Society

news and reports on contemporary social issues in Greater China

Never-ending screenings of ‘Ne Zha 2’

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Source: China Digital Times (5/27/25)
Netizen Voices: Never-Ending Screenings of “Ne Zha 2” Are “Off the Rails”
By Arthur Kaufman

The Chinese animated film “Ne Zha 2” has continued its record-breaking run, grossing over $2 billion worldwide and remaining on China’s top-five box-office list over 110 days after its release. But the film’s success has belied its curated image and masked a broader chill for the Chinese box office. Many Chinese companies and schools have organised patriotic outings and repeat viewings to boost box-office figures. Articles and comments critical of “Ne Zha 2” have been deleted from social media platforms, and Chinese bloggers and reviewers have reported being criticized or attacked online for expressing dissenting views about the film. Now, news that screenings of the animated blockbuster will be extended to June 30—the fourth extension thus far—has drawn mockery from netizens who wonder whether there will ever be an end to official efforts at promoting the film:

专踢周宁海那条好腿: Wouldn’t it be nice if they could bring things full circle by extending its release to next Lunar New Year?

waldeinsamkeit: This is turning into a joke. Why not extend it straight through to the end of summer vacation?

还不是尽头: Haha, might as well extend it until “Wolf Warrior 3” comes out.

专属小杰哥哥: If you don’t watch “Ne Zha,” you’re not Chinese.
无敌暴龙战士: We’ve fast-forwarded to: “If you don’t watch ____, you’re not Chinese.”

NN: I was banished to Singapore because I didn’t watch “Ne Zha.”

余杭: While it’s normal for theatrical releases to be extended, it’s obvious that the wall-to-wall publicity for “Ne Zha 2” has sapped whatever goodwill it once had.

横蛮但却恐惧: Couldn’t you theatres and film associations manage to coordinate with each other to show some other movies? Over the past few months, there have been a few new movies I honestly wanted to see, but they never showed up in theatres. Theatres have just been extending release dates and rescreening old films day after day. I’m baffled—I want to go out and spend money but they won’t let me.

立鑫: In the past, no matter how good a movie was, it would never stay in theatres this long. Besides investors trying to wring the last bit of profit out of a dying market, there’s an acute shortage of resources being invested in film.

Joe.: It’s kind of gone off the rails. These endless extensions just to chase box office clout seem pointless.[Chinese] Continue reading Never-ending screenings of ‘Ne Zha 2’ →

Nepo babies with connections and resources

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Source: China Digital Times (5/15/25)
Words of the Week: “Nepo Babies With Connections and Resources” (关系咖 guānxi kā, 资源咖 zīyuán kā)
By Cindy Carter

The recent “4+4” scandal, which started with the public exposure of one doctor’s extramarital affairs and medical malpractice, has morphed into a broader societal discussion about medical and personal ethics, research fraud, “returnee” students, intergenerational privilege, nepotism, and more. The themes of privilege and nepotism seem to have resonated most deeply with Chinese netizens, particularly given China’s cutthroat job market and stubbornly high unemployment rates for young workers and recent graduates. Most galling to many was the revelation of an exclusive “4+4” medical doctoral program at prestigious Peking Union Medical College: a fast-track program that would allow certain students with four-year bachelor’s degrees (even those unrelated to medicine) from certain elite universities to obtain a Ph.D. in medicine in only four additional years, compared to a much longer timeline for most aspiring Chinese doctors.

In a WeChat essay about what the “4+4” scandal reveals about the “second-generation privilege” enjoyed by those whose well-connected parents are able to smooth their way into desirable internships, academic programs, and sought-after jobs, essayist and commentator Xipo (“Western Slope”) wrote: “Amid deteriorating [socioeconomic] circumstances, second-generation scions may happily ‘settle’ for enjoying their second-generation privilege, but today’s bona-fide ‘first generation,’ those with no parental legacy to lean on, suffer a dual blow. There are fewer opportunities available to them, and increasingly unfair competition for the few opportunities that do remain.”

The dialogue surrounding the “4+4” scandal also reveals a wealth of slang words and phrases used to describe nepotism, connections, social capital, and intergenerational privilege. Two words in particular are worth a closer examination: 关系咖 (guānxi kā) and 资源咖 (zīyuán kā) are used to refer to “well-connected” and “well-resourced” nepo babies, respectively. Another possible translation for these terms might be “well-connected scions” and “well-resourced scions.” Both feature the character 咖 (kā), employed as a suffix in Hokkien-dialect words such as 大咖 (dà kā), meaning a “big shot” or powerful high-flying type. (RealTime Mandarin’s Andrew Methven provides some fascinating background on the etymology and use of 咖 in contemporary Chinese slang.) Continue reading Nepo babies with connections and resources →

On the Edge review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Shaoling Ma’s review of On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China, by Margaret Hillenbrand. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/shaoling-ma/. This review is a leftover from Jason McGrath’s tenure as our media studies book editor. My thanks to Jason for ushering this review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

On the Edge:
Feeling Precarious in China

By Margaret Hillenbrand

Reviewed by Shaoling Ma

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2025)

Margaret Hillenbrand. On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. ??? pages, ISBN 9780231212151 (Paperback)/ ISBN 9780231212144 (Hardback)/ ISBN 9780231559232 (E-book)

On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China scrutinizes the role that contemporary cultural forms play in rousing feelings of precarity among the underclass—marginalized rural and urban Chinese populations subject to internal expulsion or what the book terms “zombie citizenship”—and its less disenfranchised counterparts. Rooted in cultural studies but with an ambitious interdisciplinary arc spanning sociology, art history, anthropology, political economy, and the law, Margaret Hillenbrand conceives of performance art, visual art about waste, workers’ poetry, suicidal protests, and short video and livestreaming apps as “factious forms,” which stage and vivify class strife at a time when the Chinese ruling party has banished class as part of its political lexicon. On the Edge extends existing scholarship on the well-acknowledged problems of inequality and migrant labor in the People’s Republic of China by excoriating the less perceptible threats of social descent and civic jeopardy confronting cultural workers, online platform employees, unemployed university graduates, tech workers, and other people not usually associated with the underclass. This book decisively rectifies China’s absence from influential discourses of precarity over the last two decades; more subtly, it marshals resurging discussions in China studies and beyond on the increasingly troubled relation between aesthetics and politics under late capitalism. It is the stakes of cultural production that are most salient in Hillenbrand’s searing study: do aesthetic practices that reincite class as a political category assume or reject their own commodification? In other words, are the cultural practices in Hillenbrand’s consideration independent from the material determinations from which they emerge? Continue reading On the Edge review →

Routledge series–call for proposals

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Routledge Series on Contemporary Asian Societies: Call for Proposal Submissions

EASt (Université libre de Bruxelles, Centre for East Asian Studies) is calling for book proposal submissions to publish in its Routledge series on Contemporary Asian Societies! Created in 2018, the series aims at providing an original and distinctive contribution to current debates on evolutions shaping societies, cultures, politics and media across Northeast and Southeast Asia.

Currently, EASt’s Routledge Collection consists of six books: four edited volumes and two monographs, including EASt members and external collaborators. Another volume is under preparation.nWe now invite proposals for books and are open to submissions for single-authored, multi-authored, and edited volumes.

Please contact the series directors Vanessa Frangville (vanessa.frangville@ulb.be) and Frederik Ponjaert (frederik.ponjaert@ulb.be) for more information or to submit your proposal, and check our website.

Chengdu overpass protest

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Source: China Digital Times (5/1/25)
The Chengdu Overpass Protest and Its Antecedents: “The People Do Not Want a Political Party With Unchecked Power”
By Cindy Carter

Three long white banners hang from an overpass, twisting in the wind. The sky is still dark, the streetlights are on, and the taillights of two vehicles—a car and a truck—glow red as they pass by on the left. Also at left, several illuminated traffic signs (in blue and green, respectively) are visible in the distance.

The three banners hanging from a pedestrian overpass near Chengdu’s Chadianzi Bus Station. Local netizens confirmed the location of the photo, which is close to Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, based on the street layout and the illuminated signs visible in the background.

In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white banners with red, hand-painted political slogans to the railings of a pedestrian overpass near a bus station in Chengdu, and unfurled them to the street below. As he would later confide to the owners of several whistle-blowing social media accounts to whom he turned for help in amplifying his message, it was a protest he had been planning for over a year. The three slogans opposing autocracy and demanding democracy read as follows:

  1. There can be no “national rejuvenation” without systemic political reform
  2. The People do not want a political party with unchecked power.
  3. China does not need someone to “point the way forward.” Democracy is the way forward. [Chinese]

The date of the protest is significant because it was the anniversary of the April 15, 1989 death of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang—who for many symbolizes a more progressive, possibly even more democratic “path not taken.” (In the spring of 1989, mourning for Hu’s death coalesced into the massive protests that would later be crushed in the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown.) The language used in the slogans is quite measured, and references the CCP’s oft-lauded goal of “national rejuvenation.” Although Xi Jinping is not mentioned by name, the third slogan is a clear reference to the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues (at least 240, by one recent count). Continue reading Chengdu overpass protest →

Satirical Tibet

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New Publication: Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo
By Timothy Thurston
University of Washington Press, 2025.

What does comedy look like when the wrong punchline can land you in jail? Humor has long been a vital, if underrecognized, component of Tibetan life. In recent years, alongside well-publicized struggles for religious freedom and cultural preservation, comedians, hip-hop artists, and other creatives have used zurza, the Tibetan art of satire, to render meaningful social and political critique under the ever-present eye of the Chinese state. Timothy Thurston’s Satirical Tibet offers the first-ever look at this powerful tool of misdirection and inversion. Focusing on the region of Amdo, Thurston introduces the vibrant and technologically innovative comedy scene that took shape following the death of Mao Zedong and the rise of ethnic revival policies. He moves decade by decade to show how artists have folded zurza into stage performances, radio broadcasts, televised sketch comedies, and hip-hop lyrics to criticize injustices, steer popular attitudes, and encourage the survival of Tibetan culture. Surprising and vivid, Satirical Tibet shows how the ever-changing uses and meanings of a time-honored art form allow Tibetans to shape their society while navigating tightly controlled media channels.

Timothy Thurston’s groundbreaking book Satirical Tibet is the first major study of Tibetan humor. Drawing on years of research in Amdo, Thurston reveals the cultures of comedy that have thrived in Tibetan-language literature, radio, television, and oral and performing arts into the digital age.”— Christopher Rea, author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China

‘Rat people’

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Source: South China Morning Post (4/14/25)
China slang term ‘rat people’ for those who shun success, attracts 2 billion views
New low-energy lifestyle choice sees young people slouch in bed, live on takeaway food, avoid socialising, embrace being a recluse
By Zoey Zhang

A new slang term, “rat people”, is being embraced by millions of young people in China who shun success and lead a sluggish lifestyle. Photo: SCMP composite/Shutterstock

Young people in China who shy away from success and embrace low-energy lifestyles are calling themselves “rat people”, a slang term that has gained widespread attention online.

Unlike the hyper-disciplined crowd that usually gets up at 5am, goes to the gym, and powers through packed schedules, so-called rat people live in the slow lane.

They spend their days in bed, live on takeaway food, avoid socialising, and have no clear goals in life. The term took off after a video appeared online in late February, in which a young woman from Zhejiang province in eastern China, known as @jiawensishi, shared her day of extreme lethargy.

She stayed in bed for three hours after waking, washing up, then sleeping for another five hours. Continue reading ‘Rat people’ →

What does China really think about Trump

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Source: The Guardian (4/13/25)
What does China really think about Trump? They know about humiliation and won’t take it from him
Economically, the trade war may be bad news for Xi Jinping, but ideologically and politically it is a gift
By

President Trump speaks about his tariffs at the White House on 2 April. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Last week, Mao Ning, head of China’s foreign ministry information department, posted a blurry black -and -white clip of a moment in history. In 1953, the late Chairman Mao, in his heavily accented, high-pitched voice, made a defiant speech of resistance to what he called US aggression in Korea.

Kim Il-sung, the North Korean leader and founder of the Kim dynasty, now in its third generation, had invaded US-backed South Korea. When Kim’s attempt to unite Korea by force appeared to be failing, China threw nearly 3 million “volunteers” into the war and succeeded in fighting to the stalemate that has prevailed ever since.

There was no mistaking the symbolism of the image. As Donald Trump bragged to his acolytes in Washington that foreign leaders were queueing up and “kissing my ass”, Beijing was announcing a “fight to the end”.

Trump may be about to discover that it is unwise to insult Beijing. The harder he plays it, the harder Beijing will play it back. Continue reading What does China really think about Trump →

A Walk through Huaqiangbei

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Source: positionpolitics (3/17/25)
Back to the Future: A Walk through Huaqiangbei in 2025
By Fan Yang

As someone who grew up in Shenzhen in the 1980s-1990s and has lived in the US since 2000, I’ve come to see returning to the Special Economic Zone today as a journey “back to the future.” During my last trip there, I walked down the “memory lane” of Huaqiangbei (Huaqiang North Road, or HQB), the place once known for Shanzhai (or “knockoff”) cell phones back in the early 2000s but that was re-branded around 2015 as China’s “No. 1 Electronics Street.” To many, HQB emblematizes the city’s 40-year history borne of China’s post-1978 Reform and Opening Up. As I found my way there just after the Chinese New Year in 2025, the comingled notion of time – simultaneously captured in the “back to” and “the future” – was precisely what I experienced.

It was one of those warm winter afternoons in southern China, now designated as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). I took the East Rail Line from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) (where I had been a visiting scholar) with an old friend from Shenzhen, a CUHK alumna who now works at Amazon Web Services in Hong Kong. We were going to Shenzhen to have dinner with friends from our elementary and high schools. Arriving at Lok Ma Chau, we joined the crowd heading “up” – what the Hong Kong locals would say, referring to the geographical movement up north to the mainland. Back when I first arrived in Shenzhen in 1986, visiting Hong Kong (or even purchasing goods from there at duty-free stores in the city) was an encounter with the more modern, the more advanced, the more “developed” world – “the future.” These days, however, more people regularly travel from Hong Kong (including Hong Kong natives and residents originally from mainland) to Shenzhen for leisure, entertainment, and consumption in general. As friends in Hong Kong have repeatedly told me, everything is “half-price” once you cross the border, and the service is better and choices more abundant. Many have opted to live in Shenzhen and commute to Hong Kong to cut the costs of living, hailing the GBA into everyday being. . . [READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE]

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
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
“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 →