Society

news and reports on contemporary social issues in Greater China

The secret campaign to save a chained woman

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Source: NYT (3/25)
The Secret Campaign in China to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck
By Vivian WangGraphics and illustration by Pablo Robles

Screenshot from a video showing a woman chained by the neck.

The video blogger had visited Dongji Village, in eastern China, to find a man known for raising eight children despite deep poverty. The man had become a favorite interview subject for influencers looking to attract donations and clicks.

But that day, one of the children led the blogger to someone not featured in many other videos: the child’s mother.

She stood in a doorless shack in the family’s courtyard, on a strip of dirt floor between a bed and a brick wall. She wore a thin sweater despite the January cold. When the blogger asked if she could understand him, she shook her head. A chain around her neck shackled her to the wall.

The video quickly spread online, and immediately, Chinese commenters wondered whether the woman had been sold to the man in Dongji and forced to have his children — a kind of trafficking that is a longstanding problem in China’s countryside. They demanded the government intervene.

Instead, local officials issued a short statement brushing off the concerns: The woman was legally married to the man and had not been trafficked. She was chained up because she was mentally ill and sometimes hit people.

Public outrage only grew. People wrote blog posts demanding to know why women could be treated like animals. Others printed fliers or visited the village to investigate for themselves. This was about more than trafficking, people said. It was another reason many young women were reluctant to get married or have children, because the government treated marriage as a license to abuse.

The outcry rippled nationwide for weeks. Many observers called it the biggest moment for women’s rights in recent Chinese history. The Chinese Communist Party sees popular discontent as a challenge to its authority, but this was so intense that it seemed even the party would struggle to quash it.

And yet, it did. Continue reading The secret campaign to save a chained woman →

Hostile reaction to Huo Meng’s ‘Living the Land’

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Soure: China Digital Times (3/6/25)
Hostile Weibo Reactions to Filmmaker Huo Meng’s Berlin Film Fest Win: “Chinese Cinema Has Never Been As Conflicted As It Is Today”
By Cindy Carter

While Weibo and other Chinese social media platforms continue to generate congratulatory content about the animated box-office smash “Ne Zha 2,” the reception for “Living the Land,” a moving and realistic film about life in the Chinese countryside in the early 1990s, has been decidedly less welcoming. After its director and screenwriter, Huo Meng, won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director at the recent 2025 Berlin Film Festival, Weibo was flooded with negative comments, including accusations that the filmmaker played up rural poverty in China to curry favor with foreign audiences.

The poster shows a small boy and a young woman, both dressed in white funeral garb and white head-coverings, standing in a lush green field. The Chinese and English titles of the film appear in white and orange text at the top.

A promotional poster for Huo Meng’s film “Living the Land”

“Living the Land,” whose Chinese title is 生息之地 (Shēngxī zhī dì), depicts a year in the life of a Chinese farming village in 1991, as several generations of farmers try to come to terms with the massive socio-economic shifts that will soon remake their lives. The film’s young protagonist, a boy named Chuang, is part of the first generation of “left-behind children.” After his parents decamp to Shenzhen to seek work, taking their two older children with them, third-born Chuang is left in the care of his uncle Tuanjie, who never lets Chuang (who has a different surname) forget that he doesn’t quite belong in the village. When the boy innocently wonders where he will someday be buried, his uncle mutters, “This is not your place.” With non-professional actors and realistic settings, “Living the Land” explores complex intergenerational family dynamics, state-enforced family planning policies, developmental disabilities, “left-behind children,” farmers seeking ways to supplement their incomes, encroaching industrialization and urbanization, and more. Continue reading Hostile reaction to Huo Meng’s ‘Living the Land’ →

Get married or get out

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Source: NYT (3/4/25)
Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out
As China’s government worries about the falling birthrate, some private employers have ordered workers to do their part, or else.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

A bride and groom hold hands in front of a church as photographers take their picture from about 30 feet away.

Taking wedding photos in Shanghai in 2023. Last year, only 6.1 million Chinese couples got married — a 20 percent decline from a year earlier.Credit…Qilai Shen for The New York Times

The ideal worker at the Chinese chemical manufacturer, according to the internal memo, is hardworking, virtuous and loyal. And — perhaps most important — willing to have children for the good of the country.

That was the message that the company, Shandong Shuntian Chemical Group, sent to unmarried employees recently, in a notice that spread widely on social media. It instructed them to start families by Sept. 30, or else.

“If you cannot get married and start a family within three quarters, the company will terminate your labor contract,” the memo said.

Shandong Shuntian was not the first company to try to dictate its employees’ personal lives amid rising concern about China’s plummeting marriage and birth rates. Weeks earlier, a popular supermarket chain had told its staff not to ask for betrothal gifts, to lower the cost of weddings. Continue reading Get married or get out →

Cutting micro-dramas down to size

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Source: China Media Project (1/9/25)
Cutting Micro-Dramas Down to Size
China’s government has signaled stricter rules this year for micro-dramas, a bite-size entertainment format with mega market potential.
By Alex Colville

Micro-dramas — TV series cut into short snippets of one to 15 minutes — are becoming a huge business worldwide. The global market for this new, bite-size format is said to be worth two billion dollars a year, with forecasts that this could double by the end of 2025. And that’s excluding China, which has emerged as a global leader in the production and consumption of weiduanju (微短剧).

Chinese micro-dramas: heavy on history and romance, light on Xi.

With the PRC’s micro-drama market growing at a blistering 250 percent annually, bringing in some RMB 37.4 billion (5.2 billion dollars) in 2023 according to state media reports, the authorities are also acting quickly to figure out how they can control this new entertainment format and ensure it serves their interests. On January 4, the National Radio and TV Administration (国家广播电视总局), or NRTA, publicized its plan to create hundreds of short videos on Xi Jinping’s political thought — for example, by promoting his vision of uniting classical Chinese culture with the latest technology and teaching netizens about the benefits of Xi’s version of the rule of law. Continue reading Cutting micro-dramas down to size →

Queering the Asian Diaspora

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New Publication
Hongwei Bao, Queering the Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2024)
ISBN: 9781529619683 (paperback, 168 pp., £11.99; $18.00)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified global geopolitical tensions, bringing Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism into sharp focus. At the same time, a growing Asian diasporic consciousness is emerging worldwide, celebrating Asian identity and cultural heritage. Yet, in the space between anti-Asian racism and the rise of Asian advocacy, the voices of queer people have often been largely missing.

This book addresses that gap. Exploring a range of contemporary case studies from art, fashion, performance, film, and political activism, Bao offers a powerful intersectional cultural politics—anti-nationalist, anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, and queer—that challenges dominant narratives and amplifies marginalized voices.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Visualising the Rabbit God: Reclaiming Queer Asian Heritage
Chapter 2 – Decolonising Drag: When Queer Asian Artists Do Drag
Chapter 3 – Queering Chinoiserie: Performing Orientalist Intimacy
Chapter 4 – ‘Secret Love’: Curating Queerness and Queering Curation
Chapter 5 – Digital Video Activism: Popo Fan’s Cinema of Desire
Chapter 6 – Imagining Queer Bandung: Creating a Decolonial Queer Space

(Readers can get a 25% discount when they order the book from the Sage website using the discount code SSSJ25: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/queering-the-asian-diaspora/book284796)

Posted by: Hongwei Bao <hongwei.bao@nottingham.ac.uk>

How a feminist comedy came to rule China’s box office

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Source: NYT (12/11/24)
How a Feminist Comedy Came to Rule China’s Box Office
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“Her Story” touches on sensitive topics in China, like censorship and gender inequality. But its humorous, nonconfrontational approach may have helped it pass censors.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

Three adults and a child wearing matching black sweaters with the words “Her Story” printed in pink, stand with a promotional placard at an event.

Shao Yihui, right, the director of “Her Story,” a feminist-themed comedy that has become a box office hit in China, along with members of the cast at a premiere in Beijing. Credit…Visual China Group, via Getty Images

The movie calls out stigmas against female sexuality and stereotypes about single mothers. It name-drops feminist scholars, features a woman recalling domestic violence and laments Chinese censorship.

This is not some indie film, streamed secretly by viewers circumventing China’s internet firewall. It is China’s biggest movie right now — and has even garnered praise from the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

The success of “Her Story” [好东西], a comedy that topped China’s box office for the last three weeks, is in some ways unexpected, at a time when the government has cracked down on feminist activism, encouraged women to embrace marriage and childbearing and severely limited independent speech.

The film’s reception reflects the unpredictable nature of censorship in the country, as well as the growing appetite for female-centered stories. Discussion of women’s issues is generally allowed so long as it does not morph into calls for rights. “Her Story,” which some have called China’s answer to “Barbie,” cushions many of its social critiques with jokes.

The director of “Her Story,” Shao Yihui, has emphasized at public appearances that she is not interested in provoking “gender antagonism,” an accusation that official media has sometimes lobbed against feminists. Continue reading How a feminist comedy came to rule China’s box office →

Anime’s knowledge cultures

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Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (11/14/24)
Anime’s Knowledge Cultures: From Astro Boy to China’s Zhai Generation
By Jinying Li

In the first two decades of the 21st century, we witnessed a widespread cultural movement of geekdom that went global and mainstream simultaneously. While American media were announcing “it’s hip to be square” and “geek is chic,” their East Asian counterparts were embracing otaku and zhai as trendy labels to identify a new generation of pop culture heroes who thrived on the transmedia arenas of the digital era. In 2008, “zhai” was chosen as the Chinese “buzz word of the year” to celebrate the cultural prominence of China’s zhai generation which, according to the Chinese news media, not only defined the cultural meanings of the “Internet pop” (网络流行) but also characterized “a state of living and being” (生存状态) in the 21st century.[1] During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, zhai as “a state of living and being” was further embraced in China as a crucial cultural strategy to survive the pandemic quarantines and lockdowns, displacing the fear of an infectious disease with the obsession with spreadable media.[2]

The worldwide rise of geek and zhai culture points to the emergence and significance of a new demographic of transnational knowledge workers in a global economy dominated by information networks. This knowledge class functions as a crucial yet often overlooked nexus in the ongoing transformations of information society that we are still trying to understand. These so-called geeks, otaku, and zhai are the active agents, as both consumers and producers, connecting techno-economic developments to socio-cultural changes. Therefore, critically examining this social group and its cultural values, I believe, is the key to understanding our current information society at large.

My work is about the cultural values of geeks, otaku and zhai: how they emerged, why they matter, and what they mean. Through the lens of anime and its transnational fandom, I explore the meanings and logics of “geekdom” as one of the most significant sociocultural groups of our time.  The key questions are why anime appeals to this rapidly expanding social group, and how anime constitutes a mediation environment that effectively translates between knowledge work and what Tiziana Terranova calls “knowledgeable consumption of culture.”[3] I study geek and zhai as informational knowledge culture in postindustrial society and investigates how anime constitutes a powerful media environment that cultivate and sustain this knolwge culture. Studying anime as the media environment of global geekdom, I want to shift the center of knowledge culture from the computer boys in Silicon Valley to the anime fandom in East Asia, problematizing the supposed American whiteness in the popular imagination of the knowledge class. This shift from the techno-culture of computing to the transmedia system of anime also calls for a theoretical rethinking of how knowledge culture is mediated. I argue that the culturalization of informational knowledge work needs a media form, which is animation rather than computation. Continue reading Anime’s knowledge cultures →

She sued over ‘conversion therapy’

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Source: NYT (12/8/24)
She Sued Over Transgender ‘Conversion Therapy,’ a First for China
Ling’er won a settlement payout from the hospital where she was held for three months against her will and subjected to electroshock therapy.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

A 28-year-old transgender Chinese woman sitting on a bed, holding a teddy bear.

Ling’er posing for a portrait in the room she recently rented in Tianjin, China, in November. Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times 

For years after coming out as transgender, Ling’er, an aspiring influencer in eastern China, struggled from heartbreak to heartbreak. Her family refused to accept her. When she tried to find an interim job to support herself, employers would not hire her.

And when her parents sent her to a hospital to try to change her gender identity, she was held there for three months, despite her repeated protests. She was forced to undergo treatment that included multiple rounds of electroshock therapy.

So when she later sued the hospital for subjecting her to unnecessary and unwanted treatment, she was not optimistic. Then the seemingly unthinkable happened: A court accepted her complaint, in China’s first known lawsuit over so-called conversion therapy involving a transgender person. And the hospital agreed in October to pay her a sizable settlement.

“To me, this is a win. With this money, I can start my new life, and start my own business,” said Ling’er, 28. “I can live my own life.”

The case is a rare bright spot in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights in China. Ling’er’s lawsuit was covered sympathetically by some mainstream Chinese news outlets, even as overall coverage of L.G.B.T.Q. issues has diminished. That her lawsuit was accepted at all was a hard-won victory, her supporters said, in a country with no laws protecting L.G.B.T.Q. people. Continue reading She sued over ‘conversion therapy’ →

Soup dumplings

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Source: The Guardian (11/10/24)
100,000 Chinese students join 50km night-time bike ride in search of good soup dumplings
Authorities impose restrictions on bike hire after huge group blocks a highway between Zhengzhou and Kaifeng in China, as night biking trend takes off
By  in Taipei

College students from Zhengzhou cycle to Kaifeng.

College students from Zhengzhou cycle to Kaifeng. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

A night-time cycling trend that started with four Chinese students riding 50km for dumplings blew out to a reported 100,000 people on Friday, jamming major roads, overwhelming a small tourist city and drawing the attention of authorities.

The pack of students, mostly on public share bikes, rode several hours through Henan province from their campuses in Zhengzhou to the ancient city of Kaifeng.

“People sang together and cheered for each other while climbing uphill together,” Liu Lulu, a student at Henan University, told China Daily. “I could feel the passion of the young people. And it was much more than a bike ride.”

But Kaifeng quickly reached capacity, with accommodation, restaurants and public spaces packed to bursting, officials said. Video circulating online shows tens of thousands of cyclists filling the six-lane Zhengkai avenue, the expressway between Zhengzhou and the streets of the much smaller Kaifeng, as police used loudhailers to ask students to leave, by bike or on a free bus.

To prevent a repeat of Friday’s event, authorities announced temporary restrictions on roads and cycle paths for the weekend, and bike share apps warned they would remotely lock any bikes taken out of designated zones in Zhengzhou.

Some Zhengzhou universities also enacted measures including banning bicycles on campuses and requiring students to apply for passes to leave the grounds. Continue reading Soup dumplings →

Can men in China take a joke?

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Source: NYT (10/31/24)
Can Men in China Take a Joke? Women Doing Stand-Up Have Their Doubts.
Comedy has become a way for women to skewer China’s gender inequality. Some men aren’t happy about it.
By Vivian Wang (Reporting from Beijing)

A woman in a sleeveless, striped top, is seen holding a microphone in her right hand.

Yang Li, China’s best-known female stand-up comic, in a screenshot from a variety show. She was dropped from an ad campaign after men complained to the company.Credit…iQIYI Variety via YouTube

On the list of topics best avoided by China’s comedians, some are obvious. Politics. The Chinese military.

Now add: Men’s fragile egos.

That, at least, was the message sent this month, when a major e-commerce platform abruptly ended a partnership with China’s most prominent female stand-up comic. The company was caving to pressure from men on social media who described the comedian, Yang Li, as a man-hating witch.

Speaking up for women’s rights is increasingly sensitive in China, and the stand-up stage is the latest battleground. Growing numbers of women like Ms. Yang are speaking out about — and laughing at — the injustices they face. On two hugely popular stand-up shows this fall, women were among the breakout stars, thanks to punchlines about the difficulty of finding a good partner, or men’s fear of talking about menstruation.

But a backlash has emerged, as men balk at being the butt of the joke. They have attacked the comics on social media; Ms. Yang has described receiving threats of violence. The women’s new visibility can also be easily erased. Not long after the e-commerce company, JD.com, dropped Ms. Yang, it deleted posts on its official social media account featuring two other female comedians.

The battle over women’s jokes reflects the broader paradox of feminism in China. On the one hand, feminist rhetoric is more widespread than ever before, with once-niche discussions of gender inequality now aired openly. But the forces trying to suppress that rhetoric are also growing, encouraged by a government that has led its own crusade against feminist activism and pushed women toward traditional roles.

On guancha.cn, a nationalistic commentary site, an editorial declared: “The fewer divisive symbols like Yang Li, the better.” Continue reading Can men in China take a joke? →

China’s latest security target: Halloween partygoers

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Source: NYT (10/29/24)
China’s Latest Security Target: Halloween Partygoers
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Last year, the Shanghai government said Halloween celebrations were a sign of “cultural tolerance.” This year, the police rounded up people in costume
By Vivian Wang and Muyi Xiao (Vivian Wang reported from Beijing)

Social media videos verified by The New York Times showed police in Shanghai escorting away people dressed in costumes. CreditCredit…

The police escorted the Buddha down the street, one officer steering him with both hands. They hurried a giant poop emoji out of a cheering dance circle in a public park. They also pounced on Donald J. Trump with a bandaged ear, and pushed a Kim Kardashian look-alike, in a tight black dress and pearls, into a police van, while she turned and waved to a crowd of onlookers.

The authorities in Shanghai were on high alert this past weekend, against a pressing threat: Halloween.

Officials there clamped down on Halloween celebrations this year, after many young people turned last year’s festivities into a rare public outlet for political or social criticism. People had poured into the streets dressed up as Covid testing workers, to mock the three years of lockdowns they had just endured; they plastered themselves in job advertisements, amid a weak employment market; they cross-dressed, seizing the opportunity to express L.G.B.T.Q. identities without being stigmatized. Continue reading China’s latest security target: Halloween partygoers →

Copycats are no joke

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Source: China Media Project (10/21/24)
For State Media, Copycats are No Joke
The recent case of a counterfeit article erroneously sourced to the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party has the authorities crying foul. But the real culprit is their claim to a monopoly on the truth.
By Alex Colville

Earlier this month, the People’s Daily astonished millions of online readers in China by weighing in on a petty dispute between two celebrities. The article, which accused an actress of grabbing publicity by slandering her ex-boyfriend, was an odd change of character for the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece. Speculation raged about what this aberration could mean.

There was just one problem — the article was a complete fake. And within hours, a new question loomed: How did this happen?

In fact, convincing as it was — with an apparently genuine People’s Daily Online URL, look and layout — the piece wasn’t written by People’s Daily at all. The next day, the media group weighed in to disavow the article, saying it was a “copycat” (套牌) that had cloned its news pages. It went on to say this was not an isolated incident, and voiced concern that the impersonation of official news outlets, apparently a rather widespread phenomenon, could “trigger a crisis of trust” in the country’s Party-run news outlets.

In fact, the issue has little or nothing to do with trust — and everything to do with power. The lesson: monopolize access to speech and information, and those eager to be heard will find a way to borrow your privilege. Continue reading Copycats are no joke →

Wedding humiliation

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Source: China Media Project (10/18/24)
Divorcing China from Wedding Humiliation
After a recent, egregious incident of “wedding hazing” went viral in China, the controversial tradition has been pushed back into the media spotlight. Outlets nationwide are joining the charge to end this “evil custom.”
By Dalia Parete

Late last month, media across China reported on the latest incident of harassment directed at a newlywed bride — a practice known in China as “wedding hazing” (婚闹). The news story was prompted by the surfacing on September 25 of a video showing a woman in Shanxi province tied to a telephone pole, crying for help while bystanders failed to intervene. The footage quickly went viral, igniting outrage — and prompting widespread debate about the lines between custom, decency and legality in modern Chinese society.

A screenshot from the video of the latest “wedding hazing” incident in China’s Shanxi province.

Chinese Business View (华商报), a commercial newspaper from Shaanxi province, managed to reach a certain “Mr. Yang” who had taken the video in question and posted it to social media. Yang said the incident had happened around midday on September 23 in the Digou Community (底沟社区) in the prefectural-level city of Yangquan in Shanxi province. He defended the actions shown in the video. “When weddings happen making a bit of a fuss, that’s our local custom,” he said. “It’s all good friends together. It’s not as netizens say, that anyone is getting hurt.”

In a subsequent report, Yangquan Daily (阳泉日报), the local CCP-run daily newspaper in Yangquan, reported that community personnel had investigated the case and found that the scene shown in the video was part of a pre-arranged “game” (游戏) arranged for the bride and groom as part of wedding festivities. The report said that those involved in the antics were “deeply sorry for the negative impact [the video] created.” Continue reading Wedding humiliation →

Is This My Country?

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Source: NYT (10/14/24)
Killing of Japanese Boy Leaves Chinese Asking: Is This My Country?
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Angry at what they view as China’s state-led xenophobia, taught in schools and prevalent online, some people are taking action, even at personal risk.
By Li Yuan

In an illustration, a spoked wheel consisting of hundreds of surrealistic eyeballs, open mouths and arms carrying knives, hammers and bricks rolls toward a group of people bearing flowers at a makeshift memorial.

Credit…Dongyan Xu

A Japanese boy was stabbed on his way to school in China on Sept. 18. That’s the date, in 1931, when Japan invaded China.

The child, who was 10 years old, was pronounced dead the next morning. The police arrested a 44-year-old man at the scene who they said had confessed to the attack. Japan’s leaders demanded answers. The Chinese government, calling the attack an “isolated incident,” told Japan to calm down and stop “politicizing” the killing.

Some Chinese people believe the boy was a victim of surging anti-Japanese sentiment fueled by China’s government with a virulent nationalism that is taught in schools and reflected online and in state media.

The evening the boy died, more than 50 Chinese attended a candlelight vigil in Tokyo and issued a statement: “The longstanding extreme nationalism and anti-Japanese education in China have misled some people’s perception of Japan, enabling ignorance and wrongdoing. We are committed to changing this troubling situation.”

Then, a week after his death, young activists, mostly in China but also some outside the country, started a memorial campaign. According to Chinese folklore, the souls of the deceased come back to visit their families after seven days before leaving for heaven.

“As Chinese citizens, we do not wish to grow up in a land of hatred,” the activists said in a statement co-signed by more than 200 people. Continue reading Is This My Country? →

China’s in-your-face push for more babies

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Source: NYT (10/8/24)
So, Are You Pregnant Yet? China’s In-Your-Face Push for More Babies.
The government is again trying to insert itself into women’s childbearing decisions, knocking on doors and making calls with questions some find downright invasive.
By Vivian Wang (Vivian Wang visited maternity hospitals and government family planning offices in Beijing and Nanjing to see how women were being prodded to have children.)

In a park, a family walks past artwork featuring life-size cutout of a man and woman walking with three children, under a slogan urging couples not to wait too long to have children.

Propaganda artwork in Miyun, a district of Beijing, depicting a couple with three children and including slogans promoting childbearing. Credit…Andrea Verdelli for The New York Times

The first time a government worker encouraged Yumi Yang to have a baby, she thought little of it. She and her husband were registering their marriage at a local office in northeastern China, and the worker gave them free prenatal vitamins, which she chalked up to the government trying to be helpful.

When an official later called to ask if she had taken them, and then called again after she did get pregnant to track her progress, Ms. Yang shrugged those questions off as well intentioned, too. But then officials showed up at her door after she had given birth, asking to take a photograph of her with her baby for their files. That was too much.

“When they came to my home, that was really ridiculous,” said Ms. Yang, 28. “I felt a little disgusted.”

Faced with a declining population that threatens economic growth, the Chinese government is responding with a time-tested tactic: inserting itself into this most intimate of choices for women, whether or not to have a child.

Officials are not just going door to door to ask women about their plans. They have partnered with universities to develop courses on having a “positive view of marriage and childbearing.” At high-profile political gatherings, officials are spreading the message wherever they can. Continue reading China’s in-your-face push for more babies →