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The entertainment industry is driven to sell certain commodities transnationally, particularly in a world where borders are becoming increasingly diffused through the access afforded by the Internet. Media content is easily consumed, making cultural exporting fast and easy. Similar tropes and plot have been replicated in the East Asian film and TV industry, perhaps in hopes of replicating the success. This paper looks at the manufacture of ideal masculinities within East Asia, particularly China. From ex-members of K-pop group EXO to the successful TV series, cross-influence of East Asian popular culture is prominent. Through this paper, I look at the influence of K-dramas on the Chinese TV industry and particularly the manufacturing of a militarized masculinity on Chinese TV. Far from portraying brute and fearsome soldiers, ideal masculinity on TV is portrayed as "steely exterior but gentle internally" and thus desirable romantic partners to heterosexual women. By exploring the basic conception of Chinese masculinity, I then discuss representations of militarized masculinity on the silver screen (Wolf Warrior II) and C-dramas, with particular focus on the series, You Are My Hero (2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TikTok continues to be the top downloaded app in many countries around the world as the short video consumption craze continues. But TikTok has also come under harsh scrutiny for its Chinese origins and data security. For TikTok, the journey of globalization has involved a painful contest with governments, geopolitical manoeuvrers, and, ultimately, finding platform regulation loopholes. TikTok's sister app, Douyin, shares identical digital architectures, but follows different trajectories of development in China. Through interviews with Chinese influencers and media practitioners, along with a content analysis of policy documents and industry reports, this paper identifies and analyzes the borderline practices that have occurred on Douyin – including content transfers, and algorithmic platformization – and evaluates the potential for these practices to be replicated on TikTok. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Social Credit System (SCS) has been widely considered a centralized surveillance project, whereas recent research found multiple scoring systems co-existing in various fields at multiple administrative levels and in diverse forms. Despite the broadened view toward the complexity of SCS, these research projects continue to focus on SCS mainly as political and digital control mechanisms. Instead, this paper is interested in the social and cultural meanings of SCS constructed in the media, both at the national and local levels. Based on the analyses of news reports since the year 2003, when the term SCS was officially coined, this paper examines the historical narratives about SCS, including its rationales, stakeholders, and intended goals/tasks. It argues that the SCS construction has been a societal project anchored in a distinct moral orientation of financial credit. While credit systems are often used to classify consumers and financial subjects in Western contexts, the case of Chinese SCS shows that the moral dimension of financial credit scoring has enabled its spread into other non-financial domains. Also, the institutionalization of such moral standards is considered an effective approach to addressing various socio-economic and ethical issues that have long baffled economic development and social justice in China's reform era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, production in China’s television sector have reshaped media cultures across the country as well as the geocultural region of East Asia. Through analysis of licensed reality television programs such as China’s Got Talent, this paper examines transnational television formats and their circulation and replication in contemporary China, challenging the traditional concept that television format trade falls within a West-Rest narrative. While highlighting the cultural and media phenomena of interactive ‘glocalization’ of cultural products, this paper calls for de-westernization in approaching Chinese and East Asian media studies. It does so by pointing out unique imitating and adaptive practices of Chinese unscripted television programs, which serve as case studies to the existing literature of television business and cultures. The practice of licensing formats provides a unique perspective into analyzing China’s media strategies in a globalized industry and reviewing the current scholarship on media globalization. With a comparative analysis, the paper attempts to reconceptualize the spatiality of East Asian media production and consumption. I also include my observations while working on the production teams for these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changes and continuities in TV representations of Chinese Communist Party's revolutionary history and interprets them within the broader context of China's political, economic and cultural transformations since the 1990s. Drawing on a comparative analysis of three state-sponsored TV dramas produced between the late 1990s and mid-2010s, it traces how the state-sanctioned revolutionary narratives have changed over time in response to the Party's propaganda imperatives on the one hand, and to the market-oriented production environment on the other. The paper argues that while recent TV productions in the new century have made increasing concessions to audience taste by adopting visually stimulating depictions and introducing fictional characters as points of identification for the audience, the revolutionary narratives were still aligned with the Party's propaganda agenda at different times. This shows the ongoing competition between ideological and commercial interests in Chinese TV production during the era of market reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to existing literature analyzing how public spaces are strategic mobilization resources for activists, we focus on the inconspicuous constraints placed by the state on public spaces that limit their utility as mobilization resources. Employing the spatial dimensions of social movement theory and Althusser's state power theory analyze an activism case in Guangzhou, China, we argue that through everyday spatial governance by the state, public spaces in China are also forms of ideological state apparatuses that latently disrupt activists' attempts to engage in contentious spatial practices to gain resources through media coverage. We further propose the concept of 'spatial inertia', which are durable, routine, and diversified spatial meaning-making practices mediated through media coverage that affect the success of social movements. This paper complements social movement scholarship by examining how the state, through latent processes exercised using public spaces as ideological state apparatuses, competes with and subverts activists' efforts to use these spaces as strategic resources for collective mobilization, especially in authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces a themed section that focuses on the production of gender discourse and representations in the midst of tightening social and cultural control in China's entertainment industry and digital media landscape. In various ways, the two articles featured case studies that exemplify how the production of gender discourses and representations in this context emerges from the interplay of state control, the market, and the digital realm and unfolds against the rise of platform capitalism and techno-nationalism. Both articles center on the intricate and sometimes contradictory configurations of gender within China's state-market nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to map out the popular phenomenon of misogyny in the specific techno-social configuration buttressed by China's state-market nexus. With a case study of a controversy involving the standup comedian Yang Li and the luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz on the microblogging platform Weibo, I highlight the 'platformization of misogyny.' The conceptualization refers to the way that a platform is evoked as tools to manufacture and amplify misogyny. Weibo has this effect both through its design, features, and algorithmic shaping of sociality and through its users' appropriation of its affordances. On top of that, the platform also engenders a form of governance that is deeply enmeshed in the commercialization of internet opinion, suggesting a techno-nationalist mode of state control that is exercised from afar and deeply imbued with patriarchal and misogynistic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the experiences of disabled individuals in online activism in the context of China. Adopting the social model of disability, this study found an iceberg structure consisting of two levels and three layers. The explicit level included observed labels, attitudes and legislation. The implicit level involved both social and internalized stereotypes. These three layers of social structures interacted with each other and together brought about social exclusion into being. Adopting the social model as an organizing principle represents a starting point to alter social patterns and possibly change social isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming to enrich the conceptual vocabulary of platform and app studies, this article provides a critical political economic perspective on the media industry to understand how platform power is operationalized in the app economy. Using the China-based tech conglomerate Tencent as a case study, four mechanisms are discussed: conglomeration, financialization, platformization, and infrastructuralization. These mechanisms show how Tencent leveraged both a conglomerated corporate structure and access to finance capital. This was combined with the infrastructuralization of the MyApp app store and the WeChat platform by providing vertically integrated app development and distribution services, which are nested in Tencent's holdings and investments. Taking Tencent as the starting point for theory building, this article attempts to "provincialize" US-based platform companies by charting Tencent's corporate evolution and its path to mobile dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates China's efforts to toughen the regulation of its tech companies since the late 2010s in the global context of Big Techs rein-in and the specific trajectory of economic development in China. Focusing on the three-phase development of Alibaba and Tencent since the late 1990s, we propose a regional and historical approach to study platform capitalism concerning how platform companies, through interacting and negotiating with shifting institutional conditions, have developed novel business models, organizational structures, and technological innovations. Not a static domination, state power co-shapes platform capitalism through a constant process of institutional improvisation and innovation, as well as interacting with private players. This geographically and historically conscious approach to platform capitalism not only contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the specificities and historicity of platform capitalism in China, but also helps to deprovincialize platform studies and extend its analytical relevance beyond the Euro-American focus or the disciplinary boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nation anthropomorphism refers to the symbol and the symbolization process in which human-like characteristics are metaphorically attributed to a nation. In China, the Homeland-Mother (zuguomuqin) is a widely accepted anthropomorphic image representing the nation. However, a brotherly national image named Azhong-Brother (azhonggege) derived from subcultures was created and went viral on social media platforms with fierce controversy since 2019. Based on 23 in-depth interviews with China’s young netizens of wide variations, this study explored the differences between these two symbols, Chinese youths’ identification with the nation through the symbols, and their identity negotiation amid the controversy surrounding the image of Azhong- Brother. We discussed the symbolic contestation between traditional hegemonic and emergent soft masculinities within Azhong-Brother, the instrumental and sentimental national attachment associated with Homeland-Mother and Azhong-Brother, and the conflicts arising from the negotiation of multiple identities in relation to Azhong-Brother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferating online social networking sites have created opportunities for Chinese queer women to meet new friends and lovers; yet, research on lesbian online dating in mainland China is scarce compared to heterosexual and gay online dating. This article investigates lesbian/ lala women's online dating experiences in the context of economic reforms and the trust crisis in urban China. It is based on 16 in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Guangdong from June 2018 to July 2019. It focuses on two digital platforms: Douban Group and WeChat. This article explores how online anonymity and stranger sociality shaped queer women's moral practices regarding turning virtual strangers into real-life partners. Queer women in this research expressed concerns about being cheated by low quality(suzhi) lovers, swindlers, and married women. This article suggests that the emerging online stranger sociality has both enabled and constrained lesbian/ lala women's practice of seeking loving relationships, while they must internalize the potential risks by themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Douyin, which is also known as the Chinese version of Tiktok, is currently the most valuable digital advertisement platform in China. One of the most significant features of this short-video platform is the heavy reliance on algorithmic production and distribution of media. In this emergent configuration, algorithms and data shape the production and circulation of media beyond social networks. Such a system develops by meshing grassroots and professionally generated content, leading to the audience engaging in the production of commercial content for profit. My essay explores the political context and economic logic that underpins these developments. It draws specifically on official reports from Douyin, as well as interviews with users, including individual users and Multiple Channel Network (MCN) employees. This essay proposes the idea of the 'data attraction model' based on the investigation of the emergence of new forms of algorithmic production and distribution. It argues that the data attraction model is characterised by an extreme logic of flexible accumulation, which is radically transforming the content production of participatory media in China [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The male-male romance web series The Untamed reached a height of media interest in the summer of 2019 in China. Numerous Chinese young women were obsessed with the drama centred on the relationship between the two male protagonists, and many fan followers identified themselves as ' The Untamed Girls'. Through online observation of young female fans of the male-male romance web series, this study articulates how they were self-organised as a counterpublic and utilised strategic ways to negotiate with the party-state censorship. Drawing upon the conceptualisation of 'ambivalence', the study analyses a dual ambivalence in their collective actions. It is argued that The Untamed Girls' participation as a popular feminist project is, however constantly intertwined with an assumption of heteronormativity and an internalised misogyny, where these seemingly empowered women are simultaneously reaffirming a heterosexual regulation of sexual desires and devaluing women when they celebrate the male-male romance embodied in such a drama series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy was one of the first European countries affected by the Covid-19 pandemic after the beginning of the outbreak in China in January 2020. Applying critical discourse analysis and theories of the mediation of suffering, this article explores the discursive strategies used by the Italian media to represent China and Chinese people in relation to the outbreak in the early stage of the pandemic. Employing the theoretical frameworks of Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and other thinkers on biopolitics, racism, and emergency, the results bring to light the persistent ideologies behind the media representations of an imagined Other, which reflect existing discourses toward the Chinese community in Italy. In this study, the contentious discourses around China and the Chinese amidst the pandemic reveal the role of the Italian media in presenting risks, mediating suffering as a distant event and, later, as a national concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hip-hop culture has evolved into a global phenomenon, attracting extensive academic research on its adaptation and localization in different societies. However, most studies have either neglected the influence of political economic power on hybridization or have overestimated the rationality of the artists in hip-hop culture. This study adopted critical transculturalism theory to shed light on the agency and power relations involved in the localization and mainstream emergence of Chinese hip-hop music from both longitudinal and comparative perspectives. The findings, which are based on qualitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis of news articles published in the three golden years (2008, 2010, and 2017) of the development of Chinese hip-hop music, suggest that whereas cultural and political factors were influential on both the localization and mainstream emergence processes, economic factors played a greater role in mainstream emergence. The enhancement of literacy in professional knowledge aroused public interest, and the use of symbolic hybridity created a role model for underground rappers and attracted social attention. Both these factors helped Chinese hip-hop music enter the mainstream industry. The idea of symbolic hybridity proposed in this study, which provides a mesolevel perspective, is worth further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]