essays published by collectors online. This can be demonstrated by considering an article in Chinese Red Collections about Hebei collector, Ren Jiping (Niu, 2015). Like many articles published in Chinese Red Collections, it is written by another collector, in this case Hebei collector Niu Shuangyue, based on a visit to the collec­ tor’s home. It begins by outlining the individual’s personal and family background. This was also a common feature in imperial-period collector biographies. How­ ever, while traditional biographies would typically stress links with the imperial system such as government appointments or successes on the civil service exam, Red Collecting narratives always situate the individual in the context of the CCP’s rise. Niu’s article states that Ren’s father joined the revolution when he was young, gained fame as an anti-aircraft machine gunner, and was recognised as a hero dur­ ing the Korean War. This family background is then linked in the article to Ren’s Red Collecting, stating that he had a deep appreciation of Red culture from an early age, and as an adult, he has collected and researched Chairman Mao badges. The article then describes the formation of the collection, with the aim of dem­ onstrating both the high quality of the pieces owned and the connoisseurship of the owner. It identifies a geographic link between the collector and their chosen item of collection, a common theme within Red Collecting. After Ren started collecting Chairman Mao badges, he learned that Chairman Mao badges from his hometown of Shijiazhuang were both some of the nation’s best and the most diverse. He set up a shop in Shijiazhuang, and began collecting badges and other Cultural Revolution

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objects. Just as traditional accounts of visits to elite collectors would frequently include a discussion of some of their best objects, Niu similarly describes some of Ren’s prime objects, including a 34-piece set of Cultural Revolution badges from Shijiazhuang, which won Ren the number 1 ranking of the ‘10 finest’ in China’s First Chairman Mao Badge Competition. Niu also describes some of Ren’s other award winning objects and further demonstrates Ren’s mastery of the field by men­ tioning his participation in Red Collection art appraisal training programmes. The reader is left in no doubt of Ren’s connoisseurship. Just as collecting was traditionally a way to build elite social networks and develop a public persona, so too do Red Collecting narratives emphasise the social prestige of the collectors. We are told that Ren is famous not just in Hebei but that he also has high honour and status across China’s badge-collecting community. He is recognised as a ‘national Red Collecting star’ (Quanguo hongse shoucang zhi xing) and was included in the list of ‘Mao Zedong Badge Collections Twenty-year List of Notable People’ (Mao Zedong xiangzhang shoucang ershi nian renwu ji). He has also engaged widely with the community, attending national exhibitions and events across the country. He is well known not just within the Red Collecting world, but also as a news personality having appeared across multiple media. The article thus constructs Ren Jiping as a respectable and respected member of society in ways not dissimilar to the late imperial construction of the elite scholargentry collector in their encomiums and biographies. He is described as a man of impeccable taste, in possession of rare and valuable objects, and who is well known within the Red Collecting circles. Describing Red Collecting in terms of connois­ seurship draws on established ideas of collecting as an elite activity, which brings cultural capital and social respect. It relies on ideas of a shared body of knowledge and taste that can be understood as ‘Red connoisseurship’ and that requires deep study and long experience to master. Conceptualised in this way, Red Collecting is seen as an activity not for socially marginalised Mao devotees or simply as a way to make money through investments, but rather as a socially respectable activity with connections not just to the ‘Red Era’, but also to China’s traditional culture. Collecting a socialist morality In addition to establishing themselves as the successors to China’s traditional cultural elites, Red Collectors legitimise their actions through the moral lens of the Mao era. This requires a rather selective understanding of the past: all ideas of rebellion against unjust authority are gone and scant reference is made to the major events of the Mao years. Instead, the period is recalled through its supposed moral purity, a purity that collectors believe is being perpetuated through their own actions. This point has been noted in the existing academic literature. Jennifer Hubbert (2006: 150) writes that for Chengdu Mao badge collector Wang Anting, “the existence of the badges proved Mao’s greatness and the correctness of the social and moral hierarchy of his day”. This reverence for the correct morality of the objects also spread to reverence for their owners. Hubbert (2006: 151–152) continues that supporters of Wang used a similar language of religious devotion

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 79 towards Wang as they did towards Chairman Mao and Red objects, celebrating him for creating a space that legitimised their Mao-era class subjectivities in a China with a radically altered sociopolitical hierarchy. More broadly, Melissa Schrift (2001: 170) writes that the “self-presentation of professional collectors reeks of values reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution: self-sacrifice, endurance, suffering and service to the people”. Wang is typically held up as one of the most fanatical Red Collectors, but the feeling that objects represent and embody a spiritual and moral purity that China has now lost is felt by many. Collecting Red objects, then, can be an appeal to the morality of the socialist era inherent in the objects (Williams, 2020). They recall what seems to be a simpler time, when the government worked for the people, when China was poor but equal, when ordinary citizens would sacrifice themselves for the sake of the nation, and when China’s dreamed-of rejuvenation would ben­ efit all. It is true, of course, that these values never existed in a state so free of complexity. Even the much heralded Yan’an spirit, which constructed the Party as defined by frugality, self-sacrifice and unity with the people has been questioned in academic literature in recent decades. But for some Red Collectors, the real­ ity of the time matters less than the ideals that the objects represent. These ideals are represented by and contained within the objects, because many of the objects themselves – particularly those made during1949–1976 – were made to try to impart a new socialist morality to the people of New China. Particularly during the Cultural Revolution, cultural production was based on the belief, as Pang Laikwan (2017: 18) puts it, that the creation of a new culture in the narrow sense of the arts could bring about a new culture in the broad sense. The new culture that was to be created was populated by the Marxist men and women forged through the revolu­ tionary experience of the Cultural Revolution, an experience which purified their souls and redirected their energies. The Cultural Revolution was experienced by many people as extremely volatile and stressful, but, as Pang (2017: 38) writes, “the overall romantic aura displayed in the propaganda culture was much more stable and enduring”. It is this romantic aura that continues to appeal to collectors today, and that they, in turn, attempt to communicate to broader Chinese society through their collecting activities. The preservation of socialist morality is frequently seen in Red Collector narra­ tives, and tends to focus on their frugality, self-sacrifice, and their identity as moral exemplars. Hong Rongchang, a Fujian collector of objects from the Chinese Soviet Republic, also known as the Jiangxi Soviet, is described in a Chinese Red Collec­ tions biography as someone with strong moral character, whose friends all attest that he does not live a luxurious lifestyle (Wang, 2015). He does not play cards or gamble, he does not pay attention to what he eats or wears; his only pleasure is collecting his ‘Red treasures’ (hongse baobei). Similarly, Shanghai badge collector Huang Miaoxin in his 2017 collection catalogue, describes his own personal fru­ galness as one of the main reasons he has been able to buy so many badges (Huang, 2017: 121). He does not, he writes, smoke, drink alcohol or tea, or snack. Instead, he pools all his small change to buy objects. He does not begrudge this hardship because it contributes to his larger purpose.

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Self-sacrifice is often mentioned in collector narratives, and while it may recall the self-sacrifice of the revolutionary period, in the modern era it has a funda­ mentally different end: the collector’s self-sacrifice is for the sake of their own collection, not for the revolution. This, of course, goes largely unacknowledged, or is justified through an explanation of the larger social value of collecting dis­ cussed subsequently. Self-sacrifice in collector discourse is frequently about the lengths that collectors will go to acquire desired objects. For example, much of the self-introductory article by Fujian collector Wenhai Yang (2015) in Chinese Red Collections is about his long search for objects related to the military and police. He writes that collecting is a thankless job: it is full of hardships, and it requires perseverance and willpower. He tells a story, for example, of how he heard about a 1955-style commander’s epaulet that was destroyed before he could acquire it. A few years later, when he was walking through the Fuzhou Antique market, he happened to see an old man wearing a 1955-style public security uniform with the epaulet, just the piece he had been searching for. He ran over to the old man and convinced him to sell it to him then and there, even going so far as to buy the man a new suit so that Yang could take the uniform home with him. Another time, he heard word that an old man was selling two cloth insignia. Despite the ferocious heat of the Fuzhou summer, he raced to the shop, but by the time he got there, a young man had already bought the China People’s Police insignia. Yang bought the remaining Fuzhou Municipal People’s Police insignia and then began a long search to both find out the background of the old man who had sold the insignias (in order to develop an understanding of the provenance of the object) and to find the young man. He did eventually find the young man and managed to convince him to sell the insignia. These stories may seem fairly insubstantial when compared to the sacrifice of their revolutionary predecessors, but collectors frequently put these two narratives of sacrifice into dialogue with each other to engender relevance. Yang writes, for example, that whenever he sees the military and police clothes that he has gathered, he is not just reminded of many happy memories (he previously served in both the military and the police), but also the sweat, blood, and tears of the predecessors who fought to build the People’s Republic of China and give today’s Chinese citi­ zens a happy life. He writes that due to the hard work of those who wear the mili­ tary and police uniforms, China’s national sovereignty is protected, social security is maintained, and the people live a happy life. It was, he wrote, “with the belief of pursuing Red memory and inheriting the Red spirit, I formally entered the ranks of Red Collection”. In other words, by linking the materiality of the revolutionary predecessors – ‘the work of those who wear the uniforms’ – with his own collection of these material objects, Yang positions himself as the inheritor of the revolution­ ary and Red spirit, and thus as similarly ennobled by the socialist morality that the clothing represents. The second aspect of ‘Red merit’, therefore, comes from the socialist morality of the past, embodied by the objects themselves and perpetuated by the noble actions of the collectors. It orchestrates a vision of collecting that legitimises the collectors and their objects through reference to a broadly defined

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 81 ‘socialist morality’ that fits in well with Xi Jinping’s calls to carry forward the revolutionary spirit (Xi, 2016; Wang, 2020; Huang, 2016). The nature of the ‘Red merit’ discourse is that collectors tend to operate within all three spheres of legitimisation rather than just one. Ren Jiping, who was described as a connoisseur, also talks about his frugality and unwillingness to frivolously spend money and emphasises his family’s patriotic service to the nation, which is continued through his own collecting activities. Huang Miaoxin, mentioned earlier for saving all his money for buying badges, is described in Hubbert (2006) as a master connoisseur. These two spheres – collecting as an elite and socially respect­ able activity, and collecting as representative of socialist morality, are then seen not as contradictory, but rather as two sides of the same coin. There is also a third strand of legitimisation closely tied to the second, and which is of particular impor­ tance for contemporary collectors, namely collecting for ‘society’. Collecting for society The third way in which collectors orchestrate discursive legitimacy of their prac­ tice is to tie it into the contemporary government’s aims and understandings of history. This has an at-times complicated relationship with the other two registers. On the surface, collecting objects from the Party’s past should link the collectors very well with the Party’s contemporary aims, but, as stated previously, one of the reasons some collectors feel the need to collect objects representing the socialist morality of the past is because of the feeling that this has been lost in contemporary China. There can be, therefore, something inherently critical in the desire to collect the past, as it contains an implicit critique of the present. It is not surprising that Red Collecting began in the late 1980s around the same time as other forms of what Geremie Barmé (1999) calls ‘totalitarian nostalgia’ appeared. The suggested link with the collecting practices of China’s traditional elites might be expected to be problematic in a country still governed by a com­ munist party, but as mentioned earlier, the promotion of Chinese traditional culture has been a key strategy used by the CCP in their efforts to link national pride with support for the Party today. Somewhat perversely then, collectors’ efforts to link their actions to the revolutionary period, and particularly the Mao era, are poten­ tially more sensitive than their link to the imperial past. And it is perhaps for this reason that the collectors are so keen to show that they are au fait with the narrative of history put forth by the CCP. In particular, collectors use President Xi Jinping’s recentralisation of revolutionary history as key to the CCP’s legitimacy to promote their own activities. In recent years, therefore, the social contribution Red Collec­ tions can offer has been ever more emphasised, particularly in terms of teaching the next generation to remember and cherish revolutionary history. Most Red Collectors were born in the Mao era, and currently are in their 50s–70s. Having experienced the huge transition in Chinese society and economics from the Mao era to the Reform Era, many fear that the youth of today take the prosperity of today’s China for granted and feel that objects from the past can help make material

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a connection between the past and the present. We see this explicated in the Red Collector narratives in two main ways: an emphasis on the continuity of the CCP’s leadership and how the original hardship and sacrifice led to current happiness, and a reframed conception of collecting, which is for the benefit, not of the individual collector, but for society and the nation, both now and in the future. The aforementioned 2015 Chinese Red Collections article about Fujian col­ lector Hong Rongchang makes explicit this continuity (Wang, 2015). The article describes Hong’s family background, portraying it as the story of ‘new China’. Hong came from a poor family in a mountainous region of Fujian, one of 12 chil­ dren. However, he was able to join the army, receive an education, and eventually become a government official. He was also able to take advantage of the Reform Era policies to ‘fairly and openly’ make a large sum of money through invest­ ments. His appreciation for the opportunities afforded to the poorest members of new China has given him what he calls a ‘thanksgiving complex’ (gan’en qingjie), the outcome of which is his collecting. Hong took advantage of his location in Fujian to collect the relics of the Chinese Soviet Republic, particularly its money and coupons, and he built a collection with a number of ‘national treasures’ (guozhi zhenbao). This has allowed him to build a national reputation, as demonstrated by coverage in numerous media outlets and a travelling exhibition of his objects in 2014. The article suggests that Hong takes the social responsibility his posi­ tion affords him seriously. It states that Hong sees the propagation of knowledge derived from the collection as the central responsibility of the collector. While it cannot compete with the task that fell upon his predecessors – the grand cause of revolution – for Hong, spreading the stories contained within his objects has value in ensuring the next generation never forgets the sacrifice and heroism of China’s revolution. In the article, Hong mulls on the relationship between past and present. He cred­ its the ‘correct policies’ of the CCP in the Reform Era with his ability to make enough money to fund his collecting practice. But he also muses more lyrically about this relationship. Every night he sits on his balcony writing about what he has learned from his collecting practice, and contemplating the calm scenes of urban life that unfold beneath him. Seeing this picturesque scene, one cannot help, he writes, but to reflect on the prosperity and health of society and feel gratitude deep in one’s heart. He offers his “thanks to the revolutionary predecessors who have laid a solid foundation for us and made our bed in this wonderful life” (Wang, 2015: 39). The irony of thanking communist predecessors for creating a society in which the gratitude can be expressed through commodity accumulation is, perhaps, lost on the collectors, but their motives are, it seems, sincere. The social value of Red Collections in Red Collector discourse comes through particularly strongly in their writings about the museums and exhibition halls that they have opened. For example, Niu Shuangyue, the Hebei collector who wrote the article on Ren Jiping, owns his own museum centred around White Haired Girl, a famous revolutionary ballet (Niu, 2017). The purpose of the museum, he writes, is to “commemorate the ballet, to teach future generations its history, to ensure the past is not forgotten, to cherish today, and to create the future”. Niu’s personal story

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 83 echoes that of the narratives previously explained. He comes from a poor peasant family and grew up hearing the stories of the revolutionary martyrs of North China. As a result, the “Red gene was firmly rooted in his heart” (Xiao, 2017). He served in the army and then returned to his hometown in Hebei where he began to collect. He has sacrificed much in order to collect, including once spending two year’s sal­ ary on a White Haired Girl poster, and another time travelling across the country in search of a particular poster, before eventually acquiring it through friends in Thai­ land. Niu states that the purpose of collecting must be for “the country, for soci­ ety, for faith in and striving toward [communism]” (Xiao, 2017). It is not enough, he argues, to simply engage in ‘private collection’, as this will not last. Rather, private collections must become national collections, must serve society, and in doing so, bring glory to the act of collecting. The impetus of personal collecting is, through collector narratives, reframed as being not for the self, but for society and the nation. The real beneficiaries are never the collectors themselves, even though they may admit some personal or financial fulfilment from their activities; the real beneficiaries are always the nation and the future generations who will be able to study their country’s history because of the noble actions of the Red Collectors. Conclusion Red Collectors, like other niche communities in contemporary China, are forced to negotiate the continued tensions that exist over how the recent past can be remembered and represented. Despite the seemingly niche nature of the activ­ ity, the collectors themselves are diverse: they span China’s geographical and socio-economic spectrum; they have different motivations for collecting, and their views of history and politics vary. And yet, the narratives told in Red Col­ lector publications are surprisingly similar. In their writings, collectors adapt the narratives of their own collecting activities so as to present them in ways which align with state objectives. They share a discourse of collecting practice that seeks to legitimise Red Collectors as valuable social actors in contemporary China, and they do so in three ways: firstly, by recalling in their actions the collecting practices of imperial China, in which collecting was a common elite practice and a way of developing social networks and cultural capital; secondly, by framing their actions as in line with their revolutionary predecessors, with a particular focus on collecting as a way of practising the socialist morality inher­ ent in the objects; thirdly, by demonstrating their adherence to and support for the contemporary CCP and particularly by framing collecting and exhibiting Red objects as a contribution to society and to the future. The general coherence of this discourse of ‘Red merit’, as presented in this chapter, is indicative of the state’s capacity to influence how niche communities behave. This discourse is evidence of the CCP’s ability to orchestrate narratives about its own history: even while some collectors will privately express disagreements with the direction of Reform Era politics, the desire for social and political legitimisation has resulted in the construction of a politically neutral discourse in which Red Collectors demonstrate their utility and adherence to the government.

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This discourse of ‘Red merit’ is not static; rather, it is responsive to the changing political environment, and we can expect it to continue to change in emphasis or even direction as the state’s objectives evolve. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the space for alternative histories and alternative discourses has shrunk, thus putting increased pressure on collectors to limit their historical discussions; at the same time, the renewed attention to the Party’s revolutionary history has given the col­ lectors a new space for legitimacy that they previously lacked. By framing their actions as defined, not by nostalgia or greed, but rather by what we might call ‘Red merit’, the Collectors have taken advantage of this space to portray themselves as socially legitimate and patriotic defenders of China’s past. This merit is medi­ ated through individualistic and capitalist notions of commodity accumulation, but is justified through a socially minded collecting practice dedicated to preserving objects of the past to suit the future aims of the Party. References Ai, Janette, 2015, Politics and Traditional Culture: The Political Use of Traditions in Con­ temporary China. Singapore: World Scientific. Anagnost, Ann, 1993, “The Nationscape: Movement in the Field of Vision”. Positions, 1(3), 585–560. Barmé, Geremie, 1999, In the Red: On contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Colum­ bia University Press. China Association of Collectors (Zhongguo Shoucangjia Xiehui, 中国收藏家协会), n.d., “About the Association” (Guanyu Xiehui, 关于协会), China Association of Collectors [online]. Available from: www.zcxn.com/page81?article_id=41&menu_id=60 [Accessed 6th December 2019]. Chinese Red Collections (Zhongguo hongse shoucang, 中国红色收藏), 2011, “Public Notice” (Gonggao, 公告)，Chinese Red Collections, 1, 1. Clunas, Craig, 1991, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Mod­ ern China. London: Polity. Dutton, Michael (ed.), 1998, Streetlife China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Michel, 1979, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel, 1981, “The Order of Discourse”, in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 48–78. Gill, Stephen, 2002, “Globalization, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism”, in Eivind Hovden & Edward Keene (eds.), The Globalization of Liberalism. London: Palgrave, 123–151. Hall, Stuart, 2001, “Foucault: Power, Knowledge and Discourse”, in Margaret Wetherell et al. (eds.), Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. London: SAGE, 72–81. Huang, Cary, 2016, “Xi Invokes Spirit of ‘New Long March’ to Reach Communist Party Goals”. South China Morning Post. 20 July. www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/ article/1991990/xi-invokes-spirit-new-long-march-reach-communist-party [Accessed 20th November 2020]. Huang, Miaoxin 黄淼鑫, 2017, Chasing the Dream: 31 Years of Collecting Chairman Mao Badges (Zhuimeng: Mao Zedong xiangzhang shoucang 31nian， 追梦：毛泽东像章 收藏31年). Hong Kong: China News Publishing House (Zhongguo xinwen chubanshe, 中国新闻出版社).

‘Red merit’ discourse and ‘Red Collectors’ 85 Hubbert, Jennifer, 2006, “(Re)collecting Mao: Memory and Fetish in Contemporary China”. American Ethnologist, 33(2), 145–161. Hulme, Alison (ed.), 2014, The Changing Landscape of China’s Consumerism. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. Jang, Scarlett, 2015, “The Culture of Art Collecting in Imperial China”, in Martin J. Powers & Katherine R. Tsiang (eds.), A Companion to Chinese Art. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 47–72. Kaufman, Alison, 2015, “Xi Jinping as Historian: Marxist, Chinese, Nationalist, Global”. The Asan Forum. www.theasanforum.org/xi-jinping-as-historian-marxist-chinese-natioalist­ global/ [Accessed 17th January 2020). Ko, Dorothy, 2017, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Liscomb, Kathlyn Maurean, 1996, “Social Status and Art Collecting: The Collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen”. The Art Bulletin, 78(1), 111–136. Ma, Jingjun 马京军, 2002, “Preface”, in Yufeng Xu (ed.), Appreciation of Regalia Col­ lection: Jiangsu Edition China (Huizhang Shoucangpin Yishu Jiangsheng: Zhongguo Jiangsu Ban, 徽章收藏品艺术鉴赏： 中国江苏版). Beijing: Education Science Pub­ lishing House Jiaoyu Kexue chubanshe, 12–13. Niu, Shuangyue 牛双跃，2015, “The Dream Seeker of the Red Collection World – Ren Jiping” (Hongse shoucang jie de zhui meng ren – Ren Jiping, 红色收藏界的追梦人 – 任 继平). Chinese Red Collections (Zhongguo Hongse Shoucang,中国红色收藏), 4, 29–31. Niu, Shuangyue 牛双跃, 2017, “Niu Shuangyue’s White Haired Girl Art Exhibition Hall’ (Niu Shuangyue de Bai Mao Nu Yishu Chenlie guan, 牛双跃的白毛女艺术陈列馆”, in All China Red Museum, Exhibition Hall and Home Collection Hall, Volume 1 (Quanguo Hongse Bowuguan, Zhanlanguan, Jiatingshoucangguan, diyiji, 全国红色博物馆，展览 馆，家庭收藏馆，第一集). Chinese Red Collections (Zhongguo Hongse Shoucang， 中国红色收藏), 6, 17–18. Pang, Laikwan, 2017, The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution. London and New York: Verso. Schrift, Melissa, 2001, Biography of a chairman Mao Badge: the creation and mass con­ sumption of a personality cult. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press Sina Collection (Xinlang Shoucang, 新浪收藏), 2017, “The Chinese Red Culture Research Association Red Collection Professional Committee is established in Beijing” (Zhongguo Hongse Wenhua Yanjiuhui Hongse Shoucang Zhuanye Weiyuanhui zai Jing Chengli, 中 国红色文化研究会红色收藏专业委员会在京成立). Sina Collection. http://collection. sina.com.cn/2017-12-08/doc-ifypnqvn1206610.shtml [Accessed 6th December 2019]. Wang, Jianfen, 2020, “Xi Calls for Promoting Yan’an Spirit”. China Daily. 19 September. www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202009/19/WS5f658613a31024ad0ba7a8ef.html [Accessed 20 November 2020]. Wang, Zhonghong 王中鸿，2015, “Hong Rongchang: The Legend of the Red Collector” (Hong Rongchang: hongse shoucangjia de chuanji, 洪荣昌： 红色收藏家的传奇). Chi­ nese Red Collections (Zhongguo hongse shoucang, 中国红色收藏), 4, 36–39. Williams, Emily, 2020, “Who Will Serve the People? Red Collecting & China’s Moral Crisis”, in Dragan Pavlićević and Zhengxu Wang (eds.) Social Relations and Political Development in China: Change and Continuity in Xi Jiping’s ‘New Era’. Abingdon: Routledge, 52–71. Xi, Jinping 习近平, 2016, “Carry Forward the Red Boat Spirit and Advance in the Forefront of Our Times”. Chinese Law & Government, 48(6), 425–429. Xiao, Hong 肖鸿, 2017, ‘ “White Haired Girl’: Preserving History, Preserving Sounds” (“Bai Mao Nu”: Liu shi liu sheng 白毛女”留史留声) Army Micro Platform (Junsao

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wei pingtai, 军嫂微平台). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0UXED3vdAD4D4FHnkdAXbQ [Accessed 7th February 2020]. Yang, Guang 阳光, 2018, “Collection and Reminiscence: Mao Zedong Badge Collection Hall” (Shoucang yu huainian – Mao Zedong xiangzhang cangguan, 收藏与怀念 – 毛泽东 像章藏馆). Meipian (美篇). www.meipian.cn/1pr4c00m [Accessed 7th February 2020]. Yang, Wenhai 杨文海, 2015, “My Red Destiny” (Wo de hongse qingyuan 我的红色情缘). Chinese Red Collections (Zhongguo hongse shoucang, 中国红色收藏), 4, 31–33. Yu, LiAnne, 2014, Consumption in China: How China’s New Consumer Ideology Is Shaping the Nation. Cambridge: Polity Press.

7

The construction of patriotism

in primary school Chinese

language textbooks

Fuqin Pan

Introduction Every nation hopes to utilise their education systems to socialise children ideologi­ cally for entry into the society they live in upon leaving the institutional confine­ ments of the school environment. The ideas imparted to children about the world around them are not inborn, they are formulated by the elites and powerful to “keep control of power and status and to feel validated in doing so” (Gee, 2008: 28). These ideas include understandings about the natural, political, and social world around them, and are driven by the dominant powers of the time. One immediate and effective medium to indoctrinate children is through school textbooks, which not only reflect the teaching and learning goals of a specific curriculum, but also a particular selection and organisation of designated knowledge embodying the legitimised values, ideology, and worldviews of a particular hegemony in a society. Such is the case in China, which, over the past century, has seen drastic sociopo­ litical changes both during the Mao era and during the reform era (1978 to present). Despite all the changes, the People’s Republic of China (hereafter referred to as China) remains a Communist Party-state, which means that economic, cultural, and social resources are distributed by the political elite often leading to politically determined inequalities (Goodman, 2014). Thus, both the dramatic social changes and stable political system of the modern era are manifested in the state-ordained teaching materials which Chinese children consume during their schooling years. Alternative teaching materials within the classroom are simply not permitted dur­ ing the compulsory education stage (nine years of schooling). Thus, millions of Chinese schoolchildren all uniformly consume and learn the same materials within their formative years. This ensures there is a single narrative consumed by children (notwithstanding the rare variations in interpretations and opinions) of China’s his­ tory and cultural identity. This chapter considers three volumes of Yu Wen [语文] textbooks for primary school students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in China, which were issued in 2019 by the People’s Education Press (PEP). The textbook titled Yu Wen in China is a combination of Chinese language tuition and studies in literature. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a total of ten curriculum stand­ ards have been used for Yu Wen in primary schools. No matter how the standard DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-7

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is revised, “teaching Putonghua (Mandarin) and standardising Chinese charac­ ters have always been regarded as the basic teaching tasks of Yu Wen in China” (Yuan, 2002). Putonghua and corresponding Chinese characters, which have been strongly promoted in China as a standardised version of China’s official language, is prioritised throughout China’s primary schools. As social linguist Professor Gee notes (2008: 10), “language . . . always comes fully attached to ‘other stuff’: to social relations, cultural models, power and politics, perspectives on experience, values and attitudes, as well as things and places in the world”. Accordingly, it is no surprise that the learning of history, science, nature, and culture is indivisible from the learning of Chinese language for younger readers in China. As the following analysis reveals, textbooks in 2019 have been revised to do three things for children today in China: revive and instil a sense of nationalism, entrust great people with missions corresponding with the unsolved social prob­ lems in the Reform Era, and, lastly, assert the dominance of the Han majority while exoticising China’s minorities as a group of peoples to be admired within the context of the natural world, thus halting their capacity to demonstrate their participation and challenges in the nationwide social and economic construction of contemporary China through literary means. China’s education system and textbook development China’s nine-year compulsory education encompasses children from year 1, in pri­ mary school to year 9 in secondary school. The system started in 1986 with legal force, but not until 2006 was it that all the students in this system were exempt from tuition, and only in 2011 did the nine-year compulsory education system become universally accessible throughout China (MOE, September 27, 2019b). Currently, the education system accommodates Chinese children between 7 to 16 years old. Besides being compulsory and free of tuition, the system is highly unitary reflected by textbook publishing mechanisms, language dominance, and the national launch of audio textbooks. As the compilation organiser and publisher of the compulsory education text­ books, PEP is a giant state-owned publishing enterprise closely associated with the Ministry of Education (MOE). Since its establishment in 1950, PEP has published 11 sets of primary and secondary school textbooks, all authorised by the MOE and widely used in mainland China (People’s Education Press, 2019). The latest ver­ sions of the textbooks were released in May of 2019. The MOE requested that all primary and secondary schools in mainland China use the state unified textbooks for the three subjects: Morality and Law, Chinese Language, and History. This included private schools and joint venture schools. All the other subjects within the compulsory education period must refer to textbooks included in the Cata­ logue of National Course Teaching Textbooks for Compulsory Education (MOE, May 14, 2019a). This was a significant shift in education policy, as for nearly two decades provincial educational departments and local schools were given some freedom to “explore and establish an effective mechanism for selecting text­ books, and form a specific working mechanism for curriculum management at

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 89 the national, local and school levels” (MOE, 2002). The re-tightening of policy towards the use of textbooks in Chinese classrooms implies that the central gov­ ernment realised the disadvantages of devolving power over education resources to reinforce and spread its new round of unitary, ideological education among young readers in China. The Chinese language has long been regarded and used by the government and educational advocates as an important means of transmitting the dominant ideol­ ogy in China (Price, 1992). Yet, China is a multi-ethnic country, with many eth­ nic minorities having their own oral and written languages. Each living language used in China deserves the identification of being a Chinese language. Yet only Putonghua, which originates from northern Mandarin, has been officially set as the uniform language used in compulsory education system. Take the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as an example of the language unitarity, starting from the autumn semester of 2018, all the bilingual classes of primary and secondary schools in the region adopted the PEP version of Yu Wen textbooks written and recorded in Chinese standard Mandarin, with an additional language course given in the local ethnic minority languages (MOE, October 20, 2018). By virtue of digital advantages too, the MOE and China Media Group initiated a national audio textbook project, converting so far 200 texts recited by famous broadcasters or actors on digital disks to accompany the textbooks. Primary and secondary schools in impoverished areas in particular have been targeted with audio textbook players given as “gifts” (CNR, 2018). The MOE also encourages textbook publishers to provide digital materials to accompany the textbooks, free of charge, through Internet downloading (MOE, 2019). Thus, digital options pro­ vide children with alternative access to textbooks with minimal cost, for example, enabling children from less privileged families or those who lag far behind in learn­ ing how to read, to be taught the legitimised national narratives and included in the national identity-shaping process. The unified language in both sound and written form in a set of Yu Wen textbooks adopted nationally in the basic education period facilitates the diffusion of dominant ideologies and helps cultivate the collective national identity from individuals’ early life stage. Inspiring Chinese nationalism and patriotism Patriotism is commonly acknowledged as an individual’s love of one’s country, and actions to defend it or sacrifice for it. In contrast, “nationalism”, just like nation and nationality, has “proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone to analyze”, despite the concept exerting immense influence on the modern world (Anderson, 2006: 19). In his book The Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (2006: 20–21) proposed the definition of “nation” as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. Considering the “nation” as a political concept, he then interpreted the official nationalism as “an anticipa­ tory strategy adopted by dominant groups which are threatened with marginaliza­ tion or exclusion from an emerging nationally imagined community” (ibid: 117). By nature, nationalism serves the interests of the state first and foremost. It is a

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strategy taken by any state government to construct the “imagined community” using iconic and uniform symbols among which language is often listed high. Woods and Dickson (2017: 170) equate patriotism as “a benign form of nation­ alism”, which “can be a source of popular support for the regime as people take pride in the country’s achievements, especially when the state is believed respon­ sible for those achievements”. Patriotism points to positive nationalism and “it can . . . be inferred that a positive national attitude gives an individual a (mod­ erate, very, or extremely) positive national identity, and it also serves to satisfy the need for a sense of positive self-identity” (Dekker et al., 2003: 347). Taking the positive influence of patriotism in nationalism ideology construction, the Chi­ nese Communist Party-state has relentlessly led the patriotic education campaigns, “striving to maintain authoritarian control” (Zhao, 1998: 287). Yet, the purposes of launching patriotic education have varied from time to time after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In the 1950s and 1960s, patriotism was used to bolster the political power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who liber­ ated the people from foreign invasion and the civil war, and urgently needed a stable political environment to develop the economy and improve people’s living standards. From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, following a series of political mistakes committed by the Party leaders, it was realised that ideological education should be strengthened to regain the Party’s credibility so as to win mass support of the regime. Then, after the rapid economic growth brought by the “Reform and Opening Up” in the late 1970s and 1980s, China experienced dramatic urbanisa­ tion and GDP growth, and a tremendous international status promotion. However, the socialist market economy also resulted in considerable inequality and increased stratification in Chinese society; in addition, with the change of the world power structure, China’s diplomatic relations with other countries concerning national interests have become more complicated. A very real concern about maintaining domestic political and social stability ensued for the Chinese leadership. One pos­ sible solution to maintaining stability was for the government to re-examine its social construction orientation in the transformation period. Accordingly, Zhao and Cui (2014: 56) suggested that “social construction could focus on the establishment of social foundation and the cultivation of social capital through public services such as education, health care, social security and disability assistance”. The need for a singular narrative in the name of patriotism and nationalism to inspire young children’s loyalty to the regime may have informed the selection of the following studied poems and passages within the national Yu Wen textbooks. Red poems and ancient war poems Unlike History subject learning within a critical context that allows for students to be introduced to multiple interpretations of historical facts and outcomes, through the semblance of language tuition, Chinese students are taught about two legiti­ mised political doctrines. The first is that Chinese people should never forget that the CCP “saved China by bringing independence and peace to a land long rav­ aged by ruinous wars, social turmoil and foreign invasions” (Huang, 2014: 2).

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 91 Furthermore, only by following and supporting CCP leadership can Chinese peo­ ple realise their dreams of better lives. The second is that fighting against other countries’ aggression is every citizen’s responsibility and the highest honour. Two poems in the textbooks convey such messages: Poem 1: Yan’an, I pursue You 《延安，我把你追寻》

Like a swallow coming back, in pursuit of the past spring light; like a thriving tree, in pursuit of rain and sun. Pursue you, the tinkling water of Yanhe River, pursue you, the fragrance of pear flower in Zaoyuan. pursue you, the virgin land pioneers of Nanniwan, pursue you, the venue where Yang Jialing Speech took place. Rows of tall buildings are springing up, arrays of household appliances are dazzling; we said goodbye to the shabby hut forever, but can’t forget the warm cave dwellings of Yan’an. The space shuttle explores the mysteries of the universe, the computer plays a wonderful symphony; We didn’t hesitate to abandon the old ox-cart, but can’t throw away the indomitable backbone of Baota mountain. Yan’an, your spirit is brilliant! If we lose you, it’s like we lose our souls, how can we fly to a better future? Ah! Yan’an, I pursue you, pursue faith, pursue golden ideals; pursue warmth, pursue a radiant spring; pursue light, pursue the red sun!

(Wen, 2019a: 104–105)

This is a modern Chinese poem paying tribute to the prestigious place of revolu­ tionary interest – Yan’an, which was the headquarters of the Central Committee of the CCP and the War of Liberation between 1935 and 1948. It is sung as a sig­ nificant point of symbolism for the CCP’s leading role in defeating the Japanese invaders and the opposition party, Kuomintang, to establish a new China. The poem uses various rhetorical devices to reach young readers, aiming to cultivate their loyalty and gratitude towards CCP leadership. In the title, Yan’an,

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I pursue you, the use of the first person singular pronoun “I” imposes readers to be the protagonist and the initiator of all the actions in the poem. Children are brought into the poem as the passionate pursuers of Yan’an – the symbol of CCP leadership. In the first part, the metaphoric use of “swallow” and “tree” in relation to “spring light” and “rain and sun”, which are familiar to children, facilitates readers’ com­ prehension of the subordinating relationship of the paired figures. Spring light is an essential condition for swallows to come back, just like trees cannot grow without rain and sun. Young readers are taught that what Yan’an symbolises and represents is essential to them just like rain and sun is to the survival of trees in the natural world. Children are led to believe that this kind of pursuit is not a subjective choice but an irresistible law of nature. The second part consists of four imperative sentences in a catchy parallel struc­ ture, directing younger readers clearly to the destinations of their pursuit, which are the Yan’he River, Zaoyuan, Nanniwan, and Yang Jialing. For children who were not born in Yan’an or Shannxi Province, these are probably unknown places. Thus, in the lead-in section of the poem, it says: “If you don’t understand some content, such as ‘Nanniwan Pioneering’ and ‘Yangjialing Speech’, you can search relevant information to help understand” (Wen, 2019a: 104). This pre-reading note indicates that the education elites and powerful in Chinese society estimate that children today will know little about the CCP-led revolutionary feats and hardships starting almost one century ago. Yet, they are insistent that the glorious history should not be forgotten or unknown to each generation of readers. So, assisting teaching and learning materials will be arranged to add historic meaning to these places. Just take “Yang Jialing Speech” for an example, this speech was given by CCP leader Mao Zedong at the Yan’an Forum of Literature and Art in 1942, claiming that art serves the masses, including workers, peasants, soldiers, and urban petty bourgeoi­ sie (McDougall and Mao, 2020). Without the study supplements though, the poem could be understood by young readers as ordinary scenic work, rather than a piece of “red” ode expressing gratitude to the CCP’s feats in founding a new nation and ending the country’s previous humiliating history. The third and fourth parts of the poem make strong contrasts between living standards and science and technology development between the present time and the Yan’an revolutionary years. Striking word contrast such as “dazzling” vs. “shabby”, “building” vs. “cave”, “wonderful” vs. “old” has a strong visual impact on children. Dazzling material things are familiar to today’s young kids; on the contrary, old and shabby huts stand for all the hardships and difficulties that the CCP and its followers had endured. Huge technological gaps between space shut­ tles and ox-carts provoke children’s pride in great changes achieved by the nation. The poem changes the singular pronoun “I” which appears in the title to be the plural form “we” in these two parts. It is an appealing strategy to win children’s hearts. Firstly, the plural form implies that it is the mass population instead of one person that enjoys today’s abundant and comfortable lifestyle. The increase in quantity helps the leadership prove its mission is for all, not only for the privi­ leged class. Then, “we” is the plural of “I”, not “you”, so each reader is included and privileged in the collective nation. The usage of “we” serves the purpose of

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 93 national identity-building. Young readers are passively made to claim that “we” “cannot forget” and “we” ‘cannot throw away’ the beliefs which helped the nation overcome profound hardships. The last two parts of the poem are engulfed with a constant rising stream of praise for the Yan’an spirit. Besides radiant words, the rhetorical question “how can we . . . ?” is applied to strengthen the indispensability of the Yan’an spirit, which equals to a person’s soul in this poem. The Yan’an spirit is personified and endowed with a superior power injected into young readers in such a private way that if they do not have faith in the spirit, it is suggested they are soulless and incomplete as human beings: an incredibly confronting prospect for young readers. This modern poem, characterised by several rhetorical devices such as meta­ phor, paralleling, personification, and singular–plural pronoun changes, allows it to be comprehended and memorised easily. More importantly, it is infused with manifestations of being grateful to the CCP leadership and firmly following it for a sustainable happy life. As Liu (2005: 7) argues, “At a very early stage of their formal education, Chinese children are exposed to the ideological construction of their political and social identity”. They are positioned to include themselves within the Party-state nation and encouraged by the unified textbooks to be faithful followers of the leadership. Poem 2: Marching Out to the Frontier《出塞》

The moon of Qin shines over the passes of Han; our men have not returned from the distant frontier. If the Winged General of the Dragon City were there, no Hu horses could ever cross the Yinshan Mountain. (Wen, 2019a: 94) In contrast, Marching Out to the Frontier is an ancient Chinese poem written by Wang Changling during the time of the Tang Dynasty. This is a four-line poem with seven characters in each line, a very popular literary style in ancient China, with its popularity peaking during the Tang and Song Dynasties. This type of poem is also featured in rhyme, meaning the final syllables of the last characters in the first, second, and fourth lines share the same sound in Chinese. This feature makes the recitation and memorisation of the poem extremely efficient. The rhyme alone makes this poem a strategically smart inclusion in children’s textbooks. The territory which a country puts into its domain is a significant symbol of national sovereignty and integrity. Human history can be interpreted as a dynamic redistribution of the earth by brutal wars, tactical negotiations, or even natural disasters. War seems to be inevitable in the process of defending and expanding territories, justifying identities and securing survival. The selection of this poem informs a political idea that no matter how advanced the human civilisation is, ter­ ritorial integrity is always a bottom line in patriotic and nation-building education. It is a nation’s dignity and physical health.

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“Qin” and “Han” in the first line refer to the two dynasties in ancient China, which long before the Tang had established the passes along the frontier to pro­ claim the national boundary and defence against endless invasions by neighbouring countries or tribes from north of the Great Wall. Children are exposed to the prin­ ciples of China’s ancient history: that the land needs to be protected and defending one’s nation in the present is a noble tradition praised by later generations. The second line emphasises that defending one’s nation demands sacrifice because “the frontier soldiers who marched as long as ten thousand miles to fight had not come back”. The depressing thoughts that these soldiers may not come back safely is swiftly dealt with by the third line that turns to the war heroes of the West Han Dynasty who bravely beat back the Huns and deified them as the Winged generals. The fourth line then suggests a rosier outlook that if those heroes were still alive, the Hun would never have managed to cross the frontier. Children are always obsessed with heroes who have superior powers to achieve their goals. Highlighting the patriotic image of the heroes boosts children’s patriotic enthusi­ asm and pride. The little 27-character rhyming poem brings young readers into a heroic world where defending the nation’s territory bravely is highly praised and admired. Any war has at least two sides, with each side treating the other as the enemy. Unlike the first poem on Yan’an, teaching patriotism in an embellishing way, this poem introduces children to the cruelty of war and the hostility of different war sides. Young readers are supposed to learn that “Others” or “enemies” do not belong to “our group”, they should be negatively treated, guarded against, defeated, or even eliminated. Interestingly, real history of the Tang Dynasty has revealed that war was not the only solution to dealing with borderland conflicts and “Others”. As Li (2014: 64) has revealed, the northern borderland during the Tang Dynasty “appeared as a constantly changing territory”, and some nomadic empires, after being conquered by force, “regained their independence and evolved into other political entities”. The nature of Tang’s northern borderland was the struggle and game between the Tang administration and nomadic countries living on the land. Apart from war, other strategies adopted by the Tang included allying with other neighbouring countries to deter powerful enemy countries; disintegrating strong enemy powers from within; conferring nomadic emperors with titles of nobility; making peace with rulers of minority nationalities in the border areas by marriage; and opening up trade channels and jointly developing economy and culture with neighbouring countries (Xu, 2007; Ma and Zhang, 2020). The thinking mode of a pure antagonistic attitude though from such early ages may preclude children from seeking cooperation, teamwork, or consultation from “Other” groups even in the same class, school, or neighbourhood – not to mention impressions of the world beyond China. In the name of patriotism, the shadow of nationalism which emphasises superiority or anti-foreign sentiments could be instilled into young readers through war or war hero texts like this poem and serve the national interests in a biased way when international conflicts rise. The domi­ nant power in today’s China spares no efforts in reviving nationalism from both a benign state-led patriotism and a legitimised nationalistic ideology tightly linked

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 95 to victimisation and anti-foreign sentiments. The inclusion and adaption of the cul­ tural knowledge that young readers are made to believe in these textbooks supports these efforts, either through these “Red” or ancient war-themed poems. People of greatness undertaking new missions The emphasis of China’s past so-called century of humiliation and the great lead­ ership of the CCP in all sets of children’s Yu Wen textbooks is typically reflected through readings on the struggles of great Chinese people throughout modern his­ tory: for example, the former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in Reading for the Rise of China (为中华之崛起而读书, 4A: 96–98), the great writer and thinker of the New Culture Movement, Lu Xun, in My Uncle Lu Xun (我的伯父鲁迅先生, 6A: 115–118), Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang in Mei Lanfang’s Beard (梅兰芳蓄 须, 4A: 99–101), and anti-Japanese war heroes in Five Heroic Men in Mt. Langya (狼牙山五壮士, 6A: 18–20). While these people remain heroes in the textbooks, new characters worthy of being held in high esteem today have been included, and reflect the changing values of social policies on the part of the leadership. In the 1950s, the boiler workers were featured in children’s textbooks as Chi­ nese heroes in the early stages of industrial production after the founding of the new republic. The hard work of the boiler workers reflected the need to stimulate a lagging economy and address the people’s glaring demand for food, clothing, and shelter. Boilers symbolised the manufacturing industry and economic development in the country, thus giving readers positive hints that the sharp social contradiction would be solved by the hard labour of the working classes (PEP, 1953: 103). Seven decades later, the sharp social conflict has changed into a fierce contest between the fast-growing economy and the ever-growing social inequality as well as the deteriorating Chinese environment. Environmental degradation directly under­ mines and threatens the sustainable development of the country, even the world. Political leaders in China now hold environmental degradation as a critical issue needing urgent attention. Statements on environmental issues appear frequently in state media, while President Xi (2017) pointed out that “Clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver”, and that “generally speak­ ing, China is still a country with few forests and weak ecology”. Evidently, boiler workers are out of fashion and the image of the toiling worker out of step with Chi­ na’s rising middle classes. Instead, alleviating social inequality and environmentfriendly policies are highly advocated and encouraged. The work of the forester, therefore, has appeared in the latest version of children’s textbooks. Green Mountains Last Forever 《青山不老》

I know the overall environment of this gully. This is the northwest of Shanxi Province in China. It’s the place where Siberian gales are often raging. It’s the place where all monsters, such as drought, frost and sandstorm, wreak havoc on human life. In the past, when the wind blew, sand could blow all the way up and bury the top of the city wall. According to the county annals,

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This passage shapes the image of an old man who, for many years, has been devoted to afforestation in the north-west of China, where desert spread has sped up signifi­ cantly in recent years. The first paragraph features the use of contrast. The contrast between the destructive situation in the past and the oasis of the present, and the contrast between the rampant Siberian gales and the thin old man suggest the gap in power between man and nature. Despite this seemingly impossible situation, the thin nameless old man does something great to prevent natural disasters and bring green back to the land. The second paragraph uses statistics to quantify the great man’s contribution. In addition to his contribution to the environment, he buys TV sets for his villagers, signalling that the pursuit of both environmental and living standard improvement is the Party-state’s unremitting goal. Textbooks, as a power­ ful publicity tool, used in different historical periods show that role-model-building is closely connected with the urgent demands of domestic politics, economy, and society of the times. Exoticising China’s minorities Thomas Mullaney (2011) argues that the notion of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups only came about during the 1950s as a result of selection and reclassifica­ tion of the then calculated over 400 ethnic groups. The classifications depended primarily on the languages they spoke as well as the ethnic taxonomy designed by British officer H.R. Davis in late 19th century. Chinese State authorities then turned the ethnologists and linguists’ ethnic classifications into a new official dis­ course of Chinese ethnic diversity, influencing various aspects in Chinese identity, such as film, tourism, consumer culture, and even cyberspace. As Mullaney (2011: 125) points out, “Yunnan and Guizhou increasingly became the destinations of choices for a rising Chinese middle class” who worried little from which minority the souvenirs they bought derived from as long as they represented one of the 55 ethnic minorities. Chu Yiting (2015) concludes that Chinese textbooks also contribute to under­ mining the cultural uniqueness of China’s ethnic minorities. For example, the text­ book passages in the 2019 edition place minority groups specifically in fields of natural scenery, suggesting that minority groups are a “part of nature” and wor­ thy of admiration in the same way that untouched parts of the natural world may

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 97 be. In doing so, these textbooks place minorities as separate to China’s develop­ ment objectives, unable to be included in the economic development narrative, and perpetually primitive. This is supported by extensive research undertaken about China’s minority groups, including research by Louisa Schein (2000), who argues that rural and minority residents are marginalised by mainstream society. Their lack of education, skills, or training needed in the market economy lead them to a non-competitive and more vulnerable position than their urban and ethnic majority counterparts who are situated in the social centre. Two excerpts from Yu Wen reflect these concerns: Grassland (草原 草原)

Outside the yurts, there are many horses and many carts. Many people come to see us from dozens of miles away by horse or car. The owners get off the horse and we got off the cart. I don’t know whose hand it is. It’s always warm and can’t be separated. Everyone’s language is different, but their hearts are the same. People talk in their own language, in general, meaning national unity and mutual assistance. ... At this time, the Ewenki girls, wearing pointed hats, dignified and a little shy, came to sing folk songs to the guests. The singers in our company also sang quickly. It seems that singing is louder and more moving than any lan­ guage. No matter what they sing, the listeners will always show a knowing smile. After dinner, the boys performed horse riding and wrestling, and the girls performed ethnic dance. Guests also dance, sing and ride Mongolian horses. The sun is already setting to the west, yet no one wishes to go. Indeed, how can we bear to say goodbye when Mongolian people and Han people are in such a deep friendship, with the vast land and the green grass under the set­ ting sun. (Wen, 2019c: 2–4) This passage narrates the experience of a Han delegation’s visit to the Inner Mongolia grasslands and their contact with these “minorities”. Emphasising the imagery of yurts, horses, Ewenki, horse-riding, wrestling, and ethnic dance and the colourful illustration of the special Mongolian headdress present to younger read­ ers a festive and joyous picture. However, the introduction of the minority peoples in the selected text is confined to their shelters, dresses, transportation means, and guest-receiving etiquette, and arguably done so from the perspective of the Han delegation as visiting observers of the exotic. Basic demographic identifiers like their source of income and contribution to the Chinese nation are not mentioned. Two similar statements in this text are worth noticing: one is “Everyone’s lan­ guage is different, but their hearts are the same. People each talk in their own lan­ guage, in general, meaning national unity and mutual assistance”. And the other is “No matter what they sing, the listeners will always show a knowing smile”. Yet,

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the latest official action to unify primary school Yu Wen textbooks across China in standard Mandarin contradicts with the sentiments of these sentences. Different “Chinese” languages are marginalised in the state education system in China, and Han Chinese children are not encouraged through the education system to learn the languages of any ethnic minority group during their formative years (albeit minori­ ties must learn standard Mandarin). Another excerpt is the text Walking the Moon (走月亮, 4A: 5–6), which describes wonderful evening views with the bright moon in a Bai Ethnic village. The excerpt will not be relayed here, rather a comment provided on the illusive reference the textbook makes to a nameless ethnic minority group. As it is, the minority group, Bai, is not directly identified by the text and only revealed by some ethnic vocabulary. For instance, a knowledgeable reader may recognise A Ma（阿妈）, meaning mother, and A Ba（阿爸）in Bai language. Set in Ehai (洱海), the second largest fresh lake in Yunnan province, the locale of the excerpt also alludes to the minority group featured being the Bai. The accompanying illustration shows a mother and a child in Bai ethnic attire to allow association for the reader with the minority group in question. For readers without previous knowledge of Bai ethnicity, arguably the very young schoolchildren for which this textbook is intended, the light touch on their costume and appellation is not informative enough to identify them as an ethnicity coexisting with the Han majority. Rather, the Bai in this case are presented as indicative of a generalised exotic “Other”. Presenting minorities alongside that of nature’s beauty in primary Chinese lan­ guage textbooks embellishes this idea of the ethnic minority as a tourist attraction to be admired in remote or mountainous regions outside of China’s developed urban areas. As Chu (2015: 469) argues, ethnic minority groups are under-represented in Chinese elementary textbooks and the knowledge about them is constructed from the perspective of the Han people, thus “the dominant ideology and unequal power relations are reflected and reinforced through the strategic construction, selection, and presentation of knowledge in textbooks”. This is a concern because while the well-being of the population as a whole has risen sharply, “inequalities have widened both as concerns the comparison between the [minority] nationality and Han areas, and within the nationality areas themselves” (Mackerras, 1998: 61). Normalisation of difference in Chinese society should be a foundation to the values instilled in young Chinese children through the education system today – a review of the 2019 Yu Wen, however, suggests such socialisation will necessarily be required from other forces in a child’s formative years. Young readers and orchestrating thinking Today, many urban children now have access to rich reading resources outside of the prescribed readings of the state’s classrooms. Extensive reading of works in different cultures and different historical backgrounds may play a role in diversi­ fying the orchestrated thinking of young readers that state textbooks seek to fer­ ment in China’s young. A certain portion of Chinese children may indeed grow

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 99 up facing contradictory views towards the cultural content they consume in their school textbooks. Yet this requires great investment and foresight on the part of Chinese parents to provide this alternative reading practice and content. The reality is, while some parents may have this capacity, many in fact do not and do indeed, rely heavily on the state system to educate their children. The disadvantages of the textbook selections in patriotism, education, and civic duty cultivation for young readers have been pointed out in many studies (Xu and Li, 2020; Jin and Tian, 2016). Yet not all motivations behind patriotic education and senses of love for one’s nation are exclusively negative. The socialisation, however, of these sentiments does require independent critique and periodic evalu­ ation to ensure they do not create further confusions in a rapidly changing society, nor lead to radical views that distort realities. After all, China’s children are the ambassadors of China’s future, and will ultimately decide China’s identity as mem­ bers of both the Chinese nation and the international community. References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nation­ alism (Rev. ed.). London: Verso. China National Radio (CNR). (2018, December 23). 最优美的中国声音最标准的有声 教材 “中小学语文示范诵读库”第二季作品上线. “The most beautiful Chinese voice, the most standard audio textbooks” – the 2nd season of Chinese Demonstration Audio Library for Chinese textbooks in Primary and Secondary Schools is ready online [Trans­ lation]. Retrieved July 18, 2019, from http://edu.cnr.cn/eduzt/ywkwsfsd/sdyw/20181223/ t20181223_524458854.shtml Chu, Y. T. (2015). The power of knowledge: A critical analysis of the depiction of eth­ nic minorities in China’s elementary textbooks. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(4): 469–487. Dekker, H., Malová, D., & Hoogendoorn, S. (2003). Nationalism and its explanations. Polit­ ical Psychology, 24(2): 345–376. Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Goodman, D. S. G. (2014). Class in contemporary China. Cambridge: Polity Press. Huang, C. T. (2014). Turning a Chinese kid red: Kindergartens in the early People’s Repub­ lic. Journal of Contemporary China, 23(89): 841–863. Jin, Y. M., & Tian, Y. B. (2016). 社会主义核心价值观融入小学语文教学的路径探思 – 以教材中榜样人物为例. On the path of integrating socialist core values into primary school Chinese language teaching. Education Exploration, 2016(9): 117–119. Li, H. B. (2014). 唐朝北部疆域的变迁：兼论疆域问题的本质与属性 Change of the Tang Dynasty’s Northern Borderland: On the essence and nature of borderland territory. China’s Borderland History and Geography Studies, 2014(2): 63–76. Liu, Y. B. (2005). Discourse, cultural knowledge and ideology: A critical analysis of Chinese language textbooks. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(2): 233–264. Ma, A. H., & Zhang, J. X. (2020). 从平定薛延陀看唐太宗经略边疆的方式. On the Fron­ tier administration of emperor Taizong of Tang from pacifying Syr Tardush tribe. Tangdu Journal, 36(3): 30–35.

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Mackerras, C. (1998). The impact of economic reform on China’s minority nationalities. Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 3(1): 61–79. McDougall, B. S., & Mao, Z. D. (2020). Mao Zedong’s “talks at the Yan’an conference on literature and art”: A translation of the 1943 text with commentary. University of Michi­ gan Center for Chinese Studies. Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2002, April 30). The national experiment of new curriculum reform in compulsory education deployed by MOE will be extended to more than 500 counties, districts and cities. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_zllssj/moe_183/tnull_1921.html Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2018, October 20). Feedback from the national education supervision and inspection group on the balanced development of compulsory education in 13 counties (cities and districts) of Xinjiang Uygur Autono­ mous Region. Retrieved March 21, 2020, from www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/moe_2082/ zl_2018n/2018_zl85/201811/t20181112_354357.html Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2019a, May 14). Notice on the publication of the catalogue of textbooks for primary and secondary schools in 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A26/moe_714/201906/ t20190605_384649.html Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2019b, September 27). The Imple­ mentation of the nine-year compulsory education. Retrieved March 21, 2020, from www. moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_zt/moe_357/jyzt_2019n/2019_zt24/jyfzdsj/ggkf/201909/ t20190927_401413.html Mullaney, T. S. (2011). Coming to terms with the nation: Ethnic classification in modern China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. People’s Education Press. (1953). Chinese textbook of senior primary schools (for 5th grade). Nanchang: Jiangxi People’s Popular Press. People’s Education Press. (2019). Overview of textbooks: The eleventh set. Retrieved

November 12, 2019, from www.pep.com.cn/rjgl/jc/201311/t20131128_1174309.shtml

Price, D. (1992). Moral-political education and modernization. In R. Hayhoe (Ed.), Educa­ tion and Modernization: The Chinese experience. Oxford: Pergamon. Schein, L. (2000). Minority rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s cultural politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Woods, J., & Dickson, B. (2017). Victims and patriots: Disaggregating nationalism in urban China. Journal of Contemporary China, 26(104): 167–182. Xi, J. P. (2017, June 2). Excerpts on Xi Jinping’s exposition on “ecological civilization” since the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC. Retrieved November 22, 2019, from http://news.gscn.com.cn/system/2017/06/02/011718087.shtml Xu, J., & Li, Y. H. (2020). 小学语文统编教材爱国主义教育的呈现与优化路径. The presentation and optimization of patriotic education in primary school Chinese language textbooks. Language Planning, 2020(2): 50–53, 58. National integration and national Xu, M. (2007). harmony in Zhenguan period of Tang Dynasty. 中央社会主义学院学报 Journal of the Central Institute of Socialism, 2007(5): 44–47. Yuan, R. G. (2002, June 3). Speech by Yuan Guiren, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Educa­ tion and director of the State Language Commission at the national school language work report and exchange meeting. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from www.moe.gov.cn/s78/ A18/yys_left/moe_801/s3130/201001/t20100127_78587.html Zhao, C. S., & Cui, Y. W. (2014). 当前中国社会问题的政策生成及其反思 The policy generation of current social problems in China and a reflection. 上海行政学院学报 The Journal of Shanghai Administration Institute, 15(5): 49–57.

Patriotism in primary school Chinese language textbooks 101 Zhao, S. (1998). A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 3(3): 287–302. Textbooks Wen, R. (2019a). Chinese language textbook for the compulsory education: 4A. Beijing: People’s Education Press. Wen, R. (2019b). Chinese language textbook for the compulsory education: 5A. Beijing: People’s Education Press. Wen, R. (2019c). Chinese language textbook for the compulsory education: 6A. Beijing: People’s Education Press.

8

Orchestrating opinions A case study of mainland Chinese responses to Hong Kong’s mass protests Magdalena Wong

Introduction In 2014, protests in Hong Kong broke out in demanding universal suffrage for the election of the Hong Kong Chief Executive. The 79-day sit-in was known as ‘Occupy Central’. At the time, I was undertaking research in a Sichuan city called Nanchong, this gave me the opportunity to witness in situ how ordinary people in China understand the notion of democracy and react to Hong Kong’s mass protests. Three major themes showed themselves through this study: the pervasive rhetoric of democracy with Chinese characteristics, an insight into the state orchestration of public opinion through media control, and the peculiarities of how national­ ism is expressed in China. These are not new topics; indeed, these are topics that have been researched by many scholars and extensively reported in popular media. Rather, what my study offers is an insight into how from the ground up national­ ist sentiments interact with personal interests and broader social contexts to shape responses to democratic movements in China. And most importantly, the role that people-to-people exchanges play in reinforcing these ideas through conversational discourse and efforts to persuade one another to their way of thinking – or even the lack of conversation if people believe their ideas run contrary to the mainstream. Considering the heavy-handed control exercised by the central government, it will come as no surprise that the most vocal and publicly expressed opinions were found to be somewhat aligned with the Party’s. The quieter and less socially acceptable opinions were mentioned in one-on-one conversations and whispered in private conversations. While indeed the official line does influence greatly how people think about the Hong Kong protests, the role of peer reinforcement of these ideas also plays a major role in ensuring the state’s message is broadly accepted. Peer­ to-peer dissemination of ideas spread through family ties, friendships, communitybased networks, all of which I embedded myself in during my fieldwork. It is not the intention of this chapter to provide a political analysis of the devel­ opment of democracy or nationalism in China. Nor is the chapter an attempt to expound in any detail the forms of democracy and nationalism that have emerged. It is rather an anthropological study, registering from inside a Chinese community how people reacted to the democratic protests occurring in Hong Kong, their sister city. The findings reveal how orchestrated thinking has resulted in many people DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-8

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tuning into the thematic transcript of ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ that has developed in China. Alternative strands of thought are sidelined and sup­ pressed, but contradictions to the mainstream were found in the field. Since the results of this case study draws from ethnographic fieldwork I carried out in Nan­ chong (Wong, 2020), the accounts I give here can be described as a by-product gleaned from the field. The incidental nature of the information obtained made it highly productive because the responses arose spontaneously during natural daily encounters. 2014 Occupy Central in Hong Kong Occupy Central, also known as the Umbrella Movement, refers to a series of acts of civil disobedience and pro-democracy protests that culminated in clashes between the police and protesters in Hong Kong. As early as March 2013, a trio comprised of two professors and a Baptist minister announced a manifesto called ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace’. They advocated mass sit-ins in the Central District, which is the main business area in the city, unless genuine universal suffrage was granted by the government. Around that time, debates were ongoing to set rules for the election of the Hong Kong Chief Executive in 2017. Universal suffrage is agreed in the Basic Law of Hong Kong even though there is no exact timeline. On 10 June 2014, the State Council of PRC issued a White Paper which specified that the high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong was not full autonomy and should be under the comprehensive jurisdiction of the central government. The White Paper also indicated there would be new rules for the nomination of Chief Executive can­ didates – details of which were announced in August and considered ‘fake democ­ racy’ by protesters. Half a million people joined an annual rally on 1 July 2014, the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong back to China in 1997. On 26 Septem­ ber, student activists clashed with the police at the government headquarters. Two days later, the police fired tear gas and protesters used yellow umbrellas to defend themselves. Tens of thousands set up camps in Hong Kong’s three main districts and blocked the roads for an occupation that ended on 15 December 2014. The Umbrella Movement was widely reported around the world and was the subject of many academic studies (Cheng, 2016; Veg, 2017; Chan and Lee, 2018; Lee and Sing, 2019). However, reports of responses from people inside mainland China were very limited. A collection of these reports can be found in Lim and Ping (2015), Zhao (2017), Zhu (2017), Kou et al. (2017), Luo and Zhai (2017), Ho (2019), and the New York Times (NY Times, 2014). The following ethnographic account contributes a first-hand observation of how people in Nanchong responded to the protests. Responses inside Nanchong For almost the whole of 2014, I was living in Nanchong. People in Nanchong started to ask me about the Occupy Central in July that year. From September onwards, related news appeared on all kinds of media in China. The protest

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movements were condemned from all angles. They were seen as breaking the rule of law in Hong Kong, undermining the stability of the city, poisoning the minds of young people, challenging the sovereign rule of the central government, and making attempts to secede from China. Social media circulated blogs and posts that accused Hong Kong people of being ungrateful, unfaithful, and unpat­ riotic towards the mother country and their Chinese comrades. Hong Kong was portrayed as a senseless child who had been snatched from his parents and later returned, but his heart remained with his abductor even though his parents had graciously offered him all kinds of goodies. Examples of those privileges were the central government’s assistance in rescuing the city’s economy during the financial crisis; the concession that allowed the SAR government to retain its sur­ plus and not pay tax to the central government; the fact that Hong Kong residents were granted permits to travel freely to the mainland, but mainland residents were not allowed to travel freely to Hong Kong; that the Guangdong Province had been generously supplying water to Hong Kong. Many of these viewpoints and arguments reverberated among people in Nanchong. On 28 July 2014, I attended a post-funeral lunch for an old man who was the deceased father of a close interlocutor during my research, called Chen. Around the table, there were about a dozen close relatives as well as myself. Shortly after we started eating and Chen had introduced me as somebody coming from Hong Kong, the most senior member in the group, who was Chen’s uncle, looked at me and openly said, ‘You are from Hong Kong? You Hong Kong people are causing quite serious chaos these days’. I immediately got what Uncle Chen meant. A younger man in the group followed up by asking what had motivated people to stage the demonstrations. I explained the background in a way I considered politically neu­ tral, concluding that, in a nutshell, people were fighting for a fair and democratic system to elect our Chief Executive. Uncle Chen challenged that in an authorita­ tive, but still friendly, voice: So many things are unfair, what is fair and just? Peace and prosperity are the most important. What’s happening in Hong Kong is like the rioting in Xinji­ ang. We won’t allow Hong Kong to separate from China. For about 20 minutes, four or five people in the group lashed out with their collec­ tive nationalist impulses in ways that were variously accusative, cynical, or sym­ pathetic. They put it in a matter-of-fact manner that the conflicts must be instigated by politicians in America, Britain, and anti-Chinese people in Hong Kong. When I said that I thought the protests were largely initiated and supported by Hong Kong people themselves rather than foreign parties, and that the protesters were not nec­ essarily anti-China, the group showed a mix of disbelief and curiosity. It was hard for them to make out what Hong Kong people were fighting for now that colonial rule was over and they had rejoined a strong and powerful motherland. They heard what I said about pre-screening of candidates running for the election, but coun­ tered that if everyone could cast their vote after a safety check on the candidates,

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was it not a liberal democratic election working for the benefit of the people? How could one say that freedom in Hong Kong was curbed if people were allowed to stage mass rallies and bully their leaders? Democracy with Chinese characteristics

In Nanchong, I heard or read on a daily basis, comments with consistent and coher­ ent themes that reflected the logic of so-called democracy with Chinese charac­ teristics. Special circumstances, I was told, in Hong Kong (and China) require a different kind of democracy. Western democracy has not made their countries any better than China, why then should doctrines such as multi-party rule and free elections be lauded? People liked to point to Singapore as a model of success for implementing a democratic and yet authoritarian system. Hong Kong was never democratic under colonial rule – people were not allowed to select their own gov­ ernors in the past, why would they now demand so much power over the selection of the Chief Executive? Foreign powers, especially America, were seen as being behind the chaos with the aim of causing trouble and aborting the rise of China. Grand nationalist narratives that touched on the humiliating past and current West­ ern attempts to contain China were common, as this lawyer in her 50s revealed in her thinking to me one day: Western powers want chaos in China. They are afraid we may take revenge. Americans may have democracy in their own country, but they are bar­ baric towards others. They are the Number One but can’t tolerate us being Number Two. The view that dominated most discussions was that the last thing Chinese peo­ ple and the central government wanted was political and social turmoil. National unity was holy and secession was criminal. The nation was often compared to a big family that has to be kept intact. The rhetoric of dependence on the country’s leaders is strong. Leaders, for many Chinese, are like parents who can, and have duties to, protect family members. An interlocutor described the country as a big wok that contained small woks, meaning its people. Small woks were safe under the shelter of the big wok. It is similar to a comment made by a netizen in Luo and Zhai’s (2017: 166) report: ‘How can a tree survive without the root?’, implying that the Chinese had grown up in the environment of a political tradition that is struc­ tured around an orderly hierarchy and subservience to authority. Defiance of the Party leadership is considered unrealistic, unacceptable, and unfilial. Even though the country is facing many problems, such as corruption and inequality, people are thankful and proud of the developments that have been brought to fruition and put in place since the Reform Era in the late 1970s. When the country prospers, not every countryman can enjoy an equal share of prosperity, but individual sacrifices have to be made for the common good and people have to stay patient and loyal. Harmony has to be maintained, at least on the surface. As spelt out by Nader (1997: 715),

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the ideology of harmony can work as a coercive, hegemonic, controlling tool that produces order of a repressive sort. Interestingly, many in Nanchong, young and old, expressed their respect and affection for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), an admirable disciplined force that guarded the country and well-being of people. The Army did not only fight for the countrymen but was also often mobilised to serve them in difficult times. The Party-state garnered acclaims that it handled crises and natural disasters with deter­ mination, prowess, and perseverance. People thought that foreign governments were made less effective because of divided voices in their countries. As a gym instructor (male, 30s) shared in passing his thoughts on the incident of the missing flight, MH17, in July 2014: During crises, you see the benefits of living in a strong nation. Which other country can mobilise so many soldiers when an earthquake happens? Which other country can mobilise its embassies and airlines and repatriate its people so promptly in the case of crisis overseas?’ While in other conversations a similar theme was heard: China has developed miraculously in the last 30 years; it would not have happened had it not been ruled by one single party which can put things right immediately. . . . In China, if the government says “build it!”, something can be built overnight. (University student, male, early 20s) The main thing in China that is not so good is that it is ruled by one single party. But that has merits. . . . Look at India, it is so poor because the govern­ ment is not strong and not effective. They could never get their development projects started. (Tailor, male, 40s) National sovereignty and unity, as in an integral family, are considered of prime importance. Many of my informants said explicitly that the government could not afford to soften its reaction to the quest for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong because that would set an example for people in Tibet and Xinjiang. Hong Kong was also clearly thought of as a model city to encourage the peaceful reunification of Taiwan. Military suppression was seen as legitimate when the country’s unity and order were challenged. Communist or one-party rule, though undemocratic, was endorsed when it was needed for collective well-being. It was not bad that the students’ movement (4 June 1989) failed. The students asked for democracy and the downfall of Communist China. Had the country submitted to their wishes, it could have caused huge problems. China could have become another North Korea or Vietnam. (Restaurant operator, male, 40s)

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Look at the USSR. They were so strong in the past. Now that they are broken up, if a World War Three broke out tomorrow, Russia might not win. Simi­ larly, if China was broken into pieces and, for instance, Guangdong Province became independent, it would be of no significance to the world and could be bullied by other countries. But as part of one big country, nobody can bully Guangdong! (Tailor, male, 40s) The aforementioned opinions shared makes it clear that, to no small extent, popular narratives about the Hong Kong protests, and the content that was allowed to stay on social media, echoed the official discourse. Online discourse flourished into everyday conversation points, arguably a conscious decision to allow certain ideas to proliferate within the community. Even though peo­ ple were aware of censorship in China, they liked to think that they were in the know and were not missing information of consequence. An interlocutor thought that since he read every issue of Cankaoxiaoxi (a leading newspaper that is known to provide depth analysis), he would not have misread the protests in Hong Kong. The role of news reporting about the protests is worth mentioning at this point. Ho (2019) compared the linguistic and discursive features of news reports in two leading English newspapers: the national China Daily, and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP). The study revealed drastically different reporting angles. For example, SCMP depicted students to be determined and uncontrol­ lable, whereas in China Daily, they were ignorant and easily controlled by foreign powers. Both publications saw the police as efficient, but they appeared to be effi­ cient and violent in SCMP reporting, and by contrast efficient and dutiful in China Daily. Zhu (2017) did a quantitative survey among mainland Chinese residents, NGO activists and rights advocacy lawyers, and Chinese living overseas. Statisti­ cal results showed that the more the individuals relied only on official news and Chinese media for information, the less sympathetic and more negative they were to the civil disobedience acts in Hong Kong. This reinforced the hypothesis that public opinions in China are constructed with heavy guidance from the state media. The research also revealed that mainlanders gave a higher value to the rule of law and economic development than to democracy. In another study, Zhao (2017) cap­ tured deleted posts on social media by using a microblog data collection tool called Weiboscope. A total of 1,195 posts were found to be deleted during Occupy Cen­ tral, 34% of them were deleted within 1 hour after appearing on Weibo, 50% within 80 minutes. It was reported that on 28 September 2014, the following instruction went out from the censorship authorities in Beijing: ‘All websites must immedi­ ately clear away information about Hong Kong students violently assaulting the government and about “Occupy Central”. Promptly report any issues’ (Ringen, 2016: 107). During this time, I personally tried to send out messages on WeChat about the protests but always failed. A woman who was a close interlocutor would not believe me until I showed her what I had posted on WeChat, but could not be found in her friends’ circle. My ‘deleted’ posts contained only a few pictures of the

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road blocks in the Admiralty district where the demonstrators last stayed. Clearly, what remained in the media was highly filtered, in line with the instructions of the censorship authorities in Beijing, providing mainlanders with a biased version of the protests. The woman’s response reminded me of a saying that birds that are kept in a cage will never be able to appreciate freedom outside. I could feel that many people in Nanchong genuinely welcomed Hong Kong rejoining the big family. Many told me how excited they were on the day of Hong Kong’s return in 1997; they joined crowds celebrating the event at the landmark Five Star Square in the city centre. They shared a great national pride and thought that the same jubilation was felt across the border. National pride was, therefore, especially hurt when, on a few occasions during the Occupy Central campaign, people were seen waving the British (colonial) flags. This was considered a dis­ grace and humiliation, as well as a betrayal of Chinese people. The desire for stability and unity is not only driven by patriotism. Another sen­ timent, more latent, but perhaps equally compelling, is a desire to stay in a new­ found comfort zone, and this comes together with intolerance of new chaos. In Chinese language, this mentality is called shang buqi. People would explain that China cannot afford to go through another period of turmoil and the country and its people cannot afford to be hurt and suffer again. After China’s centuries-long polit­ ical crisis, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been able to lead the country from poverty to prosperity in the last 30 years. As many interlocutors told me, they want no more big changes. Peace and prosperity were gained with enormous diffi­ culties and sacrifice. People are not willing to tolerate uncertainties and turbulence that would obstruct future growth. The shang buqi attitude is especially strong among the middle-aged who have suffered political turbulence and poverty since they were young. Some comments capturing this line of thinking were as follows: I am getting a good pension now. That won’t be possible if China and its people are not strong. I can’t imagine going back to the old days, like when Mao sent us to the mountains and villages. I can’t afford to live in wartime again and lose my hard-earned pension. (Semi-retiree, female, 50s) We certainly don’t want to have to fight to keep Hong Kong. . . . [T]he main point is, after centuries of war and poverty, the country and we ordinary folk can’t afford to be hurt and suffer again. (Restaurant owner, male, 40s) Rather than stemming from an altruistic motive of love for the country, or a nationalistic aspiration to buy time to flex military muscles, these views represent people’s hope to maintain security in their personal lives. It is far from being the patriotic conviction that might say, ‘China is the best country in the world’, or that, ‘I support my country whether its policies are right or wrong’. These are attitudi­ nal statements that are commonly used to measure how nationalistic people are in quantitative surveys (Gries et al., 2011; Sinkkonen, 2013; Tang and Darr, 2014;

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Johnston, 2017; Weiss, 2019). A high score of collective nationalism or patriotic (aiguo) mentality may be found from these studies, but, deep inside, individual interests override. Many would love to emigrate from China if they could. Two women jokingly told me that people in countries such as Canada and Australia must be irritated by the large number of Chinese immigrants to their countries, whereas China was able to attract only ‘black’ migrants from Africa. People admired the West for various reasons such as the open and free social atmosphere, the civic behaviour of their citizens, respect for human rights, generous social wel­ fare, creativity, and technological advances. Quite a few expressed the view with little hesitations that Western political systems were more mature and desirable than the system in China, while other informants went further to say that democ­ racy was a universal value and the route to modernisation. It would only be a matter of time before China took up the democratic practices of the West. Nevertheless, they doubted if China was ready for it. As put by an informant: Democracy will come. When it comes, even if you want to shut it down, you can’t. But I hope it will not come in my lifetime. I hope resistance move­ ments will only arise sometime in the future, when people are ready for them. (Lawyer, female, 50s) Many shared the perspective that one had to accept the current system and its omnipotent leader, rather than live with the unpredictable results of democratic elections. New Left

Only a small minority of the people I encountered in Nanchong who discussed politi­ cal matters appeared to belong to what Li (2014) would categorise as ‘New Leftists’, that is conservatives who consider Western-style political democracy a failure and advocate state guidance combining the teachings of Confucianism, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping. The so-called New Leftists typically argue that China’s priority should be the development of a strong state, with better and more stable livelihoods for her people, rather than the establishment of political democracy. All of the argu­ ably New Leftists I encountered in my fieldwork expressed aggressive nationalistic sentiments. They denied the value of Western democracy and embraced commu­ nism as a supreme ideology. They considered that whatever control the Party exer­ cised was working for the benefit of the country and the people. A middle-aged businessman asked me how many people had died in the Umbrella Movement, I said none so far. He immediately waved his hand and said the disturbance must have been mild because if it had been serious both the Hong Kong and Beijing governments would have been less tolerant. In his opinion, Hong Kong people should be grateful for their benevolent leaders. In a condescending tone, he said, ‘China is too big, Chinese have to be governed (guan)!’ He went on trying to persuade me that stability would soon be restored and that Hong Kong would prosper if people just obeyed the government.

110 Magdalena Wong A newsstand owner in his 50s who was my close informant often said that Hong Kong people were spoiled and chauvinistic towards mainlanders, thinking that their system was better than the mainland’s. Now that the city was returned to Chinese sovereignty, people had to play by the new rules. He joked that if China were to introduce universal suffrage, society would be in a mess and many people would ‘sell’ their votes to make money. Electoral democracy was impossible and unnecessary in China because the country was well-governed. It was too bad that Hong Kong people refused an election package that was already very generous: Let there be chaos! When enough is enough, you people will know how much damage is done. . . . The Central government can send tanks to Hong Kong and remove the troublemakers when even your own people lose patience! The most devout Leftist I met, however, was a woman in her late 20s who worked for the local government and was a Party member. Let me call her Mei. We met at least once a week because we attended a Latin dance class together. She lived in my neighbourhood, and her mother and I went to the same church. Mei prompted me several times to talk about the chaos in Hong Kong, each time ending with some unpleasant feelings on both sides. First expressing her indignation or disrespect with ‘Wo peipeipei!’ a sound that mimics spitting, she said: We can cut all supplies to Hong Kong and you will realize how you have managed to survive so well for so many years! . . . I believe in the Com­ munist Party! It makes us rich and strong. . . . I hate people saying Chinese people have no religion. Communism is our religion! When I challenged that Chinese people actually admired Western culture, she argued: Yes, but Chinese are very inclusive and tolerant, we don’t force our ideas on other people, like the Americans, who want the whole world to follow them. One evening Mei and I shopped together in a hypermarket after a dance class. While we were queuing for payment, Mei spoke of her recent trip to Europe. She said France and Italy had disappointed her because so many places were old and low-tech, and the people were too laid back. In her view, development in Europe was definitely behind China. China had persisted in creating a new and successful path for itself in the world. At that moment, a man in front of us who was just leaving the cash counter turned his head to Mei and said in a serious tone, ‘I have to tell you, Europe is much better than us!’ It is hard to know what else this man would say about China. Yet his drive to ensure that this position was imparted and expressed in such a public domain and between strangers is a clear indication of the diversity in opinions among Chinese on the topic − and the desire and confidence some Chinese have to have their say in public to defy the thinking of others.

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Disapproval of the regime

Disapproval of the communist leadership was present, but all expression of this was kept within private, trusted, circles. One of my most anti-government inform­ ants was a neighbour during my fieldwork. She was quite a well-off woman in her late 20s and worked in an NGO. In her opinion, people were generally less patriotic than they appeared. Many privately supported the protests in Hong Kong, but had nowhere to express their views except within their intimate fam­ ily circle, or with trusted friends. She once shared, ‘Hong Kong is the only, and maybe the last, territory in China daring to say something against the Party. You (Hong Kong) have to protect the opposition voice’. I heard a similar comment from a young woman in a chance encounter. Knowing that I was from Hong Kong, she quipped softly that Hong Kong people should be proud because they had sustained ‘the last pure ground of democracy on Chinese land’. People were generally cautious about discussing politically sensitive issues, so much so that my NGO neighbour’s anti-government stance had escaped my attention for some time despite the frequent visits we paid to each other and that I attended parties with many of her friends. In another encounter, a teacher (female, early 40s) told me that Obama, the then American President, was her son’s idol. The young teenage boy often told his mother how great the American nation was and how much China lagged in all areas. The mother would tease her son when Obama appeared on TV saying, ‘Here boy, your idol is speaking!’ The woman might, however, have played a role in her son’s admiration. We went to the same church in Nanchong City. She complained privately to me about what she saw as being inappropriate practices of the church administration. The church was a ‘three-self church’ (sanzi jiaohui). The ‘threeself’ refers to self-supporting, self-government, and self-propaganda. These are churches that officially submit themselves to the state’s rules, support, and govern­ ance, instead of to the Vatican or any other Christian authority. I recorded in my fieldwork notes that on 6 June 2014, in a weekly evening gathering I participated in at the church, the pastor spent the whole evening reminding the congregation of the rules we had to follow while practising our faith in China. My fellow churchgoer was adamant that she would not trust a government that disallowed freedom of belief and subverted religion to state control. She was curious to know more about the protests in Hong Kong, assuming that the news circulated inside China was far from reliable. A taxi driver, who drove me on a long trip from Chengdu City back to Nan­ chong, also opened up after we had chatted for a while. He was initially lukewarm about the protests in Hong Kong, saying that he did not know what was going on because information was restricted. However, the more we talked, the more he appeared to know a fair amount about the protests. In a sarcastic tone, he told me that demonstrations of that kind, if they took place on the mainland, would have been suppressed by the central government as soon as signs of unpatriotic senti­ ments came to the surface. Hong Kong people were therefore in a better place, in his view.

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Conclusion The reactions to the Umbrella Movement relayed earlier reveal a more complex nexus of individual aspirations and beliefs hidden under what appear to be col­ lective and unitary expressions of support for the state. The protests in Hong Kong provoked a high level of concern, but also some degree of sympathy among mainlanders. Although official narratives and public discourses influenced their opinions, people demonstrated that they are not just passive recipients who simply accede to what is promoted. People are active social agents who can create their own discourse despite an environment of increasingly controlled communication. Simple patriotism and the desire for unity are fraught with more intricate views and conflicting motivations. Many people believe that communism is inferior to demo­ cratic systems and that, as a result, China’s policies are not as good as they could be. But they also see their government as efficient in practical matters, particularly at times of crisis, and believe China is in a process of continual progress. People want democratic change but may reject it if they fear it might result in instability that upsets the current path of development, or the comfort of their personal condi­ tions. Crises that threaten order and the nation’s integrity can lead to exaggerated displays of collective patriotism. These do not stem simply from filial and patriotic instincts, but come out of a real fear of going back to personal hardships that are a living memory for millions in China. People may be unanimously against the violent protests in Hong Kong, but this does not necessarily mean they disagree with the aims and values of the protestors, that democracy and free elections are noble goals. Witnessing mainlanders’ reactions to the protests, I found a variety of attitudes that contained elements of Leftist, Liberalist, and the so-called ‘Democracy with Chinese characteristics’ views. The hyper-patriotic and anti-democratic views of several of my informants come from a Leftist perspective. My NGO neighbour and fellow church member both are more aligned with the liberalist school. Others’ attitudes displayed support for democracy with Chinese characteristics. The study is not quantitative, so I cannot measure the extent of the representation of each school of thought. It was clear to me, however, that more of my interlocutors felt that Hong Kong should follow in China’s footsteps and forge a democratic system with Chinese characteristics, rather than a Western kind of democracy. This was the message that the Hong Kong government, and effectively the central government, had promoted when they offered the election package in August 2014. It is highly doubtful that Hong Kong people, with their particular historical and cultural back­ grounds, will accept democracy with Chinese characteristics. It also remains to be seen how growing discord and tension between mainlanders and Hongkongers on a grassroots level will evolve. Hong Kong citizens continue to read nationalist comments in Chinese media opposing Hong Kong’s democratic values. Chinese mainland residents, on the other hand, are only exposed to a onesided, orchestrated view of what is happening in Hong Kong through the state media (see Chapter 3 for more on the influence of the state media). This does not mean that state censorship is the only factor that leads to mistrust and conflict

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between people from the two places. Anti-Chinese sentiments in Hong Kong are due to many factors, some ill-founded, which I do not cover in this chapter. There are also multiple reasons for mainlanders’ ultra-nationalistic stance towards Hong Kong. What is clear is that people need to know more than only one-sided official news to judge the acts of the opposite party, and have experiences of diverse opin­ ions rather than hiding their ideas and understandings to themselves. Successful transition in both mainland China and Hong Kong to a democratic system requires popular participation. Participation requires an open public space for people to share diverse ideas and viewpoints – without fear of retribution. Without that, Con­ servative and Leftist values will come to dominate. Those in the mainland who believe in liberal values will feel thwarted. For pro-democrats in Hong Kong, this will only give them more reason to resist Beijing’s rule. References Chan, J.M. & Lee, F.L.F. 2018, Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era, Oxford Uni­ versity Press, New York. Cheng, E.W. 2016, “Street Politics in a Hybrid Regime: The Diffusion of Political Activism in Post-colonial Hong Kong”, The China Quarterly, vol. 226, pp. 383–406. Gries, P.H., Zhang, Q., Crowson, H.M. & Cai, H. 2011, “Patriotism, Nationalism and Chi­ na’s US Policy: Structures and Consequences of Chinese National Identity”, The China Quarterly, vol. 205, no. 205, pp. 1–17. Ho, J. 2019, “ ‘Sensible Protesters Began Leaving the Protests”: A Comparative Study of Opposing Voices in the Hong Kong Political Movement”, Language and Communication, vol. 64, pp. 12–24. Johnston, A.I. 2017, “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising? Evidence from Beijing”, International Security, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 7–43. Kou, Y., Kow, Y., Gui, X. & Cheng, W. 2017, “One Social Movement, Two Social Media Sites: A Comparative Study of Public Discourses”, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 807–836. Lee, C.K. & Sing, M. 2019, Take Back Our Future: An Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Li, H. 2014, “Chinese Intellectual Discourse on Democracy”, Journal of Chinese Political Science, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 289–314. Lim, T.W. & Ping, X. 2015, Contextualizing Occupy Central in Contemporary Hong Kong, Imperial College Press, London. Luo, Q. & Zhai, X. 2017, “ ‘I Will Never Go to Hong Kong Again!” How the Secondary Crisis Communication of “Occupy Central” on Weibo Shifted to a Tourism Boycott”, Tourism Management, vol. 62, pp. 159–172. Nader, L. 1997, “Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power”, Cur­ rent Anthropology, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 711–738. NY Times, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/world/asia/in-beijing-young-chinese-see­ little-to-cheer-in-hong-kong-protests.html Ringen, S. 2016, The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century, Hong Kong Univer­ sity Press, Hong Kong. Sinkkonen, E. 2013, “Nationalism, Patriotism and Foreign Policy Attitudes among Chinese University Students”, The China Quarterly, vol. 216, pp. 1045–1063.

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Tang, W. & Darr, B. 2014, “Chinese Nationalism and Its Political and Social Origins” in Construction of Chinese Nationalism in the Early 21st Century, Routledge, London, pp. 1–16. Veg, S. 2017, “The Rise of “Localism” and Civic Identity in Post-handover Hong Kong: Questioning the Chinese Nation-state”, The China Quarterly, vol. 230, pp. 323–347. Weiss, J.C. 2019, “How Hawkish Is the Chinese Public? Another Look at ‘Rising Nation­ alism’ and Chinese Foreign Policy”, Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 28, no. 119, pp. 679–695. Wong, M. 2020, Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of AbleResponsible Men, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Zhao, J. 2017, “Hong Kong Protests: A Quantitative and Bottom-up Account of Resistance against Chinese Social Media (Sina Weibo) censorship”, MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, vol. 33, no. 62. Zhu, H. 2017, “A Divided Society” in Law and Politics of the Taiwan Sunflower and Hong Kong Umbrella Movements, 1st edn, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, pp. 161–188.

9

The discursive battle over public participation in China Ceren Ergenc

Introduction Political language is an important discursive tool for public policymaking and legitimation in contemporary China. The discursive framing of new policy orien­ tations and linguistic symbolism employed in official announcements are closely followed to decipher the decision-making processes. While linguistic symbolism and discursive framing of political language often have significant explanatory power, the scientific analysis of political language in China tends to focus only on the state-sanctioned political content production. Political language and notions of political representation, however, also articulate the parameters within which Chi­ nese citizens understand their legal and political agency in contemporary China. A common assumption is that because China does not have elections, political agency and public consultation also do not exist. At the local level, however, partic­ ipatory mechanisms allow select members of the public to come and ask questions, voice their opinions, and more generally, advocate for their rights and interests in policy- and law-making processes. Therefore, the public deliberative and consul­ tative processes that do take place provide an opportunity for different segments of the society to engage in a form of political representation. In some cases, this provides the public with a political voice. In others, however, the participatory mechanisms rather turn into orchestrated performances of political consultation and participation overseen by leaders. This chapter analyses the production and contestation of the legitimising dis­ courses of these participatory mechanisms by both state and societal actors. The case study presented in this chapter analyses deliberative and consultative mecha­ nisms, including public hearings, town hall meetings, and expert meetings at the city level. The findings in this chapter draw from interviews with the organisers and participants of participatory events in Hangzhou and Wuhan in 2014 and Suzhou and Changsha in 2019. The analysis demonstrates the differences between the framing of the participatory experience by the central and local state, on the one hand, and the participants and the local and national media on the other hand. The first section highlights the diverse discursive sources of political legitimacy in China. The subsequent section then provides examples of discursive construc­ tions used by officials and participants in different localities and times. The case DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-9

116 Ceren Ergenc study cities reflect one developed city in coastal China and one developing city in central China. The empirical data derive from interviews and official and media documents in Hangzhou and Wuhan in 2014 and Suzhou and Changsha in 2019. These years correspond to two different periods of the Xi Jinping leadership. In Xi’s first term (fieldwork of 2014), the participatory mechanisms that peaked in the Hu Jintao era continued to function in a consistent manner. In Xi’s second term (fieldwork of 2019), however, there was a decline in the number of delib­ erative meetings held, and a gradual replacement of consultative meetings with “expert” meetings. Accordingly, the second term witnessed systemic limitations to political representation structures. In conclusion, this chapter argues that the central state, local governments, grassroots organisations, and individuals all con­ stantly re-negotiate their positions in participatory policy processes amidst political contestation. Accordingly, the discursive frames used for legitimation of political agendas change. The intellectual sources of regime legitimacy in the post-Mao era China has undergone a capitalist transformation since the early 1980s, albeit not officially named and never without state control. There was an expectation that injustice and inequality, as well as the opportunities brought about by such a trans­ formation, would erode China’s Party-state regime. However, the generations that have grown up since the capitalist transformation of the 1980s, regardless of their class, are doing better economically than their parents. This situation creates a legitimacy that makes social inequalities relatively insignificant to the present day. On the other hand, with the corruption of the same period and the neoliberal trans­ formation since the 1990s, the gap between rich and poor has widened. Today, Chinese society contains social classes and segments whose needs and demands contradict each other. In the 1980s, the social contradictions were between rural and urban, and between party members and non-party members. The 1990s witnessed the emergence of new layers in social relations. For example, with the diversification of life opportunities, the younger generations growing up in big cities no longer aspire to Party membership with the aim of accessing privileges, as had been the case in the past. Similarly, financial urbanisation partially reversed the inequality of opportunities for rural and urban populations. The social contradic­ tions of the 1990s were between the urban poor and migrant workers, on the one hand, and the new middle classes on the other hand. Since the 2000s, due to pre­ carious employment, white-collar unemployment, and financial urbanisation, there were changes in class formation in urban China. For instance, the younger genera­ tions of the urban white-collar middle class witnessed a drop in their life quality due to the precariousness of employment. On the other end of the spectrum, the second-generation urban migrants also witnessed the emergence of the so-called real estate rich while their social mobility remained constrained. In such a multilayered and dynamic social structure, the sources of legitimacy of the state have also changed over time. Under Mao, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was the “vanguard of the proletariat”, so the legitimacy of the regime came

The discursive battle over public participation in China 117 from its representational claim. In the early years of the post-Mao era, there was a rapid shift from representation to executive competence and performance legiti­ macy. Without notable ideological consistency, rapid economic growth, develop­ ment, and welfare for the masses were ensured quickly through trial-and-error policies. Although there were movements that demanded political rights during this period, such as the Wall of Democracy and Tiananmen protests of 1989, there was still the traditional expectation that powerful leaders would be benevolent (Perry, 2008). This mentality paved the way for the concept of “consultative rule of law” developed by Pan Wei in the 2000s as a means of gaining political legitimacy without democratisation (Schubert, 2005). According to this conceptualisation of state–society relations, rule by benevolent leaders under the supervision of edu­ cated elites would be preferable to direct representation of citizens. When it became evident that equality and transparency could only be realised by popular demand, during the second half of the 1990s, there was a shift from execu­ tive competence to legislative representation as the source of state legitimacy. The role of the “Rights Consciousness Movement” initiated by journalists in the early 2000s, and whose strength is still felt today with the support of volunteer law­ yers and public intellectuals, the public was made aware of the rights of workers and women, as well as environmental and food safety issues. Ordinary citizens also gained access to legal aid in the process, thanks to public advocacy activ­ ists and non-profit organisations involved in the movement (Ergenc, 2020). In a society where people’s needs and demands drastically differed in the absence of a planned economy and state-enforced equalising ideology, citizens understand­ ably so required a voice amidst the law- and policymaking and implementation processes (Lewis and Xue, 2003). Over time, even liberal thinkers like Yu Keping advocated for “good governance” as a form of democratisation for China without regime change (Wang and Guo, 2015). Action and representation in China, there­ fore, became sources of state legitimacy shaping the development of local govern­ ments and deliberative democracy. The intellectual and political roots of participatory governance in post-Mao China The notion of “participatory governance” became popular in China’s policy circles towards the end of the 1990s. The governance crisis of local governments in the aftermath of fiscal recentralisation in the mid-1990s led decision-makers to search for an alternative source of legitimacy. Public policy and legal scholars, who had been following the global trend towards deliberative democracy at the grassroots level, provided the answer. The CCP Politburo and central decision-makers are often seen as the main actors in China’s economic and political transformation. However, the socio­ economic differences throughout the Chinese geography give local governments an important role in (i) the implementation of the policies coming from the centre, (ii) the early recognition of local problems, and (iii) formulating new policies that, if successful, can be applied countrywide.

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Two milestones explain the importance of local governments in China’s Reform Era. First, in the 1980s, in order to accelerate economic growth, Deng Xiaoping encouraged local governments to find foreign investment no matter how or from where. Tax revenues were left entirely to local governments, and the privatisation processes of municipal-level state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and tenders initiated by local governments were not supervised by the central government. This sudden enrichment of local governments attracted both domestic and foreign investors, as well as migrant workers to cities. With the local development experiments pro­ moted by the central government in cities such as Wenzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, the national growth rate reached two-digit numbers and the rate of urbanisation also rapidly increased (Mulvad, 2015). In the 1990s, due to the uncertainty brought on by corruption of the local gov­ ernments, foreign capital investment decreased. Moreover, local governments focused only on attracting investment and the under-delivered social services such as public health and education saw deterioration in service quality. Local govern­ ments also inadequately addressed conflict in real estate ownership born out of an ambiguous legal framework. Observing these growing problems, the central gov­ ernment decided to revise the reform programme of decentralisation and revoked the powers it had given to local governments. The central government tightened the cadre promotion criteria to supervise local governments. The annual evaluation reports included not only financial growth rate and capital inflows and outflows but also whether the local officials success­ fully combated poverty, unemployment, healthcare challenges, and public protests in their localities. In other words, public satisfaction and representation and not only policy implementation became measures of success for local government (Mei and Wang, 2017). Fear of their superiors was not the only reason local governments decided to engage all classes in policymaking consultation. The participatory local govern­ ment model also became a shield against the business actors to whom local govern­ ments outsourced utilities services. When utilities were charged at market prices, for example, it angered the public who were used to state-subsidised prices. This was especially so in light of urban poverty reaching alarming levels in parallel. Local governments accordingly used public deliberative meetings to let stakehold­ ers collectively and transparently discuss the matter (Ergenc, 2014). As local governments faced a legitimacy crisis in the eyes of higher levels of government and non-state actors in their localities, two theoretical frameworks dominated the scholarly field of Chinese public administration from the 1990s onwards. First, was the “new public management” framework that focused on the concept of governance, that is, private sector participation in the delivery of public services. The new public management framework envisaged stakeholder participa­ tion in local governments. Community groups that benefitted from public services were granted access to decision-making and policy implementation processes at different rates, and therefore, responsibility in public services became thought of as shared (Li et al., 2019).

The discursive battle over public participation in China 119 The second was the “deliberative democracy” framework developed with a non-class-centred social space in mind. Chinese intellectuals argued that the con­ cept of deliberative democracy, in which state and non-state actors would be in a continuous state of communication and reciprocal transformation, was compatible with China (He, 2006). By inviting deliberative theorists of democracy such as John Dryzek and Jane Mansfield to deliver seminars in elite universities of China, reform-minded scholars recommended to state officials the mechanisms they thought could be applied to China. After 1998, public participation in local governments in China began with topdown policies imposed by the central government and local experimentations in developed cities (Duckett and Wang, 2013). For example, the Hangzhou city gov­ ernment developed a policy called “Open Public Administration” in 2009, follow­ ing the participatory policies it had been experimenting with since 1999. Similarly, in 1997, reform-minded constitutionalist legal scholars, taking advantage of the conditions set by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for China to be a full mem­ ber, encouraged the local branches of the National Congress of the People to hold consultation meetings in order to strengthen the legislative vis-à-vis the executive (Ergenc, 2014). These meetings were one of the most prominent developments of the 2000s in which many participatory decision-making experiments were introduced because of the relatively relaxed political atmosphere during the Hu Jintao era. Among these participatory experiments, the most discussed in scholarly litera­ ture to date are the “participatory budget meetings” in which towns and villages decided together the local government budget allocations (He and Warren, 2011). Towards the 2010s, seeing that deliberative democracy and participatory local governance were supported by the public and not opposed by the central govern­ ment, reform-minded scholars advocated for further experimentation with partic­ ipatory mechanisms, including elections for local council membership and direct representation of social groups in cases of dispute resolution by local council representatives. With Xi Jinping’s ascension to power in 2012, however, the attempts to make local governance more participatory gradually faded and a state orchestrated effort to shift understandings of the role of participatory local governance towards “policy success” once more occurred. This was most explicitly noticeable in the top-down emphasis on “expert input” in the consultative processes that gradually replaced social classes and group representation at the local level. Expert opinion is not neutral, and who participates in expert meetings still matters for interest representation and rights advocacy. Since expert partisanship is hidden behind the discourse of scientific neutrality, the struggle for rights, demands, and negotiations have thus in recent times moved behind closed doors, rather than being open to the public through mechanisms such as stakeholder meetings (tingzhenghui). The next section will outline how the state discourses on the assumed neutrality of the “science-based” policy process disempowered citizens and hindered political inclusion in urban China.

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State and societal discourses in deliberative and participatory policymaking processes In the early 2000s, the Chinese government initiated local-level deliberative prac­ tices such as public hearings. While the relevant central state agencies initiated public hearing systems in order to elicit public opinion on administrative and leg­ islative decisions at the local level, soon after, local governments re-appropriated the term “public hearing” for use on almost every occasion they wanted to refer to formal mechanisms of representation and political participation. These meet­ ings do not have decision-making powers from a legal and administrative point of view (Ergenc, 2014) and even though these meetings are deliberative by design, the deliberative process is not long and nuanced enough to allow all interested parties to agree upon a collective decision (Xu, 2017). Hence, this was a useful discursive tactic to instil the thinking in broader society that the public was con­ sulted on matters of governance. Netizens and opinion leaders also used the term “public hearings” to refer to all deliberative mechanisms. Yet the state and societal ways of thinking about the participatory policymaking processes have changed and diverged noticeably from 2014 to 2019. While state actors discourse emphasised efficiency, societal actors discourse prioritised equality. 2000s: the representative turn

Participatory policymaking mechanisms were designed with different motivations in mind in China in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, respectively. Participatory law-making mechanisms such as legislative public hearings (lifa tingzhenghui) were organised by provincial and city-level People’s Congresses and were part of a broader legislative reform stemming from the Hu-Wen era (2002–2012). During this time, a “representative turn” significantly redefined the role of the state not as the “vanguard” of the masses via the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but the “representative” of them via the National People’s Congress (NPC) (Duan, 2019). Benefiting from the relatively relaxed political climate of the first half of the tenure of Hu Jintao, legal scholars such as Cai Dingjian proposed a series of reforms in the legislative system to strengthen the NPC against the Politburo Standing Com­ mittee (Ergenc, 2014). For these reform-minded scholars, the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) were institutions that main­ tained representativeness even with the lack of general elections. Therefore, these institutions had the potential to democratise China’s Party-state system by con­ straining the executive branch of the state (Ergenc, 2014). The NPC and CPPCC both, however, had to adhere to regulations about legislative hearings, including the minimum number of meetings local People’s Congresses must hold, the mini­ mum number of participants, and the composition of the participants. All regula­ tions were geared towards enhancing public participation and representation in the legislative process (Peng et al., 2004). In contrast, administrative public hearings (xingzheng tingzheng hui), and other participatory policymaking mechanisms such as town hall meetings (zuo tan hui) were part of a trend towards the neoliberal policy innovation called “Good

The discursive battle over public participation in China 121 Governance” in China. For example, in 1997, as a part of the WTO accession, administrative public hearings were introduced by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) (Peng et al., 2004). Since then, various other mecha­ nisms that allow citizens to voice their opinions and demands were included in local governance reforms. Unlike the legislative public hearings mentioned earlier, however, the right to political participation in policy processes was not seen as a citizenship right per se, but a practice to serve the purpose of good governance by the authorities (Wang and Guo, 2015). In the Xi Jinping era, this purpose was rede­ fined as “orderly participation” (Wang and Guo, 2015). Deliberative mechanisms, however, were already thought as a means for rights protection by the broader Chinese society. As such, communities that did not get the results they wanted from these meetings ran social media campaigns accusing the government of taking away their representation rights. These social media cam­ paigns were popularised by a catchphrase “Our representation rights were stolen” (women bei daibiaole) (Ergenc, 2014: 203). The public took deliberative institu­ tions as substitutes for non-existent formal mechanisms of political participation and representation. When both legislative and administrative deliberative meetings were first held, local media played a role in reinforcing such thinking (Ergenc, 2014). In 2010, there was even a social media campaign in Beijing during the Spring Festival, which demanded public hearings on the left-over budget spending of the government offices at the end of the fiscal year in China – an issue often dubbed as the “three- publics” (sangong xiaofei) (Wang and Yan, 2020). Techni­ cally speaking, government spending is not an issue solved through public hear­ ings, but the push for public hearings was the only mechanism to constrain the state in the minds of the public. Similarly, in November 2009, a news story about a layperson participant who threw a water bottle at the chair of the meeting for not giving him a chance to talk simply because of his opposing stance was much discussed in the national media and social media. This incident went beyond complaints about government accountability and transparency and became the symbol of public resentment about political inclusion. A month after the event, the NDRC, in order to combat growing public resentment on the incident, published a series of six articles explaining the design, goals, and limits of public hearings as they saw it (Wu, 2010). In these arti­ cles, the NDRC clearly stated that participation in administrative public hearings was strictly based on individual representation. Local government participatory mechanisms such as administrative public hearings did not formally allow for col­ lective representation and public advocacy. In contrast, both direct and symbolic representation were encouraged in legislative public hearings. At the local level, governments allow wider representation in the implementa­ tion stage of policymaking rather than at the initial stage of policy design because they see participatory policymaking as a tool for policy feedback rather than a channel for citizens to voice their opinions: In China, the local political ecology is therefore designed to function as a de facto representative loop as a whole – and a mediation of state and societal

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interests – rather than a unidirectional representative relationship. By select­ ing local spokespersons, following and implementing policy decisions from above and allowing some feedback from below, local interests and demands can be met and mediated in accordance with policy decisions from above. (Sintomer and Zhou, 2019: 379) The intervention by the NDRC to curb public discourse about deliberative mecha­ nisms as tools for collective interest representation was an indication of a larger tide of change in the way participatory governance would be framed discursively by local states in China. 2010s: the consultative turn

While there was a gradual trend away from layperson participation in policymak­ ing, participants were convinced that there was room for re-appropriating the exist­ ing mechanisms (fieldwork interview 2014). Participants would make use of the loopholes in the system, such as when applying to the same public hearing they would act like a de facto lobby group. They also employed tools available to them such as media publicity and their own social networks to publicise their cause. The broader public also tried to maximise the outcome of public hearings by creating publicity on social media about the issue before the meeting took place and screen­ ing participant profiles to check their representativeness, in order to maximise the outcome of public hearings. Last but not least, netizens would also follow up with the decisions that come out of the hearings. In 2014, when constitutionalism was the dominant discourse among partici­ pants, there were also public-spirited lawyers and community leaders who searched for strategies to enhance citizens’ capacity to participate in policymaking and law­ making (fieldwork interview 2014). In 2019, participants of legislative public hearings continued to have the same discursive framework, although the official discourses changed. Lawyers interviewed in 2019, who participated in legislative hearings that same year, continued to define their responsibility as encouraging members of the disadvantaged segments of society to take part in participatory mechanisms. Representativeness of the participants and the right to collective interest representation are two outstanding issues that citizens and participants con­ tinued to address regarding their right to public participation. Both issues are about the identities of those who participate and the capacity in which they participate. These issues appeared pertinent from 2014 throughout 2019. Today, the participation rules of public hearings only allow self-selected repre­ sentation, meaning those who apply to participate in the meetings are not officially designated representatives of the social groups they claim to represent. When the results of the public hearings are not in line with public opinion, netizens claim that the government planted so-called self-selected participants in the hearings to manipulate the outcome. The netizens and participants re-appropriate the rights discourse the state uses for deliberative mechanisms to challenge the legitimacy of the outcomes. This re-appropriation is similar to the discursive strategies of

The discursive battle over public participation in China 123 “rightful resistance”, the grassroots protests that frames their grievances as remind­ ing the state their own laws and rules (O’Brien, 1996). The scholars who advocated legislative hearings supported establishing a representative relationship between participants and social groups: Low and middle-income groups are the most closely related stakeholders of utilities pricing. A public hearing on the potential increase in the water prices should allow the low-income users to speak fully. If they do not speak out, then the hearing is not representative. (Cai, 2009, translation by the author) In the early 2000s, participants were called “hearing representatives” (tingzheng­ hui daibiaozhe) in the relevant regulations (Measures on Government-organised Pricing Hearing, zhengfu dingjia tingzheng banfa). The NDRC changed the title of those attending the public hearings from “representatives” to “hearing partici­ pants” (tingzhenghui canjiaren) in 2008 after realising that any reference to “repre­ sentation” raised expectations about the meetings that went beyond their intended purpose. The NDRC modifications to the titles used in administrative hearings, however, were not satisfactory in the eyes of public opinion. The public hearing in Fujian in December 2009 is an example of raised expectations about the repre­ sentativeness of the participants. According to the local media, the netizens ran a “human flesh search engine” (renrou sousuo) on the participants whose affiliations were not made public. A so-called human flesh search engine is a phrase given by Weibo users for online grassroots sleuthing that appeared during the 2000s (Lev­ ine, 2012). Typically employed to bring to justice corrupt officials and criminals who use their political connections to avoid incrimination, the sleuthing was first praised as a way for the public to accomplish rule of law by constraining offi­ cials and rendering them accountable through public pressure. In later periods, the phrase was used to describe Internet vigilantism, or online lynch mobs, based on differences of opinion and social values. The netizens running human flesh search engines on public hearing participants often came to the conclusion that most of the participants did not have representativeness because they worked for business operators who worked for the government (even if they were not involved in that specific case) (Sina, 2009). Prospective changes in political discourses for participatory governance in China

During my fieldwork in 2014, state officials consistently mentioned citizen repre­ sentation as one of their goals, but often complained about the scarcity of informed opinions elicited from the layperson participants of public hearings. In 2019, fieldwork interviews revealed a shift in local government interviewees expressing a preference for handpicking participants they thought had either experience or knowledge in the relevant policy area. Such a change in the discourses of state offi­ cials indicated a shift from layperson representation to expert participation even

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in the mechanisms designed for stakeholder participation. The official language used in documents related to participatory governance now also reflects this new design. In 2018, the term that defines the participants of public hearings changed to reflect the shift from layperson stakeholder participation to “expert-level” stake­ holder participation. Participants today are divided into two categories: “speakers” (chenshuren) and “participants” (canyuzhe). Speakers are invited or apply for par­ ticipation and they are entitled to time slots to express their opinion, but there is no reference to their representative powers. Participants now take on the role of what would have previously been referred to as the hearing’s “audience” (pangtingren). While the former “audience” are now referred to as “participants” (canyuzhe), in practicality they may or may not be able to participate depending on the time left for opening the floor for contributions (hearing announcements 2019). Both par­ ticipants and speakers have a demographic profile representative of the stakehold­ ers, experts, and public interest advocacy volunteers. In 2019, interviewees relayed that government officials were now encouraging educated middle-class candidates who were also Party members or had a Partyrelated civil post to apply for speaker positions. According to the meeting organis­ ers interviewed, the reason for such preference was not to have all speakers agree with the government’s point of view, but to make sure that all speakers had an expert-level understanding of the subject matter. Indeed, unlike what public opin­ ion claimed, the attempt at orchestrating the hearings through the handpicking of participants did not necessarily result in all participants voicing opinions similar to the official state line; and analysis of 2019 hearing transcripts reveal limited levels of disagreement were raised. Despite the officials’ efforts to recruit informed participants, however, the knowledge level of participants varied. Furthermore, the changes did not eliminate representative diversity entirely as a diverse array of views was heard in participant speeches during the public hearings. It is frequently assumed that lower-income and disadvantaged groups often do not have access to effective political representation that middle classes and busi­ ness elite have. The controversies in public hearings held in developing areas such as Harbin and Jinan reflect such perception: Jinan held a hearing on water price. There were many names from middle and high-income groups such as directors, senior engineers and professors in the list of hearing representatives, while none of the low-income groups such as laid-off workers, people from extremely poor families and marginal households with low social security who are most sensitive to price adjust­ ment were represented in the meeting. (Wang, 2009) This quote from local media confirms that, unlike what the government tries to portray, ordinary citizens still see representation not as an individual legal right but as a collective political right. However, while participants express their “respon­ sibility to represent” throughout the two periods of fieldwork, none of them refer to their class identity in articulating their expectations about collective interest

The discursive battle over public participation in China 125 representation. Therefore, we can infer that the discursive decoupling of class iden­ tity from politics in the reform era (Perry, 2009) is effective in the case of partici­ patory policymaking processes at the local level. The fact that labour unions and other professional organisations are state corporatist organisations also plays a role in such framing of organised interest representation. In an environment of relatively weak organised interest representation, partici­ pants tend to employ what is termed citizen strategies in the “social movements literature” (Della Porta and Andretta, 2002). De facto organised interest represen­ tation is a collective, yet uncoordinated, civil action to transform public hearings into a tool of political representation. It is not a wholesale social movement, but is one of the phenomena often cited when China scholars talk about changing state– society relations in contemporary China (Jing, 2007). Fieldwork interviewees also see their participation as a pragmatic act of constraining the state, rather than a sys­ tematic political movement for collective interest representation. They use what­ ever means they have in hand, such as participating in public hearings, presenting their opinion to their People’s Congress representative, or petitioning, to have their voices heard (Ergenc, 2014: 203). Civil society activists complained that it is difficult to mobilise the citizens and groups who qualify to propose hearings as they are afraid of confronting the authorities personally and, in some cases, are afraid of the private companies involved, because the companies are said to have the potential to resort to violence (Ergenc, 2014: 206–207). In the absence of sufficient stakeholder representation due to structural disadvantages, the self-appointed public advocacy activists, such as lawyers, assume the responsibility to represent disadvantaged social groups symbolically. The self-selected participants of the participatory policymaking mechanisms utilise two sources of rights discourses in contemporary China. One of the lawyers explained why he encourages members of disadvantaged groups such as women, university students, and rural migrants to participate in public hearings by saying “we help ourselves by helping them” (fieldwork interview 2014). By encouraging those who are under-represented to participate, the interviewee thinks he helps improve the institutionalisation of the public hearings, which in turn contributes to better governance and state–society relations. Such a self-assumed responsibil­ ity is an example of rights conceptualisation that sees freedom of expression as an obligation to speak the truth instead of simply the right to speak. This is called “remonstrative speech” in Confucian philosophical analysis (He, 2014; Garrison, 2015), and is similar to what Levenson (1958) identified as “loyal opposition” at the turn of the 20th century. The research findings in 2014 revealed that public advocacy lawyers and other self-appointed representatives of disadvantaged groups participated in public hearings not necessarily because they had experience or expert-level knowledge in a particular field, but because they felt a responsibility to represent the under­ represented segments of society (fieldwork interviews 2014). Contrarily, the research findings in 2019 revealed that the public hearing participants that were selected for their experience, or expert-level knowledge in a particular field, do not

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feel empowered to participate in public hearings on other issue areas. The emphasis on expertise enhances the efficiency of deliberations in public hearings but hinders egalitarian participation of citizens. Conclusion Politics is a process in which all the involved parties continuously negotiate, con­ test, and deliberate their position in order to maximise their interests. Political lan­ guage is an important tool to affect the balance of power and elicit consent. Even in political geographies with relatively hierarchical decision-making structures such as China, the discursive battle over organised interest representation plays a vital role. This chapter analysed the state and societal discursive framing of participa­ tory governance mechanisms and how such discourse informs perceptions about political inclusion in the Chinese society. The state agencies that organise legislative and administrative public hearings, and their participants, use the discourses of constitutionalism and consultative rule of law. There is a continuity in the discourses of the parties involved in legis­ lative hearings, whereas change has occurred in the discourses of the state and societal actors involved in the administrative hearings from 2014 to 2019 (elite interview 2014; elite interview 2019). In 2014, the state officials who organised the administrative hearings claimed that they were for the individual participation of citizens (in opposition to collective interest representation) for the purpose of citi­ zen involvement in policy process (elite interview 2014). In 2019, their discourses changed to emphasise that the administrative hearings were meant for expert and trained stakeholder participation (in opposition to layperson participation to ensure representativeness of the meetings), and for the purpose of policy efficiency. In 2014, the participant discourses in administrative hearings highlighted political participation as an individual and collective citizenship right (fieldwork interview and media analysis 2014); whereas in 2019, the participants interviewed defined their act of participation as a responsibility (fieldwork interview 2019). The changes observed in the state and societal discourses on participatory poli­ cymaking demonstrate a shift from constitutionalism to consultative rule of law in rights discourses in contemporary China. For Chinese citizens, shifts in state dis­ courses have immediate consequences on their thinking about their own capacity for political participation and inclusion. Political language in general reflects the dynamic identities of state and societal actors that are constantly re-negotiated in encounters such as in participatory governance mechanisms. References Bray, D. 2008. Designing to Govern: Space and Power in Two Wuhan Communities, Built Environment, 34(4), 392–407. Cai, D. 2009. 公众参与：撬动风险社会的日常民主Gongzhong canyu: Qiaodong fengx­ ian shehuide richang minzhu (Public Participation: leveraging the daily democracy of risk society). www.calaw.cn/article/default.asp?id=403 (accessed 10/13/2021).

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10 “Our sugar daddy can never control us” How television professionals

negotiate with market forces in

Chinese entertainment shows

Wenna Zeng Introduction Although China has long been criticised for its intensive control of political power in the media industry (Zhao, 2004), the expression of a top-down power model was, and still is, challenged by scholars who seek alternatives to explain what is happening in Chinese media practices as a result of the introduction of market forces to the industry (Brian, 2016; Gang and Bandurshi, 2011; Huang, 2003; Wang and Sparks, 2019; Winfield and Peng, 2005; Zhang, 2011). This chapter contributes to this discussion by focusing on how television and adver­ tising professionals orchestrate their commercial interests behind the production elements of a Chinese entertainment show while aiming to balance financial and professional expectations. This chapter tackles the ideas of power negotiation through an analysis of how producers make decisions, after balancing profes­ sional and commercial power, in the making of Hurry Up, Brother, a highly popular celebrity reality show on Chinese television. The original version of the show was South Korea’s Seoul Broadcasting System’s (SBS) Running Man, and the rights of which were bought by Zhejiang Satellite TV (ZSTV) in 2014. The Chinese adaptation was necessarily localised in its production and then broadcast in China between 2014 and 2021 for a total of nine seasons. While in 2017, Hurry Up, Brother was renamed as Keep Running to circumvent a government policy that limits the number of shows imported from South Korea (Li, 2020), albeit in 2015 when this fieldwork was conducted, the name of the show was Hurry Up, Brother (and so will be referred to as such in this chapter). Since 2014, the show has been extremely successful in the first few seasons and has had the highest audience ratings in its entertainment category at that time (NRTA, 2017). The study of television and advertising professionals offers a way to understand how power is negotiated and orchestrated among various parties in contempo­ rary entertainment circles. It does so by drawing on field work with the produc­ tion team in 2015, including interviews conducted with television professionals involved with the show. In China, while journalism seeks a new way to produce commercial success, its main duty continues to be to work as the mouthpiece of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-10

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Communist Party of China (CCP). However, commercial success occupies a more important place in the entertainment sector because it does not receive govern­ ment funding. Accordingly, television channels and their production teams need to observe three goals, namely fulfilling the ideological and educational demands of the Party, generating commercial success for corporate investors and pleasing audiences in a way that directly influences ratings (Zeng, 2017; Zeng and Sparks, 2019). The power relations among these players within the entertainment sector are very complex, and the demands of each interest group heavily influence the think­ ing and approach of the producers themselves. The insights into the production of Hurry Up, Brother during 2015 presented here thus provide a contribution to the volume in terms of the chapter’s focus on workers and the efforts of advertisers and sponsors to orchestrate their own commercial interests in a commercial televi­ sion context. Broadly speaking, it offers an understanding of the experiences of media commercialisation in China. Four-player model In Hurry Up, Brother, the four players engaged in commercial cooperation are the management team, the advertising staff, the sponsors and the production team. These players are divided between the production and commercial sides. On the production side, the executive producer, producers, scriptwriters and technical staff constitute the production team. The executive producer has the most power and usually holds a political position within the media group. She/he usually focuses on audience ratings, the quality of the show and, most importantly, avoidance of the political bottom line. There are limited direct connections between the production team and the sponsors, except for the commercial producer, who is the frontline member of the production team who communicates advertising issues to the inter­ nal advertising team at the channel’s Marketing Centre and liaises between the production and commercial teams. On the commercial side, the Marketing Centre, an internal department at ZSTV, is in charge of advertising from sponsors. That means while the production team produces the television content, investment in the show depends on what the Mar­ keting Centre can secure for it and the production team. A single advertising team in this department is responsible for a specific show. For example, one advertising team is in charge of all advertising matters for Hurry Up, Brother. The advertising team mentioned in this chapter, including its managers and staff, is wholly related to the advertising team’s work within ZSTV’s Marketing Centre. The team consists of six to seven members, including one senior advertising manager and her/his subordinates. When a sponsor sets out to invest in a show, it should first contact the advertising team for more details. The production and advertising teams have different interests and respon­ sibilities based on where their salaries come from. The advertising team is recruited by ZSTV and acts as an intermediary between the production team and the sponsors. Its members’ salaries are largely dependent on commission from

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advertising. By contrast, members of the production team’s salaries are paid for by the television channel and not the sponsors. At an administrative level, the advertising staff are employees of the channel and are at the same level of hierar­ chy as the production staff at the channel. Yet, staff working in advertising must work to find sponsors because it is only through their investment that they will receive a commission. Hence, advertising staff typically place priority on the demands of sponsors. The advertising staff recruit diverse sponsors that are categorised by the size of their investment. They may be “sole sponsors” of shows or simply sponsors for a specific duration of advertising time and not for the entirety of a show. The options open to sponsors are inclusion in the programme’s title, canned video advertising and/or product placement. Title sponsorship is a commercial sponsorship method to buy the title of the show, and how this is done depends on the production team. For example, when Anmuxi agreed to be the sole sponsor of Hurry Up, Brother, it was offered title sponsorship for the second season, and its name was put in front of the show’s title to become “Anmuxi, Hurry Up, Brother”. The four categories of players represent considerations of political correctness, commercial success and professionalism to different degrees on the show and within the media group. Sponsorships are obviously important, as was highlighted at the very beginning of the purchase process for the format rights to Running Man in China. ZSTV started negotiations with the Korean format owner, SBS, in early 2014. At that time, a domestic agent representing SBS in China had only planned to sell the format rights at a standard price and without a plan for further cooperation. But as a member in the advertising team explained: In the beginning, SBS did not have much intention of cooperating with us directly. They perhaps only planned to earn a format rights fee. I told my boss that I could get CNY100 million [$15.5 million] sole sponsor fees to support this show. My boss was very surprised by the amount of money as it is quite a lot indeed. And I said, “Yes, I am sure”. Then we started to approach some more detailed cooperation plans with SBS because we had the big advertis­ ing fee, and then, finally, SBS decided to cooperate with us directly and fully, not via the agent. (Advertising Staff, 17 August 2015) Apart from the title sponsorship, television stations offer two other forms of adver­ tising: canned advertising and product placement. For canned advertising, the sponsors provide video advertisement content directly, and the broadcaster does not normally comment because they focus on selling airtime, not content. For prod­ uct placement, however, sponsors can negotiate with the production team about where and how their products are placed on the show. This results in more conflict and negotiations are necessary between the production and commercial teams for how products are to be included within the TV show. Sponsorship promises television stations enough money to hire extra employees and ease budget limits on location fees, film props and equipment. A sponsor will

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also allow production staff to be creative without being concerned about finances. As a producer explained: We are very proud to say that money is not a problem for us now. In every episode, the fee for props usually cost hundreds of thousands [CNY]. Now we have more freedom to try different designs of games and do not need to care about the money. It gives us more chance to free our creativity and talent. (Producer, 14 September 2015) The involvement of sponsors is now much more significant for Chinese televi­ sion productions than1 it previously was. Since the 2000s, when the govern­ ment cut off its subsidies to the television industry, domestic television stations, and in particular those at provincial levels, began to deal directly with domestic and foreign companies for financial investment and to purchase cheap program­ ming (Hong, Lu and Zou, 2009; Zhong, 2010; Zhu, 2013). Pressure to seek new, self-funded strategies pushed television stations into competition with each other and forced them to face other market forces such as advertisers, spon­ sors, foreign vendors and celebrities. Sponsors’ ambitions and the pursuit of audience ratings and advertising revenue require television executives to take risks. They need to find unconstrained ideas and creativity from a narrative lim­ ited by political correctness and the business rules for chasing financial gains. As such, television professionals must rethink their marketing strategies and to some extent reconsider the content, ideas and values of the shows they produce. Therefore, for ZSTV, sponsorship is a double-edged sword: on the one side, there is the promise of a show reaching its potential; on the other side, there is pressure to showcase sponsors’ products that sometimes conflict with the con­ tent of the show. In this four-player model, a sponsor’s interests are mostly protected by the advertising team at ZSTV that functions as an intermediary between sponsors and the broadcaster. The team works as an advertising content gatekeeper that negoti­ ates with production teams about how to present the sponsors’ interests in their shows and explain to sponsors the concerns of producers. The manager of the advertising team is usually the one who makes decisions within the team and nego­ tiates with the executive producer, who is the main decision-maker in production. The executive producer also promises political correctness, professionalism in the show and cooperation with sponsors. Thus, the advertising manager and the execu­ tive producer are two key roles for understanding the power relationship between production and market forces in Hurry Up, Brother. Advertising team as a lobbying power Compared with the other television channels, which mostly outsource their advertising to agencies, ZSTV controls all of its advertising through the market­ ing department. Most of the advertising staff are long-term ZSTV employees and have close relationships with the management team. Normally, sponsors do not

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participate in editorial or other internal meetings related to programme content; instead, they assign their advertising agent, the ZSTV internal Marketing Centre in this case, to represent their interests and negotiate with the show’s producers. Some sponsors initially send one or two employees to watch a show starting to be filmed, but after the first episode airs, they hand over that responsibility to the advertis­ ing team at the ZSTV Marketing Centre. Being a member of the advertising team at the channel is a special position, as the role represents the interests of both the broadcaster and the sponsor. At the start, when a show begins to air, the advertising team places more empha­ sis on the quality of the show, its audience ratings and the professional views of the production team. A lack of professional knowledge of how television programmes are produced, however, limits the advertising team’s power. For example, advertis­ ing team members went to a filming location to place the sponsor’s logo on the wall of the set in a bid to increase advertising exposure for their client. The advertising staff member believed they had an agreement: I communicated with the entire production team and then talked individually to the executive producer, the executive director and every camera operator. In Season I, I spoke to 18 camera operators to make sure they got enough footage of these products. (Personal communication with Advertising Staff, 17 August 2015) However, such behaviour was not welcomed by the production team. Producers felt the placement of the logo on the wall interrupted the shooting of a scene. As a production team member clarified: After the contract is signed, we talk to the advertiser about how to present their brand, and they tell us what they want. If the plan is reasonable, then we will accept it, but if they want to change the design of the show, then it is not allowed. The advertising team placed the brand logo at filming loca­ tions because they wanted to give the brand as much exposure as possible. They only care about product exposure for those brands, no matter whether it is suitable for the content. It looked like those advertisements on telegraph poles, and was in very poor taste, so the footage was not attractive at all and violated the space aesthetic. (Producer, 6 August 2015) Although the advertising team had been doing what the sponsor’s contract required, they stopped intervening in the filming place by following complaints from the production team. That was in the early days of the show, when content was the primary focus. Choosing not to intervene in the show directly, they rather persuaded the celebrities and sponsors to cooperate better with the production team. Despite this, what was clear was that when the advertising team talked to the production team, they represented the interest of advertisers, and when they

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communicated with sponsors, they lobbied on behalf of television professionalism and ZSTV’s interests. As a member of the advertising team described: Sponsors have very detailed requirements, and we will talk to produc­ ers based on that. Every episode is different. At Zhejiang TV, we represent [advertising] customers and negotiate with the producer about what kind of effect this show should have and what my customers want. Interviewer: Will you allow sponsors to design their own product placement? No, we cannot let sponsors do that because their standards are too unreal­ istic. We cannot make it happen. For example, in Season I, our sole sponsor, a company called Ling Du, said they wanted all the celebrities to say the slogan “Run, Ling Du”. How could we do this? We cut them off directly and explained to them, “we are not your spokesperson”. But we asked one of the celebrities to say the show’s slogan, “Run Brother”, in front of a Ling Du car, and then we asked our editor to add a subtitle saying “Run, Ling Du”. We found a way to satisfy the sponsor’s needs. Sometimes, sponsors’ require­ ments are unrealistic, but we can negotiate with them. (Advertising Staff, 17 August 2015) Lobbyists are typically known for strategically influencing politicians to make deci­ sions on behalf of an individual or organisation. In the case of Hurry Up, Brother though, the advertising staff appeared to operate as lobbyists to persuade each side of the production team to provide the best for a sponsor’s advertising spend and exposure while maintaining ZSTV’s interests. The advertising team were observed to negotiate with both sides with the aim of promising that the advertising will sat­ isfy both the show’s content standards and the sponsor’s advertising requirements. Thus, for the sponsors, the advertising team acts as a consultant that they trust to provide reliable advice. As an interviewee from the advertising team explained: When Anmuxi [a milk brand in China] decided to be the sole sponsor for the second season, we told them to sign Angelababy as their brand spokesperson, and then she could quite naturally drink milk in the show. This is a reality show; we cannot stop her drinking, right? So the editors could add this foot­ age very easily. We also told them to sign Li Chen and Zheng Kai as their event/activity spokespersons so they would also have a duty to expose the brand in the show. (Advertising Staff, 17 August 2015) Angelababy, Li Chen and Zheng Kai have each been long running celebrities on Hurry Up, Brother and finding a natural solution to including the product place­ ment fell on the shoulders of the advertising team to propose solutions to the spon­ sors. By the time the show had gathered high-enough audience ratings though, and the advertising team had gained the trust of the sponsors, it was observed that the advertising team started to challenge the power of the production team. In

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several episodes, especially after the third episode of Season II, the sponsors were starting to ask how they could improve their exposure in the show. Their increas­ ing demands led to arguments with the production team and such arguments typi­ cally took place in the editing room and during review meetings. After watching one particular episode of the show with senior managers during the final review, members of the ZSTV advertising team that had negotiated on behalf of the spon­ sors were angry that the product placement in the episode was not overt enough and began to criticise the executive producer. The executive producer was in turn then angry with the advertising team’s demands to increase the product placement already agreed upon. Despite the disagreement and the seniority of the executive producer, post-meeting the post-production team could be observed to immediately start looking for footage of the sponsor’s product to give it more exposure. The sponsor’s dollars were understood to be important, and sponsors needs had to be appeased. As an interviewee from the production team described the situation: We signed the contract, so we cannot just ignore it; otherwise, we would have to add more product placement in the final episode. At the very least, we must complete our obligations, and the executive producer will eventually say yes. The executive producer is just angry now. (Personal communication with Scriptwriter, 21 May 2015) The day after the argument, a senior advertising manager who had access to the editing room through their staff identity card began to (notably) sit in the room to observe the editor’s work. The appearance of the manager did not affect the pro­ duction team because the visitor simply spent her/his time watching and did not negotiate with the editors directly. The decision to “sit beside the editor”, however, reflected the advertising manager’s attempt to impose some sense of advertising “presence” in the process, or at least influence, the professional work taking place in the editing room. Interestingly, the argument did not result in a worsening of the situation; on the contrary, the senior producers and advertising management began to talk and negotiate with each other directly. The result was not only compromise between the two sides, but also smoother operations. The result did not surprise the scriptwriters and the directors on the production team, as one of them confided: Of course, we allow the sponsor to enter the editing room; they are the boss. In the news department, this is quite rare, because the news department does not have very many people [employees] to feed, and the government will pay once you reach the right ideological performance. But in entertainment shows, we must get investment; we need money. The executive producer does not like sponsors but will have to compromise eventually. (Producer, 28 July 2015) At the outset of the cooperation, the internal advertising team worked more to bal­ ance the production team’s need for professionalism and to ensure a quality TV show was being produced first and foremost. Knowledge about how to produce a

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good TV show is the power that benefits the production team and thus at the out­ set they could be seen to lead. When the audience ratings improved, however, the advertising staff felt clearly emboldened to argue on behalf of the TV show’s spon­ sors. Amid the conflict between advertising and content, the decisions made by the producers and advertising team seemed like compromises from both professional and commercial standpoints. Entertainment sponsorship for a TV show ultimately results in negotiations between advertising team with creative producers – and nei­ ther sponsors nor producers ultimately have the strongest standpoint to control what eventually appears on TV for Chinese audiences. From compromise to partnership As stated earlier, based on my observations in the field, once the audience rat­ ings for Hurry Up, Brother became stable, conflicts between the advertising and production teams became more obvious. The production team accepted nuanced changes when they were confident that such moves would not have a big impact on the show, as audience ratings were consistently high. While minor product place­ ment might not overtly influence storytelling, it does have some effect on the pres­ entation of content and how audiences in turn receive the entertainment content. For instance, in one episode, there was product placement for a mobile phone com­ pany. The production team had already incorporated what the executive producer called “very good product placement” for the sponsor. To do so, they hid the phone in a box with a card that had a partial advertising slogan written on it. The celebrity who found the box first was required to vocalise the slogan word for word. This was regarded as more natural product placement; however, an advertising staff member argued with the production team: We have signed a contract, and the contract says that the footage in this scene [when the celebrity speaks] should zoom in with the subtitles saying “XX mobile is Wan Ren Mi” [in Chinese: 万人迷, meaning “very popular”], and also, the colour of the subtitles should be pink. But the production team retorted: X [the celebrity who had read the message on the mobile phone] did not say “Wan Ren Mi”, so how can we put a subtitle there saying this? You think your requirement for a tiny change may not influence audience ratings, but it does influence the quality of the show. We cannot do it! (Observation of argument in editing room, 22 May 2015) Interestingly, the demands of the advertising staff in this instance were not satis­ fied. However, despite the production team’s small victory in the argument, the next day the editor of the episode confirmed that amendments to the scene had been made to in a “neutral way” that satisfied all parties. This was done by adding zoom-in footage and using subtitles while retaining the previous storytelling and

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also colouring the subtitles to satisfy the requirements of both the sponsor and the producers. There were conflicting views about how to understand the end result; some production staff felt a compromise had been made, while others believed that it was simply what the production team had to do under the confines of a contract with the sponsors. As a production team member noted in private: Advertisers cannot intervene in the content. They only have their rights and interests, and those are all written in the contract, including the prod­ uct placements. Automobiles, Anmuxi [a sponsor] – everyone’s interests are written in the contract. (Producer, 6 August 2015) Being responsible for meeting all contractual terms has become an important obli­ gation for the production team through the power of commerce. If producers do not follow a contract and satisfy sponsors’ demands, broadcasters have less chance the next time they attempt to find quality and lucrative sponsorship, to win sponsor­ ship on their terms. Reputation matters in the business. And the conflict of interest between production and advertising needs are also understood differently within any production team – the management and the frontline workers, including jun­ ior producers. For a production manager, such as the executive producer, they like to believe they treat sponsors as customers whose interests needed to be satisfied, while maintaining control over their production. As a television professional said: I always say we negotiate with sponsors based on our audience rating. We respect those rules in the contract, but we do not allow them to ride all over us. I think XX media group is doing that, by unfailingly listening to adver­ tisers (but we do not). You see that. I believe that an elegant show is made when sponsors are proud of being part of it. We so rarely allow sponsors to overstep their rights. The bottom line for us is that advertising cannot change the content and direction of the show. (Producer, 13 August 2015) Despite this confidence the producer expresses here in this interview, however, the numerous examples given earlier indicate that producers do not in fact have as much control and authority over their work as they like to believe they do. The pres­ sures of sponsorship – overtly or inadvertently – orchestrate certain thinking and approaches to thinking among entertainment producers simply through the power they yield over producers to ensure their TV shows are able to come into fruition. Particularly because what was observed is that the relationship and the power the sponsors have were observed to increase depending on the confidence the TV show garnered in relation to its audience ratings. When Hurry Up, Brother first aired, the power was mainly held by the creator of the programme, the broadcaster and those who produced it. But once the show became popular, the advertisers became more demanding in their expectations, and sponsors’ interests became more important.

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For some producers, they recognised this balance with pragmatism and clear on the limitations they have to control the creative process: Interviewer: At the start of a show, do producers have more space? Of course. If the advertiser insists on having more advertising exposure, the production team will say, “well, if you do not add this theme, then the audience rating will increase by one point”. And then the advertiser will compromise and say that if an advertisement is inappropriate, then it does not need to be aired. But when the show is airing and going well, sponsors will say it does not matter – the ratings are very high, and this scene will not diminish the audience, so add it. (Producer, 28 July 2015) So real has the power of the sponsor’s dollars become, that in 2015 a new part­ nership model for television was proposed at ZSTV, namely a new model con­ sisting of the broadcaster, customer and production company (“customer” in this context refers to sponsor). One of the main changes proposed was that the channel would cooperate with sponsors during the design stages of a show, its filming and broadcast, and not simply include the sponsor’s interests as an afterthought dur­ ing the filming process. It meant that cooperation between the two sides would be closer than before, and the opinions of the sponsors on how to articulate creative production would become more important. The frontline television professionals at ZSTV often joked about this, saying, “The sponsor is our sugar daddy, but he will never control us”. This joking reflects the logic of the new working model and the positions that creative producers in China’s entertainment industry exist within: money talks. The first part of the joking reveals the importance and power of sponsorship, while the latter part illustrates entertainment show is the result of negotiations between advertising and television professionalism. Without govern­ ment oversight to control and dictate the standards by which production should take place, entertainment TV in China today must find sponsorship within the mar­ ket. The market – concerned with more than simply the quality of a TV show – are never silent bystanders to the way in which their investment is presented for the Chinese audiences of the TV shows they engage with. Producers may wish to hold onto the illusion of absolute creative control, but indeed, must always keep in mind the contractual arrangements they have with sponsors and ultimately, their think­ ing towards their creative work is often orchestrated along the lines of what their sponsor’s wishes and demands are. Conclusion The negotiation between the production team and the advertising team in Hurry Up, Brother has an obvious commercial priority tendency. The power relations among different parties changed throughout the filming process according to dif­ ferent audience rating levels. At the beginning, the producers and other staff used professional knowledge as their bargaining capital to maintain consistent television

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professionalism and audience ratings. When the audience ratings became stabi­ lised, the production team were required to satisfy the sponsors’ requirements. At times, this occurred at the expense of their professional standards. Once the show became popular, the advertising team of ZSTV began to frequently interfere with the project in order to protect their own interests; these interests included those that were driven by the commissions they received and their lobbying roles on behalf of the show’s sponsors. The case presented here is a miniature version of the Chinese television indus­ try. Entertainment shows are utilised as an important form of propaganda tool in the country and are heavily embedded in the political and educational discourse with a lack of commercial discourse. However, with the development of television format trading and the increasing demand from Internet entertainment platforms, entertainment shows have become a perfect product for economic achievement. According to China Business News, in 2015, the advertising fee for the top ten entertainment shows was more than CNY 10 billion ($1.54 billion) (Yin, 2015) and one of the most popular entertainment shows, Sisters Who Make Waves, earned more than half a billion advertising fee in Season 1 (Ban, 2021). If money is so powerful, then what does the future hold for entertainment TV in China? What does the entire product placement do in terms of “orchestrating thinking” among Chinese audiences, particularly with regard to consumption and the fact that they cannot watch a TV show without advertising being forced on them? The truth is that the television industry in China cannot ignore the power of commercials. Television professionals have begun to provide both the experimen­ tal capital and capability for new shows to enjoy a certain degree of freedom of creativity. It has also made way for these shows to accelerate on the path of work­ ing within a market-orientated environment through the practice of negotiating with market forces based on contracts. The meaning of creativity – considered as the core value of a show – is largely redefined by consumption needs. To create a high-quality show, knowledge is often assumed to be the most important ele­ ment; this includes the professional knowledge learned from previous successful television shows and the tacit knowledge of political and cultural implications; however, according to the new consumer-driven ZSTV working model, the pro­ ducers, scriptwriters and other production members are required to take the needs of sponsors as the original consciousness behind their creative idea. This change has been confirmed by a producer who previously worked with a traditional TV channel and has now joined an Internet company. The producer shared the key difference between making a show in these two different places: the awareness of commercialisation. Now, when I create a new show, the most important thing is how to combine the sponsors’ needs into the design of the show. I need to think about this at the very beginning. I design the show based on the needs of sponsors rather than my own taste. (Producer, 16 October 2020)

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This is one of the many producers who have left their jobs with traditional tele­ vision channels and joined or established private television companies. In doing so, these individuals have entered an open-market system. The habit and characteris­ tics inherited from traditional TV serves to influence this new system, and they are shifted in order to embrace the new open market. Balancing the commercial needs among other crucial aspects – such as professional knowledge and the political bot­ tom line – requires that production members put themselves into the “orchestrating thinking” strategy. These changes also have an impact on the construction of consumer society in the country. This change has affected the traditional practices and consumption behaviours of the people. Current Chinese entertainment programmes are hardly seen without celebrities, and they are almost never seen without advertisements. In the case of Hurry Up, Brother, a minimum of 90 seconds of advertising are placed within a show. These commercial advertisements have become easy to accept and receive as a result of the influence of China’s celebrity industry. The lifestyle seen in TV commercials has begun to change the consumer outlook of Chinese soci­ ety. Therefore, television professionals are requested to prevent audiences from being disturbed by excessive and vulgar advertisements during their viewing time. These television professionals should also orchestrate and think about advertising strategies according to a combination of the following factors: audience, sponsors, political and professional standard. Note 1 This research was supported by the Guangdong Province Education Science Fund (Pro­ ject Title: 13th Five-Year Plan 2020 Research Project, Project Number: 2020GXJK077).

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11 Digital business governance The algorithm design of the short video-sharing application – TikTok Altman Yuzhu Peng

Introduction Digital governance, which refers to the employment of digital technologies in social governance, has become ubiquitous amid the widespread penetration of the Internet in today’s society (Aydiner, 2020; Carrizales et al., 2006; van Dijck, 2013). A large amount of existing literature has explored the political dimension of digital governance, focusing on the interplay between the government and Inter­ net users (Garson, 2006; Rod and Weidmann, 2015; Stockmann and Luo, 2017). This is especially the case in contemporary scholarship about digital governance in the Chinese context due to the potential tension between people and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on freedom of speech and freedom of information on the Internet (Schneider, 2016; Tong and Zuo, 2014). Yet, today’s Chinese social media platforms are almost all provided by private-owned giant high-tech companies (Fuchs, 2016). The private ownership of high-tech companies has paved the way for a new form of digital governance, namely digital business governance. Different from political governance on the Internet, digital business governance involves no written laws or legislations. It is an emerging practice in which social media applications become “a binding technique” that influences Internet users’ everyday practice as they use and interact with the applications (Dean, 2010: 95). The institutions behind digital business governance are not state governments but giant high-tech companies that design social media applications. Their regulation of Internet users is largely enhanced by the design features of the Internet services that these companies launched in the market (Cote, 2014; Cote and Pybus, 2007; van Dijk, 2013). Digital business governance in the Chinese context shows unique authoritar­ ian features. It must be considered as a part of the CCP’s broader digital political governance practice, as it not only creates data that informs the CCP’s monitor­ ing of people but is also operated in relation to the compatibility of the authori­ tarian regime and the market economy unique to the post-reform era (Zhang, 2020). In this way, digital business governance in the Chinese context contributes to orchestrating thinking in contemporary China through relationships between Internet users, market-oriented high-tech companies, and the authoritarian gov­ ernment. Given the global reach of digital communication technologies today, DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-11

144 Altman Yuzhu Peng giant Chinese high-tech companies’ digital business governance has become increasingly of international relevance. This chapter uses TikTok as a case study to address how giant high-tech compa­ nies regulate Internet users’ everyday practice through the design features of social media applications. As a social media application, TikTok is primarily designed to enable Internet users to share and view short videos. With a particular algorithm design that feeds Internet users with customised content, TikTok is the most popu­ lar of its kind in Chinese society today and its popularity is arguably based on these unique design features. In this way, a case study of TikTok underlines how hightech companies engage in profitable digital business governance in the Chinese context and why they are both accepting of and contributing to authoritarianism despite being market-driven. The analysis of TikTok’s design features is based on a case study of 147 Chi­ nese university students via survey. The participants were undergraduate students recruited from four universities in Fujian, Henan, and Jiangsu Provinces. A total of 84 were women and 63 were men. University students are an important group of Internet users, who are not only active on the Internet but are also widely consid­ ered to have led the trend of social media use in Chinese society. While acknowl­ edging that the findings of the case study cannot be over-generalised to describe how the design features of social media applications influence all Chinese Internet users, the insights into this group of young people’s experience with social media use are indeed enlightening, as they help us to recognise the intersecting vectors of Internet users, the authoritarian government, and the market economy in today’s Chinese society and their influence on social behaviour and expectations. Digital business governance in China As detailed in Guanying Li’s Chapter 2 in this volume, the Chinese government uses a combination of censorship and cyber-police forces to control and monitor Internet users’ everyday behaviours on the Internet. Such Internet control has pro­ voked a backlash from Internet users, encouraging their development of various creative ways to pursue freedom of information and freedom of speech (Peng and Sun, 2022; Stockmann and Luo, 2015; Tong and Zuo, 2014). This tension between Internet users and the government, however, is often exaggerated by the Western media as a tension between an “evil enemy” regime and the Chinese people keen to pursue a “forbidden truth” (Liu, 2011: 47). The Internet is perceived as a bat­ tleground, where Internet users fight against the government (Peng, 2021). Yet, the people vs. state assumption of the Internet in the Chinese context fails to consider that a large proportion of Internet users concur with the government on Internet censorship, given the need for preventing the distribution of pornography, slander, and violent content on the Internet (Liu, 2011). From the CCP’s perspective, however, the main purpose of Internet censorship is to prevent collective protests against the Party-state (Schneider, 2016). And as King et al. (2013) have revealed, the censors do tolerate some criticisms of the government, as long as the criticisms do not provoke civil disobedience. Such

Digital business governance and TikTok 145 tolerance is not only because of the limits of censorship and surveillance technolo­ gies but also a result of the CCP’s post-reform governance strategy, which priori­ tises economic growth and considers it the basis for the country’s political stability (Peng et al., 2022). Against this backdrop, the CCP’s digital governance strategy indeed incorporates a market-assisted component, which involves the collabora­ tion between the regime and businesses. The pivotal role giant high-tech companies play in the digital governance of Internet users sheds light on the market-oriented economy in China (Peng et al., 2023). From the late 1970s onwards, the Chinese government launched a series of policies that primarily focused on the marketisation of industries to reform the country’s economy. Since then, private ownership has been officially verified in the country’s constitution. Despite these reforms the state still plays a pivotal role in the economy. Yet, while maintaining a level of control over the economy, the CCP indeed encourages private investment in the development of digital infrastructure. A few high-tech companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu, Sina, and Tencent, which are owned by private investors and are listed on the stock market, are privileged ben­ eficiaries of these economic policies. By fully exploiting the potential of the Chi­ nese market, which has the largest size of the Internet population in the world, they have grown into giant conglomerates with national or even international influences (Keane and Fung, 2018). As Yang (2009: 111) notes, such “business interest in a prosperous Internet economy serves as a buffer against control because an overly controlled Internet will keep Internet users away and harm commercial prosper­ ity”. Accordingly, the CCP seeks ways to address the tension between their need to prevent grassroots democracy and companies’ need to operate their businesses. Thus, while giant high-tech companies are provided with a level of freedom to compete on the market, people’s use of the Internet is also notably influenced by these giant high-tech companies who “control power, visibility, attention, reputa­ tion and capital in the context of the Internet and thereby deprive others of these resources” (Fuchs, 2016: 30). Based on a comparative analysis between the businesses that operate search engines, mobile messaging applications, and social media platforms in China and the United States, respectively, Fuchs (2016) suggests that the revenue model of giant high-tech companies are in fact largely similar in the two countries. These companies are generally based on two revenue streams of advertising in which profit is generated through providing advertising services to brands, and financ­ ing in which capital is accumulated via selling shares to investors (Fuchs, 2016). Addressing the two interrelated profit streams, giant Chinese high-tech compa­ nies are motivated to regulate people’s everyday use of the Internet, focusing on increasing the number of Internet users who adopt their services so as to raise their stock market values. As such, the efficiency of this digital business governance centres around the capacity of the applications for attracting Internet users. The issue is, however, that nowadays, Internet users are given free and easy access to abundant information, which leads to an overflow of information. For these Internet users, concentrating while surfing the Internet is often difficult. This gives rise to the notion of “attention as a scarce resource” because of the

146 Altman Yuzhu Peng “preoccupations of corporate giants when facing a new context of communication characterised both by a large offer of information and a new type of consumer/ viewer who is tendentially in a state of drift” (Terranova, 2012: 3). As such, Inter­ net users’ attentions become a finite and exchangeable commodity (Goldhaber, 1997, 2006). Today, high-tech companies necessarily design their Internet services to attract their users’ attention and sell it to a third-party, such as advertisers, for a tangible profit. Such a business model is known as the “attention economy”. It is within the context of the attention economy that digital governance is practised by high-tech companies today. From the perspective of the attention economy, therefore, digital business gov­ ernance relies on the affective design of social media applications. To unpack how the affective design works, an understanding of affect is indeed necessary. Accord­ ing to Deleuze (1988), affect is the “outcome of the encounter between entities”, and it explains how the “entities are affected by these encounters” (Ash, 2015a: 84). As Clough (2008) and Thacker (2004) argue, to be human is to be immersed in an environment full of affects. An affect opens up the affected to new capaci­ ties for action, which reshape their everyday practice (Ash, 2015a). In general, social media applications are specifically designed to facilitate the generation and transmission of attentive affects – a particular form of affects that captures and holds the attention of Internet users (Ash, 2015b). This design rationale enables a social media application to constantly modulate Internet users’ attentive behav­ iours, which both exploit and feed into their conscious and unconscious awareness and voluntary and involuntary actions as they use and interact with the application (Ash, 2012). The affective design of social media applications can be implemented on the structure of its user interface. In this regard, China’s leading social media platform – WeChat – provides a good example. Launched by Tencent in 2011, WeChat has now become the most popular Chinese social media application, with 1,098 mil­ lion monthly active users (Tencent, 2019). Similar to WhatsApp, another mobile instant messaging service popular outside of the Chinese territory, WeChat also uses a list of dialogue boxes on the default home page of its interface to invite Internet users to exchange messages. As soon as receiving a new message, users of WeChat see a red bubble displayed at the top right corner of a dialogue box. This, along with a ring tone and vibration, not only prompts the users to pay attention to the incoming message but also tempts them to check and reply. In this process, the affectively designed interface of WeChat tempts users’ senses, encouraging them to engage in attentive practices that continue to require their attention. Additionally, WeChat also has an important add-on called “Moments”, allowing users to upload photographs to share with other users with whom they are connected on the appli­ cation. As soon as a new Moments post is uploaded by other users, a red dot also appears on the user interface, prompting users’ attention to new updates in their Moments streams. With often up to hundreds of WeChat contacts, users generally receive a steady flow of Moments streams, which comprises dozens of posts every day. The daily Moments streams also tempt users to constantly click on WeChat “Moments” to check what is new there. In this way, the time that users spend on

Digital business governance and TikTok 147 using the social media application increases. The way in which the design features of WeChat encourage its users’ engagement offers a glimpse into how the attention economy works in the Chinese market of social media applications. Algorithms and stickiness: TikTok as a case study Today, high-tech companies’ digital business governance strategies are not limited to using an affectively designed interface to attract Internet users paying attention to the social media applications they launched. Rather, the notion of “stickiness”, a marketing concept used to describe a user’s “deeply rooted commitment leading to consumer retention” (Chen, 2018: 31), also plays an important role. The sticki­ ness of a brand significantly influences consumers’ behaviour, encouraging them to follow and purchase the brand’s products on a continuous basis (Hallowell, 1996). As a type of digital consumer good, the development of social media applications also involves the notion of “stickiness” to encourage users’ commitment to the use of the applications (Zhang et al., 2017). In the context of social media applications, stickiness is manifest by the algorithm design. Rather than being an algorithm controlled by programmers, however, the algo­ rithm is led by users’ behaviour itself, informing the algorithm to display Internet users’ tastes and interests. According to Striphas (2015: 403), algorithm refers to “a formal process or set of step-by-step procedures” for data processing; it describes one of the most important technological bases of Internet services, which allows them to realise certain functions. However, individual coders or programmers do not have complete control over the algorithm of social media applications, as they are commissioned by giant high-tech companies to shape the applications in a way that serves the business interest. As KhosraviNik (2018: 7) notes, “the more users consume, engage with, and contribute to [a social media application] the more there is an added value for the [application]”. Similar to WeChat, TikTok has become a China-based international social media phenomenon, providing a useful case study of how affects, the attention economy, and digital business governance merge in the Chinese context. Known as Douyin in China, TikTok mainly allows Internet users to share and view short videos of up to 60 seconds in length. Launched in late 2016 with specialisms in short-music video sharing and viewing, TikTok has now become extremely popular with younger Chinese generation Internet users (Chen et al., 2020). Existing marketing research shows that the number of TikTok users residing in China has reached 150 million, with more than 40% of them aged between 24 and 30 (Zhang, 2018). TikTok offers a good case study to elucidate how affective design works beyond the context of interface amid more and more social media applications being designed with a high level of so-called stickiness to retain users’ attention. As a case study, TikTok provides an up-to-date example illustrating the pro­ cess through which the algorithm of social media applications may affect Internet users’ everyday practice. It is widely acknowledged that the business success of TikTok is inseparable from its algorithm design that aims to retain users’ attention (Li, 2019). According to iResearch (2018), the design of TikTok incorporates an

148 Altman Yuzhu Peng algorithm, which uses a combination of different predictors to determine what con­ tent is suitable to be recommended to a user when he/she clicks on the application. These predictors include (1) the relevance of terms or types that the user employs to search for videos, (2) the current geographic location of the user determined by the system, (3) the personal interests that the user indicates in the profile of her/ his TikTok account, and (4) the popularity of the videos among all TikTok users in general. The more the likes, follows, comments, or reposts a short video receives, the more the users it is recommended to by the system. In this way, Internet users’ interests are algorithmically targeted in the distribution of affective content on this social media platform by means of prioritising “relevance over significance” (KhosraviNik, 2018: 7). As Figure 11.1 shows, the results of the survey that informs this chapter note the power of TikTok on Chinese university campuses: 60% of the university student respondents had used TikTok in the past six months, with more than half of them spending more than 30 minutes on the application daily. Similar to the results of iResearch (2018), the results of this project’s survey also revealed that the algorithm design of TikTok influences Internet users’ behav­ iours when they used the application. Two-thirds of the Chinese university student respondents admitted that they are likely to spend a long time on watching short music videos on TikTok every time they open the application, and the time spent is likely to be longer than they expected. Such a pattern of TikTok use is indeed engineered by the application’s algorithm. As the survey results show, 55% of the students said they had viewed the short videos that the system recommended (see Figure 11.2). By providing TikTok users with personalised video recommendations,

Figure 11.1 Time spent on TikTok per day.

Digital business governance and TikTok 149

Figure 11.2 Videos recommendation and extra time spent on TikTok.

TikTok’s algorithm could be seen to increase its stickiness by extending the dura­ tion a user is likely to spend on the application. In China, TikTok is not the only social media application that is primarily designed to facilitate short video-sharing. Yet, having developed a high level of stickiness through the algorithm, TikTok becomes the front runner in this emerging, niche market (Li, 2019). An endless loop of attention-seeking is facilitated by the algorithm design of TikTok that extends the time these students spent on the appli­ cation on a daily basis. An example of this being the arguably “free labour” that these university students offer to TikTok in the likes of short-video-viewing service in exchange for “free-access”, but that contributes to both information collection of data, advertising revenue, and development of the application’s stickiness. Certainly, we cannot say that university students reflect all Internet users. Yet, existing literature shows that the diffusion of the Internet in China is highly imbal­ anced, with huge gaps between different groups of Chinese people determined by demographic categories such as age, gender, location, and levels of education obtained. As Chen and Reese (2015: 3) note, “a typical Chinese Internet user is well-educated, urban, and young”. University students are one of the most active groups among younger generation Internet users, and thus the target consum­ ers of high-tech companies (Chu and Choi, 2010; Liu, 2011; Lyu, 2012). Their daily engagement with the TikTok application, thus, provides a glimpse into the effectiveness of TikTok’s strategical digital business governance of Internet users through the algorithm design of the social media application. Besides TikTok, almost all Chinese social media applications today are designed to be affective through their interface and algorithm. These applica­ tions facilitate the generation and transmission of affects as “a binding technique”

150 Altman Yuzhu Peng (Dean, 2010: 95). The attentive affects are accrued from Internet users’ every movement or action when using these applications, including sending a message, replying to a comment, sharing a link, uploading a photograph or a video, or even adding a friend. These attentive affects are both generated through users’ actions (e.g. by clicking an upload button and to be affected by checking the update) and transmitted via technological systems (e.g. translating the movements of our bodies into digital data so as to transmit from devices to devices and to decode the digital data into images or sounds that make sense to people). With the associ­ ated algorithm to increase stickiness, the circulation of attentive affects shapes the social media applications into affective networks in which Chinese Internet users become both consumers and manufacturers of affects amidst the attention economy. Ultimately, the power that digital tech giants have is that these Internet users appear to have little awareness of this orchestrated affective loop within which they are caught. Consequences of digital business governance Today, Chinese cities feature high-density residential and fast-paced lifestyles. Urban residents in particular in China are often overwhelmed by the stimulators that constantly attract their attention. The algorithm design of these social media applications, such as TikTok, thus, not only addresses Chinese Internet users’ needs, helping them cope with moments of boredom or seeming refuge from the fast-paced lifestyles they have – but interestingly, also creates more tasks that tempt users to engage in the attentive experience requiring continual multitasking (Stiegler, 2009). As a result, for users of an application like TikTok, they may well find it becomes increasingly more difficult to focus on one specific activity at a time. These users’ desire for affects and their limited capacity to cope with so much attention thus create tensions, with implications for the mental well-being of these application users that indeed require further intellectual intervention. Anxiety and addiction

Survey responses indicated that TikTok’s algorithm that encouraged extended video-watching activities sometimes caused these students to feel anxious. Specifi­ cally, a total of 63% of the respondents noted that they are likely to feel anxious after using TikTok because of spending time on the application longer than expected. Tellingly, when prompted, only approximately one out of ten students agreed that they could give up using TikTok to resolve such anxiety (see Figure 11.3). These results mirror other existing research which shows the association between stress and social media use–related addictive behaviours in Chinese university students’ everyday lives (Li et al., 2018; Montag et al., 2018). As the aforementioned results indicate, these university students appear to pri­ oritise their desire for attentive experiences engineered by TikTok over the anxiety issues associated with their daily use of the social media application. Accordingly, the potential impacts of social media applications on younger generation Internet

Digital business governance and TikTok 151

Figure 11.3 Anxiety addiction and TikTok use.

users’ mental well-being surface, pointing towards an important dimension of the collateral consequences of giant high-tech companies’ profit-driven orchestration of China’s digital business governance. It has become a notable social issue that requires us to fully account for. Privacy risks

Profit-driven digital business governance also leads to notable privacy risks. These privacy risks are associated with how social media applications use the affectively designed algorithm to detect Internet users’ preference by collecting and analysing the user-generated content they share on social media applications (Cote, 2014). Taking TikTok as an example, its privacy policy publicly acknowledges that data provided by users are collected for providing advertising services to third-party businesses. The application’s terms of service clearly state: We collect information when you create an account and use the Platform, such as your contact details, content you create, and your location. We also collect the information you share with us from third-party social network providers and technical and behavioural information about your use of the Platform. (TikTok, 2019a: n.p.) Concerningly, survey respondents revealed inconsistencies in concerns over privacy and their actual privacy behaviours when using TikTok. More than

152 Altman Yuzhu Peng three-quarters of the participants are aware that TikTok collect users’ data but only half of them suggested they might take actions to address the privacy implications (Figure 11.4). Such findings point towards an inconsistent relation between privacy concerns and privacy behaviours in younger generation Chinese Internet users’ TikTok use. The inconsistent privacy concerns and privacy behaviours identified by the pre­ sent research are not unique to younger generation Internet users’ TikTok use in the Chinese context (Chen and Peng, 2022). Rather, they reflect aspects of the world­ wide changing nature of privacy in the digital age. According to Altman (1976: 8), privacy relates to one’s behaviour of controlling other people’s “access to the self”. The notion of privacy enables people to recognise a private–public boundary “along a spectrum of openness and closeness” (Palen and Dourish, 2003: 130), and manage it by regulating “the flow of information efficiently without interference or intrusion from the outside” (Chan, 2000: 1). Today, scholars have noted that Internet users’ privacy behaviour on social media platforms presents inconsistency between how they express concerns over their privacy and how they actually pro­ tect their privacy (Barnes, 2006; Chen and Cheung, 2018; Han et al., 2019; Kokola­ kis, 2017). To a certain extent, this phenomenon is engineered by the principles of digital business governance, which require Internet users to trade off privacy for convenient services (Chambers, 2017). While the privacy paradox represents a thorny issue lying at the heart of all young people’s social media use, it has unique cultural implications in the Chi­ nese context. In particular, research has shown that Chinese political activists “tend to voice their views as a means to socialise and be recognised”, and they often have “lower concerns for privacy”, which facilitate their expression of dissenting

Figure 11.4 TikTok use and privacy concerns.

Digital business governance and TikTok 153 opinions (Stockmann and Luo, 2015: 2). Against this backdrop, their sharing of personal information on social media platforms may have political consequences, given that high-tech companies are legally bound to implement political censorship on their platforms in the country (Svensson, 2014). Adhering to the CCP’s censorship requirements, therefore, TikTok’s terms of service explicitly prohibit Internet users from generating or sharing content that criticises the “socialist system” or violates “socialist ethics” (TikTok, 2019b). These prohibitions apply to Chinese Internet users only, as TikTok has different terms of service for people living outside of the country. Chinese Internet users cannot sign up for a TikTok account without agreeing to these terms. To ensure compliance and accountability, TikTok also requires that its users need to supply their “real name, residential ID card number, and phone number” in exchange for TikTok services (TikTok, 2019b: n.p.). The application also encourages Internet users to find restricted content and report such content to the system. This restricted content, according to TikTok’s categorisation, includes “sensi­ tive information”, which is vaguely defined and open to ambiguity. In practice, this “sensitive information” often refers to criticisms of the government. The report function, alongside the real-name registration policy, helps the CCP to gather intelligence about dissidents on the social media platform. In this way, the daily operation of social media platforms, such as TikTok, becomes integral to the CCP’s political control, facilitating the authority to target domestic critics who are vocal about their political opinions on the Internet. Such a scenario can be seen in a series of the CCP’s recent crackdowns on political dissentients, in which the report function of social media applications often plays a pivotal role (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Given the far-reaching capacity of the government in China, control over such surveillance obligations is beyond these high-tech companies’ control. The collaboration between commercial and authority’s sur­ veillance, thus, represents an important aspect of China’s digital business gov­ ernance character. Despite having reported differences in user obligations inside and outside of China, the influences of TikTok’s digital business governance are no longer lim­ ited within Chinese society. In 2018 alone, TikTok was downloaded 45.8 million times in the Apple App Store worldwide, outperforming a long list of interna­ tionally reputable social media applications, such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, becoming the most downloaded social media applications in more than 40 countries (Zhang, 2018). In this way, the privacy implications of TikTok use have transcended the Chinese territory. In November 2019, TikTok’s controver­ sial ban on a US teenager’s account because of her posting of politically “sensi­ tive” content shows that the company’s execution of censorship is consistent and always in line with the government (Xu, 2019). Accordingly, the international speculation surrounding the CCP’s control over TikTok’s daily operations out­ side of the country, and the application’s capacity to inform digital behaviours, attention, and speech have reportedly underpinned the US recent ban on down­ loads of the popular video-sharing application, despite such a move of the Trump

154 Altman Yuzhu Peng administration per se being politically motivated (The Guardian, 2020). Thus, the transnational power of TikTok to orchestrate social and digital behaviour beyond China’s borders has not been lost on other national interests worldwide. TikTok’s global popularity contributes to the increasingly grey lines between Chinese and non-Chinese interests for beyond border engineering as Nicole Talmacs and Michael D. High also argue in terms of Chinese/Hollywood cinema production in Chapter 4 of this volume. Conclusion By using TikTok as a case study, this chapter provides a glimpse into how giant Chinese high-tech companies orchestrate the algorithm designs of social media applications to attract and retain Chinese Internet users’ attention. Following the model of the attention economy, such strategies have become an important means through which these giant high-tech companies profit from Internet users. In doing so, they showcase the process of how digital business governance emerges in contemporary Chinese society, explaining the rationale behind the profitability of these businesses. As the aforementioned analysis reveals, digital business governance aims at increasing the duration users spend on the Internet. This has consequences, including the potential for impact on both the mental well-being and the ability to project the privacy rights of Internet users. The issues of privacy implications in the Chinese context, in particular, are grave and dangerous because giant Chi­ nese high-tech companies’ digital business governance is an integrated part of the CCP’s digital political control over the population. The pivotal role these high-tech companies play in the CCP’s political surveillance system presents an interesting insight into the close relationship between the market economy and the authoritar­ ian regime. What is most alarming, however, is the willingness of young Chinese people to give up using the social media application, despite the anxieties that they openly express. Social media applications, such as TikTok, have become integral digital platforms for social integration, information dissemination, and attentive labour for these young people, and as such, contribute to creating a generation of thinkers orchestrated into particular behaviours and consumption in a digital (both commercial and political) context. How this plays out into China’s future is still to be seen and urges intellectual intervention, considering the increasingly observed participatory nature of China’s social-mediated propaganda (Repnikova and Fang, 2018) and censorship (Luo and Li, 2022). References Altman I (1976) Privacy: A conceptual analysis. Environment and Behavior 1(8): 7–30. Ash J (2012) Attention, videogames and the retentional economies of affective amplifica­ tion. Theory Culture & Society 29(6): 3–26. DOI: 10.1177/0263276412438595. Ash J (2015a) Technology and affect: Towards a theory of inorganically organised objects. Emotion Space & Society 14: 84–90. DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2013.12.017. Ash J (2015b) The Interface Envelope: Gaming, Technology, Power. London: Bloomsbury.

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12 Male anxiety and self-victimisation Chinese young men’s perception of gender dynamics and intimacy Yanning Huang

Introduction In late November 2020, Tamdrin (Ding Zhen in Mandarin), a 20-year-old, rural Tibetan man became a sensation on the Chinese Internet through his appearance via Douyin (TikTok), a major Chinese-language short-video sharing platform. While the video of a smiling Tamdrin only ran for 10 seconds, his “sweet and wild” look (Xinhua News, 2020) captivated the imaginations of a huge number of female fans. Seizing upon the Tamdrin craze, the local government in Litang, Sichuan Province, quickly hired him as a spokesperson for local tourism. It apparently saw an opportunity to reflect healthy relations between Han Chinese and Tibetans to both a domestic and an international audience. Female fans’ support and the local government’s endorsement turned Tamdrin into a star. So much so, the UNDP in Beijing subsequently invited Tamdrin to deliver a speech on environmental protec­ tion for the 2021 Earth Day. Yet, not everyone appreciated Tamdrin’s overnight popularity – especially not young Chinese men. A parody music video (MV) of Tamdrin’s smiling face, titled “I hate myself: a song for all the working-class people (dagongren)”, went viral before it was removed from all digital media platforms in China. The lyrics of the MV titled “Ding Zhen’s huge popularity broke whose heart?” set a gloomy tone, with reflections such as “(my) ten years of hard work at school cannot match Tamdrin’s smile (of ten seconds)” (Xiaolajiao, 2020). The MV juxtaposed Tam­ drin’s easy success (suggestively because of his looks) with the tragic life led by an ordinary man who fails despite the huge effort he has made to be successful. In the face of this male-led online backlash, many female Internet users pointed out that women’s bodies had long been objectified by men. Meanwhile, they deni­ grated men who took issue with Tamdrin as showing jealousy and a “loser” mind­ set (Xiaolajiao, 2020). While from the outset meant to be a celebration of ethnic expression, the pseudo online gender war around Tamdrin’s success revealed rather a discursive tension in Chinese cyberspace between men-oriented and women-oriented stances (Huang, 2018b). The men-oriented stance in this case refers to non-elite men’s anxiety about their improbability to become economically capable – a trait largely understood as a prerequisite for marriage in contemporary China. And the women-oriented DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-12

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stance underlines women’s own autonomy over their consumption and expression of desire, rejecting male anxiety as “self-victimisation” (Huang, 2018a). This discursive tension needs to be understood against the intersectionality of state politics and gender culture established in post-Mao China. The Chinese Party­ state’s One Child Policy, carried out strictly from the 1980s, has recently been replaced by more birth-encouraging policies respectively in 2016 and 2021 to allow for two and three children per family. However, the huge ramifications of the One Child Policy (unpredictably so at its inception) continue to shape the experiences of women and men where the family unit underpins social welfare and norms. The sex ratio imbalance, an unintended consequence of the Policy, has led to an oversupply of available men desperate to marry in rural areas who are known as “leftover men” (shengnan) (Sun, 2017). Simultaneously, urban women born after 1980 who reaped the benefits of wealthier parents investing in their single daugh­ ter’s education and personal capital (Fong, 2002) have also been negatively termed “leftover women” (shengnü) (Fincher, 2014). It is a degrading term to categorise educated and gainfully employed, financially stable women who have chosen not to marry or ended up not marrying. While this labelling itself indicates the ongoing discriminations and challenges women continue to face in Chinese society today (Feldshuh, 2018), shifting perceptions of young women about their entitlements and lifestyle expectations amidst a changing Chinese society and economy have led some scholars to claim a “crisis of masculinity” among Chinese men (Song, 2010; Zheng, 2015). This chapter draws on the findings of focus groups and individual in-depth interviews conducted between April and July in 2016 with 52 young Chinese men born between 1980 and 1995 in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai and tier-three cities in nearby provinces. In China, cities are ranked by using a tier system, based on the size of their population and the level of their economic development. This chapter explores how Chinese men respond to the new realities they believe they face in light of women’s changing attitudes to intimate relationships. Prompted by online buzzwords with gendered meanings also inferring to social class, most rural migrant men and white-collar men with modest income level expressed mani­ fest anxiety and self-victimisation when discussing the language currently used to make light of changing gendered norms. They were found to not only resort to denigrating women’s integrity but also scapegoating what they understood to be “feminism” for making women increasingly imposing and demanding of their male intimate partners. The author views feminism as a form of politics that aims to transform the unequal power relations between men and women. R.W. Connell (1987: 292) argues that gender inequality is neither secondary to class, nor could be “torn down without a class politics”. As will be seen later, her viewpoint helps to understand the limitation of the emerging popular feminism in the Chinese context. What follows is first a discussion about the multiple dimensions of the so-called masculinity crisis in contemporary China, which intersects with state policies introduced during the period of China’s opening up and reforms. The chapter then presents the current complexities in Chinese gendered Internet discourse, followed by analysis of focus group responses to the discourse to illustrate how ordinary

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 161 young men perceive the results of the orchestrated gender norms present in con­ temporary China today. The “crisis of masculinity” in post-Mao China Immediately following the Cultural Revolution, male intellectuals enunciated their preoccupation with the “emasculation of Chinese men” (Song, 2010). Expressing a strong negative reaction against the so-called socialist androgyny in the Mao­ ist era, they bemoaned men’s diminished social status with women’s increased employment and men’s impotency as a result of the sexual repression and the stateorchestrated politicisation of the “masculinisation” of women (Z. Wang, 2017; Zhong, 2000). It is in the 1980s that “yin sheng yang shuai” (the prosperity of the feminine and the decline of the masculine) became a widely discussed topic (Zheng, 2015) and remained influential and imbued with different meanings throughout the next 40 years. Chinese male intellectuals’ quest for masculinity co-concurred with female intel­ lectuals’ attempt to retrieve femininity and womanhood (Barlow, 1994). Together, they formed a lively debate over “humanity” and “humanism”. Yet, this debate was quickly deflected and co-opted to legitimate and mobilise China’s market reforms. As Rofel (1999) puts it, a key component of the “allegory of post-socialism”, which serves to reject the socialist experiments of the Mao era, is to re-emphasise the gendered dichotomy that appears to liberate human nature and mark the pro­ gressiveness of marketised China. Corresponding with the country’s integration into the global capitalist order, this gendered dichotomy slotted into line with other national experiences, associating femininity with a consumerist “nature” (Croll, 2006; Evans, 2006; Yu, 2014). In contrast, the dichotomy also defined masculinity in terms of a man’s entrepreneurial spirit and economic superiority (Louie, 2015; Song and Hird, 2014; Zheng, 2015). By extension, real-estate ownership has also become “a necessary condition for (Chinese) men to talk about love and marriage, as well as demonstrating their manhood and dignity” (L. Zhang, 2010: 170–171; Talmacs, 2017). The discourse of a crisis of masculinity emerged during the 1990s in relation to the layoffs of working-class men who used to enjoy life-tenured employment in state-owned enterprises (Yang, 2010). The mass layoffs of male workers from state-employment was considered synonymous to their loss of virility. In other words, the unemployed male workers not only lost the economic means to main­ tain their male authority within the family unit but were also denigrated as a “his­ torical lack” in the post-Mao era in the sense that they did not have the business mindset, skill, and capital to match the new historical period (Rofel, 1999: 96). Such discourse helped to distract male workers’ blame for the government histori­ cally responsible for everyone’s employment to their own “individual” lack in the new era. As such, Yang (2010: 552) argues that the crisis of masculinity should be treated as a state-orchestrated “ideological construct” that serves to downplay sug­ gestions of class antagonism and revise it as individual private anxieties rooted in concerns for the family unit (see Chapter 13 by Peiqin Zhou in this volume). By

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doing so, Yang notes that the post-Mao Party-state attempted to revive itself rather as “a patriarchal benevolent government exercising kindly power” to the working class (ibid.: 550). For example, state enterprises helped male workers to retain their masculine dignity by firing female workers earlier than male workers or re­ employing some male laid-off workers after they resorted to extreme protest such as public self-humiliation (Yang, 2010). The Chinese working-class population now largely consists of rural–urban migrant workers. Scholars who study the masculinity construction of this social group note that filial piety and the responsibility to have a kin-related heir still looms large in male migrant workers’ lives as they tend to construct their mascu­ linity through relational roles, such as being fathers, husbands, and sons, instead of seeing themselves primarily as individual subjects (Du, 2017; Lin, 2013). Based on her ethnographic research conducted in Nanchong, a third-tier city in south-west China, Wong (2020) argues that ideal masculinity among the Chinese working class is not only defined by financial capacity but also by men’s family­ centred responsibility. The so-called masculinity crisis, therefore, also arises when men of lower classes have trouble in meeting their gendered expectations to marry and earn for their families. Male migrant workers thus have to cope with the discrepancy between their gender privilege in rural China and their low economic, social, and political status in the city context. Their anxieties are exac­ erbated by rural migrant women’s partial empowerment by migrant working too, resulting in a further perceived “masculine compromise” over labour division (Choi and Peng, 2016). Among urbanites, the crisis of masculinity entails different meanings with the seeming empowerment of urban young women by the One Child Policy (Fong, 2002). As urban daughters born after 1980 mostly enjoy equal access to educa­ tional resources as boys, the topic of “yin sheng yang shuai”, which emphasises boys’ underperformance in contrast to girls’ overachievement at school, is often evoked in Chinese mainstream media (Lin and Ghaill, 2019: 281). Urban young women’s high educational levels have been translated into their strong purchas­ ing power that together with exposure to global cultural influences has also sig­ nificantly contributed to the construction of a new masculinity in contemporary China (Louie, 2015). The power of the “female gaze” is instantiated in the growing visibility of beautiful male images and of homosexual expressions in popular cul­ ture whose major consumers are highly educated young women (C. Zhang, 2016; Zheng, 2015). A type of gentle and women-friendly, if not uxorious, masculinity has by extension gained huge popularity in TV dramas and other popular media (Huang, 2018b). All these constitute what Hanning Gao (2016) refers to as “popu­ lar feminism” driven by commercial logics and oriented towards this social group. While the objectives and desires put forward by “popular feminism” pose a certain degree of mismatch with the patriarchal gender order encouraged by the Party-state, its immanent ambivalence becomes a by-product orchestrated by the state and the market. The state government’s campaign for population growth and suppression of grassroots mobilisation have squashed the room for feminist movements in the public sphere. This comes against the backdrop of

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 163 businesses increasingly utilising pseudo-feminist marketing campaigns to capital­ ise on women’s increasing purchasing power without challenging the patriarchal socio-economic structure. In this way, women are effectively lured back to a maledominated social order despite appearing to be empowered in post-Mao China. Orchestrated ambivalence towards women’s autonomy A telling example of the rise of popular feminism is the changing of the name for “Women’s Day”. While the day had been known as “March 8th Funü Festival”, which inherits the revolutionary and socialist rhetoric of women’s liberation (Bar­ low, 1994), e-commerce corporations such as Alibaba have attempted to rename the day as “March 8th Queen’s Festival” (nüwang jie). This wording of nüwang, or “queen”, exemplifies the entitlement of women in the discursive and symbolic realm now permeated with commercial imperatives. In addition, some university students have unofficially named the day before March 8th as “March 7th Girls’ Day” (nüsheng jie) to differentiate themselves from the older and married female imagery connoted by funü. The day has also been partially institutionalised by cor­ porate sponsorship which seeks to capitalise on young feminine beauty. These changing labels surrounding March 8th Women’s Day in China resonate with other prevalent notions of “girl power” seen in the Western post-feminist media cultures (Hollows, 2016: 206). McRobbie (2007) notes that the fashion and beauty industry has displaced traditional modes of patriarchal authority to urge women to endlessly dress up and work on their bodies. Appearing young and sexu­ ally desirable is the supposed prerequisite for Western women to gain power and to exchange for social recognition of their capability (ibid). However, the kind of “girl power” in the Chinese context, though highlighting and celebrating women’s empowerment via individual consumption as well, is ambivalent about women’s earning power and economic independence, still predicating women’s entitlement on the gender expectation of getting married and bearing children (Meng and Huang, 2017; Talmacs, 2017). While urban young women have been empowered by the One Child Policy, their families, popular culture, and the patriarchal state often question their auton­ omy and independence. Based on their interviews with young mothers in the city of Nanjing between 2006 and 2007, Fong and her colleagues (2012) observed that Chinese women, despite class divergences, shared similar ambivalences in terms of their toddle daughters’ future independence and excellence. They encouraged their daughters to attain a certain degree of independence and school achievement; but at the same time, they worried that a too independent and well-to-do woman would not marry, thus remaining vulnerable and unhappy. Conducting both textual analy­ sis and audience studies on the film Go Lala Go! a popular film targeting urban young white-collar women in 2010, Talmacs (2017) also teases out conflicting messages from Chinese contemporary popular cinema and its audience reception in terms of urban young women’s career ambition, economic capacities, and their expectation for men to support their consumerist compulsions. In particular, she notes that being shopaholic is seen as “a privileged female’s natural inclination”;

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her professional success entangled with an expectation to find an elite man who can appreciate and support this “natural inclination” (Talmacs, 2017: 94–95). Women’s consumerist compulsions have become a major theme for online paro­ dies since China’s e-commerce industry took off, and e-shopping itself has been co-constructed as a gendered practice by corporations, mainstream media, and numerous Internet users (Meng and Huang, 2017). A popular online saying goes: Western men console women by saying, “you need a cry dear”, while when Chinese men make the same pronunciation (you nide kuaidi’er) to console a woman with the articulated sentence translated to mean “there is a (shipped) parcel for you”. The Party-state is complicit in this gendered construction of e-shopping. A nation­ alistic tone oftentimes underpins the celebration of China’s booming e-commerce and women’s huge contribution to it. Whereas in the Maoist China, women were called upon by the Party-state to “hold up half of the sky” of social production, today they are guided to “hold up half, if not more than half of the sky for China’s economy” through shopping (Liang, 2014). In China’s online space, buzzwords can be found that capture all of these gen­ dered tensions. The ambivalence towards women’s autonomy and earning power and their zeal for shopping is oftentimes mimicked as squandering men’s income with the buzzword “spendthrift chicks” (baijia niangmen) (Meng and Huang, 2017). At the same time, Chinese online discourse also entails a kaleidoscope of buzzwords that adopt an apparently feminist stance to compare and contest vari­ ous types of masculinities which are discussed later (Song and Hird, 2014; Huang, 2018a, 2018b). These buzzwords are used as stimuli during my interviews to uncover their perception of gender dynamics and intimacy at present. The coexistence of patriarchal and feminist tones in online discourse The online buzzword “spendthrift chicks” inspired various memes and jokes each year during the “double eleven shopping carnival” – the Chinese counterpart for Black Friday (Meng and Huang, 2017). Women are said to squander men’s money while men try to curtail their partners’ “spendthrift” nature by, for example, chang­ ing the password of a bankcard. But the meme “spendthrift chicks” is not just denigrating. Chinese urban young women’s consumerist compulsions are simulta­ neously essentialised, teased, and celebrated. In the end, their gendered obligation to physical beauty and domestic labour legitimate their consumption for them­ selves and for their families (Huang, 2018b; Meng and Huang, 2017; Peng, 2021). Meanwhile, Chinese Internet discourse also entails a (heterosexual) female per­ spective which compares, contests, and idealises different types of masculinities (Huang, 2018a, 2018b; Song and Hird, 2014). For example, “tall-rich-handsome” (gaofushuai) and “domineering CEO” (badao zongcai) both refer to the kind of hegemonic masculinity defined by wealth. “Little fresh meet” (xiaoxianrou) gen­ erally connotes effeminate manhood and the objectification of male bodies by the female gaze; and “warm men” (nuannan) signifies a type of women-friendly and gentle masculinity. What underpins this female perspective is a seemingly femi­ nistic stance typified by the online buzzword “straight-men cancer” (zhinan’ai).

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 165 Stemming from the danmei (boys love) subculture whose major consumers are young heterosexual women with high educational levels (C. Zhang, 2016), the buz­ zword “straight-men cancer” constructs heterosexual men as the Other to gay men. The latter are romanticised as women-friendly, caring, gentle, and consumptionsavvy in the danmei genre. Correspondingly, the buzzword “straight-men cancer” refers to macho (da nanzi zhuyi) men who presumably are heterosexual and to a series of “incurable symptoms”, such as commenting condescendingly on women’s appearance, marriage, and sex life, caring little about women’s feelings, behaving rude, and having poor consumption tastes (Huang, 2018b: 191). The buzzword “straight-men cancer” symbolises many urban young women’s yearnings for more autonomy over their bodies and marriage, and for more respect from their male counterparts. However, buzzwords symbolising patriarchy and feminist stances coexist in the Chinese cyberspace. For instance, Jack Ma, the for­ mer CEO of China’s biggest e-commerce corporation Alibaba, is known as “Ma Father” (Ma Baba), which involves a mocking undertone indicating women’s eco­ nomic dependence on men. This point is brought home by the online saying: “the new criterion of a good man nowadays is (being) a pile driver on the bed and an ATM machine off the bed (chuangshang dazhuangji, chuangxia qukuanji)”. Here, women are positioned as a subject in the private realm with her sexual desires and satisfaction emphasised; yet, she is objectified in the public realm because of her consumerist compulsions depending on the economic support of men. To put it simply, men are expected to be both breadwinner and caregivers. This masculine ideal has to be understood as resulting from the interplay between state policies and market imperatives in post-Mao China. It would not have come into existence without urban young women’s inadvertent empowerment during the One Child Policy and their increasing influence on popular culture, on the one hand, and the oversupply of available men in the marriage market, on the other hand. Meanwhile, as the Party-state repeals its welfare services and commit­ ment to improve gender equality in work and employment, women are facing a mounting degree of employment discrimination since childcare burdens are almost completely commercialised and individualised in post-Mao China. Despite their high educational level, a growing number of urban women have retreated to the family and taken on the domestic role (Zuo, 2016). Romantic as the idea of men pampering women’s consumerist compulsions might sound, the multiple gender expectations it prescribes can make non-elite Chinese young men even more anxious and misogynist. Their response to popular feminism emerges as a backlash to the rise of women’s social status, which signi­ fies both their experience of being socio-economically disadvantageous in postMao China and their misperception of feminism because of such experience. “Chairman Mao is the most handsome man (for women nowadays)”

In a dormitory room of a garment factory in Changshu, Jiangsu Province, five male migrant workers shared with me their anxiety about their singleton status, though some of them came to the factory because they imagined that “many girls work

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in the garment manufacturing industry”. Aged between 23 and 24, the young men

who came from Anhui Province were eager to get married. However, their rela­ tively low income and class background, combined with the squeeze on the current

marriage market caused by the disproportionate sex ratio, have made it difficult for

rural young men to fulfil their gender obligations of getting married to continue

their family’s line. They expressed their collectively felt male anxiety at the begin­ ning of the focus group:

Chenchen: Wei:

It’s actually hard to find a wife in this factory.

It’s hard to make money. Our salary is always like this, no mat­ ter how hard we work. Yongle: And those beautiful girls in the factory look down upon us. They appear to be so high, so above our level! Researcher: How do you know that? Have you tried to pursue them? Most participants: No . . . Chenchen: Well, we have to say that we are very “low-key” (didiao). Tongfei: Perhaps we really lack confidence in ourselves. Only taking two days off every month and working five days a week overtime (12 hours), these male garment factory workers earned around RMB 4,000–5,000 a month. For a married female worker from Shandong Province who later joined the focus group, this salary was “quite satisfactory” – she was attracted to work here because of the salary. But this amount appeared far from enough to support the male dignity of these rural migrant men who presumed their female colleagues would rather “marry up” instead of dating men earning a similar amount of sal­ ary. One year after our focus group interview, I contacted Tongfei and asked him whether he had quit the tedious job and started to learn some new skills as he had expressed during the focus group. “No”, he said, “my parents are arranging blind dates for me and I have to make money to prepare for my marriage”. The articula­ tion between patriarchy, filial piety, and market economy can imprison as much as empower men of lower classes in China. Immersed in Chinese popular online discourse that highlights women’s materi­ alist and consumerist “natures”, male anxiety can easily turn into self-victimisation and denigration of women’s integrity, as shown by another focus group formed by five male workers installing and maintaining broadband in Fuyang, a thirdtier city in Anhui Province. Watching an NBA basketball game and chain-smoking through the interview, these men co-constructed a macho and misogynist flow of conversation: Mujin:

Women are now so pragmatic (xianshi). As long as you give them money, they will let you fuck. Bingxin: For them, Chairman Mao is the most handsome man. In the aforementioned extract, Bingxin’s reference to Chairman Mao was not the real person but a metaphor for Chinese money because the portrait of the widely

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 167 considered “founding father” of the communist China appears on all currently used RMB notes. Bingxin’s whimsical comment made everyone laugh. Aged 19, Mujin was the youngest participant of the focus group and had never dated anybody, but he sounded cynical and disillusioned. These male workers’ monthly salaries ranged from RMB 3,000 to RMB 4,000 and a sense of cynicism cut across their conver­ sation. Shenli, another singleton participant, joked about himself as a “three-no product (sanwu chanping)” – no looks, no money, no future – to indicate the reason why he was still single at the age of 28. While the five men did recognise social disparities, they attributed more blame to “pragmatic” women for the moral crisis in China and their own singleton predicaments. This kind of misogynist perception of women’s moral deterioration under­ pinned by a presumption of women’s economic reliance on men was internalised by almost all the men I interviewed. On presuming and assuming the responsibility to provide for a woman who liked to consume, many rural migrant men I inter­ viewed rejected the idea of considering women’s emotional needs and respecting their will. In effect, the discursive emphasis on women’s consciousness can lead to a sense of deprivation as these men have already felt anxious about their male prerogative (Du, 2017). This point was crystalised by most rural male respondents’ rejection of the buzzword “warm man” (nuan nan). The buzzword refers to a type of family-oriented and uxorious masculinity that contrasts conventional macho masculinity. Talking about “warm man”, Mi Le, a 33-year-old hairdresser from Anhui Province whom I interviewed in Shanghai, recalled how he broke up with his former girlfriend: We were in a shopping mall when her shoelaces became loose. Then she just did this (illustrating how she wanted him to kneel down and tie the shoelaces for her). I didn’t say a word to her and left. On hearing this account, another hairdresser, A Bin, echoed in a jokingly respect­ ful manner: “(This is) a man who refuses to lower his head”. The conversation had overtones of another online saying that “as long as a woman starts to date someone, she stops being able to open bottle lids” (nüsheng yitan lianai jiu dabukai pinggai). Asking one’s boyfriend to tie one’s shoelaces might be interpreted as cuteness in a romantic relationship on the part of the female. And performing “cute” and depend­ ent resonates with the role of caregiver that men are expected to play as well in the symbolic order constructed by the popular feminism in contemporary China. Yet, for young migrant men who grew up enjoying male entitlement but have been taking pains to maintain this sense of entitlement in the urban environment, ask­ ing them to play along with this cuteness appeared to be particularly imposing. In fact, a rural young man I interviewed refused to “lower his head” even with regard to doing housework. In a mix-sex focus group consisting of restaurant workers in Shanghai, discussion of the buzzword “warm men” evolved into a debate about male and female division of domestic labour. A Ling, a 21-year-old young man from Guizhou Province who aspired to become Jack Ma’s driver and learn how to do business successfully, insisted on women’s “natural” inclination and obligation

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to do housework. As a number of scholars have noted, rural migrant men’s diffi­ culty in fulfilling masculine pride from waged work can reinforce their insistence on being “manly” in the private domain (Choi and Peng, 2016; Du, 2017; Lin, 2013). This may explain why a number of rural female respondents underlined their aspirations for men to share both their emotional needs and domestic chores when they discussed the buzzword “warm man”. Indeed, the emphasis of women’s entitlement in the private realm through consumption conceals the kind of “life­ style work” (Weinbaum and Bridges, 1976) that women have to fulfil in order to be “entitled”. Rarely being acknowledged and valorised, consumption as such – no matter it is for personal beauty or familial needs – can be tiring, not to mention the various domestic labour that women are taken for granted to assume. “Nowadays men are the vulnerable group”

Compared with rural male respondents, white-collar men tended to express more empathy with the type of women-friendly and family-oriented manhood signi­ fied by the buzzword “warm man”, and the corresponding necessity of catering to women’s emotional needs. Those who earned a decent salary considered shopping for women an important way to be warm and caring in their relationship. In a focus group mostly comprising graduates from prestigious universities in Shanghai, three male participants collectively recalled their experiences of selecting and buying gifts for their “queens” (nüwang) from an exclusive e-commerce website, whereas the only female participant, Ling, joined the conversation by joking to her husband (who was also there): “you can be a bit macho when paying”. Here, shopping for women was considered as a legitimate “macho” behaviour, softened by highlight­ ing women’s privileged status in the home as “queen”. Being economically capa­ ble, these male respondents appeared to find little difficulty in subjectifying the masculine ideals prescribed by Chinese online discourse. Sharing with each other how one indulges his partner helped to perform their masculinity and confirm their male pride in this focus group. Except for the participants of this focus group, other white-collar men – especially those with moderate income level and whom I interviewed in individual settings – also indicated a sense of male anxiety. Some of them articulated their critique of feminism which, according to these respondents, made women increasingly demanding and imposing. Shizhi, a young video producer born in 1991, consid­ ered himself as a “masculinist” (nanquan zhuyizhe) because “nowadays men are the vulnerable group”. For him, what makes men “vulnerable” is “feminism”, which “intends to take advantage of both sides” – that is calling on men to respect women’s will while at the same time expecting men to support women economically. The society is actually more tolerant towards women than men. For example, sissy men will be much more discriminated than tomboy women nowadays. Women can feel free to stay at home or go to work. A man who chooses to stay at home will face much more pressure than a woman choosing to do so. (Shizhi)

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 169 The two examples Shizhi gave illustrate both the empowering and the constrain­ ing aspects of the truncated feminism this chapter delineates. By extension, urban young women’s strong purchasing power sponsors a particular type of media con­ tent that represents soft masculinity, homosexuality, and metrosexual aesthetics. Yet, feminine men continue to be discriminated in real life; stay-at-home men con­ tinue to be pressured precisely because patriarchy is not fundamentally challenged in contemporary China where the Party-state and the market’s orchestrated ambiv­ alence towards women’s autonomy continues to underpin the prevailing gender order. Popular feminism serves to naturalise “patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics” (Meng and Huang, 2017) by romanticising women’s economic dependence on men. Shizhi misrecognises the symbolic as the real as he underlines women’s free will to choose between working and staying at home. This “free will”, however, which is underpinned by middle-class ideals, is in fact far away from most people’s realities given ordinary men’s sheer difficulties in supporting their families on their single income. Similarly misrecognising the symbolic order as the material reality, several white-collar men insisted that feminism – in the sense that it fights for women’s equal rights in the workplace – is not welcomed by most women in China either. Sanshi, a 28-year-old PR practitioner, said: “now that most women want to stay at home, whose interests are feminists representing?” He thus took pride in being macho and embracing the label “straight-men cancer” which is supposed to make men reflect on the male prerogative. Five white-collar men, including a gay respondent, enunciated their identification with “straight-men cancer”. On taking for granted the symbolic order that prescribes women as economically relying on men, these white-collar men shut their ears to feminist reasoning altogether. They highlighted the apparent female entitlement in contemporary China while neglect­ ing the prerequisites for such impartial empowerment – women’s gender obliga­ tions of appearing desirable, getting married, and shouldering domestic labour, all of which feminism is set to challenge and deconstruct (Connell, 1987; Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2009). Conclusion To conclude, this chapter sheds light on young men’s response to popular femi­ nism in the contemporary Chinese context. To be sure, its valorisation of wealthbased masculinity and the association of femininity with consumption are common in patriarchal capitalist social settings all over the world. Yet, the construction of this gender dichotomy is articulated with an emphasis on men’s family-centred responsibility (Wong, 2020) and coated in feminist rhetoric in contemporary China. It idealises a symbolic order that privileges women in the private realm with their consumerist compulsions pampered by economically capable men who respect women’s will and emotional needs. This oxymoron construction of women as “objectified subjects” arises from and negotiates the imminent tensions brought about by the changing policies of the Party-state since it embraced a mar­ ket economy. In other words, the commodification of female consciousness, urban

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young women’s rising purchasing power; their inadvertent empowerment by the One Child policy; the male marriage squeeze; and the de facto disempowerment of women by the declining social welfare in post-Mao China. All these trends in effect exacerbate the crisis of masculinity in contemporary China as non-elite men feel culturally deprived by the emerging female gaze and popular feminism on the one hand, and struggle to afford women’s economic reliance on men, on the other hand. The respondents who embraced the masculine ideal of treating women as “objectified subjects” were a group of men with higher incomes and education in my interview samples. As illustrated by the aforementioned interview analysis, male migrant workers who struggle to become economically capable may not only feel self-defeated but also blame materialistic women for their own masculinity crisis. The real cause of their masculinity crisis – the redistribution and polarisation of wealth and power among men of different classes – is dispersed and naturalised by their misogynist outcry about women’s immorality. Moreover, on presuming women’s economic reliance on men, many respondents refused to engage with feminism and its inten­ tions to further women’s political, social, and economic rights. With their (unac­ knowledged) desire to retain their gender privilege, they scapegoated feminism for making women increasingly demanding and imposing. In these ways, patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics (Meng and Huang, 2017) remains intact with the help of ordinary men’s own interpretive agency. Orchestrated by the results of state policies and market imperatives, popu­ lar feminism in contemporary China serves to conceal the huge cost that women have to take to become “entitled” with state policies working against their auton­ omy, as well as the great burdens placed on non-elite men’s shoulder with the inter­ sectionality of gender and class inequalities in contemporary China. Neither side acknowledges each other’s sacrifices, and thus pays little attention to the structural forces behind their respective gendered anxieties. References Barlow, T. (1994). Politics and protocols of Funü: (Un)Making national women. In Gilmar­ tin, C., Hershatter, G., Rofel, L., and White, T. (eds.), Engendering China: Women, Cul­ ture and the State (pp. 339–359). Harvard University Press. Choi, S. Y.-P., & Peng, Y. (2016). Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, and Gender in China. University of California Press. Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and Power. Polity Press. Croll, E. (2006). China’s New Consumers: Social Development and Domestic Demand. CRC Press Book. Du, P. (2017). Factory Boys, Factory Girls: Gender, Family and Migration of Migrant Workers in Contemporary China. Chinese University of Hong Kong. Evans, H. (2006). Fashions and feminine consumption. In Latham, K., Thompson, S. and Klein, J. (eds.), Consuming China: Approaches to Cultural Change in Contemporary China. Routledge. Feldshuh, H. (2018) Gender, media, and myth-making: constructing China’s leftover women, Asian Journal of Communication, 28 (1), pp. 38–54,

Male anxiety, self-victimisation, intimacy and gender dynamics 171 Fincher, L. H. (2014). Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. Zed Books. Fong, V. (2002). China’s one-child policy and the empowerment of urban daughters. Ameri­ can Anthropologist, 104(4), 1098–1109. Fong, V., Zhang, C., Kim, S., Yoshikawa, H., Way, N., Chen, X., Lu, Z., & Deng, H. (2012). Gender role expectations and Chinese mother’s aspirations for their toddler daughter’s future independence and excellence. In Kipnis, A. (ed.), Chinese Modernity and the Indi­ vidual Psyche (pp. 89–117). Palgrave Macmillan. Gao, H. (2016). Hewei “wangluo nvxing zhuyi”: cong dusheng ziny yidai de “huamulan” shi kunjing shuoqi (What is online feminism: taking the “Hua Mulan dilemma” of the single-child generation as the starting point) [Paper.cn]. www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1550953 Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the Media. Polity Press. Hollows, J. (2016). Media Studies: A Complete Introduction. Hodder and Stoughton. Huang, Y. (2018a). The female perspective and gender politics in Chinese internet discourse (《网络流行语中的女性视角和性别政治》). Journalism and Communication Review (《北大新闻与传播评论》), 11 (2018), 23–41. Huang, Y. (2018b). The Politics of Online Wordplay: On the Ambivalences of Chinese Inter­ net Discourse [PhD thesis]. LSE. Liang, H. (2014). Nvxing Jiang Zhudao Zhongguo Xiaofei Zengzhang (Women will be the main driving force of China’s economy). Sina.com. http://finance.sina.com.cn/zl/ china/20141112/110720796494.shtml Lin, X. (2013). Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China: Becoming a “Mod­ ern” Man. Routledge. Lin, X., & Ghaill, M. M. (2019). Shifting discourses from boy preference to boy crisis: edu­ cating boys and nation building in neoliberal China. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(3), 281–293. Louie, K. (2015). Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World. Routledge. McRobbie, A. (2007). Top Girls? Cultural Studies, 21(4–5), 718–737. McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. Sage. Meng, B., & Huang, Y. (2017). Patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics: gendered discourse of “Double Eleven” shopping festival. Cultural Studies, 31(5), 659–684. Peng, A.Y. (2021). A techno-feminist analysis of beauty app development in China’s hightech industry, Journal of Gender Studies, 30(5), pp. 596–608. Rofel, L. (1999). Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Univer­ sity of California Press. Song, G. (2010). Chinese masculinities revisited: Male images in contemporary television drama serials. Modern China, 36(4), 404–434. Song, G., & Hird, D. (2014). Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Brill. Sun, W. (2017, September 27). My parents say hurry up and find a girl’: China’s millions of lonely ‘leftover men’. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/sep/28/ my-parents-say-hurry-up-and-find-a-girl-chinas-millions-of-lonely-leftover-men Talmacs, N. (2017). Go Lala Go! Secretaries, shopping and spinsterhood. In China’s Cinema of Class: Audiences and Narratives (pp. 73–97). Routledge. Wang, Z. (2017). Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the Peo­ ple’s Republic of China 1949–1964. University of California Press. Weinbaum, B., & Bridges, A. (1976). The other side of the paycheck: Monopoly capital and the structure of consumption. Monthly Review, 28(3), 88–103. Wong, M. (2020). Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of AbleResponsible Men. Hong Kong University Press.

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Xiaolajiao. (2020). Ding Zhen gained huge popularity, but there was also a group of people who hated him ( 丁真火了，可也有一大波人讨厌他) [Blog]. The Paper. www.thepaper. cn/newsDetail_forward_10327312 Xinhua News (2020). Pic story: 20-year-old Tibetan herder becomes internet celebrity [online]. https://go.huanqiu.com/article/410yGR60C71. Yang, J. (2010). The crisis of masculinity: Class, gender, and kindly power in post-Mao China. American Ethnologist, 37(3), 550–562. Yu, L. (2014). Consumption in China: How China’s New Consumer Ideology Is Shaping the Nation. Polity Press. Zhang, C. (2016). Loving boys twice as much: Chinese women’s paradoxical fandom of “boys’ love” fiction. Women’s Studies in Communication, 39(3), 249–267. Zhang, L. (2010). In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Cornell University Press. Zheng, T. (2015). Masculinity in crisis: Effeminate men, loss of manhood, and the nationstate in postsocialist China. Etnográfica, 19(2), 347–365. Zhong, X. (2000). Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chi­ nese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Duke University Press. Zuo, J. (2016). Work and Family in Urban China – Women’s Changing Experience since Mao. Palgrave Macmillan.

13 Neoliberal femininities in China The conflicting gender discourse of transgender celebrity, Jin Xing Peiqin Zhou

Transgender in contemporary China Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex assigned at birth. This gender practice has only gained legitimacy in China in the last two decades. Before that, being transgender was associated with moral degeneration, and it was usually considered as one type of sexual perversion, or even a means of counter-revolutionary conspiracy. As it is considered a social taboo, transgender behaviour has been blocked away from Chinese mass media under the direct control of the state. Sociologist Yinhe Li (2006) argues that there are two reasons for the lack of coverage on transgender behaviour in Maoist era Chinese media. One reason was that being transgender was considered at the time to be a wicked social phenomenon that would only occur in capitalist nations, and so media coverage of its existence in China would make socialist China lose face. The second reason was that Chinese society also held at the time an extremely conservative attitude towards sexuality – sexuality of any kind that is – with sexu­ ality being a taboo topic rarely mentioned in public. By examining China’s most authoritative Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, from 1949 to 1978, Zhang (2014) found that except for drag performances in some traditional operas, there was only one story about a transgender person. Published in 1957, the story was about how the “counter-revolutionary” Guoxiong Wan had cross-dressed to hide his real identity as a spy for the Nationalist Party that at the time had been defeated and retreated to Taiwan. Guoxiong Wan was found guilty of counter-revolutionary activities and was held in prison until 1978. After his release, Wan (2008) insisted he was “a victim of transgender discrimination”, that “the judge forced me to admit that I committed adultery with Miss Chen to prove that I was a normal male, so I was convicted of being a spy with an accomplice”. In the late 1970s, China began to reform and open up, which provided some space for the social acceptance of behaviours which were previously considered deviant. While being transgender (often also referred to in China as “transsex­ ual”) was decriminalized from a legal perspective, interestingly, much of the moral stigma associated with being transgender receded after it being defined as a medi­ cal disease that could be resolved by sex reassignment surgery. While a hospital in Beijing performed the first sex reassignment surgery in January 1983, the surgery DOI: 10.4324/9781003399124-13

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was kept a secret. It was only on 31 August 1990 that Wenhui Newspaper published a news article about a sex reassignment surgery performed at a hospital in Shang­ hai, tactically employing the narrative of science news to cover the surgery as the latest medical breakthrough. In fact, it was Huiying Qin, the patient who underwent the surgery, who contacted the newspaper to help publicise her case in order to educate society and hopefully unearth others like her. Unfortunately, Huiying Qin was subject to serious discrimination after the publicity about her surgery and she quickly faded out of public view. Despite the widespread discrimination against transgender people and their low status and visibility in Chinese society, the paradox is that China’s legal system accepted and entitled transsexual people legal recognition much earlier than many Western societies. In 2008, China passed a law allowing those with sex reassign­ ment surgery to change their sex officially on state identity documents and grant transsexuals’ rights of marriage, childbirth, and adoption. The passing of the law itself did not cause any controversies in China; in fact, the vast majority of Chinese people did not even notice the passing of the law. Legal scholar Xiaofei Guo (2014) describes the gradual empowerment process in this case of China’s transgender community to have been “silent”. To explain this unusually smooth and fast process of transgender rights empowerment in a Chinese context, Guo argues that the rights bestowed upon transsexuals, such as marriage rights, were easily accepted because they were framed within the context of heterosexual monogamy. The gay rights movement has had so little impact in China, in contrast to the umbrella issues of transgender people, because homosex­ uality is understood as an entirely separate phenomenon that sits outside the het­ erosexual paradigm. Until now, China has not legalised same-sex marriage. This unique phenomenon makes the lived experience of transgender and transexual peo­ ple in China quite different from that of other gender minorities and also different from that of their counterparts in Western societies. In general, in Chinese society, this social group enjoys a coveted legal status when it comes to sexuality advocacy, but are almost invisible in any advocacy capacity among gender minority groups. The impact of neoliberalism on women Neoliberalism is a key element in understanding any aspect of contemporary China, even though China’s official discourse has always been fiercely critical of neoliber­ alism by denying its prevalence in China. Instead, the Chinese state has insisted on discourse about the legitimacy, domination, and continuity of socialist principles to guide the nation. Neoliberalism, in short, attaches great importance to the mar­ ket, downplaying the role of governmental intervention. Furthermore, it applies the logic of the autonomous market to governmentality, encouraging the development of individualism, advocates for social upward mobility as the result of individual efforts, and values competition as a primary driving factor. It pays, however, little attention to addressing social inequality and rejects the idea of the welfare state. In the face of market risks, neoliberalists tend to favour familism because in the absence of state welfare, the assumption is that the family unit will act as a

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 175 necessary social security net. For example, the ideal life of the “American Dream”, which emerged after the Second World War, is embodied by a middle-class nuclear family living in a large, suburban house, with the husband as the sole breadwinner and the wife taking care of the family full-time (Betty Friedan, 1963). Anthropolo­ gist Yan Yunxiang (2016) notes that the shift to familism could be seen during the 1980s and 1990s when young couples in north-east rural China started to establish nuclear families. Albeit, the return to stem families quickly returned by the 2000s because many young parents had to rely on their parents for childcare. Yan (2016) proposed that it was in this context that “the rise of familism” could be indicative of neoliberal China. David Harvey (2007) argues that China has been a country of “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics” since its reform and opening up initi­ ated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. Hui Wang (2008) rather proposes that neoliberalism took root in China in the 1990s when the country began to transform its planned economy to a market one. Despite the market taking a crucial position in China’s economic development and people can feel its effects in their daily lives, the state’s “hand” is never too far away. With regard to gender in this context, neoliberalism seems to be gender-neutral, but the emphasis on the individual and an open market has had a profound impact on gender ideology in China. From 1949 to 1978, the core of gender ideology was state feminism adopted to reflect the socialist ideals of equality. In that period of time, the state acted as a “benevolent parent” and arranged all the details of peo­ ple’s lives from birth to death, no matter whether they were male or female. Due to the impetus provided by the state, Chinese women’s status increased significantly with a large number of women joining the labour force. The gender pay gap nar­ rowed and a significant portion of domestic labour, including child-rearing, was socialised through state planning; albeit the state stopped sort of giving women enough power to act on their own subjectivity. The aspirations of state feminism, however, were terminated in the 1990s as the market became the key factor in China’s economy. The egalitarianism valued and promoted by China’s socialists were soon replaced by the principle of “effi­ ciency”, leading many state-owned enterprises to dismiss a large number of work­ ers. Women made up the majority of these workers. At the same time, the political slogan, “women hold up half the sky” that was once popular during the Maoist era, was charged by neoliberals as showing no respect to the differences between men and women and actually forcing women to become masculine while devalu­ ing their inborn femininity. Due to the changing gender ideology, in the 1990s, China began to witness the rise of women’s “re-gendering”, or in other words, re­ feminisation. For example, many beauty pageants were held across China during this period because they were praised as symbolising ideological liberation and women’s freedom to express their inborn femininity. Even though Chinese women are, broadly speaking, more feminised today than they were during the Mao era, the influence of the proliferation of neoliberal values on their social status is complicated. This is especially so, considering the effects of social stratification in China since the 1990s and Chinese women no longer belong­ ing to a highly homogeneous social category vis-à-vis Chinese man. A widening

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social class gap makes women of different classes express their femininity in differ­ ent ways – determined by their capacity to engage with the new market economy. Just as how liberalist ideals may have played a role in initiating the first feminist movement in the West, neoliberalism arguably in the Chinese context has simi­ lar potential to empower Chinese women from well-resourced households. The new market options have generated a large number of elite women who are well educated, hold professional jobs, and live a cosmopolitan life. Since their success requires achievement in the public sphere, they are understood to embody many traits, such as assertiveness, independence, and aggressiveness – characteristics typically considered masculine. As Liu (2014) argues, a woman must possess these traits of masculinity to acquire success and power in a patriarchal society. As far as women from less advantaged backgrounds are concerned, although the free market offers the possibility of self-development, the lack of cultural, economic, or social capital usually restrains them from making the best use of the market. Shaopeng Song (2011), a Chinese feminist scholar, argues that in China, state capitalism, which embraces the privatisation of production materials and the pri­ vatisation of family life, has become the working ideology. Housework has been re-feminised in the name of the privatisation of family life, which makes women less valuable in the labour market. It is reported that the employment rate of women fell 16% in 2010 compared with 2000, while that of men fell only 9%. It is clear that the gender binary system, severely challenged during the Maoist era, is begin­ ning to recover and strengthen. In fact, even women from advantaged backgrounds are found to agree that gender differences are inborn, men are superior to women, and therefore men should shoulder more family responsibility. In response to this, Liu (2014) posits that accepting to be inferior to men may be a strategy employed by young women for self-protection in a male-dominated, competitive world where social security is inadequate. Jin Xing: a celebrated transgender woman To raise the social status of any minority group, informing the public of their exist­ ence and the plight they face is the first step. It is clear that in China, the average level of public awareness on the subject of transgender people is rather low. For example, the well-known sociologist Yinhe Li’s partner is a transgender man nick­ named Daxia. After Li revealed her relationship with Daxia to the public, Li was vehemently denounced on the Internet as “hiding” her lesbian identity from the public while acting as an advocate for homosexual rights. Li had to defend to the public her relationship with Daxia by explaining it as heterosexual because Daxia is a transgender, albeit not a transsexual. Face-to-face contact in everyday life is a very effective way to help the public learn about gender minorities and shift public thinking on the matter of gender “dif­ ference”. But as far as transgender people are concerned, the minority’s proportion of the Chinese population is so small that very few Chinese have any first-hand experience with gender other than that of man and woman. In such an environ­ ment, media representation of transgender people therefore becomes a crucial

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 177 source for educating the public. But according to the Living Conditions of Sexual Minorities in China report released by the UN Planning and Development Agency (2016), China’s mainstream media provide little space to the presentation of sexual and gender minorities. Celebrity culture though has risen to new heights in China today, and the power they possess to influence public opinion is great. China’s own TV celebrity, Jin Xing, the only transgender celebrity in present-day China, is thus an exception to the norm in Chinese broadcasting terms, and by extension plays an incredibly important role in presenting all matters “transgender” to a Chinese public. Presenting as male at birth, at the age of 17 Jin won the first prize in the youth group of the national “Peach Plum Cup” dancing competition. From 1991 to 1994, she studied and worked in the United States and Europe, and had grown to be an accomplished modern dancer. She underwent sex reassignment surgery at a hospi­ tal in Beijing in 1995. Within the next few years, Jin adopted three kids and mar­ ried a German man. Unlike most transgender people who prefer to go through sex transition in private, Jin has actively made the transition from male to female highprofile. She even had the transition produced as a documentary titled “Miss Jin Xing Story”. After her reassignment, she continued to stay in the media spotlight. Jin relocated herself from Beijing to Shanghai to organise her own modern danc­ ing troupe. In the 2010s, Jin was frequently invited to be a judge on many TV real­ ity competition shows, and her candid and satirical comments were so catchy that she earned the nickname “Poisonous Tongue”. Publicity accrued through these TV programmes made Jin an even more popular entertainer than as a modern dancer that she had trained to be. In January 2015, she started to host a weekly talk show named the Jin Xing Show at Shanghai Oriental TV. The Jin Xing Show was very popular, but in July 2017, the talk show was taken off the air without any explana­ tion. And while Jin was blocked from appearing on mainstream media, she does occasionally obtain some publicity through messages she posts on her social media accounts. Her TV show recordings, her reassignment documentary, her public talks and interviewees, however, are still available on the Internet. In this way, Jin Xing’s social media presence continues to spearhead representation for transgender people for many of the Chinese public in the face of Chinese mainstream media no longer having any gender diversity representation. Since Jin Xing’s media image has been the only way for most Chinese to get to know transgender people, its impact cannot be understated. The first thing those exposed to Jin Xing’s media image, question her gender expression. This is a primary question often asked about all transgender people, albeit the femininity embodied and performed by Jin Xing’s media representation is hard to miss or confuse. Two conflicting femininities in Jin Xing’s gender discourse In August 2013, Jin Xing hosted and delivered a public lecture to a mostly female audience in a theatre in Shanghai. The title of her talk was “How to intelligently get along with the male-dominated society”. As a celebrity in the Chinese spotlight for

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the last three decades, Jin has accumulated a wealth of experience dealing with the mass media, which she identifies for the purpose of her talk as a male-dominated industry to illuminate examples for her advice. She notes for her audience’s benefit, three strategies she has noted that the media adopt in presenting her to the public. First, she argues that the media often made her witty comments sound more biased than what she meant for the purpose of appealing to the audience and creating a “character” of her. As Jin explains, “My comments have their beginnings, transitions and closings, but the directors edit them out. In order to create a sharp-tongued judge, they only ever include my most caustic remarks”. Second, in light of the Chinese state’s media censorship proto­ cols, her commentary on broader social issues are often stymied. “Before I came here today”, she informs the audience at the beginning of her talk, “a friend on Weibo left me a message saying, ‘Teacher Jin, be careful about what you say. We don’t want you to be invited to have a cup of tea by government agents’”. “Having a cup of tea” is an obscure phrase with a touch of sarcasm employed when referring to unofficial interrogations by the public security authorities in China. Yet, as Jin Xing was quick to clarify, “In fact, I do pay attention to our living environment as much as anyone else. . . . Ah, this topic is too serious, let’s stop it here and move on to chat about men and women”, a shift in the momentum of her talk in itself made cute and appropriately feminine in its flirtatious diversion on a serious issue. The third strategy she notes that the media has continuously worked to ques­ tion whether she is “feminine enough”. Jin reflects on the impact that this has had within her family unit, relaying how her son once said to her in bewilderment, “Mom, these media are so vulgar, they keep talking about your sex change!” She offers an appropriately motherly response to the memory, clarifying that “his words went to my heart, very sweet, very touching. He is just a child”. Jin’s public lecture is hosted by Yu Chen, the director of the non-for-profit pro­ ject behind the organisation of Jin Xing’s public lecture series, who opens the show saying: Many friends have told me that Jin Xing is so beautiful, especially when she walks from the stage side curtains to the center; the air that follows her is very sexy. So, I have planted a little seed in my heart, hoping that one day she would have a chance to share with us the secret to “doing” womanhood (zuo nv ren). In a conservative society like China, “sexy” is rarely used in public to praise a woman, but here the host is not hesitant to highlight Jin’s sex appeal and empha­ sise that it is this characteristic that makes her a qualified guest speaker (and more importantly, a qualified woman). For transgender people, “gender passing” is an ever-present battle, no matter whether they are willing to engage in the process or not. Yet Jin is much more capable of exercising her autonomy in the process of her own media image due to her long-term relation with the mass media. Therefore, the way she orchestrates understanding about her gender identity is more likely to be the cooperative product of her and commercial media. And in doing so, for any

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 179 audience of Jin Xing’s public-facing persona, her personal gender identity nar­ rative becomes the framework within which to understand all other transgender people across China. Independent and individualistic professional

Jin’s public talk is organised by a non-profit project titled “Making a Great Differ­ ence in Your Life” (ren sheng da bu tong), launched in 2011 by Shenjiang Daily Newspaper. The project consists of several activities, including a series of speeches delivered by social elites. The project’s stated aims were to “build an open platform for learning, sharing diversified life experiences and helping young people dis­ cover and become themselves”. Yu Chen, the project director, explains that according to our criteria, guest speakers get selected not only because they are celebrities, but also because these people have a similar trait: they are people who have found what they truly love to do and have created their own way to realise their dream. Based on this criteria, Jin is arguably fully qualified to speak. Firstly, she is a celebrity. Her reputation came first as an outstanding modern dancer, then as a high-profile transgender woman, and then as an outspoken and highly popular TV entertainer. In the meantime, her unique family unit – which includes her, her Ger­ man husband, and three adopted children – generates a great deal of curiosity from the Chinese public. Secondly, she has been pursuing a life she wants to live with a strong sense of autonomy, including her sex reassignment surgery and her devo­ tion to dancing. Jin Xing proudly talks about her sex reassignment and shows firm control over her family and career life. She tells the audience, “my parents gave me a birthday, but I gave birth to myself again. Counting on my fingers, now I am a 17-year-old teenager girl!” Thirdly, Jin has been working hard to realise her dream and has been considered successful in many regards. For example, after the sex reassignment surgery, Jin gave up her secure life in Beijing and moved to Shanghai to start her own dancing troupe under very difficult conditions. Besides her successful career, her media image shows that she has reached a balance between work and family, which is a relevant challenge that feminists have long fought recognition for. For example, while raising one child has already made many families in China exhausted, Jin is seen happily raising three children with her husband while having a tight work schedule. And her family structure is the opposite of the traditional gender norm of “male breadwinner, female homemaker”. In the family of five, it is Jin’s job that is the main, if not only, source of family income, while her husband is a stay-at-home caretaker. For these efforts and achievements, Jin is invited to deliver the talk. As the host, Yu Chen, said in her introduction, the purpose of the talk is to let Jin share with the audience “how to do womanhood”. While meant complimen­ tarily to Jin Xing’s achievements, ironically, this speaks to the exact challenge of gender passing that transgender women face day in and day out. And arguably in

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the context of the “cisgender” women seated in Jin Xing’s audience, whose gen­ der expression or gender identity is consistent with sex assigned at birth, gender passing is a test they seldom have to consider. Taking Jin Xing as their role model, therefore, is not a case of Jin Xing teaching them how to “do womanhood” per se as Yu Chen posits the talk to be about, but in fact, how to be a “better woman”. Performing the persona of an independent, confident, and courageous woman, the media representation of Jin can easily be interpreted as the embodiment of feminism – but the reality is that Jin’s gender discourse does not adopt this theo­ retical framework. In fact, during the whole talk, Jin’s analysis of her achievement does not mention gender equality at all; on the contrary, her endorsement to the existing gender binary regime is clearly expressed and she situates her success in the specific context of male domination, which she has no intention to challenge. The title of the speech “How to intelligently get along with this male-dominated society” thus sets the tone for the whole speech. The title reveals the two primary points Jin intends to pass to the audience, and it is hard not to sense the sexist impli­ cation embedded in the title. One point is that Jin considers it a fact that current society is male-dominated. As Jin confirms to her audience, “in Chinese society, from the beginning to the end, we should never forget that we live in a game whose rules are set by males”. Throughout her speech, Jin surprisingly makes no criticism of male-domination, and to the disappointment of feminists in her gender discourse, “male-domination” is a neutral phrase she does not consider problematic. Her second point is that she wants to teach the audience tactics to thrive in such a male-dominated society. Usually, a person recognising that a society is male-dominated tends to be focused on how to elude male domination and achieve gender equality. However, this logic does not apply to Jin. In her speech she asserts, “I don’t want to change the world, and I don’t want to be changed by the world”. The relationship Jin proposes for women to develop with the world that marginalises them is to “get along” – a non-confrontational or even congenial coexistence. Her value-free attitude towards male domination makes the speech more like a guide for cross-cultural commu­ nication. “Conforming to the rules” is a phrase that comes up several times in the speech. According to Jin, this is the primary strategy she applies, for example, to foreign cultures and unfamiliar institutions. In order to elaborate this point, she uses her relationship with her husband to illustrate how to switch positions among in a couple in different cultural occasions: There are always lots of guests in our house (in China). When I talk to Chi­ nese men about the history and the current affairs, although there is no prob­ lem with his (her husband’s) language, there are cultural barriers. When we get back to Europe, accordingly, I lie quietly beside him like a cute bird. By using this argument, Jin presents herself to be a confident but flexible woman. Even if she plays a submissive role to her husband in Europe, she considers this her own choice, which she has made based on self-evaluation of her cultural (in) competence in a foreign culture.

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 181 In the same vein, based on the principle of conforming to the existing rules, Jin regards most issues raised by the audience to be personal, and the solutions she posits are correspondingly centred on the individual’s responsibility and efforts, most of which rely on individuals’ consuming power exercised in the free market. For example, Jin talks about her eldest son who is going to school in the UK: At first I didn’t want to send my children to England for school. But it was a helpless solution. From the first grade we let him walk alone. He didn’t take any extracurricular classes. At that time, if someone warned me that a child can lose at the starting line, I would slap that person in the face. But the arm is no match for the thigh. When my son attended the first grade, the other children had already learned English and Chinese phonetic alphabets well. My son scored 60 on his first final exam, second to the last in his class. In the face of difficulties caused by China’s education system, Jin’s solution mirrors what lots of Chinese middle-class parents usually do: send their children overseas for their schooling. Even though Jin considers these parents “helpless”, sending children to grow up in a developed Western country is definitely beyond the reach of millions of working-class families in China. It is a solution based on the laws of the free market where affluent Chinese parents pay an intimidating price to keep their children from competing for survival in an overly competitive environment without direct confrontation with the state. Another audience member asks Jin what she should do with her father who does not want to travel with her because he feels the high pressure of saving for old age. Jin immediately replies to her: You should tell your father, dad, you have raised me and your job is done, I’ll be responsible for your elderly care. If the country does not provide you social security, what will your daughter do? If the nation can’t support your father, it’s your responsibility. As a child, you should relieve him of the worry. So far, there is no effective social security for old-age care in China, and Jin’s advice on this issue is completely in line with the strategy employed by any neo­ liberal government to make families shoulder elderly care through reinforcing the traditional family ethics of filial piety. Again, Jin’s solution to the pressure for elderly care calls on individuals to work harder and earn more, a common logic in neoliberalism, but does not explore the possible problems in the social structure that may hinder such aspirations in the first place. In general, Jin presented herself in her public lecture as a responsible and capable individual, who meets the expectation of the neoliberal state well. Cor­ respondingly, her gender discourse calls on women to accept the reality of a maledominated society and seek self-development while remaining in a subordinate position. All of this, despite her unique wealth and privilege, is how Jin interprets her own success.

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Submissive and caring housewife

The purpose of the project “Making a Great Difference in Your Life” is to show the guest speakers’ successful lives, and set these speakers as role models to inspire the visiting audience. Paradoxically, even though Jin has been very successful in the public sphere, in the speech, the advice she offers to the women audience is only centred on how women should fulfil their family roles. She states that family is the place where women can be the most valuable and whenever there are family–work conflicts, women should put family first. She argues it is the woman’s failure if her husband has an affair or children do not properly behave. She does not encourage her audience to get to where she is, but tells them to give up challenges that she herself has successfully overcome and retreat to the home to be a wife and mother. The sharp contrast between Jin’s own life experience and her advice to other women is vividly illustrated by the following scene: she stands confidently on the centre of the stage and talks eloquently about how she exercised leadership in many difficult situations, but the principle she keeps recommending to women is to be submissive to men. Jin puts it in this way, “Don’t compete with men at work, and don’t compete with men at home either. What will you get in the end? Who would benefit from fighting to the death?” Jin’s all concrete suggestions to women on family and work issues are based on this principle. For the women who have not yet joined the labour force, Jin posits that girls should not have too much consumerist “desire”, and they should engage in more leisure activities. After her speech, Jin Xing answers a few questions from the audi­ ence. One mother tells her: My daughter is a college junior. She is an obedient and quiet girl, and she has been this way since she was very young. Now she needs to start her intern­ ship, but she feels the workplace is just too depressing. Maybe we have put too much pressure on her. She thinks that a girl doesn’t need to make a mil­ lion dollars, and four or five thousand a month is enough. The mother asks Jin Xing if in her opinion her daughter is doing all right. Jin answers her promptly: There are a lot of girls who earn 5,000 yuan in Shanghai, but they are not happy. By contrast, many girls in Chengdu only earn 3,000 yuan but are very happy. Who stirs up a girl’s desire? It’s the parents and society! If she has free time, let her do some embroidery and engage in small talk with her friends. I think your daughter’s world view is healthier than yours. Jin attributes the girl’s anxiety about her workplace to excessive desire for frivolity, and expresses full support to the girl’s decision to earn less and even encourages young women to spend more time on leisure activities in their private sphere to find peace and happiness. In terms of Jin’s way of analysing the mother’s question, the influence of neoliberal individualism can be seen since she suggests individuals

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 183 look inside for finding out the causes of, and the solutions to, their problems. Inter­ estingly, Jin uses embroidery and small talk as two example activities for women to engage in for leisure. Embroidery had been a symbol of femininity in traditional China for many centuries because it is time-consuming, needs lots of patience, is usually carried out at home, and is not productive but highly displayable. Embroi­ dery as a “woman’s activity” though has been outdated at least for a few decades since most women have left home for paid work. What’s more, Jin’s advice to young women is the opposite of her own pursuit as a career-oriented woman. In order to develop her dancing career, Jin went from China to the United States, from the United States to Europe, and then back to China. There is also a far cry between Jin’s own financial success and the ideal income she sets for young girls. Indeed, Jin has revealed in many interviews that her family lives in a lavish rented presidential suite in a five-star hotel in Shanghai all year round. For women who have entered the labour force, addressing their work–family conflict, Jin’s advice again indicates that she strongly supports stereotypical gender roles by emphasising women’s familial responsibility and suggests women give up work for family if needed. For example, one audience asks her: Are women supposed to stay at home to take care of their husbands and children? My baby is fifteen or sixteen months old and I’m struggling. I have taken more than two years off for the baby. Would you go out to work if you were me? My parents-in-law are living in Hangzhou. They are too old to come and help me with the kid. My parents are still relatively young, and they have their own career. Jin replies to this question: When your family needs you to stay at home to take care of your husband and children to let your husband work outside the home, at this moment, your primary task is to be a good mother and wife. When your children grow up, your career will not be delayed if you still want to continue working on it. I think a clever woman can always control her situation and manage a perfectly balanced life. Taking good care of the family is a great accomplish­ ment. If your family can shoulder some of the burden, and you can continue your job part time, you are lucky . . . If it is impossible for you to get family support, stay home to take care of the kid. Because you gave birth to him, you have to be responsible for him. Whether to become a full-time housewife or not has been a common question that many Chinese women have had to face since the economic reforms of the late 1970s. This is mainly because the government cancelled a lot of the social welfare policies developed in the planned economy era, including shutting down many kindergartens subsidised by the state and taking nursery for children under 3 years old off completely from state coverage. In the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese society had several heated debates on whether women should take career breaks

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to become full-time housewives for childrearing. Jin’s viewpoints represent one side of these debates which considers care work, especially child care, a good match with women’s inborn femininity, and suggests new mothers would bet­ ter go home to fulfil their family roles while leaving the unequal gender rela­ tions and problematic social structure untouched. In Jin’s advice, for example, she does not ask for any information about the new father, including his paid job and involvement with childrearing, nor does she take the lack of childcare social services into consideration. Instead, she states that having family support for childcare is something that is decided by a mysterious and uncontrollable “fate”. Meanwhile, she tells the women audience that, “Because you gave birth to him, you have to be responsible for him”. Thus, a problem that feminists see as socially constructed becomes a form of personal bad luck in the eyes of Jin. To better convince young women, Jin further argues that these women can just pick up their career and move on a few years later, although in reality, getting back to the normal track of highly competitive careers after leaving for a few years has never proved to be an easy job, if at all possible. In order to persuade her audience to put family first, Jin goes to great lengths to argue that stay-at-home moms can be highly accomplished because they make great contributions to their families and they are morally superior. As she says: Women are very important at home. God is fair to give women two chances: one is to affect the men around you, your husband, or your lover; the other is to educate your children. The two chances are fairly given by God to every woman to shape the world. Don’t believe that in order to change the world, a woman has to be a deputy prime minister, CEO, or president. The number of these positions is extremely limited. How do women affect the world? Change the people around you! One of her most striking points is that motherhood is crucial to the growth of the next generation, and if children do not behave well, it indicates that “their moth­ ers didn’t raise them decently”. For example, she says, “My son was slapped in the face by another child in Carrefour. I told my son that the boy’s mother had not educated him well”, and goes so far as to draw the conclusion that “whether a girl will become a good wife can be judged by taking a look at her mother, and whether a boy can take the familial responsibility can also be judged by taking a look at his mother”. In addition to considering children’s wrongdoing their mother’s failures, Jin employs the same theory to explain husbands’ extramarital affairs, giving warn­ ings to wives that they should take efforts to satisfy their husband’s sexual desire during pregnancy and breastfeeding: I’ve often said that, when a woman is three months pregnant, the man next to her is still a normal man. 70 to 80 percent of extramarital affairs occur during pregnancy. After I have a child, I don’t want to see any men for almost three years. I don’t need to. Having children is all I care about. You might not need something, but how about the guy next to you? What about him? During this

Neoliberal femininities and transgender celebrity, Jin Xing 185 period, men are particularly prone to be seduced. Take special care of your man during breastfeeding. The aforementioned view on male and female sexuality expressed by Jin has long been criticised by feminists. The sexist view holds that only men have sexual desire, women are the object of men’s desire, and men’s sexual desire should be satisfied by women, otherwise, if a husband cannot get sexual satisfaction from his wife, he should be forgiven for having an extramarital affair while his wife is to blame. To sum up, instead of encouraging the female audience to follow her example as a self-reliant and accomplished person, Jin’s advice to women is to basically follow the footprints left by age-old stereotypical gender divisions that require women to put family first at the expense of their self-development, to facilitate the continua­ tion of the male-dominated households, and to fall in line with the state-supported revival of familism promoted by the state and the market in the neoliberal era. Conclusion Transgender celebrity Jin Xing presents a rich text for understanding the subject of being transgender situated specifically in a Chinese context. This study reveals that there are conflicting messages in Jin’s gender discourse. Jin endorses two types of femininities expected for women from different social classes: one highlights the traits of independence, autonomy and the public sphere reflected in Jin’s lived experience as a neoliberal elite; and the second is what she encourages women from less advantaged backgrounds to pursue: to be a submissive, dependent, and a caring housewife. The two femininities reflect two opposite directions along which Chinese women’s status are changing and arguably are the result of both state and commercial interests. Similarly, both show strong influences of neoliberal ideals, albeit drawing different elements from this dominating ideology. Jin’s own upward social mobility is a testament to the potential of neoliberalism for social elites who have access to, and can make the best use of, self-actualising opportunities. Her suggestions to less advantaged women, however, about “how to intelligently get along with the male-dominated society”, cater to aspirations of familism that high­ light the importance of family as a basic institution to act as a social safety net in the face of an absent state welfare system. In a society, which today is deeply stratified, there is no homogeneous femininity shared across social classes. At the intersection of gender and neoliberalism, social elites like Jin Xing and “the other” less advantaged Chinese women take different paths to embodying their unique femininities. Neoliberalism in China is thus both empowering some women and depriving others of the rights left to them by state feminism. The new-found neo­ liberal feminism is gradually changing the way women think of themselves and their roles today in the context of Chinese society. Care should be taken to understand Jin’s conflicting messages in her gender discourse, especially her strong support for male domination in Chinese society. One explanation may be that many transgender people are not against the gender binary and what they want is to change where they stand within the gender binary.

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Showing acceptance of male domination can be an effective way of “doing wom­ anhood” in a patriarchal society. It is also possible that Jin has aligned her gender discourse to “conform to the existing rules” set by the dominant neoliberal values. Since Jin is a veteran of China’s mass media, she may also be “conforming to the existing rules” to keep distance from social activism in order to survive in a, broadly speaking, heterosexual, male-dominated society that stipulates strict codes on media content. Another possibility is that the sexism embodied in Jin’s gender discourse is to stir up controversies to attract media attention, which contributes to Jin’s commercial success in the mass culture market. To understand Jin’s gender discourse more accurately and deeply needs more research to unveil the interaction between Jin’s transgender identity construction and the mechanism of the produc­ tion of Jin’s media representation. What is clear, however, is that Jin Xing, as a media character of interest and star attraction, has the power to influence not only the millions of viewers of her TV shows, but also the eager audience members who come to hear her speak as an “expert” on women’s issues. Her words and thoughts carry weight and influence particularly among young women searching for ways forward for their generation that are placed in very different circumstances than their mother’s and grandmother’s generations. As for evaluating the influence of Jin Xing’s gender discourse, especially the conflicting femininities it presents, what the audience may take away from these messages is an important and chal­ lenging subject for future research. References Friedan, Betty (1963). The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Guo, Xiaofei (郭晓飞) (2014). 无声无息的变迁 – 中国法视野下的变性人婚姻权 [Wúshēng wú xī de biànqiān – zhōngguó fǎ shìyě xià de biànxìng rén hūnyīn quán]. 中国 青年研究 (11): 29–33 + 39. Harvey, David (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Li, Yinhe (2006). Regulating male same-sex relationships in the People’s Republic of China.

In Elaine Jeffreys (ed.), Sex and sexuality in China. New York: Routledge, pp. 82–101.

Liu, Fengshu (2014). From Degendering to (Re)gendering the Self: Chinese Youth Negotiat­ ing Modern Womanhood. Gender and Education 26(1): 18–34. Song, Xiaopeng (宋少鹏) (2011). “回家”还是“被回家”? [“Huíjiā” haíshì ”bėi huíjiā”?]. 妇女研究论丛 (4): 5–12 + 26. UN Planning and Development Agency (联合国开发计划署) (2016). 中国性少数群体生 存状况 [Zhōngguó xìngshǎoshù qúntĭ shēngcún zhàngkuàng]. www.cn.undp.org/content/ china/en/home/library/democratic_governance/being-lgbt-in-china.html，23 June 2017. Wan, Guoxing (万国雄）(2008).读者来信 [dúzhĕ láĭixìn]. 文史月刊12: 75. Wang, Hui（汪晖） (2008). 去政治化的政治 – 短20世纪的终结与90年代 [qù zhėngzhìhuà de zhėngzhì — duǎn 20 shìjì de zhōngjié yǔ 90 niàndài]. 生活·读书·新知三联书店. Yan, Yunxiang (2016). Intergenerational Intimacy and Descending Familism in Rural North China. American Anthropologist 118(2): 244–257. Zhang, Qingfei (2014). Transgender Representation by the People’s Daily since 1949. Sexu­ ality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 18(1): 180–195.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure or photo on the corresponding page. 1994 GATT 43 9/11 48 accountability 121, 153 activism: feminist 8; social 186 addictive behaviours: social media use– related 150 advertising revenue 34–36, 133, 149 affect 146–151; attentive 146, 150; see also affective design affective design 146–147, 151 afforestation 96 Afghanistan 48 agency 3–5, 76, 170; journalistic 36; legal 7, 115; political 1, 7, 115 algorithms 3, 22; design 7, 143–154; and stickiness 147–150 Alibaba 145, 163 American Dream 6, 175 “Americanisation” 41–42, 52 “American monomyth” 47–48 American Other 6, 41–53 American TV 49 American values 48–49 America’s War on Terror 47–48 ancient war poems 90–95 anti-foreign sentiments 94–95 anti-Japanese war heroes 95 anti-PX (para-xylene) protests 4 attention 145, 150, 153; authority’s 36; censors’ 22; Internet users’ 7, 16, 146–147, 154; media 186; public 66; as scarce resource 145–146; scholarly 56; -seeking 149; see also attention economy attention economy 7, 146–147, 154 audience appeal 33

authoritarianism 42, 50, 144; political 33 authoritarian regimes 28–29, 32, 34, 143, 154 authoritarian rule 27 authoritarian system 1, 4, 105 autonomy 12, 30, 178–179, 185; in Hong Kong 103; of journalists 36; media 33; of news organisations 33–35; women’s 8, 160, 163–165, 169–170 Avengers franchise 50 Baidu 145 Batman 47–48 Beijing 15, 63, 65, 107–109, 113, 121, 159, 173, 177, 179; 2008 Olympic Games 58, 62 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 5 “blockbuster” 6, 44–49, 52–53 blocking access 14 Bollywood 45 broadcast media industry 29 Bush (US, 2001–2009) administration 48 buzzwords 3, 8, 160, 164–165, 167–168 Caijing 35 Canada 44–45, 109 capital 118, 145, 161; bargaining 139; cultural 6, 73, 77–78, 83, 176; economic 176; experimental 140; foreign 118; personal 160; social 77, 90, 176; state 176 capitalism 33; with Chinese characteristics 170; patriarchal 169–170; state 176 capitalist transformation 116 “Captain America complex” 48, 51 Captain America franchise 50; see also “Captain America complex”

188

Index

celebrities 2–3, 66, 133–135, 141, 179 celebrity 173–186; culture 8, 177 censorship 73, 76, 107, 153–154; administration of 29; authorities 107–108; of Chinese citizens 11; constitutive 18; content 14; government 19, 22; internalisation of 11, 14, 20; Internet 3, 5, 11–23, 144; Internet legislation 12–14; of ISPs 11; of journalism teaching 31; limits of 145; mechanism 17, 28; media 6, 28–29, 178; of news 6, 28–30; online 17–19; political 28, 153; processes 44; regulatory 18; requirements 153; ‘reverse’ 16; state 112; strategy 17; system 11–14, 16, 22; total 29; see also Internet censorship; self-censorship central government 3, 30, 35, 89, 102–105, 110–112, 118–119 Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs 13 ‘Century of National Humiliation’ 56 ‘Chase The Chinese Dream’ 64 Chen Sisi 66 China: ancient 93–94; authoritarian 48; central 116; Central Propaganda Department 31; coastal 116; communications in 1–8; communist 106, 167; contemporary 2, 22, 47, 83, 88, 115, 125–126, 143, 159–161, 167, 169–170, 173–174; cyberspace of 11–13, 16, 19–20, 159, 165; economy of 63, 175; education system of 88–89, 181; future of 99, 154; GDP growth 90; imperial 83; Internet use in 11; mainland 44, 88, 103, 113; Maoist 164; marketised 161; Minister of Culture 16; Ministry of Public Security 14; modern civilisation of 56; national identity construction in 56–69; national sovereignty of 80, 106; New 57, 79, 82, 91; news media in 27–37; North 83; north-west 96; as Party-state 2, 27–28, 34, 51, 120; People’s Police 80; persona-building in 56–69; post-Covid-19 era 8; post-Mao 76, 117–119, 160–163, 165, 170; post-Reform 8; present-day 177; public relations in 56–69; Reform Era 74, 76, 118; revolutionary past of 6, 72; rural 162, 175; socialist

173; Southern 46; south-west 162; State Council Information Office 67; traditional 183; urban 116, 119; urbanisation in 90, 118; see also specific dynasties; China’s big screens/film industry; Chinese Communist Party (CCP); Internet censorship; Ministry of Education; national identity; public participation China Association of Collectors 74–75; Badge Collectors Committee 74; Red Collectors Committee 74 China Central Television (CCTV) 61, 66–67 China Film Group Co. 50 China International Public Relations Association 57 China’s big screens/film industry 41–53; and changing Hollywood 44–48; Chinese box office 48–51; Chineseinvested American stories 51–52; genre cultivation 48–51; ideological messaging 48–51; resistance to Hollywood 42–44 Chinese audiences 6, 42–43, 45–46, 49–50, 52–53, 137, 139–140 Chinese civilization 67 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1, 3–4, 8, 27, 29–36, 42, 44–45, 50, 57–58, 60–64, 68–69, 72–73, 76–77, 81–83, 90–93, 95, 108, 116–117, 120, 131, 143–145, 153–154; Central Committee 30, 91; ideology 29; revolutionary heritage of 73; Think Tank network 32; as “vanguard of the proletariat” 116; see also Politburo ‘Chinese Dream, The’ (zhongguomeng) 1, 56–69; constructing narratives for nationwide promotion 63–66; construction and promotion of 61–63; projecting an international image 66–68; see also ‘Chase The Chinese Dream’ Chinese Dream, The (book) 67 Chinese entertainment shows 130–141; advertising team as a lobbying power 133–137; from compromise to partnership 137–139; four-player model 131–133 Chinese history 63–64, 67; see also ‘Century of National Humiliation’; Cultural Revolution; First Opium War

Index Chinese language textbooks 87–99; textbook development 88–89; young readers and orchestrating thinking 98–99 Chinese leaders/leadership 8, 31, 41–42, 44, 48, 53, 90

Chinese minorities 8

Chinese national identity 6, 49;

construction 56–69 Chinese nationalism 89–90 Chinese patriotism 89–90 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) 120

Chinese public 2–5, 29, 36–37, 44, 68, 118,

177, 179

Chinese Red Collections 75, 77, 79, 82

Chinese Red Culture Research Association

Red Collection Professional Committee 74–75 Chinese society 1, 8, 43, 61, 77, 79, 81,

90, 92, 98, 116, 121, 126, 141, 144,

153–154, 160, 173–174, 180, 185;

patriarchal 8

Chinese Soviet Republic/Jiangxi Soviet 79, 82

citizen strategies 125

civic awareness 64

civic society 6

civil disobedience 103, 107, 144

collecting 72–75, 83–84; for society

81–83; of socialist morality 78–81; as traditional Chinese practice 76–78; see also Red collecting collective intelligence 63

collective protests 144

comics 47, 51–52

commercial businesses 7

commercial consumer culture 2

commercialisation 140; media 32–33, 131

commodification 74, 169

communism 83, 109–110, 112

communist ideology 32

Communist Party of China see Chinese

Communist Party (CCP)

community interest groups 2

compulsory education 87–89

Confucianism 59, 109, 125

connoisseurship 77–78; ‘Red’ 78

constitutionalism 119, 122, 126

consumerism 161, 163–166, 169, 182

consumer society 1, 3, 141

Covid-19 29; leak of news about 29;

pandemic 4; post- era 8

creative work 7, 139

189

cultural diplomacy 67

cultural relics 74

Cultural Revolution 43, 72–74, 77–79, 161

cultural values 6

cyber-police 144

cybersecurity 13

Cybersecurity Law (2016) 13, 17

cyberspace 11–13, 16, 19–20, 96, 159, 165

Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)

12–13

cybersurveillance 48

DC comics 47, 52

decentralisation 13, 15, 17, 29, 118

deliberative and participatory policymaking

processes: 2000s: the representative turn 120–122; 2010s; the consultative turn 122–123; state and societal discourses in 120–126 democracy 7, 32, 48, 50, 102–103,

111–112; with Chinese

characteristics 102–103, 105–109,

112; deliberative 117–119; electoral

110; grassroots 145; political 109;

Western-style 32, 105, 109, 112

democratic governments 28

democratic reforms 41

democratic regimes 29

Deng Xiaoping 60, 109, 118, 175

Deng Xiaoping Theory 31

development: China’s 56, 64, 97, 175;

economic 4, 35, 62, 95, 97, 107,

160, 175; goals/objectives 64, 97;

local 118; multilateral 67; regional

62; social 4; sustainable 63, 95;

world 62

digital 3D technology 46

digital business governance 7, 143–154;

consequences of 150–154

digital era 34

digital media 36, 159

digital projection 46

discourse, concept of 75–76; see also

deliberative and participatory policymaking processes; gender discourse; Jin Xing; online discourse; participatory governance; political discourse; public discourse; rights; state discourse Divergent series 50

domestic cohesion 66

domestic film industry 6, 41, 44

domestic labour 164, 167–169, 175

domestic politics 3, 60, 96

190

Index

dominant message 35

“double eleven shopping carnival” 164

drag performances 173

Earth Day 159

East Asia 62

e-commerce 163–165, 168

economic reform of 1980s 29, 60, 183

educators 2, 32

egalitarianism 126, 175

e’gao 20, 22

Ellul, Jacques 57

employment discrimination 165

England 181

entertainers 2, 177, 179

entertainment TV 3, 139

environmental degradation 95

ethnic diversity 96

ethnic minorities 89, 96–98; groups 96;

languages 89

Europe 43, 110, 177, 180, 183

executive competence 117

expert meetings 7, 115, 119

filtering systems 15, 22, 29

financial urbanisation 116

First Opium War 56

fiscal recentralisation 117

foreign film 43; imports 3, 41–42, 44, 50

foreign investment 118

Foucault, M. 5, 11–12, 14, 17, 19, 75–76;

see also panopticon

freedoms: of belief 111; of creativity 140;

of expression 14, 18, 125, 175; of

information 35, 143–144; of speech

143–144

gay rights movement 174

gender binary 176, 180, 185

gender discourse 173–186 gender dynamics: and intimacy 159–170 gendered dichotomy 161

gendered online buzzwords 8

gender equality 165, 180

gender expression 173, 177, 180

gender/gendered norms 1, 3, 160–161 gender identity 173, 178–180, 186

gender ideology 175

gender inequality 160

Facebook 153

gender issues 8

familism 174–175, 185

family(ies): background 77, 82; circle 111; gender minorities 174, 176–177 gender passing 178–180 ethics 181; income 179; life 176;

gender pay gap 175

line 166; members 105; networks

3; nuclear 175; -oriented 167–168; gender politics 8

gender privilege 162, 170

poor 82, 124; responsibility 169,

gender relations 8, 184

176, 184; roles 182, 184; structure

gender relationships 8

179; support 183–184; ties 102;

gender representation of 8

traditional 8, 181; unit 160–161,

“girl power” 163

174, 178–179; values 8; work-

globalisation 4, 57, 68

conflict 183; working-class 181;

Global Times 30

see also familism; filial piety; One

Global Wellbeing Index 60

Child Policy

Golden Shield Project 14

‘fellowship of the stone’ 76–77 “Good Governance” 117, 120–121 female entitlement 169

governance 6–7, 50, 111, 120, 125;

“female gaze” 162, 164, 170

concept of 118; crisis 117; digital

femininity(ies) 8, 161, 169, 175–177,

143, 145–146; Internet 13, 143;

183–185; neoliberal 173–186

local 119, 121; media 27–28;

feminism 160, 165, 168–170, 180;

panopticonist 12; participatory

neoliberal 185; “popular” 160,

117, 122–126; political 143; policy

162–163, 165, 167, 169–170; state

56; post-Reform 145; self- 59;

175, 185

social 143; strategy 145; see also

fenzhang pian (revenue-sharing) 41, 43–44, digital business governance; “Good

50–52 Governance”

Fifty Cent Party (wumaodang) 16, 22

government officials 30, 32, 82, 124

filial piety 162, 166, 181

film importation 42, 45; flat fee agreements Great Firewall (GFW) 11, 14–15, 19, 22

50; revenue-sharing agreements 41, Great Wall 94

Guoxiong Wan 173

43–44, 50–52

Index Han Chinese 88, 97–98, 159

Han Dynasty 93–94

harmony 62, 68; ideology of 105–106

heterosexual(ity) 164–165, 174, 176, 186;

paradigm 174; relationships 8

high-tech companies 7, 143–147, 149, 151,

153–154

high-tech sector 7

Hollywood 41–42, 52–53; blockbuster

franchises 6, 47–48, 53; changing

44–48; Chinese resistance to

42–44; Chinese-invested American

stories 51–52; cinema 6, 43, 52,

154; films 3, 41, 44–47, 49, 51;

genre cultivation, ideological

messaging, and Chinese box office

48–51

homonyms 29

homosexual(ity) 162, 169, 174; rights 176

Hong Kong 52, 102–113; autonomy of

103; Basic Law of Hong Kong 103; Chief Executive 102–103; mass protests 7, 102–113; universal suffrage 103; see also Occupy Central/Umbrella Movement Hu, President 60

Huaxia Film Distribution Co. 50

Hubei F4 20, 21

Hu Jintao 116, 119–120

human censors 15–16, 22

human flesh search engine 123

“humanism” 60, 62, 68, 161

“humanity” 161

Huns 94

Hurry Up, Brother 130–133, 135,

137–138, 141

identity 2, 5, 17, 44, 79, 93, 122, 126,

136, 173–174; Chinese 96; class

124–125; construction 59, 64, 186;

cultural 87; ‘dilemma’ 60; lesbian

176; ‘liquid’ 59, 61; organisational

59; political 93; politics 60; self- 90;

social 93; transgender 186; see also

Chinese national identity; gender

identity; national identity

IMAX format 44, 46

indexing 30

India 106

information filtering systems 29

Instagram 19, 153

international community 51, 99

international exchange points (IXPs) 15

internationalisation 58

191

Internet access providers (IAPs) 15 Internet censorship 11–23, 144; indirect strategy for bypassing: online political satire 19–22; legislation 12–14; manual enforcement 16–17; technological approaches 14–16; users’ attitudes towards 17–19 Internet filtering system 15

Internet intermediaries 13–14 Internet monitors (wangguan) 16

Internet service providers (ISPs) 11, 14–15,

17

Internet User Account Name Management

Regulations 17

Internet users 5, 7, 11–12, 15–20, 22,

143–154, 159, 164; self-regulation

18

Internet vigilantism 123

Iraq 48

Iron Man franchise 46–47, 50

Jiang, President 60

Jin Xing 8, 173–186; conflicting femininities in discourse about 177–185; as independent and individualistic professional 179–181; as submissive and caring housewife 182–185 Jobs, Steve 52

“joint model” campaign 31

journalism 57, 130; Marxist principles of

31; see also journalism education;

journalistic licenses

journalism education 6, 28, 31–32, 37

journalistic licenses 34

journalists 2, 27, 30–37, 117; agency of 36; autonomy of 35–36; beat 35–36; investigative 35–36; newspaper 36; relationships with politicians 30; as watchdogs 36; see also Chinese journalists Jung, Carl 59

Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) 3

keyword blocking 15

Korean War 77

Kuomintang 91

labour 95; attentive 154; division

162; domestic 164, 167–169,

175; exploitation of 7; force 175,

182–183; “free” 149; market 176;

unions 125

Lee, Spike 52

192

Index

“leftover men” (shengnan) 160 “leftover women” (shengnü) 160 Legendary Entertainment 51–52 legislative representation 117 legitimacy 5, 58, 73–76, 122; authoritarian 57; of CCP 30, 34–35, 61–62, 81; crisis 118; discursive 81; government 72; intellectual sources of regime 116–117; Party-state 36–37, 84; performance 117; political 57, 59, 69, 115, 117; ruling 30; social 6, 73; of socialist principles 174; state 30, 117; of transgenderism 173; of U.S. policies 41 Leninism 31 less sensitive issues 33, 35 Li, Dr Wenliang 29 liberalisation 32 local cadres 30, 34 local governments 4, 6, 29–30, 34–36, 110, 116–121, 123, 159; legitimacy of 72, 118; relationship with news outlets 36 Lu Xun 95 Ma, Jack 165, 167 male anxiety: and self-victimisation 159–170 male entitlement 167 male marriage squeeze 170 manga 20 manhood 161, 164, 168 Maoism 43 Mao years 74, 78; moral purity of 78 Mao Zedong 42–43, 57–58, 60, 92, 109, 165–167; badges 72–75, 77–79, 108, 116; era 72–73, 75, 78–79, 81, 87, 161, 164, 173, 175–176; postera 76, 116–119, 161–163; see also Cultural Revolution; Maoism; Mao years; Mao Zedong Thought Mao Zedong Thought 31 “March 7th Girls’ Day” (nüsheng jie) 163 “March 8th Funü Festival” 163 “March 8th Queen’s Festival” (nüwang jie) 163 March 8th Women’s Day 163 Marching Out to the Frontier 93 market economy 74, 90, 97, 143–144, 154, 166, 169, 176 market forces 7, 37, 130–141 market-oriented 34, 58, 74, 143, 145 market reforms 33, 161 Marvel 47, 52

Marxism 31, 79 masculine pride 168 masculinity 168, 176; “crisis” of 160–163, 170; gentle 164; hegemonic 164; macho 167; soft 169; uxorious 167; wealth-based 169 materialism 166, 170 media: autonomy 33; commercialisation 32–33, 57, 131; control 27–29, 102; foreign 14; governance 27–28; industry 2, 6, 29, 130; legacy 36; market 32; marketisation 6, 27–37, 28; outlets 14, 31, 82; party 31; platforms 2, 4, 11, 20, 29, 145–146, 148, 152–153, 159; state 29, 31, 57, 61, 64, 67, 95, 107, 112; watchdog role of 30, 36; see also broadcast media industry; digital media; news media; print media/printed press; social media Mei Lanfang 95 men: feminine 169; gay 164; heterosexual 164; macho 165; Marxist 79; migrant 160, 166–168; non-elite 159, 170; rural 166–168; sexual desire of 185; stay-at-home 169; “warm” 164, 167; Western 164; white-collar 160, 168–169; working-class 161; young 8, 159–170; see also “leftover men”; male anxiety; male entitlement; male marriage squeeze; manhood; masculine pride; masculinity Middle East 48 migrant worker 116, 118, 162, 165, 170 Ministry of Education (MOE) 31, 88–89 minorities see Chinese minorities; ethnic minorities; gender minorities; sexual minorities misogynism 165–167, 170 mobile messaging applications 145 modernisation 56, 68, 109 monitoring mechanisms 15 multilateralism 67 Nanfang Daily 30 Narrative Transportation Theory 49 National Congress of the People 119 national consensus 64 National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) 121–123 national humiliation 64 national identity 1, 60, 89–90; -building 93; Chinese 6, 49; construction 56–69

Index nationalism 4, 64, 66, 88–90, 94, 102, 109;

Chinese 89–90

Nationalist Party 173

national narratives 6, 89

National People’s Congress (NPC) 56, 120

national pride 56, 64, 81, 108

national prosperity 61–62

national rejuvenation 1, 56, 64, 72

national security 13

national sovereignty 80, 93, 106

‘national treasures’ (guozhi zhenbao) 82

national unity 14, 97, 106

nation-building 58, 64, 93

neoliberal femininities 173–186

neoliberalism 7, 181, 185; impact on

women 174–176

neoliberal transformation 116

netizens 29, 105, 120, 122–123

New Culture Movement 95

“New Era” 41, 56–58, 61, 68, 161

New Left 109–111

New Leftists 109

“new public management” framework 118

news media 1, 6–7, 27–28, 35–36;

autonomy 33–35; industry 6;

national 27; orchestration of

production in China 28; political

control over 28–32; practices

32–33, 28

news organisations 27, 30, 33, 35;

autonomy of 33–35; non-party 31

news outlets 33–34; non-party 33–34;

party 31, 33; relationship with local

governments 36

newspapers 30, 34, 36, 57; English 107;

national 64; non-party 27, 31; party

27, 30–31, 34–35; state-owned 27,

34

news production 22, 27–37, 28; negotiation of news reporting boundaries 35–36; news media practices 32–33 news value 33, 35

news workers: appointment of 34

north Africa 48

North Korea 43, 106

Obama, Barack 111

Occupy Central/Umbrella Movement

102–103, 107–109, 112

One Child Policy 160, 162–163, 165, 170

online discourse 107, 164; patriarchal and

feminist tones in 164–169

online expression 16, 19

online political satire 12, 19–22

193

online reporting centres 17

Opening and Reform Era 41

Open Road Films 51–52

orchestrating opinions 102–113

orchestrating thinking 1–8, 98–99, 140,

143

paid content 34–36 paid Internet commentators 16, 22–23;

see also Fifty Cent Party

panopticon 5, 11–23; ‘cyber’ 11; digital

12–17; electronic 12, 19–22

panopticonist governance 12

parody 22, 159

“participatory budget meetings” 119

participatory governance 117, 122–126;

intellectual and political roots of 117–119; local 119; prospective changes in political discourses for 123–126 participatory mechanisms 115–116, 119

Party members 72, 110, 116, 124

party news organisations 30–31, 34

party news outlets 31, 33; non- 33–34

Party-state 1–8, 27–28, 33–34, 36, 51, 72,

76–77, 87, 90, 93, 96, 106, 116,

120, 144, 162, 164–165, 169

patriarchal society 176, 186

patriarchal state 163

patriarchy 165–166, 169

patriotic education 6, 64, 90, 99

patriotism 108, 112; Chinese 89–90;

construction of 87–99

Peking Opera 95

people of greatness 95–96

People’s Daily 30, 173

People’s Education Press (PEP) 87–89

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 106

People’s Republic of China 80, 87, 90; see

also China persona 59–63, 68, 180; -building 56–69;

multifaceted 61, 63, 68; politics 6;

public 77–78, 179

Pirates of the Caribbean franchise 47

Politburo 117; Standing Committee 120

political astroturfing 16

political communication 20, 57–58

political control 27–37, 153–154; of

journalism education 31–32, 28;

negotiation of news reporting

boundaries 35–36; over news media

28–32; news censorship 28–30, 28;

restriction of political information

access 30–31, 28

194

Index

political correctness 7, 132–133 political credibility 30

political discourse 7, 123–126 political ideology 58, 61

political indoctrination 31

political information access 6; restriction of 30–31 political language 7, 115, 126

political leaders 30, 62, 95

political legitimacy 57, 59, 69, 115, 117

political representation 7, 115–116, 124–125 political voice 115

politician–journalist relationship 30

pornography 15, 17, 144

power(s): balance of 126; bargaining 33;

censorial 19–20, 22; commercial

130–141; communicative 2;

consuming 181; control 12;

cultural 42; decentralization of

13; disciplinary 17; discursive 62;

dominant 87, 94; earning 163–164;

economic 42; enemy 94; exercise

of 12, 162; foreign 105, 107;

governing 12; and knowledge 76;

masculinist 8; negotiation 130;

panoptic 22; political 1, 33, 90; as

‘productive’ 19; professional 130;

purchasing 162–163, 169–170;

regulatory 13; relations 76, 98,

131, 133, 139, 160; representative

124; soft 53; speak truth to 20;

structure 20, 90; top-down 130;

transnational 154; Western 105;

world 90; see also “girl power”;

superpower

precarious employment 116

pre-Reform Era 32

press freedom, Western-style 32

primary school 6, 87–99 print media/printed press 27, 29, 34

privacy behaviour 151–152 privacy paradox 152

private companies/industry/sector 2, 8, 57,

118, 125, 141, 143, 145, 152

private investment 145

private ownership 143, 145

privatisation 118, 176

pro-democracy protests 7, 103

product placement 132, 135–138, 140

progressive values 8

propaganda authorities 29, 31–34 propaganda bureau 2–3, 44

propaganda wall 64, 65

protectionism: cultural 41–42; industry 41; and market 42

proxy servers 19, 22

public administration 118–119

public consultation 3, 115

public discourse 8, 72, 112, 122

public hearings 7, 115, 120–126;

administrative 120–121, 126;

legislative 120–121, 126

public opinion 7, 16, 23, 32, 57, 64, 102,

107, 120, 122–124, 177

public participation 115–126; see also deliberative and participatory policymaking processes; participatory governance public relations (PR) 56–69; models 6

Public Security Bureau 74

purchasing power 162–163, 169–170

Putonghua (Mandarin) 50, 88–89, 98, 159

Qin Dynasty 93–94

Qing China 76

real-estate ownership 161

reality television 8

real-name registration policy 12, 17–19,

153

Red collecting 72–75, 77–78, 81; tensions

in 73–75

Red Collectors (hongse shoucangjia) 6, 72–84; collector narratives 75–76, 79–80, 82–83 Red gene (hongse jiyin) 73, 83

Red hobbyists 72; see also Red Collectors

Red merit 72–84

Red poems 90–95

Red relics (hongse wenwu) 72–74; Mao

badges 72–75, 77–78

Red treasures (hongse baobei) 79

“Reform and Opening Up” 90, 175; see

also Reform Era Reform Era 3–4, 41, 43, 74–77, 81–83,

87–88, 105, 125; post- 8, 143, 145;

see also pre-Reform Era

Regal Entertainment Group 51

regime legitimacy: intellectual sources of

116–117

regime stability 27, 29

religion 110–111

“remonstrative speech” 125

revolutionary propaganda 6

“rightful resistance” 123

rights: advocacy 107, 119; collective

citizenship 126; to collective

Index interest representation 122; collective political 124; conceptualisation 125; discourses 122, 125–126; economic 170; to free expression 17; to free speech 17; gay 174; homosexual 176; human 109; individual 126; legal 124; marriage 174; movement 117, 174; political 3, 117, 170; to political participation 121; to public participation 122; privacy 17, 154; protection 121; representation 121; to security 17; social 170; to speak 125; transgender 174; of women 117, 169–170, 185; of workers 117; working 56; see also gay rights movement; “Rights Consciousness Movement” “Rights Consciousness Movement” 117 rule of law 48, 104, 107, 123; “consultative” 117, 126 Running Man 7, 130, 132 “safe” themes 35 SARS outbreak 35 search engines 15, 145; human flesh 123 search filtering 15; see also filtering systems Second World War 46, 175 self-censorship 5, 12–13, 18, 20, 32, 34 self-entrepreneurship 8 self-representation 72–73; constructing legitimacy through 75–76 self-sacrifice 79–80 self-selected participants 122, 125 self-victimisation 159–170 sensitive issues 16, 19, 33–36, 111 sex ratio 160, 166 sex reassignment surgery 173–174, 177, 179 sexuality 173–174, 185; see also heterosexual(ity); homosexual(ity); transsexual(ity) sexual minorities 177 shang buqi attitude 108 Shanghai 15, 46, 58, 64, 75, 79, 160, 167–168, 174, 177, 179, 182–183 short video-sharing applications/platforms 3, 7, 143–154; see also Tik Tok Sina 145 Singapore 105 Sino-Japanese War 56 slander 17–18, 144 slogans 3, 59, 62, 135, 137, 175

195

Snowden, Edward 52 social classes 63, 116, 119, 160, 185; gap 176 social contradictions 95, 116 social control 14, 28 social inequality 95, 174 socialism 56; Mao-era 74; post- 161 socialist androgyny 161 social media: accounts 3, 15, 177; applications 7, 143–144, 146–147, 149–151, 153–154; bots 23; campaigns 121; design of 7, 146, 154; effect on newspapers 34; marketing 51; platforms 4, 11, 20, 29, 145–146, 148, 152–153; presence 177; use 144, 152; userelated addictive behaviours 150 social norms 12, 18 social stability 1, 17, 30, 51, 90 social stratification 175 Song Dynasty 93 South China Morning Post (SCMP) 107 Southern Metropolis News 30 South Korea 17, 130 Soviet block 43 Soviet Union 57; see also USSR speak truth to power 20 sponsorship 132–133, 137–139, 163 state discourse 119, 126 State Internet Information Office see Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) state interventions 2 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) 16, 118, 161, 175 state policies 2, 160, 165, 170 state propaganda 1, 57, 64, 67 stickiness 147–150 subversiveness 6, 20 Superman 47–48 superpower 6, 62, 66–68 surveillance 5–6, 11–12, 14, 16–20, 22, 153; cyber- 48, 52; mechanisms 17; systems 5–6, 154; technologies 145 taboo subject matter 35, 173 Taiwan 20, 106, 173 Tang Dynasty 93–94 Taoism 59 television professionals 130–141 Tencent Pictures 51–52, 145–146; WeChat 29, 51, 107, 146–147 ‘thanksgiving complex’ (gan’en qingjie) 82 “thought management” 1

196

Index

‘three-self church’ (sanzi jiaohui) 111 Tiananmen Square Incident 43, 117 Tibet 106; Tibetans 159 TikTok 7, 143–154, 159; anxiety addiction and use of 150–151, 151; time spent on per day 148; use of and privacy concerns/risks 151–154, 152; videos recommendation and extra time spent on 149 top-down: control 1; power model 130 ‘totalitarian nostalgia’ 81 town hall meetings 3, 7, 115, 120 traffic data encryption 19 Transformer franchise 46–47, 52 transgender(ism) 8, 173–186; as counter­ revolutionary conspiracy 173; as transsexuality 173; see also transgender people transgender people 173–174, 176–178, 185 transparency 48, 117, 121 transsexual(ity) 173–174, 176 Trump administration 153–154 Twitter 66 uniformed Internet police (wangjing) 16 United Kingdom (UK) 68, 181 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 159 United Nations Human Development Index 60 United Nations Planning and Development Agency 177 United Nations Special Rapporteur 14 United States 44–46, 48, 57, 145, 153, 177, 183; House of Representatives Intelligence Committee 52; US cultural hegemony 48 USSR 107 victimisation 95; see also self-victimisation Vietnam 106 violent content 144 virtual portal networks (VPNs) 19, 22 Wall of Democracy 117 Wanda Group 51; purchased AMC Theatres 51 Wang Changling 93 War of Liberation 91 wealth gaps 58, 63 websites 14–16, 107; e-commerce 168 WeChat 29, 51, 107, 146–147

Weibo 20, 107, 123, 178 West, the 3, 32, 57–58, 94, 109, 144, 163, 176 Western, the (movie genre) 47 Western democracy(ies) 30, 32, 105, 109 WhatsApp 146 white-collar 116, 160, 163, 168–169; unemployment 116 White Haired Girl 82–83 Wikileaks 48 womanhood 161, 178–180, 186 women: “cisgender” 180; earning power of 163–164; elite 176; equal rights in workplace 169; and family 183–185; impact of neoliberalism on 174–176; in labour force 175, 183; male anxiety and 159–170; Marxist 79; “masculinisation” of 161; purchasing power of 162–163, 169–170; rights of 117, 169–170, 185; self-autonomy 8; submission to masculinist power 8; transgender 179; urban 160, 164–165, 169–170; young 160, 162–165, 169–170, 176, 182–184, 186; see also “female gaze”; female entitlement; femininity; feminism; “leftover women”; womanhood; women’s autonomy women’s autonomy 8, 160, 163–165, 169–170; orchestrated ambivalence towards 163–165, 169–170 world peace 60, 62 World Trade Organization (WTO) 42–43, 119, 121 Wuhan 29, 115–116 Xi Jinping 5–6, 13, 41–42, 51, 53, 56, 60–63, 66, 68, 72, 81, 84, 95, 116, 119, 121; anti-corruption campaigns 72; see also ‘Chinese Dream, The’ X-Men franchise 50 Yan’an 91–92, 94; spirit 79, 93 yangbanxi (“Eight Model Operas”) 43 YouTube 153 Yu Wen textbooks 6, 87–90, 95, 97–98 Zero Covid policy 4 Zhou Enlai 95 ZSTV (Zhejiang Satellite TV) 130–136, 139–140; Marketing Centre 131, 134