The China Project shuts down

What a shame. The China Project is shutting down. For over seven years, it has offered broad and in-depth news on China that complemented mainstream media reporting. It will be sorrily missed. — Kirk

Jiong -- bright or brilliant

Source: The China Project  (11/7/23)
We have to shut down, and this is why

The China Project (formerly SupChina) launched in 2016 with the aim of informing the world about China with a breadth and depth that general interest news organizations cannot devote to one country.

As the U.S.-China relationship deteriorated, and China’s relations with other countries have become more complicated in the years since then, our work has only become more important.

But sadly, that same work has put several targets on our backs. We have been accused many times in both countries of working for nefarious purposes for the government of the other. Defending ourselves has incurred enormous legal costs, and, far worse, made it increasingly difficult for us to attract investors, advertisers, and sponsors. While our subscription offerings have been growing strongly and steadily, we are not yet in a position to rely on these revenues to sustain our operations. The media business is precarious, and the politically motivated attacks on us from various interested parties put us in an even worse situation.

We are not prepared to compromise our values for funding. And this week, we learned that a source of funding that we had been counting on was no longer going to come through, and we have had to make the difficult decision to close down. Continue reading

China’s Online Literature talk

Online Talk: China’s Online Literature and the Problem of Preservation
Dr. Michel Hockx
Thursday, November 16, 2023
6:00-7:30p.m. CST
Virtual event held on Zoom.

Please register to attend:

https://kansas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqfuqqrz4uH9YY5V5uoODOT6PN3sSzv6O2

Abstract

Since their introduction in the late 1990s, websites devoted to the production and discussion of literary work have been ubiquitous on the Chinese Web. Over the years, the study of online literature has become an established field of inquiry within the Chinese academy. General studies and textbooks have been produced, and especially for the first decade or so of online literary production, there appears to be consensus on what were the most important sites, authors, and works. This emerging canon of born-digital works, however, can rarely still be found online in its original location and context. This paper addresses the challenges of preserving early Chinese Internet literature, as well as the opportunities for literary analysis when preservation does take place.

About the speaker

Dr. Michel Hockx is professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely, both in English and in Chinese, on topics related to modern Chinese literary culture, especially early 20th-century Chinese magazine literature and print culture and contemporary Internet literature. His monograph Internet Literature in China was listed by Choice magazine as one of the “Top 25 Outstanding Academic Titles of 2015.”

Posted by: Faye Xiao <hxiao@ku.edu>

China’s fake press problem

Source: China Media Project (10/26/23)
China’s Fake Press Problem
By David Bandurski
Controls on news and information in China, seen as key to protecting the CCP regime, are perhaps the strictest in the world. So how — and why — are entirely spurious media outfits operating right under the nose of the authorities?

When two men arrived outside the gates of a coal processing enterprise in the city of Zhengzhou back in May this year and began filming video, the company’s boss demanded to know their business. The men explained that they were journalists from Henan Economic News (河南经济报), and that they were documenting his company’s failure to comply with environmental standards.

From there, the conversation moved quickly beyond the facts of their planned report to a more practical question — how the company could make it disappear.

If the boss wished not to have his company’s violations reported publicly, a simple arrangement was possible. For 12,000 yuan (about 1,600 dollars) transferred directly to a designated account, the journalists could shelve the report. The transaction would be disguised as a payment for a company subscription to Henan Economic News. The men could even provide an invoice bearing the media outlet’s official stamp. Continue reading

Chinese mourn the death of Li Keqiang

Source: NYT (10/27/23)
Chinese Mourn the Death of a Premier, and the Loss of Economic Hope
An outpouring on social media for Li Keqiang, the former premier who died Friday, reflected public grief for an era of greater growth and possibility.
By 

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, wearing a dark suit, bowing low while standing on a deep red carpet.

Premier Li Keqiang after delivering his state of the nation address in March. He served as China’s No. 2 official for a decade until eight months ago. Credit…Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

They posted videos on social media of the time he promised that China would remain open to the outside world. They shared photos of him, standing in ankle-deep mud, visiting victims of a flood. They even noted the economic growth target for the first year of his premiership: 7.5 percent.

The death Friday of Li Keqiang, 68, prompted spontaneous mourning online. Mr. Li served as premier, China’s No. 2 official, for a decade until last March.

Among many Chinese, Mr. Li’s death produced a swell of nostalgia for what he represented: a time of greater economic possibility and openness to private business. The reaction was jarring and showed the dissatisfaction in China with the leadership of Xi Jinping, China’s hard-line leader who grabbed an unprecedented third term in office last year after maneuvering to have the longstanding limit of two terms abolished.

In post after post on social media, people praised Mr. Li more for what he stood for and said than for what he was able to accomplish under Mr. Xi, who drove economic policymaking during Mr. Li’s period in office. Continue reading

Visual language of official press

Source: China Media Project (10/20/23)
The Visual Language of China’s Official Press
Understanding the political messages of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) requires much more than mere summary and translation — and more even than close textual readings. Here’s a walk through the basics, looking at today’s edition of the Party’s flagship newspaper.
By David Bandurski

In the official Party-state media in China, design is driven by politics — and it is a crucial aspect of the political discourse. Want to see this principle in action? Today’s edition of the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) offers a prime example.

The oddest and most prominent feature of the front page of the People’s Daily today is the large vertical headline running down the left-hand side. The headline, which announces that top leader Xi Jinping met with international leaders attending the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, ties the rest of the headlines on the page together. All are announcements of separate meetings, each with a different foreign leader.

As has been the case all week in the official state media in China, the top story is the Belt and Road. Coverage has touted its great benefits for participating countries, and for the entire world — emphasizing the growing economic and political centrality of China and its top leader.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the global infrastructure development and trade promotion program, which has been a pillar of China’s foreign policy, and the forum this week is the year’s most prominent opportunity for state-run media to roll out related domestic and international propaganda.

They have not missed the chance. Coverage of the Belt and Road Forum has eclipsed all other stories, including one of the world’s most pressing concerns, the unfolding conflict in Gaza and its potentially disastrous implications for security in the Middle East. Continue reading

Chongzhen Emperor book withdrawn

China Digital Times (10/18/23)
Xi Parallels Suspected behind Withdrawal of Book on Ill-Fated Chongzhen Emperor
By 

On October 16, it was reported online that a recent reprint of the historical biography “The Chongzhen Emperor: Diligent Ruler of a Failed Dynasty” (《崇祯:勤政的亡国君》Chóngzhēn: Qínzhèng de Wángguó Jūn, ISBN 9787549640775) had been recalled by the book distributor Dook Media Group (读客文化Dúkè Wénhuà). A notice from the distributor stated that due to an unspecified “printing problem,” the book was being recalled from the shelves of all online booksellers, Xinhua bookstores, and private bookstores. At present, the cover image of the book is no longer displayed on online platforms, and the hashtag #Chongzhen has been search-censored on Weibo, with searches only showing content from verified users.

Continue reading

Abe assassination reenactment creates Weibo firestorm

Source: China Digital Times (10/10/23)
Abe Assassination Reenactment Creates Weibo Firestorm
By 

A skit reenacting former Japanese President Shinzo Abe’s assassination—staged during a high school field day in Zaozhuang, Shandong—has reignited online debate over rising anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Abe’s assassination in 2022 shocked the world; the Chinese government’s official statement mirrored that sentiment. But on Chinese social media and in some offline corners of the country, a much different sentiment predominated: glee. On Weibo, some hailed Abe’s assassin as a “hero of the Anti-Japanese War” (as World War Two is referred to in Chinese), and at least one restaurant offered an “Abe Banquet Meal Deal” on the food delivery app Meituan in celebration. A wave of anti-Japanese incidents followed, including the arrest of a woman who paid for memorial tablets for Japanese war criminals in a Nanjing temple, the cancellation of a series of long-running Japan-inspired festivals, and the arrest of a woman in Suzhou who wore a kimono in public. Anti-Japanese sentiment perhaps reached a new apogee with the release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in late August 2023. The Shandong students who performed the skit reenacting Abe’s death drew a connection between the two unrelated events—Abe’s assassination and the Fukushima wastewater release—by unfurling a banner that read, “Two Gunshots Leave A Cold Corpse, Wastewater Release Leaves A Long Aftermath,” at the moment of the actor-Abe’s collapse. Video of the incident was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter: Continue reading

Netflix and East Asian Audio-Visual Culture–cfp

Call for Papers for a special issue of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images 4.2 (December 2024)

Netflix and East Asian Audio-visual Culture

In the early 21st century, Netflix fundamentally shifted the delivery model for global audio-visual content, and its unique characteristic as a program curator has made it a cultural mediator with the ability to shape local content productions. As global OTT (over-the-top) platforms, including Netflix and Disney+, play a pivotal role in cultural production, East Asian cultural products such as dramas, reality shows, films, and animation have experienced changes in genres, themes, visual style, and narratives. Netflix originals or licensed cultural programs are circulated simultaneously in many countries, compelling local cultural creators to adjust their production norms to attract Netflix and Netflix users. In South Korea, for example, the local audio-visual industry started to develop zombie, sci-fi, adventure, and dark thriller; and there are now a multitude of television dramas and films that focus on these genres and themes in the era of global OTTs. Netflix has also driven in changes in audiences’ consumption habits in Hong Kong, Singapore, and other countries. East Asian cultural creators have re-oriented their standards in cultural production. On the other hand, Netflix has also been on the constant lookout for new genres and themes that have proven successful elsewhere including in East Asia. In Japan, for instance, based on the global success of several Anime products, Netflix plans to develop live-action and animated feature films originating from the country. Continue reading

Is There a Chinese New Wave in Animation?

Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (9/30/2023)
Is There a Chinese New Wave in Animation? An Examination of Student Animation in China
By Jingyi Zhang

Figure 1. The exaggerated proportion of figures in Fish in the Bus.

The beginning of the millennium was important for Chinese animation. It not only began the rejuvenation of the Chinese animation industry, which embodied “the promise of the modernization of Chinese visual culture,”[i] but also saw the creation of a surprising range of works that can be categorized as independent animation. Additionally, it was a significant period for Chinese animation education. In January 2000, the Beijing Film Academy separated the animation major from the Art School, forming an independent Department of Animation. This change signals the rise of professional animation education in China in the 21st century. Since then, animation departments and institutions have gradually been founded in many universities and provinces, including the School of Animation and Digital Arts at the Communication University of China (CUC). That department in particular has trained and inspired many young animators who contribute to the commercial and independent films in Chinese animation industry. Scholars have conducted many studies in Chinese animation, yet they rarely consider the important field of student films.

In this paper, I investigate student animation created after 2000 in China, focusing on those works directed by the students who graduated from CUC. I argue that student animation reflects the ongoing changes within Chinese animation, changes that will alter the industry, and make important breaks from the characteristics of the 20th century. The student films exhibit a variety of narrative, visual styles, and techniques. They not only are influenced by the development of digital technology and global animation and cinematic culture but also indicate the trend of reviving traditional visual styles and telling indigenous narratives. Moreover, the young generation of filmmakers have gone on to enter the industry, often while keeping their personal, auteur styles. With the new talents, new technology, new producers and a new reputation on the world stage, I keep wondering whether we are witnessing a new wave set off by the young animators in Chinese animation history. Continue reading

Queer Women’s Fandom–cfp

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of Dr. Jamie J. Zhao, we are writing to send you a gentle reminder for the approaching deadline (October 15th) for submitting paper proposals to the special issue “Queer Women’s Fandom: New Global Perspectives” co-edited by Jamie J. Zhao and Eve Ng to be published in 2024 (as issue 3) in the journal of Popular Communication. Please kindly find the full call copied below.

Queer Women’s Fandom: New Global Perspectives
Special issue for Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture
Co-editors: Jamie J. Zhao (City University of Hong Kong) and Eve Ng (Ohio University, USA)

There are numerous fan communities and spaces, in different geocultural locations and linguistic contexts, dedicated to intimacies between women. Yet research on queer women’s fandoms – including fandoms of queer female public figures and their media presence, fan communities comprised of non-cis/non-heterosexually identified women, and/or queer reading activities done by women-identified fans – remains rather scant, especially compared to work on the queer fandoms of stars, celebrities, and idols who are cis-men. Furthermore, most scholarship on queer women’s fan cultures is focused on two types: femslash in Euro-American contexts and GL (“girls love” or yuri/baihe) in East Asian contexts. To develop a theoretically richer and more globally diverse account, this special issue seeks critical approaches to the transnational dimensions of queer women’s fandoms, including as they pertain to the formation and transformation of cross-racial, transcultural, and global queer fan identities, relationships to feminist and queer movements, the capitalization and coopting of queer fan labor, and other complexities of transcultural fandom. Continue reading

“Good morning, class. I am not a spy”

Source: China Digital Times (9/21/23)
“Good Morning, Class! I Am Not a Spy”
By 

In this screenshot, a bearded teacher (whose face is partially obscured) wearing a black t-shirt stands next to a projection screen. The slide presentation on screen reads: “2 most important facts: I am American. I am not a spy.”

“2 most important facts: I am American. I am not a spy.”

A photo of an American teacher introducing himself to a Chinese university class with a slide presentation proclaiming, “I am not a spy” has gone viral, eliciting much mirth online. It also highlights an increasingly tense atmosphere in which suspicions of spying abound, teachers face being reported by their students for minor ideological infractions, and the Chinese government is attempting to mobilize the whole of society to fight espionage.

On September 15, Xiaohongshu user ~十号草莓酱” (~Shí hào cǎoméijiàng” or ~Strawberry Jam No. 10″) shared this photo of an American instructor at Shanghai Normal University’s Tianhua College:

CDT Chinese editors have compiled some comments from Weibo and other social media platforms in response to instructor’s precautionary presentation: Continue reading

Media Gaffes

Source: China Digital Times (9/15/23)
Recent Media Gaffes Say Quiet Parts Out Loud on Sensitive History and Current Anxiety
By 

By inadvertently “saying the quiet part out loud,” three recent media gaffes have touched off public debate on questions usually left unspoken. For some Chinese social media users, these blunders have provided an opportunity to discuss the problems of wage stagnation, official corruption or indifference, politically sensitive dates, and the paradoxes of online censorship and self-censorship.

One gaffe involved state media outlet People’s Daily censoring a video it had produced to promote the upcoming Asian Games, which will be held from September 23-October 8 in Hangzhou. The video, “A Literary Exploration of Hangzhou,” contained two classical poems with politically awkward subtexts that the producers had apparently overlooked. One of the poems, containing references to “June” and “four seasons” had been used by some activists to get around censorship of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. As Helen Davidson reported for the Guardian, the other poem that raised eyebrows was a thinly-veiled satire of corrupt and callous officialdom:

Written in the 12th century, it is interpreted as a criticism of the Song Dynasty rulers, accusing corrupt officials of fleeing troubled lands to Hangzhou, and ignoring the struggles and crises of regular people while they drunkenly enjoy their own lives.

The poem itself is widely known and not censored, but commenters noted its inclusion suggested the video producers hadn’t realised the descriptions of people partying in Hangzhou was political satire.

[…] The video containing both poems was quickly taken down, but not before it was viewed at least 130,000 times across the People’s Daily and another state media account, according to censorship monitoring site, Free Weibo. Several other accounts also shared the video. A hashtag promoted alongside it no longer returns any results. [Source] Continue reading

Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion (1)

Wang Fang the ‘opera singer’ and her husband the propagandist are doubling down on their support for the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine. Traveling in the illegally annexed areas of Ukraine occupied by the aggressor, Russia, they now come out and copy Putin’s genocide propaganda directly, calling the heroic Ukrainian defenders ‘Nazis’ and insinuating Ukraine is killing its children — this while the International Criminal Court has issued a formal indictment of Putin for stealing Ukraine’s children, as in genocide.

As long as China’s own government does not immediately reject and withdraw these gross propagandists, it must be assumed that China’s government itself is officially behind this, and the signal they are sending is that China is the ally of fascist Russian aggressor in its illegal invasion, “no limits” as Xi said, so now they are the self-chosen enemy of Europe, the world, and of the UN charter.

We also note that genocide is what China is doing at home, including against the children, in their own simultaneously ongoing genocide that is aiming to erase the Uyghur people.

Wang Fang’s and her husband’s inability to care about either genocide, them choosing instead to go celebrate with the aggressor, is a sad testimony to how huge swaths of Chinese people, lacking true news, just slide defenselessly into the regime propaganda, much like the Nazis under Hitler, or Russians under Stalin or now Putler.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Xi’s obscure nicknames

Source: China Digital Times (8/25/23)
Words of the Week: Xi’s Obscure Nicknames, from ↗↘↗ to ‘2-4-2’ to ‘N’ to ‘N-Butane
By 

With hundreds of documented (and censored) online sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably the most nicknamed leader in recent Chinese history. To stay ahead of the censors, online Chinese have long resorted to using homophones, variant characters, intentional typos, and a range of typographical tricks when referring to China’s “core” leader.

Image shows the tonal marks for the three Chinese characters in Xi Jinping’s name. The order of the tones is rising (2nd tone), falling (4th tone), and rising (2nd tone).

Over time, as evading online censorship has become more difficult, the nicknames have trended toward the abstruse. When a recent “Soviet-style” joke about a man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the first string of three nonsense syllables were interpreted by many to mean “Xi Jinping,” and the second was thought to mean something like “hurry up and die” or “step down soon.” Despite the vagueness of the joke, references to it were quickly censored on social media and the original poster (@怪以德服人猫) had their account summarily deleted from Weibo for allegedly violating platform policy.

Even the tonal marks used in Xi Jinping’s name (习近平, Xí Jìnpíng) have become a roundabout way to refer to him online. In May of 2023, Chinese Twitter and social media was abuzz about a sequence of three arrows ↗↘↗ said to represent the three tones (second/rising tone, fourth/falling tone, and second/rising tone, respectively) in Xi Jinping’s name. This usage had originated with a screenshot, purportedly from QQ, showing a post that read: “You know what’s depressing? When random netizens who do your job as a hobby are smarter and more competent than you.” Someone in the comments section had responded, “Those keyboard warriors are more competent than ↗↘↗.” Many who read the comment were shocked and amused that they managed to correctly interpret the three arrows as a reference to Xi Jinping, although others had to ask, “Can anyone explain this?” Among the comments of those in the know: “I understood that!” “How was I able to read that? Someone save me,” “God, I’ve been pronouncing it →↘→ all this time, guess my Mandarin isn’t that good,” and “I got it at first glance. Does this mean I’m going to hell?” Continue reading

Spies Are Everywhere

Source: NYT (9/2/23)
China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
As Beijing tries to enlist the “whole of society” to guard against foreign enemies, the line between vigilance and paranoia fades.
By Vivian Wang (reporting from Beijing)

A woman talks on a phone against a backdrop of skyscrapers in the distance and surveillance cameras just behind her.

Surveillance cameras in Shanghai in March. Credit…Aly Song/Reuters

Beijing sees forces bent on weakening it everywhere: embedded in multinational companies, infiltrating social media, circling naïve students. And it wants its people to see them, too.

Chinese universities require faculty to take courses on protecting state secrets, even in departments like veterinary medicine. A kindergarten in the eastern city of Tianjin organized a meeting to teach staffers how to “understand and use” China’s anti-espionage law.

China’s Ministry of State Security, a usually covert department that oversees the secret police and intelligence services, has even opened its first social media account, as part of what official news media described as an effort at increasing public engagement. Its first post: a call for a “whole of society mobilization” against espionage.

“The participation of the masses,” the post said, should be “normalized.”

China’s ruling Communist Party is enlisting ordinary people to guard against perceived threats to the country, in a campaign that blurs the line between vigilance and paranoia. The country’s economy is facing its worst slowdown in years, but China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, appears more fixated on national security and preventing threats to the party’s control. Continue reading