Author: denton.2@osu.edu

vol. 33, no. 2 of MCLC

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As the new editors of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, we are delighted to announce the publication of vol. 33, no. 2 (Fall 2021). We are grateful to Kirk A. Denton for his help and support during the transition. In our Editors’ Note, we provide a few further details about editorial changes, but one particular point is worth highlighting: from Spring 2022 onward, the journal will be published by Edinburgh University Press, so subscribers should sign up there to ensure continued access: https://www.euppublishing.com/page/mclc/subscribe. Find below the table of contents of the issue, with links to abstracts.

Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier (mclc@ed.ac.uk)

Volume 33, Number 2 (Fall 2021) 
Articles

China’s loudest nationalist steps back

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Source: NYT (12/16/21)
China’s Loudest Nationalist Steps Back
Hu Xijin, editor of the Communist Party tabloid Global Times and pioneer of the country’s fiery online posturing, is retiring from his role.
By Paul Mozur and John Liu

Hu Xijin in the Global Times newsroom in Beijing in 2019. Credit…Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

Hu Xijin, the longtime leader of Global Times, the nationalistic Communist Party tabloid, and a pioneer of China’s fiery online posturing, said on Thursday that he would step back from his position.

A standout in China’s growing chorus of nationalist voices, Mr. Hu led the paper, which some have called China’s version of Fox News, for more than a decade. Under his watch, it became one of the country’s best-known, and most truculent, media organizations.

“Old Hu will turn 62 years old after the New Year, and it’s about time I retire,” Mr. Hu wrote on China’s Twitter-like Weibo social media platform, referring to himself by a popular nickname.

“In the future, as a special commentator for Global Times, I will continue to contribute to the development of the Global Times and continue to do my best for the party’s news and public opinion work,” he added. Continue reading China’s loudest nationalist steps back →

Purdue president responds to Chinese student’s harassment

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There’s been an important statement from Purdue University’s president regarding harassment of Chinese students by pro-regime ultranationalist students: reacting to the recent ProPublica report on such harassment, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels sent a message to Purdue students, faculty and staff:

My comment on his statement, also posted on Twitter:

Good. Just one thing: Don’t blame just the Chinese pro-regime harassers, on our campuses. They’re often instigated by the regime, via their nearest consulate. Those officers need to be told off, and closely monitored for violations.

Also, Chinese “education” consular officers should not be allowed to infiltrate and dominate on-campus Chinese student associations for spying purposes, like they have long been doing, with impunity, all over.

The failure to stop the long-running ultranationalist pro-regime political harassment of Chinese students, is a great betrayal of all those Chinese students who thought they’d be enjoying some freedom of speech, and thought, for a while.

Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

How Beijing influences the influencers

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Source: NYT (12/13/21)
How Beijing Influences the Influencers
By Paul Mozur, Raymond Zhong, Aaron Krolik, Aliza Aufrichtig and Nailah Morgan

poster for video

Millions have watched Lee and Oli Barrett’s YouTube dispatches from China. The father and son duo visit hotels in exotic locales, tour out-of-the-way villages, sample delicacies in bustling markets and undergo traditional ear cleanings.

The Barretts are part of a crop of new social media personalities who paint cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China — and also hit back at criticisms of Beijing’s authoritarian governance, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus.

The videos have a casual, homespun feel. But on the other side of the camera often stands a large apparatus of government organizers, state-controlled news media and other official amplifiers — all part of the Chinese government’s widening attempts to spread pro-Beijing messages around the planet.

State-run news outlets and local governments have organized and funded pro-Beijing influencers’ travel, according to government documents and the creators themselves. They have paid or offered to pay the creators. They have generated lucrative traffic for the influencers by sharing videos with millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Continue reading How Beijing influences the influencers →

Major revolutionary films and TV dramas from 2021

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Source: China Daily (12/15/21)
Year-ender: Major revolutionary films and TV dramas from 2021

This year has witnessed a number of films and TV dramas take revolutionary history as their subject, especially the early history of the Communist Party of China, as 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of CPC. Let’s take a look at some major productions.

A still from the film, The Battle at Lake Changjin. [Photo provided to China Daily]

1. The Battle at Lake Changjin 

Set during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-53), the film centers on a heroic company of the Chinese People’s Volunteers army, reflecting CPV soldiers’ iron will and great spirit to safeguard the then newly founded People’s Republic of China.

Resonating with an audience running into the millions and enhancing their pride in China’s great achievements, the film became hugely popular, smashing a total of 26 records, mainly in terms of box-office and admission figures.

The 176-minute film, which cost 1.3 billion yuan ($202.7 million), became the most expensive of its kind in China. By Nov 24, its overall box office surpassed 5.69 billion yuan ($891.1 million), replacing Wolf Warrior 2 at the top of China’s all-time box office charts. Continue reading Major revolutionary films and TV dramas from 2021 →

2021 translations from Chinese into English

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Source: Paper Republic (12/13/21)
2021 Roll Call of Published Translations from Chinese into English
By Nicky Harman

cover image

There’s good and bad news this year. The good news is that books translated from Chinese have won an encouragingly wide selection of translation prizes and awards. For the first time, we have listed them below in different categories: prizes, awards and ‘other successes’. The not-so-good news is that, as in previous years, women writers and women poets are far less well-represented than men. The gender imbalance in all categories is shocking!

As usual, please let us know if you’d like to add books, star reviews and awards that we may have missed off the lists. Finally, we’re delighted to be able to add links to lists of books translated from Chinese into other languages. (Do let us know if there are more we can include.)

Star Reviews

The Secret Talker: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-300403-0
Faraway: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5420-3120-2
The Secret Talker: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/the-secret-talker-by-yan-geling/
The Wedding Party: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/yi-chin-lo/faraway/
Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-78108-852-4
Winter Pasture: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-66260-033-3 Continue reading 2021 translations from Chinese into English →

China is the ‘worst jailer of journalists’

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Source: SupChina (12/9/21)
China is the “world’s worst jailer of journalists”

A screenshot of a video by citizen journalist Zhang Zhan

Two press freedom monitoring groups have recently detailed the worsening conditions for journalists in China, including Hong Kong.

  • “China remains the world’s worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 behind bars,” the New York–based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said last week in its annual survey.
  • Reporters Without Borders (RSF) gave a much higher estimate: 127 journalists are currently detained in China and Hong Kong, the group said in a December 7 report.
  • RSF’s count includes 71 Uyghur journalists who are currently behind bars.

Continue reading China is the ‘worst jailer of journalists’ →

A decade of China’s media going global–cfa

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Call for Abstracts: “A decade of China’s media going global: issues and perspectives” Conference
Date: May 31, 2022.
Location: Paris (France) & online
Abstract Submission Deadline: February 15, 2022

The year 2012 stands as a significant milestone in China’s government-led external communication activities. It was in early 2012 that Beijing launched television broadcasting and production centers in Washington, DC, USA (CCTV America, now CGTN America) and Nairobi, Kenya (CGTN Africa). Later in the year, it began publishing an African weekly edition of the English-language newspaper China Daily — European and Asian weekly editions launched in 2010. Set in motion under the leadership of President Hu Jintao, China’s global media expansion, part of a larger “going out” policy for the economy in general, sought to improve the country’s image overseas, and to give Beijing a larger say in global information flows.

Ten years on, Chinese media’s global engagement has not only grown, but diversified. Today, Chinese media companies are engaged in content production and distribution, direct investment in foreign media ventures, infrastructure development, training and media development efforts, and “managing” public opinion overseas. The growth and diversification of communication strategies can be partly explained by the fact that the global political and economic context under which Hu Jintao set out to improve China’s international image through external media expansion has changed. The rise (and fall) of Donald Trump in the United States, the use of social media for public diplomacy by “Wolf Warriors” in Xi Jinping’s China, and the debates about the coronavirus pandemic have encouraged a proliferation of polarised narratives. This is reflected in the global communicative strategies of the Chinese government. Continue reading A decade of China’s media going global–cfa →

BFA performance art protest

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Source: China Digital Times (12/1/21)
Translation: Blanket Censorship of Performance Art Piece Protesting Beijing Film Academy Campus Lockdown
Posted by Anne Henochowicz

A male student, wearing a face mask as a blindfold, lounges in a small cage as part of a performance art piece.

A performance art piece by a student who sat in a cage to protest a draconian lockdown of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) recently went viral, and was censored just as quickly. Like many other Chinese citizens, university students have been living under strict lockdowns, and are beginning to chafe at the restrictions—and at administrators’ lack of responsiveness to students’ concerns. With the appearance of the omicron variant and fears of new COVID-19 outbreaks if protocols are relaxed, even more Chinese schools and universities are instituting lockdowns.

The following is a full translation of the CDT Chinese article “Blanket Censorship of Performance Art Piece Protesting Beijing Film Academy Campus Lockdown”:

On November 22, a performance art piece by a Beijing Film Academy student began making the rounds on Weibo: the student sits in a cage, wearing a face mask over his eyes like a blindfold. A sign atop the cage reads, “Don’t leave the cage unless strictly necessary” (非必要不出笼); an online commentary on the performance notes that the sign is a riff on the school’s unwritten COVID-19 policy, “Don’t leave campus unless strictly necessary” (非必要不出校), interpreting the performance as a critique of Beijing Film Academy’s brute, indefinite lockdown of its campus. Continue reading BFA performance art protest →

Yeh Shih-tao: the writer who ate dreams

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Source: Taipei Times (12/5/21)
Taiwan in Time: The writer who ate dreams
After a carefree youth spent immersed in and writing literature, novelist Yeh Shih-tao was jailed during the White Terror. He eventually completed Taiwan’s first literary history
By Han Cheung / Staff reporter

Yeh Shih-tao’s writings and book covers on display at the Yeh Shih-tao Literature Memorial Hall. Photo: Liu Wan-chun, Taipei Times

Yeh Shih-tao (葉石濤) once compared writers to beasts who devour dreams to sustain themselves. For the first 18 years of his life, Yeh’s well-off family could afford to let him daydream, and he shut out the world that was being ravaged by World War II, seeking refuge in the world of literature.

Despite a concerned teacher warning his father that the boy was “useless,” Yeh had penned three novels by the time he finished high school. His third attempt, A Letter from Lin (林君來的信), was modeled after the work of French novelist Alphonse Daudet and caught the eye of Literary Taiwan (文藝台灣) editor Mitsuru Nishikawa. Published in April 1943, it was Yeh’s official debut.

The family’s fortune soon disappeared, however, and the young novelist was forced to confront reality. Not only did he struggle to make a living, he was no longer allowed to write in his native Japanese after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) took control of Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War and fleeing China. The lowest point came when he was thrown in jail in 1951 for “failing to report a communist bandit,” a common charge during the White Terror. Continue reading Yeh Shih-tao: the writer who ate dreams →

At Home with External Propaganda

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Source: China Media Project (12/8/21)
At Home with External Propaganda
The Battle at Lake Changjin, hailed inside China as a film transforming the production value and appeal of films that tow the CCP line, may have broken domestic box office records this year. But the struggle for global audiences will be far more difficult to win. And China may not be listening.
By Stella Chen and David Bandurski

Battle of Lake Changjin

The Battle at Lake Changjin (长津湖), the Chinese war epic that recently became the country’s top-grossing film of all time, tells the story of self-sacrificing volunteer soldiers who bravely take on American troops at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. Commissioned by the Central Propaganda Department with a budget of over 200 million dollars, the film has been praised inside China as a milestone both for China’s film industry and for the telling of the “China story.”

But while The Battle at Lake Changjin may have been a domestic success, earning more than 895 million dollars by the end of November, it has seriously misfired internationally, and the self-congratulatory tone of much coverage inside China points to the continued myopia of the country’s media system when it comes to crafting stories the rest of the world can relate to.

Earlier this week, the Economic Daily, a central newspaper run by the State Council, hailed the fact that in a period of 10 days following its first screening in Hong Kong on November 11, The Battle at Lake Changjin had brought in more than 10 million Hong Kong dollars in ticket sales. Not only this, said the paper, but the film, which in mainland China had prompted emotional tributes, including a wave of frozen potato eating, had “continued to heat up overseas,” showing in Singapore, the United States and Canada. Continue reading At Home with External Propaganda →

Douban Pulled from App Stores

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Source: China Media Project (12/10/21)
Douban Pulled From App Stores
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on Thursday that Douban (豆瓣), one of the country’s most popular social networking platforms, had been removed from app stores along with 105 other apps, citing “excessive collection of personal information.”
By Stella Chen

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on Thursday that Douban (豆瓣), one of the country’s most popular social networking platforms, had been removed from app stores along with 105 other apps, citing “excessive collection of personal information.” The move, which was announced through the MIIT’s WeChat official account, “Gong Xin Wei Bao“ (工信微报), quickly became a hotly discussed topic across Chinese social media.

“Please no, don’t let Douban die,” one user wrote in a comment under the news as reported on Weibo by The Beijing News newspaper. “I have a lot of bookmarks that haven’t been backed up yet.”

“Will Hupu, Zhihu and Baidu Tieba be next?” one seemingly distressed user responded.

Douban, a social networking platform established in 2005, allows users to share reviews of music, books, films and other hobby-related content. The platform’s “group,” or xiaozu (小组), function works as an online community for people who have shared interests in certain celebrities, pop culture trends, films and so on, allowing them to share their thoughts and responses. Continue reading Douban Pulled from App Stores →

Beijing Spring documentary review

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Source: NYT (12/9/21)
‘Beijing Spring’ Review: The Politics of Aesthetics
This new documentary chronicles the movement for democratic artistic expression that exploded in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in China.
By Devika Girish

Archival footage, as seen in the documentary “Beijing Spring.” Credit…Wang Rui/AC FILMS

Beijing Spring
Directed by Andy Cohen, Gaylen Ross
Documentary, 1h 40m
FIND TICKETS

Can art effect real change in the world? To this ever-urgent question, “Beijing Spring” — a new documentary about the titular movement for democratic expression that exploded in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in China — responds with a resounding yes.

Directed by Andy Cohen with Gaylen Ross, the film focuses on the Stars Art Group, a collective of self-taught practitioners who seized on the tumult after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and deployed their art like Molotov cocktails. They circulated their paintings and literature via underground magazines; papered revolutionary poems and calligraphy on the famed Democracy Wall; and, most notably, mounted a show on the exterior of the National Art Museum of China after being denied permission to exhibit within.

Continue reading Beijing Spring documentary review →

Dramatic developments on the Uyghur genocide

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Some dramatic new developments around the genocide in China, over the last few days:

  1. This morning, the London-based privately organized Uyghur Tribunal, issued its final verdict on the mass atrocities in China.  As of this morning, the tribunal’s main website now has a link to the preliminary text of the full judgment concluding what’s happening is both genocide and crimes against humanity (this will be completed with appendices, and then published, for the world to consider. )

  2. Yesterday, the US Congress passed a resolution condemning the Chinese government’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim peoples in China (H.Res. 317). See: “U.S. Congress Condemns Uyghur Genocide, Gives Hope to Uyghurs Around the World,” Uyghur Human Rights Project, December 8, 2021.

  3. The US House of Representatives also passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, to block imports from the Uyghur region where forced labor is used. A version of this law had already been passed by the Senate, and there has been a lot of speculation as to whether US corporate lobbying caused the serious delay in the House. Now, the House and Senate versions must be reconciled before it can become US law. See: “House votes to ban imports from Xinjiang over forced labor concerns.” Axios, [8 dec 2021].

  4. Olympic boycott: All this comes on top of House of Representatives Resolution 837, concluding that the International Olympic Committee failed to adhere to its own human rights commitments — just days after President Biden declared the US government will boycott the Olympics ceremonies, because of the genocide. (See: “White House announces US diplomatic boycott of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing,” CNN, December 6, 2021). One other country, Lithuania, had already announced a similar diplomatic boycott; and after the US announcement, several other countries have followed suit, incl. Australia and the UK: “These countries have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Olympics,” Axios, Dec. 8, 2021.

  5. The Uyghur Human Rights Project yesterday issued an updated report on the mass forced disappearances of members of the Uyghur cultural and intellectual elites, counting 312 such victims: “The Disappearance of Uyghur Intellectual and Cultural Elites: A New Form of Eliticide.” Uyghur Human Rights Project, December 8, 2021.

yrs, Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>