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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]

This article explores the progressive potential of commercial industry-oriented channels (IoCs), an emerging form of media produced by and addressed to workers of specific industries, on China's digital platforms. Juxtaposing textual analysis with worker-audience interviews and participant observation, I found that despite the collusion of state surveillance and platform governance, IoCs prove instrumental in fostering resistive labour subjects and collectives among ordinary workers. This is due to IoCs' genre convention and discourses, but more importantly, to worker-audience's bitter and precarious structure of feeling that mediates their collective reception processes. The findings complicate our understanding of the potential of media/cultural production for labour resistance, highlighting the role of worker-audience in the circuit of progressive labour culture and the potential of commercial media in fostering radical class subjects. Drawing on the analysis, I further advance a model of worker media as double articulation, to open up more hermeneutic and action space for cultural labour activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can Beijing afford to appear weak, especially after threatening an adversary to escalate in an international crisis? According to audience costs theory, the more high-profile a threat is, the more difficult it would be for a government to back down. Its citizens expect it to stand firm and punish it if it does not. One explanation for the "micro" logic of audience costs is that from a sociopsychological perspective, backing down sullies the national honor. It harms an in-group's collective self-esteem vis-à-vis the adversarial out-group. The humiliation that citizens endure would compel them to punish their government. In this article, I examine how humiliation can be redressed proactively. I argue that governments—in this case, that of China—may not just brace for a backlash. They resort to a range of what scholars of Social Identity Theory in psychology call "social creativity strategies" in their propaganda to alleviate their citizens' sense of humiliation. Such strategies arrest—and in some cases, even reverse—damage done to the in-group's collective self-esteem. I present and elaborate on 10 such strategies. I demonstrate how they work with anecdotes and two case studies on Chinese propaganda in the aftermath of Japan's "nationalization" of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands (2012) and the country's standoff with India in Doklam/Donglang (2017). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As geopolitical rivalry intensifies, Western states have moved to compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, the mobilisation of funds for global infrastructure remains paltry, suggesting that Western states cannot contest Chinese dominance here. Why? Through comparative political economy analysis of China and the United States, we argue that serious competition cannot be willed into being by state managers thinking geostrategically. States' strengths and weaknesses are rooted in structural political economy dynamics. Where state managers' plans jibe with, or express, the interests of powerful social forces and the capital and productive forces they command, a powerful impact results. This is true of China, whose BRI is principally a spatio-temporal fix for industrial overcapacity and over-accumulated capital. Conversely, where geopolitical ambitions are divorced from powerful groups' interests and material realities, results are lacklustre. This applies to the United States, characterised by infrastructural decay, industrial hollowing-out and a dominant financial sector largely disinterested in infrastructure. Although US state managers are turning towards increased state spending on domestic infrastructure, internationally, the West's continued neoliberal approach still relies on the already-failed approach of mobilising private capital into infrastructure investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent-child separation due to internal migration is prevalent in China. However, few studies have focused on the associations between different characteristics of parent-child separation and children's involvement in bullying. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 2,355 fifth-to eighth-grade students in China, using self-reported questionnaires to investigate the associations between children's bullying involvement (i.e., bullies, victims, bully-victims) and different characteristics of parent-child separation resulting from parental migration. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to explore these associations. Among all respondents, 17.3% reported being victims of bullying, 3.8% reported being bullies, and 2.7% reported being bully-victims. Compared to children with no left-behind experiences, those with current left-behind experiences were more likely to be victims and bully-victims. Children left behind by parent(s) at the age of three years or younger were more likely to be victims (aOR = 1.66, 95% CI [1.22, 2.25], p =.001), bullies (aOR = 1.88, 95% CI [1.02, 3.52]), and bully-victims (aOR = 2.17, 95% CI [1.04, 4.71]). Children left behind for seven years or longer were more likely to be victims (aOR = 1.49, 95% CI [1.12, 2.00], p =.007), bullies (aOR = 2.03, 95% CI [1.15, 3.69]), and bully-victims (aOR = 2.13, 95% CI [1.06, 4.50]). The identified characteristics of parent-child separation associated with bullying involvement hold implications for parental decisions regarding internal migration, interventions, and policymaking for preventing bullying among left-behind children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste source separation is an essential section of successful municipal solid waste management, and the city governments in China are shifting from building massive waste treatment facilities to regulating residents' waste separation behaviour (WSB). In order to promote residents' WSB, Beijing, the capital of China, implemented the new version of municipal household waste management regulation (NEMAR) and allocated more funds. This article constructs a theoretical framework to analyse the relationship between the NEMAR and residents' WSB from the perspective of policy tools, and uses propensity score matching method to evaluate the NEMAR's effectiveness on promoting residents' WSB, with first-hand data collected by distributing two rounds of questionnaires in Beijing. Results show that the NEMAR in Beijing have significantly improved the frequency and accuracy of residents' WSB. The command-control tools such as fines are effective to enhance WSB. The information guidance tools such as propaganda in community publicity column, banner and brochure could significantly promote residents' WSB frequency. Training seminars could enhance residents' WSB accuracy. The economic incentive tools are ineffective, and the policy of direct material rewards even hampers residents' WSB. This research reveals the effectiveness of the new policy and different tools in promoting residents' WSB. It could provide evidence for policymakers to utilize more effective governing tools and optimize the allocation of public resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do Chinese Muslims have their own voices heard under China's tightening online censorship amid a global health crisis like COVID-19? Based on 13-month ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the active participation and creative use of digital media by Chinese Muslims during the pandemic. This study uses multi-sited ethnography (MSE) and digital ethnography to identify major features of networked Islamic counterpublic in China. It shows how Chinese Muslims creatively blend Islamic discourses of hygiene, scientific discourse, official regulations, and global discourses of public health through digital media. It also examines how Chinese Muslims selectively use digital platforms to cultivate Islamic ethics and strengthening global connections to Muslim world both online and offline. Furthermore, this study shows how resilient the networked Islamic counterpublic in China has been in terms of strategically voicing dissent in the shadows of anti-Muslim sentiments and state policies during a major global pandemic of our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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I examine whether union membership affects individual foreign direct investment (FDI) preferences in ways that vary across investors' country of origin. I argue that the country of FDI origin will bear upon how union members assess FDI, because it provides cues about what the economic prospects of (unionized) workers will look like under different foreign investors. I argue that the salient attribute of foreign investors is whether they originate from a country that is an important form of patient or impatient capital. Compared with non-members, members will be more supportive of FDI from countries embodying patient than impatient capital. Specifically, I expect the (positive) gap in support between FDI from patient and FDI from impatient capital countries to increase with union membership. Conversely, I expect the (positive) gap in support between FDI from impatient versus patient capital countries to decrease with membership. Evidence from original Swiss survey data corroborates my argument. Respondents were asked to evaluate FDI from China and Europe (entities embodying patient capital) and from the United States (a country embodying impatient capital). The results show that the gap in enthusiasm for European FDI versus American FDI increases with union membership, while the gap in enthusiasm for American FDI versus Chinese FDI decreases with membership. Complementary qualitative analysis of reports, documents, and testimonies by trade unions in continental Europe show that their views are in sync with those of their members, suggesting that unions shape their members' FDI preferences. The findings have important implications for the politics of backlash against economic globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an emerging discourse on various social media platforms has drawn attention to the enduring, yet unspoken, distress experienced by a considerable number of Chinese women who have utilized intrauterine devices (IUDs) for extended durations. Using corpus linguistics and thematic analysis, this article seeks to explore the use of metaphors in discussions about IUDs on Weibo and how the public makes sense of roles of spouses in the decision of using IUDs. The findings reveal three distinct metaphors about IUDs within multi-layered family and social relationships: a time bomb, a blood-stained wedding ring, and a lethal weapon. Furthermore, three metaphorical representations of the spousal roles in relation to the use of IUDs are identified: participants versus observers regarding contraception, perpetrators versus victims within societal frameworks, and the nurturing cornerstone of the family versus instrumental means for procreation. These metaphors, deeply rooted in war metaphors, not only reflect the oppressive forces imposed on women by state power, patriarchal society, and traditional beliefs but also function as a form of resistance against such forces. [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]

Better understanding of social media uses in crisis situations can help improve disaster management by policy-makers, organizations, businesses, and members of the public. It can also build theoretical understanding of how social life and citizenship incorporate social media usage. This study tracks the evolution of public sentiment in Wuhan, China, during the first 12 weeks after the identification of COVID-19 on the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo. Data consist of 133,079 original Sina Weibo posts dealing with the novel coronavirus. The relative prevalence of eight different emotion groups is traced longitudinally using the ROST Content Mining System and the Emotion Vocabulary of Dalian University of Technology. The study finds a progression from confusion/fear, to disappointment/frustration, to depression/anxiety, then finally to happiness/gratitude. It argues that this progression indexes the changing affective energies of digital medical citizenship, which in turn indicates the context for intervention in future crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]