Re-Envisioning Gender in China: (De)Legitimizing Gazes

China Perspectives

2020-3 | 2020Re-Envisioning Gender in China: (De)LegitimizingGazes

Electronic versionURL: https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/10226DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.10226ISSN: 1996-4617

PublisherCentre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine

Printed versionDate of publication: 1 September 2020ISSN: 2070-3449

Electronic referenceChina Perspectives, 2020-3 | 2020, “Re-Envisioning Gender in China: (De)Legitimizing Gazes” [Online],Online since 01 September 2021, connection on 10 December 2021. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/10226; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.10226

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Special feature

ForewordGail Hershatter

Legible and Thus Legitimate? Reading and Blurring Gender in China, Today and YesterdayCoraline Jortay, Jennifer Bond and Chang Liu

What is Obscenity? Morality and Modernity in 1920s ChinaYushu Geng

Knowing Male Subjects: Globally Mobile Chinese Professionals and the Aesthetics of theConfucian SublimeDerek Hird

The Road Home: Rebellion, the Market and Masculinity in the Han Han PhenomenonPamela Hunt

Visual Encounters in Global Shanghai. On the Desirability of Bodies in a Coworking SpaceAurélia M. Ishitsuka

Article

Poverty Alleviation in China: The Rise of State-Sponsored Corporate PaternalismCamille Boullenois

Current Affairs

Changing Repertoires of Contention in Hong Kong: A Case Study on the Anti-Extradition BillMovementHiu-Fung Chung

Book reviews

GROSE, Timothy. 2019. Negotiating Inseparability in China:The Xinjiang Class and the Dynamics of Uyghur Identity. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Ildikó Bellér-Hann

KENDALL, Paul. 2019. The Sounds of Social Space: Branding, Built Environment, andLeisure in Urban China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Tim Oakes

China Perspectives, 2020-3 | 2020

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HO, Ming-sho. 2019. Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’s SunflowerMovement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress.Justin Kwan

VEG, Sebastian (ed.). 2019. Popular Memories of the Mao Era: FromCritical Debate to Reassessing History. Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press.Els van Dongen


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Special feature


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ForewordGail Hershatter

1 Almost half a century has passed since Anglophone feminist scholars began to write

about women in China’s twentieth-century revolutions (Young 1973; Wolf and Witke

1975; Davin 1976; Croll 1978). Their inquiry quickly expanded beyond iconic images of

women unbinding their feet, taking up the pen or the spear, and sallying forth to claim

their place in a revolutionary modernity. Calling into question the late Qing/May

Fourth images of Chinese women as sequestered and ignorant, scholars have examined

the history of educated women and restored accounts of women’s visible and invisible

labour to late imperial and Republican history. They have explored the symbolic work

that gender performed in passionate discussions about China’s place in a world of

predatory imperialist powers. They have posed questions about the Communist Party’s

conceptualisation of gender equality and the effects of Mao-era socialist construction

on gendered life. And they have attempted to broaden their research beyond the events

of high politics, asking how the understanding of social change would shift if viewed

through the analytic lens of gender. These questions have generated a large body of

scholarship, greatly enriched in recent decades by the work of gender scholars writing

in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese mainland. All the while, China has been

changing in a fast-moving and unevenly enacted process of economic reform, inspiring

new questions and explorations across the disciplines of history, anthropology,

sociology, literary and visual studies, politics, and of course gender studies.

2 And yet, stubborn silences endure, some of them perhaps permanently. It remains

difficult to grasp what happened when the everyday of gendered labour and social

relations met the circulation of norms and imperatives for what women should do and

be. How did a practice such as footbinding, once a part of the everyday, become a

shameful form of child abuse, not just in the writings of intellectuals but in the

memories of footbound women? How did the Maoist exhortation that “women can hold

up half the sky” come to be a personally meaningful statement, a component of some

women’s sense of self? How, and for whom, did the changing symbolic language of

gender come to infuse women’s consciousness of their own capabilities, of what they

might be expected to become or be admired for becoming, and how did this process

affect individual and social identifications and desires?


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3 Addressing such questions is not only a matter of asking where gender lodged in

individual psyches. We must also ask where gendered norms circulated in communities

and how their locally perceived possibilities might have enlarged and changed over

time. We cannot get at this process of change just by looking at state pronouncements,

or observing who is doing what kind of labour, or describing how the physical space of

the everyday changed. How did people performing labour understand its meaning and

its significance for them? How did that labour help them, and us, make better sense of

who they are? What did all these revolutions – including the thoroughgoing social

rearrangements of the reform era – mean to the people and communities they

touched? How did the daily actions of those people in turn change circulating

discourses about gender?

4 As an ensemble, the papers collected in this special issue expand this inquiry beyond

the realms of labour and revolution, both reflecting recent scholarly developments and

propelling them further. First, they bring changing notions of sexuality and sexual

behaviour into the discussion of gendered norms, whether exploring changing

definitions of obscenity (Geng) or enduring valorisation of male self-restraint and

control (Geng and Hird). They remind us that sexology, science, and notions of virtue

could combine and recombine while continuing to maintain and even strengthen

received social understandings of gender difference.

5 Second, the papers turn their focus from women to men and masculinity: no longer as

the unmarked and taken-for-granted subjects of history, but as specifically gendered

formations that have changed in marked ways from the early twentieth century to the

present. The work of novelist, race-car driver, filmmaker, and all-round bad boy Han

Han (韩寒) provides one version of masculinity, in which mobility, adventure, and self-

discovery are the domain of men (Hunt). Chinese professional men working in London

provide another version, which Derek Hird has dubbed the “Confucian sublime”: men

who are responsible, self-controlled, committed to moral self-cultivation, and entitled

to a position of authority in a patriarchal hierarchy. In both versions of masculinity,

women recede from public view, except for an occasional appearance as silent arm-

candy. These explorations of masculinity suggest that the project of male self-

fashioning seems to entail at least as much individual and social anxiety as creating the

New Woman or the Modern Girl did in the Republican era.

6 Finally, these essays all incorporate the premise that over the past century and more,

gender has been renegotiated in a relentlessly changing transnational context. New

knowledge about sex in the 1920s was an amalgam of imported sexology with

fluctuating local understandings of qing (情, sentiment/passion/feeling) and xing (性,

sex/human nature) (Geng). In the very recent past, London-based Chinese professionals

have crafted masculine selves in an ambivalent relationship to their white British

counterparts, drawing upon the idealised notion of a classical Chinese gentleman (junzi

君子) as well as the family values espoused by Xi Jinping (Hird). Han Han’s carefully

cultivated public persona derives resonance equally from Chinese knight-errant/

outlaws and the Marlboro man (Hunt). And in a cosmopolitan Shanghai co-working

space frequented by expat and local professionals, Aurélia Ishitsuka observes the

creation of gendered identities inflected by nationality, class, and urban/rural origin.

There Chinese women occupy a range of positions in support of the health-conscious,

physically fit would-be captains of industry. Chinese women professionals provide

logistical arrangements and translation services, while daily social activities are


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organised by the workspace’s community team of young educated women. In the

background, middle-aged rural migrant women in understated uniforms empty the

trash and refill the coffee machines. In each of these essays, the boundaries of China

and Chineseness are capacious, porous, and in need of constant maintenance and

attention, with gendered behaviour furnishing an important means to establish and

rework distinctions.

7 The papers in this special issue move back and forth between the gendered labour of

the everyday and the circulation of powerful gendered symbols. They remind us to take

seriously one of the guiding maxims of feminist scholarship: that gender is relational,

and that it must be mapped in its connections to bodies and desires, to the nation, to

transnational circuits of capital, and to the lingering aftermath of imperialism and

colonial modernity. In that mapping we can find clues to how gender itself is

continually being reformulated and questioned.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CROLL, Elisabeth J. 1978. Feminism and Socialism in China. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

DAVIN, Delia. 1976. Woman-Work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China. Oxford [England]:

Clarendon Press.

WOLF, Margery, and Roxane WITKE (eds.). 1975. Women in Chinese Society. Studies in Chinese

Society. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

YOUNG, Marilyn B. (ed.). 1973. Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism. Ann Arbor:

Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.

AUTHOR

GAIL HERSHATTER

Gail Hershatter is a Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Humanities Academic Services, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064 [email protected]


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mailto:[email protected]

Legible and Thus Legitimate?Reading and Blurring Gender inChina, Today and YesterdayCoraline Jortay, Jennifer Bond and Chang Liu

This special issue originates from an international conference titled “Re-Envisioning Gender in

China” held on 14-16 February 2019 at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium). The

conference was generously funded by a grant from the F.R.S.-FNRS and the CEFC Hong Kong, and

supported by the Faculty of Letters, Translation, and Communication, Philixte, EASt, and Striges

of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium), the SOAS China Institute, the SOAS Centre for

Gender Studies, and the Department of History at King’s College London.

1 In her keynote address to the conference from which this special issue of China

Perspectives has emerged, Prof. Gail Hershatter spoke of gender and “blindspotting”:

how practices of looking and bringing something into focus may cause other aspects to

simultaneously fade out (Hershatter 2019). This idea builds on her previous work

conceptualising gender as a “kind of lens that allows one to zoom in and out,” an

anchoring foothold that is “multi-scalar rather than scalable” (Hershatter 2012: 889,

891), allowing us to tease out seams and fractures in the historical terrain from the

individual level to the state. Taking these erasures and reframings as a starting point,

this special issue seeks to examine what is focused, defocused, or blurred when gender

is used as the prism to examine Chinese society and cultural practices, and how –

through gender – legibility and legitimacy become articulated in historically-situated

social practices. Drawing on Foucault’s and Fanon’s relations of power and politics of

looking, feminist theorist bell hooks impels us to recognise that “There is power in

looking,” (2003: 94) and that “subordinates in relations of power learn experientially

that there is a critical gaze, one that ‘looks’ to document, one that is oppositional (…) –

one learns to look a certain way in order to resist” (ibid.: 95). After all, looking away is

political, too – as writer Claire-Louise Bennett would have it: “Even looking away was

calculated. Even looking away was looking” (Bennett 2016: 177).

2 The wealth of scholarship now published on gender in China in areas as varied as

labour practices, state and nationhood, marriage, family, and sexuality, as surveyed by


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Gail Hershatter (2007) as well as Robin Yates and Danni Cai (2018), testifies to the fact

that a gendered lens has become pivotal to our understanding of modern and

contemporary China. Scholarly attention in the field has historically emphasised

women’s studies, including China Perspectives 2012/4 edited by Isabelle Attané and its

remarkable attention to women in China’s demographic and economic transition.

Building on this, our volume shifts the focus towards the immensely varied spectrum of

expressions of Chinese femininities and masculinities, reflecting newer trends

inaugurated by Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (2002). Examining a wide

range of marketable media involving reading and gazes (print, discursive and physical

(self-)representations, posters, and screens: mobile apps, display videos, films), the

contributions undertake a critical exploration of masculinities, decentred from a

supposed universal experience. Scrutinising how social and cultural constructions of

“legitimate” masculinities and femininities have been historically operative at the

expense of other gendered identities, the following four articles expand into the realm

of visuality what Amy Dooling has explored in modern literature. She remarked that

“narrative never simply reflects the hierarchical relations of power between men and

women in society, but that it actively enables and authorises those relations by

providing the emotional, ethical, cognitive, and imaginary structures that induce

individuals to accept and identify with their ‘proper’ gender assignments” (Dooling

2005: 16). The process of interrogating our “blindspots” in the construction of

legitimacy through legibility allows us, then, to expand the boundaries of what Judith

Butler calls the “terms of intelligibility”: cultural norms by which people are defined

and made recognisable (1990: 183). Simply put, this special issue interrogates how

“reading bodies” – as bodies who read and are read, gaze and are gazed at – are

constructed as legitimate as far as they are legible, and as legible as far as they are

legitimate. Whether the issue is to “read the room” (in Aurélia Ishitsuka’s article in this

issue) or to “read between the lines” (in Geng Yushu’s article in this issue) is a

discipline-related matter, but the power dynamics remain largely similar.

3 All four contributions foreground a management of desires, of sexualities, and

ultimately of gendered identities through a regulation of “looking” and “being looked

at”: the banned obscene books (studied by Geng Yushu in this issue), the well-groomed

Chinese gentlemen reining in libidinal energy towards respectability (studied by Derek

Hird), the marketability of Han Han’s 韩寒ruggedly adventurous masculinity (studied

by Pamela Hunt), or the hierarchies of desirable and undesirable bodies in coworking

spaces (studied by Aurélia Ishitsuka). This careful management, of course, hints at the

importance of market forces in shaping gendered relations of power, whether they are

to be found in the Republican-era book market, the consumption of overseas higher

education, Han Han’s own commercial venture, or the transnational capitalism of

emerging office spaces. Through a variety of gazes, bodies are read in turn as

acceptable, desirable, properly Confucian, fashionable, or assigned several of these

labels at once. They are in tension, legitimised and de-legitimised as they are being

read. Class is also central to the analysis, as all articles point to how Chinese elites

selectively drew upon transnationally circulating images of gender and sexuality in the

construction of “moral” or “desirable” gendered identities. Another lens central to this

analysis is race, for which we must foreground the pathbreaking work of Kimberlé

Crenshaw on intersectionality (1989). Beyond an early focus on how race and gender

intersect to deepen the marginalisation of African American women in the United

States, Crenshaw’s analytical tool has broadened to encompass the intersections of a


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wide variety of identity markers such as sexual orientation, social class, and disability.

Paying attention to the entanglement of these identity markers is essential to

understanding the social hierarchies of power that emerge in a variety of cultural

contexts. The articles in this issue of China Perspectives highlight the centrality of race,

as it is made legible – or even, illegible – in the construction of “Chinese” gendered

identities. Its enduring importance is revealed in instances as varied as smoothed-out

visions of Han Chinese travelling towards Western China unencumbered by the

question of ethnic minorities, questions of Han-ness on the global stage, or the multiple

ethnicities coexisting in Shanghai coworking spaces. If, following Hershatter, a

gendered lens should be applied as a versatile tool for tackling unfamiliar historical

terrain, then the issues raised by Black feminists can help us interrogate possible

“blindspots”: areas we cannot see because of our current position. Only when issues are

put under the microscope of intersectional analysis can we achieve a greater clarity of

vision. Together, the lenses of gender, race, and class equip us with an adjustable focal

length, lest we let fade out more aspects than we bring into focus.

4 Purposely letting “inconvenient” views of gender fade out was certainly the goal of

censors in Geng Yushu’s article “What is Obscenity? Morality and Modernity in 1920s

China.” Examining lists of banned obscene books from 1922 to the early 1930s,

including Ming-Qing fiction and Zhang Jingsheng’s Sex Histories, Geng asks how and why

certain texts became classified as “obscene.” Apart from exploring the ambiguous legal

definition of obscenity, the paper shows how male intellectuals and the popular press

contributed to defining the boundaries between yinshu (obscene books 淫书) and

legitimate publications. Male intellectuals in Republican China differentiated Dream of

the Red Chamber from yinshu because it was based on qing 情, defined as love, affection,

sentiment, and human nature, and thus a noble quality. Their arguments about qing

provided a radical foundation for new culturalists to go against the Confucian social

order. The popular press, however, presented a gender-differentiated perception of

qing: while for men it conferred nobility, for women over-indulgence in qing could be

dangerous and even lead to death. These concerns about qing not only reveal the

resilience of Confucian order, but also indicate that “for both May Fourth intellectuals

and urban masses, enlightenment and modernity had to be moral.” To cross the line

between yin and qing, intellectuals also adopted xing 性 to grant a “scientific”

interpretation of qing. By probing into concepts of yin, xing, and qing in the 1920s, Geng

highlights “the underlying cultural and intellectual currents supporting this

negotiation of the boundaries of decency, an important facet of Chinese modernity that

awaits further exploration.”

5 The importance of constructing the boundaries of “respectable” or moral sexuality in

the process of defining modern Chinese gendered identities is also probed in Derek

Hird’s article. In order to resolve the ambivalences of Chinese masculinity, which Hird

traces back to the unequal and emasculating power dynamics of the mid-nineteenth

century and which have resurfaced today under new transnational capitalist forces,

Hird argues that highly educated overseas Chinese men have sought refuge in the

notion of the “Confucian sublime.” Drawing on news articles, TV dramas, literature,

and interviews with overseas Chinese men, Hird argues that the Confucian sublime is

“the seductive idea of an idealised Confucian political order, ruled over by virtuous

men.” The political discourse and various kinds of cultural representation in 2010s

China have re-centred Confucian rituals on filial piety, the patrilineal family, as well as

the social hierarchy that subordinates the individual to the family and the family to the


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state. Self-narratives of male middle-class Chinese professionals show how they

selectively borrow from their British counterparts to train their gentlemanly manners.

However, more importantly, they refer to Confucianism and Taoism to cultivate their

minds. In this way, they translate the Confucian ideal gentleman, junzi 君子, across

national boundaries to produce a global vision framed in the Confucian idea of tianxia

天下 [all under the heaven], which in turn is mobilised in political discourses to argue

for China’s position in a new global order.

6 Envisioning consumable and globally legible Chinese masculinities is also at the heart

of Pamela Hunt’s article. This is exemplified by what she terms the Han Han

phenomenon, “the rapid rise to fame of this multi-hyphenate pop culture icon.” While

fans, commentators, and the audience usually portray Han as a defiant and masculine

rebel who persistently challenges the cultural and political boundaries of mainstream

Chinese society, Hunt shows that the celebration of masculinity on the move through

Han’s public image is nevertheless constrained by “global cultural influences, local

traditions of manhood, and new market forces.” Focusing on the recurring imagery of

geographic mobility and road travelling in Han’s commercials and his debut film The

Continent (Houhui wuqi 后会无期), the paper traces the tropes that travelled through

space and time in shaping the fashionable masculinity he portrays: the western

cowboy, the local knight-errant and good fellow in popular novels of the Ming dynasty,

as well as the scholar-talent (caizi 才子). The film, while reminding the audience of the

American film Easy Rider in 1969, also echoes the Chinese male privilege of travelling

based on the traditional segregation of gender roles, which positioned men as the

masters of the outer realm (wai 外) while women were in charge of domestic affairs

(nei 内). It is on the road, for example, that one protagonist redeemed his cultural

attainment (wen 文), which built up to his career success when he finally returned

home. Han’s masculinity, Hunt argues, was however “constructed at the expense of

women and non-hegemonic men.” Moreover, the film is framed against images of

imported cars, economically marginalised women, the prodigious construction of

motorways, and other elements that provide grounding to a conception of masculinity

within the context of the market economy of China’s Reform era.

7 Global cultural influences and marketing imperatives in the making of modern Chinese

gender identities are further revealed in Aurélia Ishitsuka’s case study on “the Hub,” an

office space provider marketed as a “cross-border community” in cosmopolitan

Shanghai. The paper examines the desirability of bodies in the co-working space for

both Chinese and foreign professionals. Ishitsuka shows how bodies become legible

through visual encounters, encompassing social interactions in physical and virtual

spaces as well as their representation in promotional material. The expectation that

paying members watch out for strangers marks the space as a “safe” community

designed exclusively for a mobile global middle class, revealing the reproduction of a

hierarchy between transnational and rural-urban migrants. Ironies abound: the space

could not function without the migrant labour of security guards, cleaners, and

delivery men. The controlled letting-in of “undesirable” bodies is further conducted as

a purposeful management of desires: the sober uniforms of female cleaners render

them invisible, non-sexualised beings. In the meantime, clientele from China, North

America, Europe, and other parts of Asia pursue fit and self-controlled bodies through

in-house sport facilities, dressing, and diet. As Ishitsuka’s paper shows, the Hub draws

borders to control entry to the space, but for the members it breaks down boundaries

between work and play, professional and private, sex and business. The company not


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only promotes romantic stories of Asian-woman-meets-white-man in promotional

videos, it also strategically brands its liberal values by evoking male homosexual

encounters in its commercials. In sum, Ishitsuka offers an analysis of how the

differentiation of two kinds of migrant bodies – one transnational, the other rural-

urban – determines belonging in the coworking space whereas encounters between

members are shaped by a racial and gender division of labour.

8 Boundaries, drawn and blurred, imposed and negotiated, are at the heart of all four

papers. The “legitimate” and therefore “legible” identities that they create are

constructed along gender, race, and class lines, but questions remain about their

intersections: What would an “undesirable” white body look like in the transnational

environment of the Hub? How far is Han ethnicity central to the construction of Han

Han’s mobile manhood? And how are other minority ethnicities erased while the film

leads towards Western China? How might a working-class Chinese man, without the

benefits of a Western degree, construct a masculine identity within a foreign

environment that has historically valorised the rugged masculinity of the working

class, but has also radicalised and effeminised Asian immigrants? How far did race alter

the definition of what was considered “obscene” literature in the Republican period –

and were upper-class women more susceptible to being overly stimulated by qing than

their working-class counterparts?

9 What comes through strongly is how legible bodies are made visible through their

marketability and consumption. The market plays a strong role in Han Han’s

performance of his go-getting masculinity, packaged for an aspirational globe-trotting

middle class. The consumption of an overseas education is also essential to the ways in

which the “enlightened” Confucian gentlemen construct their moral identity in

contrast to the “other” modes of masculinity performed in the West. The market for

obscene books drives consumption, even as state forces try to circumscribe the limits of

their representation. And in today’s Shanghai, not only are elite transnational bodies

marketed and made visible in the promotional material of the Hub, its members

consume this elite lifestyle and participate actively in producing such images through

regulating their own bodies and training their own gaze to consume what are identified

as “desirable” bodies in these spaces. Gendered identities in all four articles are

produced through self-conscious acts of consumption, with the market circumscribing

and legitimating what gendered identities become legible. One result of these dynamics

is a sense of dislocation. The gendered identities that emerge from all four papers share

a sense of isolation, a hard-to-shake loneliness that comes out of a bodily mobility,

transnational experience, and movement of ideas across boundaries. They are left with

a feeling of homelessness, of unbelonging: Republican-era readers who are supposed to

refrain from excessive yin and qing, the Western-educated Chinese man whose superior

Confucian morality cuts him off from homo-social activities in a different cultural

setting that he considers immoral, the lonely traveller who is always on the move, and

the transnational startuper, surrounded by other “competing” desirable-transnational

bodies, who has to strive every day to perfect their image as a work-hard play-hard

transnational elite.

10 In this sense, these caveats and ambivalences are central to the construction of

gendered identities in modern China. All four contributions show as much how

boundaries are blurred as how they are delineated: muddying the waters between

obscene and legitimate sexual representations, between Chinese and Western


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conceptions of masculinities, between work and play, professional life and intimacy...

Attempts at circumscribing boundaries are encapsulated in the person of the security

guards themselves: entrusted with separating clearly between “desirable” upper-class

patrons and “undesirable” migrant bodies, but ironically, also migrants themselves.

Upon those – highly porous – thresholds rest the enforcement of readily legible

gendered identities and their legitimising sheen. And still, under the scrutiny of the

intersectional microscope, the convoluted relationships between market, state, and self

in the regulation of desires reveal the deemed necessity but ultimate futility of clear-

cut boundaries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ATTANÉ, Isabelle. 2012. “Editorial.” China Perspectives 4(92): 2-3.

BENNETT, Claire-Louise. 2016. Pond. Dublin: The Stinging Fly.

BROWNELL, Susan, and Jeffrey N. WASSERSTROM. 2002. Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities:

A Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press.

BUTLER, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:

Routledge.

CRENSHAW, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist

Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of

Chicago Legal Forum: 139-67.

DOOLING, Amy D. 2005. Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan.

HERSHATTER, Gail. 2007. Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

HERSHATTER, Gail. 2012. “Disquiet in the House of Gender.” The Journal of Asian Studies 71(4):

873-94.

HERSHATTER, Gail. 2019. “Blindspotting, gender, and China’s revolutions.” Keynote address at

the Second Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender, “Re-envisioning gender in

China,” 14-16 February 2019, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.

hooks, bell. 2003. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” The Feminism and Visual

Cultural Reader: 94-105.

YATES, Robin D.S., and Danni CAI. 2018. “Bibliography of Studies on Women and Gender in China

since 2008.” Nan Nü 20(1): 3-152.


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AUTHORS

CORALINE JORTAY

Coraline Jortay recently obtained her PhD from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Brussels,

Belgium). Her research focuses on the literary debates following the “invention” of gendered

pronouns in Chinese, and more generally on pronominal re-appropriations in twentieth and

twenty-first century Sinophone literature. In the fall of 2020, she will take up a position as a

Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford China Centre, and a Junior Research Fellow of

Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Oxford China Centre, Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury

Rd, Oxford OX2 6LU, United [email protected]

JENNIFER BOND

Jennifer Bond is an Assistant Professor in Asian History at University College Dublin. She is

currently writing a book that explores the identity negotiations of Chinese women educated at

missionary schools in Republican era East China. Jennifer Bond, School of History, University

College Dublin, Belferild, Dublin 4, [email protected]

CHANG LIU

Liu Chang is a Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen). Her ongoing book

manuscript investigates the changing cultural-political discourses about single womanhood in

the first half of twentieth-century China and the everyday lives of actual middle-class single

women in urban areas, with a focus on Shanghai. School of Humanities and Social Science, The

Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), 2001 Longxiang Road, Longgang District, Shenzhen,

Guangdong, China, [email protected]


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What is Obscenity? Morality andModernity in 1920s ChinaYushu Geng

I thank all the participants in the 2019 CHANGE conference “Re-envisioning Gender in China” for

their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Especially useful were the suggestions made by

Jennifer Altehenger, Françoise Lauwaert, and Doris Sung. I am also grateful for the constructive

remarks of Coraline Jortay, Jennifer Bond, my supervisor Rachel Leow, and the two anonymous

reviewers, as well as for the help of Liu Chang in the publication process.

Introduction

1 The discourse on 淫 (yin, obscene/licentious/lascivious/pornographic) in early

twentieth century China has been gradually attracting scholarly attention in recent

years. Within this body of pioneering works, Michel Hockx (2018) has explored the

parameters of culturally acceptable representations of love and desire in 1910s China

through his study of the banning of Eyebrow Talk (Meiyu 眉语), the first modern Chinese

literary magazine to be banned as “obscene” by the Ministry of the Interior and the

Ministry of Education in 1916, while Yvon Wang (2014; 2019) has studied the police

regulation of sexually titillating print materials in fin-de-siècle Beijing, arguing that new

ideas of reproductive bodies and modern print technologies of mass reproduction were

two crucial factors in negotiating the boundaries of legitimate sexual representations.

Both have illuminated the enduring impact of late imperial pornographic

representations in the early twentieth century, the constantly shifting line between

“obscene” and “legitimate,” and the much-neglected link between the arrival of

modernity and the development of obscenity in Republican China. Building upon these

observations and aiming to further enrich this history of obscenity, my own research

focuses on the intellectual debates over the meaning of yin in 1920s Chinese print

culture. Through the study of attempts to negotiate the cultural parameters of yin, this

paper aims to call attention to the often-neglected tensions between morality and

Western-derived, “scientistic” modernity in 1920s China.


14

2 The history of pornography in Europe has been amply studied by scholars from

different disciplines and continues to inform the study of Chinese-language sexually

explicit materials (see for instance Walter 1987; Hunt 1993; Sigel 2005). However, Hunt’s

claim that “pornography as a legal and artistic category seems to be an especially

Western idea with a specific chronology and geography” (1993: 10) has already proved

problematic: scholars of late imperial Chinese literature have long noticed the presence

of sexually explicit representations in late Ming and Qing (early seventeenth century to

late nineteenth/early twentieth century) print culture as well as tenacious state efforts

to regulate them (McMahon 1995; Vitiello 1996; Huang 2001; Wong 2007; Zamperini

2009). Within this ongoing reflection of Hunt’s mistreatment of pornography as a

distinctively modern European phenomenon, two important and interrelated issues

linger: the problem of translating “pornography” into the Chinese context as a

category of analysis, and the uneasy shadow cast by subtle Eurocentrism when

assessing the link between “pornography” and “modernity.”

3 The difficulty of translating “pornography” into Chinese is not merely a matter of

linguistics, but is more a problem of the analytical usefulness of the category

“pornography.” Some scholars, such as Vitiello, have chosen to equate the late imperial

censorial category 淫书 (yinshu, obscene books) with “the category of ‘pornography’ in

Europe” (1996: 295). McMahon, having noted the commonalities between European and

Chinese pornographic literature, similarly defended the viability of the word

“pornography” in comparative studies (2018: 53-4). On the other hand, Zamperini has

raised the problem that late imperial sexually explicit texts defied clear-cut genre

definitions, and further questions the historical adequacy of the category of

“pornography,” a Western theoretical construct, in the analysis of late imperial

Chinese printed matter (2009: 272-5). She insightfully suggests that late imperial

sexually titillating texts should be seen and analysed as part of the yinshu canon, which,

as an analytical category, could better uncover the arousing quality of the text among

its readers and offer important answers to questions such as what exactly

“pornography” is, and how it can engender sexual desire across time and culture (ibid.:

296-7).

4 While Europe certainly does not own the word “pornography,” and it is convenient to

use it in the Chinese context from at least the Ming onwards, there are several reasons

to prefer yinshu as an analytical category over “pornography” in this article: the unease

about translating yinshu directly into “pornography” serves as a reminder that

“pornography” has never been a given but must be understood within culturally,

geographically, and temporally specific contexts.1 Yinshu continued to function as the

censorial category in Republican China, and late imperial texts classified as yinshu in

the Qing continued to be censored and banned by the Republican government. More

importantly, the term yin became intricately linked with other keywords such as 性

(xing, sex/human nature) and 情 (qing, sentiment/passion/feeling), words that had long

existed in imperial China but whose meanings underwent significant transfigurations

during the early twentieth century as China became increasingly integrated into the

global network of knowledge production and circulation.2 The analytical category of

yinshu draws attention to attempts to differentiate between yin, xing, and qing in the

1920s and the underlying cultural and intellectual currents supporting this negotiation

of the boundaries of decency, an important facet of Chinese modernity that awaits

further exploration.


15

5 Perhaps the most abiding legacy of Hunt’s study of European pornography is her

assertion of a direct link between modernity and pornography. For Hunt, early

European pornography served political functions through its critiques of existing social

and sexual order, and pornography as a regulatory category represented a response to

the “perceived menace of the democratization of culture” (1993: 12-3; 40-5). For the

Chinese context, Vitiello has stated that “the history of pornography in China parallels

that of European pornography” (1996: 296), attributing the emergence of pornography

in China to new philosophical attitudes towards desire and the material side of human

nature in late Ming while reasserting Hunt’s remark on the link between European

pornography and Western modernity. The unresolved tension in Vitiello’s argument is

that, given his observation of parallels between the emergence of Chinese and

European pornography in the seventeenth century, why should ideas generated from

the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution become

default signifiers of “modernity,” whereas late Ming neo-Confucianism’s refashioning

of human nature and desire is denied the status of “modern”? While some scholars

have attempted to trace the origin of Chinese modernity back to the seventeenth

century or even earlier, the 1910s and 1920s, a time when Western ideas such as science

and democracy became widely championed by contemporary Chinese intellectuals,

continued to be hailed as ushering in the arrival of (Western) modernity in China

(Zhang 2016: 483-4; Hockx 2018: 75).3 The problem here is, taking historically

significant events in the Europe context as the benchmark of “modernity” inevitably

renders May Fourth modernity a “belated modernity” that always attempted to but

could never fully catch up with “the ‘new’ that is originated in and defined by the

West” (Zhang 2016: 485).

6 To explore how the discourse of yin can help us understand the complexity of Chinese

modernity in the 1920s without taking the West as the benchmark of modernity, I take

an overall qualitative methodological approach in this paper and have conducted

archival research on Chinese-language newspapers and periodicals between the 1910s

and 1930s. I have examined news and magazine articles that were related to the

discussion of yin and yinshu, and analysed in detail the works of Zhang Jingsheng,

whose self-claimed scientific sexological writings came to be regarded by both the

Chinese state and the Chinese urban reading public as the most famous yinshu of the

Republican era. This paper starts with a brief account of the legal ambiguities of yin in

Republican press laws and then proceeds to discuss how the notions of qing and xing

were employed to differentiate between yinshu and legitimate forms of publication.

Legal ambiguities of yin in the Republican era

7 This section focuses on the legal regulation of obscene books in the 1920s and 1930s.

The new Chinese Republic under the Yuan Shikai government on 4 December 1914

issued its Press Laws, which contained articles prohibiting publications that would

“harm social morals” (baihuai fengsuzhe 败坏风俗者) (Song 2001: 546). They were later

abolished in 1926 under increasing pressure from both the Chinese press and

intellectuals, who regarded them as a repressive measure of the Yuan government

against freedom of speech (Ting 1974: 12-4). After taking control over the majority of

China in 1927, the Kuomintang (hereafter KMT) government issued new Press Laws in

December 1930. They received minor revisions in 1935, which also prohibited


16

publications that would “harm good social morals” (fanghai shanliang fengsuzhe 妨害善

良风俗者) (Song 2001: 573). The exact meaning of “social morals,” however, was never

explained in these Press Laws. Moreover, the very word yin never appeared in any of

these legal documents, even though almost all ordinances in the government gazettes

(national or regional) used the censorial category yinshu when ordering inspections of

the book market and the confiscation of said yinshu. In short, the terms yin and fengsu

(风俗, social morals) seemed to be used as if their meanings were self-evident.

8 The legal ambiguities of fengsu and yin did not appear to be an acute problem for the

police, who possessed the government-endorsed punitive power to fine and arrest

anyone involved in the trade of yinshu. The police department of Shantou stated in 1924

that yin was indeed a vague term, but there was no need to differentiate yinshu and

yinhua (淫画, obscene pictures) from anatomy textbooks or artistic nudes, as “we

policemen know our job well; as long as we take the right measures when dealing with

obscene materials, there is no need to clarify to the public what counts as obscene and

what does not.”4 The implication was that a definition of yin was unnecessary and that

law enforcement officers would know what was yin when they encountered it.

9 Given that ruling powers were highly fragmented during the Warlord era (1916-1928),

and that the centralising and state-building efforts of the KMT regime in the 1930s and

1940s were fractured, the search for and punishment of those engaged in the trade of

obscenity was largely carried out by parochial governing bodies, such as local police

forces, or voluntary organisations that aimed to self-regulate the production of yinshu,

such as the Shanghai’s Book Association’s Organisation of the Correction of the Mind

(Shuye zhengxin tuan 书业正心团), which was formed in 1922 by leading Shanghai

publishing houses. Individuals also wrote to the press, denouncing the harmful impact

of yinshu and supporting the ban on yinshu.5 Nonetheless, despite the lack of a cohesive

state regulation of yinshu, the bourgeoning press networks of the Republican era helped

to keep both institutions and individuals living in different regions informed about the

ongoing nationwide effort to regulate obscenity. News of the formation of the Shuye

zhengxin tuan quickly appeared in Beijing periodicals. 6 Shanghai newspapers also

reported on the hunt for yinshu and yinhua in Guangdong.7 While the policing of yinshu

(and yinhua) were far from centrally organised and planned in the 1920s, it was clear

that yin, manifested in the wide circulation of yinshu and yinhua, was regarded as a

social concern that required regulation.

10 It is also worth pointing out that the regulatory category yinshu in the 1920s consisted

of both late imperial sexually explicit texts and new texts that emerged in this period.

The 1922 list of banned obscene books composed by the Chinese General Chamber of

Commerce Shanghai was mainly made up of Ming and Qing fiction such as The Plum in

the Golden Vase (Jinpingmei 金瓶梅), The Paradise of Apricot Blossoms (Xinghuatian 杏花天),

A History of Debauchery (Langshi qiguan 浪史奇观) and A Crazed Woman (Chipozi zhuan 痴婆

子传), although it did include a few books published in the late 1910s such as The Secret

Diaries of A Female Student (Nüxuesheng mimi riji 女学生秘密日记).8 The 1930 banned

obscene book list issued by the Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs under the KMT

government remained mostly identical to the 1922 list, other than the new addition of

Zhang Jingsheng’s Sex Histories (Xingshi 性史), which was published in 1926.9

11 The co-existence of the old and the new in the regulatory category of yinshu further

complicated the relationship between pornography and modernity in the Chinese

context. Scholars have previously argued that it was the subversive potential of


17

pornography that made it crucial to the birth of new, modern culture (Hunt 1993;

Zamperini 2009). In the case of the yinshu genre in the 1910s and 1920s, “the period par

excellence when Western modernity made its way into China,” such a link is difficult to

maintain, as many texts labelled as yinshu were products of late imperial China and

contained ideas – incest, orgies, and sodomy, for instance – that would undoubtedly be

harshly criticised by May Fourth iconoclasts (Hockx 2018: 75). While it is possible to

assess whether a certain sexually explicit text has transgressive potential in a specific

context, given the heterogeneous nature of the content of yinshu in the 1920s, it

appears impossible to infer whether yinshu – the genre as a whole – was subversive or

not.

12 For such reasons, I suggest that another productive way to rethink the link between

yinshu and modernity is to ask how and why certain texts became classified as yinshu.

The lack of a clear definition of yin and fengsu in official terms did open up space for

contestation, at least discursively.10 The following sections will offer two case studies:

the mixed reception of Dream of the Red Chamber (Hongloumeng 红楼梦, hereafter

referred to as Hongloumeng) in the 1920s, and the ways in which Zhang Jingsheng

defended – albeit arguably unsuccessfully at that time – his Sex Histories from being

labelled as yinshu.

Yin and qing in the 1920s: The case of Hongloumeng

13 Written in the mid-eighteenth century by Cao Xueqin, Hongloumeng is perhaps one of

the most well-known and most publicly debated Chinese novels that straddles the

obscene and the artistic. Although now widely celebrated as one of China’s Four Great

Classical Novels, it has been repeatedly banned since its birth on the grounds that its

depictions of romance could incite obscenity (huiyin 诲淫).11 Liang Qichao, the

influential late Qing reformer, spoke poorly of Hongloumeng in his “On Children’s

Education” (1896): he stated that Hongloumeng was popular among people due to its use

of intelligible language rather than obscure classical Chinese and saw little value in it

other than its ability to huiyin. Prominent intellectual figures of the May Fourth

generation, including Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, and Zhou Zuoren, nevertheless

valorised its literary merits and defended Hongloumeng against the accusation of yin. Lu

Xun, for instance, in his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction claimed that the biggest

achievement of Hongloumeng was that it not only broke all previous conventions of

fiction writing, but also presented unprecedented new ideas.12 Lü Simian, the renowned

Republican era historian, also argued that Hongloumeng was one of the most noble

novels that depicted qing, and that it should not be confused with yinshu (cited from

Zhang 1997). In short, Hongloumeng was fashioned as a milestone in the history of

Chinese fiction and became one of the few late imperial texts that was incorporated

into the literary canon by anti-Confucian, anti-tradition May Fourth iconoclasts.

14 The governmental ban on Hongloumeng lessened considerably from the late nineteenth

century onward, particularly in comparison to the regulation of other sexually explicit

late imperial novels such as Jinpingmei, which repeatedly appeared on the banned book

lists well into the 1930s. However, despite (or precisely because of) the valorisation of

its literary value in the May Fourth era, Hongloumeng continued to be cited in debates

over the boundaries of yinshu. In this section I will first outline how contributors to New

Culture (Xinwenhua 新文化), a journal edited and published by Zhang Jingsheng in


18

Shanghai in 1927, and Zhang Jingsheng himself differentiated Hongloumeng from yinshu

by invoking the notion of qing. I then proceed to analyse how yin and qing were

fundamentally gendered, and what this gendered nature tells us about Chinese

modernity.

Differentiating qing from yin

15 The first issue of New Culture came out in 1927, a few months after the publication of

Zhang Jingsheng’s controversial book Sex Histories in 1926. Educated in France in the

1910s, Zhang returned to China in 1920 and taught Philosophy at Peking University in

Beijing.13 In early 1926, he placed advertisements in the literary supplement of Peking

Gazettes ( Jingbao fukan 京报副刊), encouraging readers to submit autobiographical

accounts of their personal sexual experiences, and soon published a selection of these

stories under the title Sex Histories. It was soon labelled a yinshu by the Ministry of

Interior and banned across China.14 Zhang moved to Shanghai in 1926 amidst the chaos

of the North Expedition as warlord Zhang Zuolin captured Beijing, and opened

Aesthetics Bookstore (Meide shudian 美的书店), under which he published the journal

New Culture and a series of books with the goal of introducing Western sexology to

China. The six issues of New Culture covered a wide range of topics related to gender

and sexuality, ranging from sex education to women’s inheritance rights. The journal

became caught up in the debate over the meaning of yinshu, triggered by the

controversy over Sex Histories. Hongloumeng was cited frequently in these discussions.

Zhang published another book titled Sex Books and Obscene Books (Xingshu yu Yinshu 性书与淫书) in 1927, in which he also argued that Hongloumeng should be understood as 情

书 (qingshu, book of sentiment/love) rather than yinshu.

16 Zheng Binyu presented a brief etymology of the term yin in his article “On Obscene

Books” in the second issue of New Culture.15 He argued eloquently that in classical

Chinese yin had no connotations of sexual desire but referred to the lack of moderation

and control. Yin should therefore be defined as excessive sex or promiscuity, rather

than “all carnal desire between women and men.”16 According to Zheng, Jinpingmei was

yinshu, as it depicted characters who only thought about sexual intercourse, which was

not the case in Hongloumeng. In a later issue, Chen Mengshao picked up on Zheng’s

comments on Hongloumeng, stating that both Hongloumeng and Water Margin (Shuihu

zhuan 水浒传) depicted “the true temperament of girl and boy heroes” (yingxiong ernü

zhi zhen xingqing 英雄儿女之真性情) and had been wrongly labelled as yinshu.17 Chen

claimed that the genre of the novel is about qing, and recognised that it could be

dangerous for the reader to indulge too much in it. Nonetheless, it was the reader’s

overindulgence that should be blamed rather than novels depicting qing: Chen clearly

expressed his disagreement with applying the label of yinshu to Hongloumeng. He was

well aware of the popularity of Hongloumeng among prominent scholars of his time,

citing Hu Shi’s promotion of Hongloumeng to further validate its status as a non-obscene

book. It is also worth noting that Chen adapted Hongloumeng into a play titled Lord of the

Flowers (Jiangdong huazhu 绛洞花主) in 1927, for which Lu Xun wrote a preface.

17 Zhang Jingsheng further elaborated on the notion of Hongloumeng as qingshu in Sex

Books and Obscene Books. Zhang argued that books that focused on the depiction of

“love” (情爱 qing’ai) and occasionally involved descriptions of sexual activities should

be classified as “sex books” (xingshu 性书) or qingshu, whereas books depicting sexual


19

intercourse without love were yinshu (1927: 41).18 Zhang examined the sexual activities

of Jia Baoyu (the male protagonist of Hongloumeng), who was deemed as “the most yin

person in the world,” stating that although Jia Baoyu experienced sex at an unusually

young age, we “considered that as human qing” (1927: 43-4). Zhang continued went on

to say that, taking the great length of Hongloumeng and its central focus on the

portrayal of human qing into consideration, even when Hongloumeng did occasionally

touch on human sexual desire, it was always written in a very subtle way, and it was

therefore unjust to simply render the whole book as yinshu (1927: 44-5). He then

lamented that Chinese people only had sex for physical gratification rather than being

motivated by qing when engaging in sexual intercourse, which, according to Zhang, was

truly “the most yin persons in the world” (1927: 45). For such reasons, Zhang concluded

that Chinese people needed books that depicted qing to save them (ibid.).

18 Haiyan Lee has illustrated compellingly that Hongloumeng’s valorisation of qing signified

an epistemic paradigm shift: it made qing the foundation of all relations and virtues, a

radical departure from orthodox Confucian cosmic order, which centred around ritual

principals and social ethics (2007: 45-50). She has further noted that Hongloumeng’s

celebration of qing became a forerunner for the May Fourth rebellion against repressive

social order and its glorification of romantic love (Lee 2007:50). Although the exact

meaning of qing was never explicitly explained in the texts from New Culture that this

paper is analysing – it seems that Zhang’s qing referred more specifically to romantic

love/affection/feelings between women and men, while Chen’s qing, as in “innate

nature” (zhenxingqing 真性情), referred to the notion of what is intrinsic in a person –

well versed as they were in the contemporary celebration of the literary merits of

Hongloumeng, Zhang, Chen, and Zheng did seem to pick up on the radical potential of

the notion of qing in Hongloumeng.19 Either more narrowly defined as romantic love, or

defined in a broader sense as referring to true temperament, qing was associated with

authenticity and consequently was deemed noble.

19 On the other hand, despite the invocation of qing as a noble quality and the antithesis of

yin in these texts, Zhang, Zheng, and Chen also took note of the vague line between qing

and yin. The quantity of sexual intercourse was regarded as a crucial factor separating

qing from yin. In his defence of Sex Histories, Zhang Jingsheng wrote in the first issue of

New Culture: “I advocated having sex once a week, which could not be yin at all. Yin

means excessive; asking adults to only have sex once a week of course was not yin, this

was merely common sense.”20 This notion was quoted by both Zheng and Chen as a key

reason why Sex Histories and Hongloumeng were not yinshu, while both also warned the

audience against the danger of overindulgence in qing, which could lead to yin. The

solution for this elusive line between qing and yin, for the contributors to New Culture,

lay in a scientific approach to sexual intercourse. I will turn to this aspect later in this

paper. In the immediately following section I will focus on examining the mass public’s

attitude toward qing and yin.

Gendered perceptions of qing and yin in the popularpress

20 It was not just highly-educated intellectuals who actively participated in the discussion

concerning yin in the 1920s. The rapid development of the press in early twentieth-

century China, particularly the growth of more commercial and entertainment-


20

oriented newspapers and periodicals, offered a platform for the literate urban masses

to voice their opinions. Throughout the Republican era, less well-known and

anonymous members of the urban reading public continued to submit pleas to

newspapers and periodicals, condemning yinshu and calling for more thorough

regulation of such texts. Hongloumeng continued to occupy a crucial place in the

popular discourse of yin and qing, and these voices from the general population reveal

an intriguing gendered dimension of the discourses of qing and yin.

21 In a 1922 article published in Shijie huabao that denounced the detrimental impact of

yinshu, an anonymous writer wrote a sensational story about Lianyun, the only child of

a wealthy family in Fengtian. Lianyun, a graduate of a girls’ school, was an avid reader

of romantic novels and was particularly fond of Hongloumeng. She was in her twenties

and not yet married. For years, she often woke up from her dreams calling the name

Bao gege (Brother Bao, the nickname for Jia Baoyu), and “qing led to sentimentality,

sentimentality led to illness” (yinqing shengchou, yinchou zhibing 因情生愁, 因愁致病) as

she grew weaker day by day. The author ended the story with a note that Lianyun was

still thinking about Hongloumeng even on her deathbed, lamenting that “such was the

harm of yinshu.”21

22 This 1922 fictional article might possibly be connected to a 1921 news report about a

female fan of Hongloumeng who died because of her obsession with the book. Both

Xinwenbao and Minguo ribao reported in October 1921 that a young woman from Beijing,

Peng Huizhen, became obsessed with Hongloumeng and grew physically weaker each

day. Her mother misinterpreted this as Peng’s secret longing for marriage and tried to

find a suitable match for her. But Peng refused to marry and revealed her desire for

singlehood to her mother. Upon discovering that Peng was a devoted fan of

Hongloumeng, her mother burned the book. Peng found out and cried, “You burned my

Baoyu.” Her health deteriorated rapidly and she died soon afterwards (cited in Zhang

2017: 333). Another similar but more elaborate story about the bad influence of

Hongloumeng was published in 1926 in Sanri Huabao. Langu, living in Shanghai with her

mother, fell in love and had sex with her cousin under the influence of Hongloumeng.

She ended up pregnant, and her mother decided to approve their marriage after she

discovered Langu’s pregnancy. Unfortunately, Langu’s father in Beijing, unaware of her

romance with her cousin, send a letter telling Langu that he had arranged another

match for her. Langu was so shocked after reading her father’s letter that she fainted

and died next day. At the end of the story, the author claimed that he reported this real

event to warn those whom he considered to be “people full of or with an excess of

qing” (duoqing zhongzi 多情种子).22

23 Except for the 1922 piece, other articles did not explicitly label Hongloumeng as yinshu,

nor was it clear whether such events really happened. It is nonetheless clear that there

was concern over female obsession with Jia Baoyu, as well as a strong connection being

made between Hongloumeng and sentimental, vulnerable young women who were easily

trapped and endangered by qing in contemporary cultural imagination. While qing was

widely used to differentiate Hongloumeng from yinshu throughout the 1910s to the

1930s, qing was also cited as the cause of women’ doom and the reason why

Hongloumeng was a harmful yinshu. The (mostly imagined) penalty for female readers of

yinshu (or books that could arouse qing) appeared to be much more severe than that for

male readers: in contemporary cautionary stories, women always became severely ill as

they were consumed by qing and eventually faced death. In contrast, in articles advising


21

men not to read yinshu, the rationale was always that yinshu would undermine their

health, presumably because reading yinshu would lead to excessive masturbation,

subsequently impairing their ability to serve the nation and society and to become a

competent head of their household. One must ask: While many male intellectuals of the

May Fourth era maintained that Hongloumeng was not yinshu (for men), to what extent

was it considered a yinshu for women among the literate, urban reading public? Were

qing and yin in fact seen as the same thing for women in the Republican era? In what

ways were the female body and the male body treated differently in the discourse of

obscenity?

24 The contemporary emphasis on the more detrimental impact of yinshu on women may

be partially explained by the popularity of gender essentialism in the 1920s: notions

such as women being naturally more gentle, emotional, fragile, and consequently more

suitable for the domestic sphere were widely circulated in popular magazines such as

Ladies’ Journal (see Chiang 2004). The association of women’s illness with qing also

reflected the lasting influence of traditional Chinese medical discourse, which

frequently used the notion of qing to explain and naturalise sexual differences between

women and men. Zhang Jiebin, a late Ming physician, argued that women’s illnesses

were fundamentally the same as men’s; it was only that women’s qing were different

from men’s because their secluded lives resulted in many pent-up feelings. Zhang

continued that women were consequently more prone to “affection, longing, love and

hatred, envy and jealousy, and worry and rancour,” and that qing made medical

treatment of women more difficult than for men (cited from Wu 2010: 49).

In short, the notions of qing and yin were fundamentally gendered in the populardiscourse of obscenity. The boundary between qing and yin seemed particularlyfragile for women. It appeared much easier and more common for maleintellectuals to argue that qing was not obscene but a noble quality, while in thepopular press young women were usually depicted (by men) as victims of qing. Ifmen were requested to beware of the harmful influence of yin, women were taughtto be cautious of qing, which, for women, seemed to be a euphemism for yin.

Morality and modernity

25 The notion of qing has indeed been amply discussed among studies of Chinese

modernity from an emotive perspective, but analysing it in tandem with the discourse

of yin helps to uncover new tensions in Chinese modernity (Lean 2007; Lee 2007). Both

Eugenia Lean and Lee have noted the significance of sentiment/emotion in the making

of modernity and civic identity in early twentieth-century China. Lee has observed that

May Fourth writers and thinkers, drawing from Western Enlightenment and

Romanticist discourses, introduced “the enlightenment structure of feeling” in

contrast to the previous “Confucian structure of feeling,” and argued that this

reconceptualization of identity and social order in emotive terms signified a

fundamental transformation of modernity (2007: 15). Lean’s study of Shi Jianqiao’s

assassination of warlord Sun Chuanfang and the subsequent media craze around this

case in 1935 showed that female qing (which she translated into “sentiment”) was an

effective forum upon which debates about Chinese modernity took place. She has

further noted that collective emotionalism embodied in the public empathy for Shi

Jianqiao was seen by left-leaning writers in the 1930s as foolhardy, feminine, and a

threat to their rational, “masculine” discourse of modernity (2007: 13, 77-106). The


22

1930s disdain of qing, Lean argued, was framed by the disillusion with May Fourth

celebration of romantic love as the way to create a modern social order, concerns with

the rise of the irrational, unruly masses, and the valorisation of more “rational”

discourses of modernity such as scientism and rule of law (2007: 84).

26 While Lee has rightly noted the power of the “enlightenment structure of feeling” in

the May Fourth era, as with Lean’s observation of the intellectuals’ unease towards the

opinions of the mass in the 1930s, we similarly detect a nuanced gap between the

agenda of intellectuals and the general population’s attitudes in the 1920s discourses of

yin and qing. The concern over the impact of qing-yin on women testified not only to the

enduring impact of traditional Chinese medical discourse but also the resilience of the

Confucian way of social order that prioritised ritual over qing among the urban masses.

The discourses of yin and qing in the 1920s also pointed to anxiety over the relationship

between morality and modernity. For the intellectuals of the May Fourth generation,

yin remained something objectionable and should not be confused with noble notions

such as qing, which could contribute to national rejuvenation and modernisation. In

other words, it seems that for both the May Fourth intellectuals and the urban masses,

enlightenment and modernity had to be moral.

Between xing, yin, and qing

27 In this section, I examine another notion Zhang Jingsheng employed to differentiate

the obscene from the non-obscene, namely, the notion of xing 性. The term xing, like

the term qing, has existed since imperial times, but it became a new keyword that

signified “sex” in early twentieth-century China (Rocha 2010). Whereas Zhang

Jingsheng classified Hongloumeng as qingshu, he defined his Sexual Histories as a xingshu

against the accusation of yinshu. What is of interest is that Zhang’s notion of xingshu

was not simply about science, but also involved a proliferation of qing. Through an

examination of this xing-qing-yin discourse, I hope to further uncover the tension

between morality and “scientistic” modernity.

28 Zhang Jingsheng presented four criteria that separated xingshu from yinshu in Sex Books

and Obscene Books: firstly, depictions of sexual intercourse in xingshu should be

“scientific.” Zhang maintained that descriptions of sexual activities from physiological,

psychological, pathological, and sociological perspectives were properly “scientific,”

while yinshu only focused on the portrayal of sexual intercourse per se without the

provision of “knowledge” (xuewen 学问) (1927: 10-36). Secondly, xingshu emphasised the

quality of sexual intercourse, while yinshu only stressed the quantity. Zhang used the

example of Jinpingmei, claiming that it was yinshu because its protagonists were

obsessed with sex and eventually died due to excessive amounts of sex. Here Zhang

referred to his earlier argument in New Culture that his works were not yinshu, as they

only advised people to have sexual intercourse once or twice per week (Zhang 1927: 37).

The third criterion of xingshu was that xingshu depicted “appropriate (normal)” sexual

intercourse (ibid.: 40). Zhang considered heterosexual intercourse as “appropriate/

normal,” stating that yinshu depicted the abnormal, such as same-sex intercourse and

bestiality. Here Zhang noted the potential conflict between this principle and his first

principle, clarifying that if homosexuality or fetishism was studied from a scientific

perspective, it did not count as yinshu (ibid.: 41). His final criterion stated that books

depicting qing’ai and containing occasional sexually explicit depictions were xingshu or


23

qingshu, whereas books depicting sexual intercourse without qing’ai should be classified

as yinshu. He summed up his key points on the distinctions between xingshu and yinshu

in one sentence: “Books that adopt a scientific approach to depict appropriate, quality

sexual intercourse that is motivated by love are xingshu. Conversely, books with no

scientific foundation – that is, purely based on the author’s nonsensical talk focused on

the quantity of sex, abnormal kinds of sexual intercourse, and sex without love – are

yinshu” (Zhang 1927: 45-6).

29 A major thread running through his argument was the notion that sex education was

the most urgent task for contemporary Chinese; hence xingshu, which served important

educational functions, should be celebrated rather than banned. Zhang contrasted

Japan’s successful Meiji Reform with China’s failed reform attempts, citing the poor

quality of the Chinese race as the major reason for China’s decline.23 He claimed that

“sexology” (xingxue 性学) was of paramount importance for “saving the nation and

saving the race” (jiuguo jiuzhong 救国救种), more important than any other kind of

science (1927: 12). Zhang invoked eugenics to argue that xingxue were concerned with

human reproduction and were therefore crucial to the improvement of the Chinese

race: “If we do not discuss xingxue, the entire race will be of bad quality; there will be no

way to study any kind of knowledge at all” (ibid.). Zhang was aware of the potential

arousing effect of Sex Histories on its readers, but he insisted that such sexual urges

were normal reactions that should not be repressed but properly guided. He stated,

“We are not concerned about young people’s sexual urges; we only worry that they may

act recklessly on such sexual urges or overindulge in such urges” (1927: 14-5). Sex

Histories, according to Zhang, in fact educated young people, who previously had no

proper knowledge of how to handle their sexual urges and consequently ended up

masturbating or having sexual intercourse in other wrong ways (1927: 15).24

30 It is interesting that educational materials concerning sex increased steadily at the

same time as Zhang Jingsheng acquired the nickname Dr. Sex (Xing boshi 性博士) and a

scandalous reputation for writing yinshu. In the 1920s, both educational and medical

journals published special issues on sex education, and women’s magazines such as

Ladies’ Journal and Linglong also discussed issues ranging from children’s sex education

to the anatomy of women, contraception methods, and sexual morality. Such public

discussions, however, never triggered the same scale of controversy as Zhang’s Sex

Histories and later theories of “the third fluid of women.” Perhaps one explanation for

Sex Histories’ infamous reputation as yinshu, as well as the biggest difficulty for Sex

Histories to hold onto its claim as a scientific study, was its rather literary style of story-

telling. Both pro- and anti-Sex Histories readers regarded its resemblance to the novel

genre as highly problematic: one contemporary commentator insisted that Sex Histories

adopted a literary rather than scientific way of depicting sexual desire, “which was just

like previous yinshu such as Chipozi zhuan.”25 Zhou Zuoren, while initially opposed the

governmental ban of Sex Histories in 1926, nonetheless maintained that its “fictional

writing style” was its biggest shortcoming (1927, cited in Zhong 1998: 177). Even Zhang

himself, in his memoirs published in the 1950s, recalled that Sex Histories had the

problem of being too literary and should have been written in a “non-fictional style”

(1998: 108). Moreover, contemporary scholars interested in sexology did not always

recognise Zhang’s sex-related works as xingshu, nor did they see such works as proper

sex education materials. Zhou Zuoren and Pan Guangdan, both well informed on

Western sexology, harshly criticised the lack of scientific foundation in Zhang’s

theories. Zhou, although stating that he did not think there was “anything morally


24

wrong” about Sex Histories and that it was “worth reading,” condemned Zhang’s

promotion of the douche for birth-control (1924, cited from Zhong 1998: 174-5).

31 I want to suggest, however, that the narrative style of Sex Histories was only one of the

reasons why it was disqualified as an educational piece, and that there was a deeper

argument beneath the contemporary critique of Zhang’s lack of scientific knowledge

among other May Fourth intellectuals. Peng Hsiao-yen has recently studied the

counter-Enlightenment strand of ideas during the May Fourth era and traced how

intellectuals such as Cai Yuanpei used the notion of qing (she translates it as “affect”) to

criticize scientism, which she considers a challenge of “Enlightenment sentimentality”

to “Enlightenment rationality and scientism” (2019). Peng considers Zhang Jingsheng’s

popularisation of aesthetics, as reflected in his 1925 work The Philosophy of a Beautiful

Life (Mei de renshenguan 美的人生观), a branch of this “Enlightenment sentimentality.” I

agree with Peng that Zhang’s works display a highly ambivalent attitude toward

scientism. Both The Philosophy of a Beautiful Life and How to Organize a Beautiful Society

(Mei de shehui zuzhifa 美的社会组织法, 1925) emphasised the importance of sex

education in organising a harmonious modern society, and this notion was further

developed in Sex Books and Obscene Books. Zhang wrote:

32 From now on the most important thing for education in China is that it should take

qing’ai as its foundation, for Chinese people are severely lacking in qing’ai. (…) why do

Chinese people lack sympathy? Why do Chinese people have no patriotic values? Why

do they not study hard? Why do they quarrel so much in their households? Why is

there no affection between husbands and wives? Why is it that all we see are people

without qing, as well as fake, sneaky, and deceitful people? It is all because of the lack of

qing’ai. But why is there a lack of qing’ai? It is because there is no foundation of sexual

desire. In a nutshell, qing’ai is the higher version of sexual desire, and sexual desire is

the basic element of qing’ai. Hence, in order to save this qing’ai deficient country, the

most fundamental problem is that of sex education. (1927: 80)

33 What is of interest here is the tangled relationship between qing and science. Sex

education was the most important issue for China, as it could help the Chinese people

develop qing, which Zhang believed would solve all problems ranging from domestic

quarrels to national rejuvenation. Qing was therefore of paramount importance,

whereas sex education was the means through which qing could be perfected. Xingshu

and xingxue, in other words, were at the service of qing. Zhang stated clearly that

xingshu needed to adopt a scientific approach, but at the same time, it was qing rather

than scientism that emerged as the organising principle of the kind of ideal modern

society he envisioned. Zhang’s sexological works could be located within the counter-

enlightenment trends in the May Fourth era, in the sense that they were not anti-

enlightenment but rather stressed the role of qing (affect) alongside rationality in

enlightenment and progression.

34 On the other hand, for Zhang, a scientific understanding of sexual intercourse was also

what prevented qing from slipping into the dangerous, undesirable arena of yin. Only a

scientific understanding of sex could prevent overindulgence, masturbation,

homosexuality, and other sexual activities he deemed to be abnormal. In Zhang’s case,

it was the combination of qing and science ( qing as the organising, foundational

principle and science as the means to develop qing) that could bring the modern. And

the notion that enlightenment and modernity had to be moral persisted; yin could


25

never be modern, and Zhang explicitly stated that he wished the government would

ban yinshu and promote xingshu (1927: 25).

Conclusion

35 The notion of yin in 1920s China was shaped by a multitude of ideas: May Fourth

transfiguration of the late imperial cult of qing, the celebration of science, and the

enduring impact of Confucian cosmological order. Such temporal complexities within

the discourse of yin defy a clear linear narrative of the relationship between modernity

and “pornography.” Likewise, the gap between the perceptions of intellectuals and

those of the emerging literate urban masses, as well as the heterogeneous nature of

yinshu, made it difficult to speak of the transgressive nature of the genre of yinshu as a

whole.

36 Nonetheless, through an examination of attempts to negotiate the boundaries of yinshu,

we see that qing was indeed crucial to the making of modernity in the May Fourth era.

Discourses on yin and qing were framed differently depending on whether the target

audience was men or women. The fragile line between qing and yin also pointed to

many tensions within modern culture, such as the relationship between morality and

modernity, the entangled rather than antagonistic relationship between reason and

affect, and the gender differentiation developing within the culture of modernity.

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NOTES

1. I am aware that the category of yinshu does not adequately address visual sources that

contained sexually explicit depictions, which were censored by the category of 淫画 (yinhua,

obscene pictures) in the Chinese context. The distinction made between yinshu and yinhua is

another reason to question the analytical strength of the category “pornography” in the Chinese

context: “pornography,” being an umbrella term, often fails to address the nuanced difference

and interplay between textuality and visuality. A more detailed discussion of this aspect is

beyond the scope of this paper, but it is indeed a direction that awaits further elaboration.

2. For a history of the transformation of xing in modern China, see Rocha 2010b. The centrality of

qing in Ming and Qing literature has been amply studied (Huang 1998; Huang 2001; Lee 2007). For

a philosophical discussion of qing, see Middendorf 2008.

3. There are works exploring the connection between late imperial China and “the early

modern,” particularly the emergence of the cult of qing in late Ming and its connection to the

formation of modern subjectivity (Lee 2007). But Lee also notes the difference between “the early

modern” and Western-inspired May Fourth transformations of conceptions of subjectivity and

identity, mostly that the late Ming cult of qing was still grounded in Confucian thinking and did

not question the supremacy of ritual (2007: 36-8).

4. “公安局批示淫书画查禁范围文” (Gong’anju pishi yinshuhua chajin fanwei wen, Police

Bureau’s instruction on the scope of obscene books and pictures), Duobao 2, 1924.

5. Wuming 无明, “希望新闻界拒登淫书广告” (Xiwang xinwenjie judeng yinshu guanggao, Hope

the newspapers stop advertising for obscene books), Minguo ribao juewu 8(26), 1921; “淫书之害” (Yinshu zhi hai, The harms of obscene books), Shijie huabao 38, 1922.

6. “函商务印书馆、中华书局请劝告同业设立团体禁止印售淫书文” (Han shangwu yinshuguan

zhonghua shuju qing quangao tongye sheli tuanti jinzhi yinshou yinshu wen, The Commercial

Press and Chung Hwa Book Co. urged fellow trade associations to form organisations that

prohibit the print of obscene books), Tongsu jiaoyu congkan 17, 1922.

7. Shouying 瘦影,“粤省淫书淫画之末日” (Yuesheng yinshu yinhua zhi mori, The doom of

obscene books and pictures in Guangdong), Shenbao, 2 March 1928.

8. Shanghai Municipal Archives (hereafter SMA): S-313-1-146.

9. SMA: S-313-1-148.

10. The concept of obscenity was of course challenged by forces both inside and outside political

and intellectual institutions. Wang has discussed how the illiterate urban sellers of obscene

materials in Beijing cited ignorance and destitution as reasons for engaging in the trade (2014),

although it is unclear whether this line of argument had any impact on the literate urban reader-

consumers of yinshu and yinhua.


29

11. For the banning of Hongloumeng in the Qing dynasty, see Zhao 2001; Zhang 2015. For a

summary of the late imperial and early Republican debate over the literary merits of

Hongloumeng, see Zhang 1997.

12. Lu Xun 鲁迅, (1923-4; revised version published in 1930) 2006, 中国小说史略 (Zhongguo

xiaoshuo shilüe, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction), Reprint, Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe:

346. Citations refer to the Renmin chubanshe edition.

13. For more studies on the life and writings of Zhang, see Peng 2002; Rocha 2010a.

14. Shen Ruilin 沈瑞麟, “内务部训令第七十五号 ”(Neiwubu xunling

diqishiwu hao, No.75 Order of the Ministry of Interior), Zhengfu

gongbao 4071, 1927.

15. Zheng Binyu 郑宾于was the author of 中国文学流变史 (Zhongguo wenxue liubian shi,

History of Chinese Literature), published in 1930. He studied at Peking University in the early

1920s and lectured at Fuzhou Xiehe University before going to work in Chengdu. This article was

written when he was teaching in Fuzhou. For an account of available records of Zheng’s life and

work, see Xiong 2012.

16. Zheng Binyu 郑宾于, “论淫书” (Lun yinshu, On obscene books), Xinwenhua 1(2), 1927.

17. Mengshao 梦韶, “新文化断不是淫书” (Xinwenhua duan bushi yinshu, Xinwenhua is

definitely not an obscene book), Xinwenhua 1(6), 1927. Mengshao is one of the pen names of Chen

Mengshao.

18. See below for further elaboration on the notion of xingshu.

19. Zhang was involved in another debate in 1923 on the meaning of 爱 (ai, love). For a detailed

analysis of this debate, see Lee 2007: 142-51.

20. Zhang Jingsheng, “新淫义与真科学” (Xin yinyi yu zhen kexue, New definition of obscenity

and true science), Xinwenhua 1(1), 1926.

21. “淫书之害” (Yinshu zhi hai, The harms of obscene books), Shijie huabao 38, 1922.

22. Hui Ying 惠英, “红楼梦误尽小儿女” (Hongloumeng wujin xiao ernü, Hongloumeng has

harmed many young women and men), Sanri huabao 93, 1926.

23. Interestingly, Zhang did not blame the inferior quality of the Chinese race on the inferiority

of Chinese women, which was a common trope since the late Qing. Zhang claimed that Sex

Histories championed women’s rights and aimed to stand up for women, who experienced much

injustice. He also argued that proper sex education would help women enjoy sex, which would

not only benefit women themselves, but also produce stronger infants. The role of Zhang

Jingsheng in women’s liberation awaits further elaboration.

24. Zhang also used the readers’ correspondence column in New Culture to disseminate

knowledge of sexual activities and assumed a mentor role for the young, literate urban youth

confused by sex. For more discussion of this aspect, see Rocha 2010a.

25. Baitou白头, “性史与淫书” (Xingshi yu yinshu, Sex Histories and obscene books),

Beiyang Huabao 54, 1927.

ABSTRACTS

This paper examines the debates over the meaning of obscene (yin 淫) in 1920s China. Although

the censorial category yinshu (淫书 obscene books) long existed in imperial China, in the late

1910s and 1920s, commonly known as the May Fourth era, the meaning and content of this genre


30

underwent intriguing changes following Chinese intellectuals’ quest for enlightenment and

modernity. As Kendrick Walter has insightfully remarked in his study of pornography in Western

modern culture, “Pornography names an argument, not a thing” (1987: 31). The argument over

the meaning of yin offers a unique perspective into the complicated relationship between

science, morality, and modernity in Republican China.

INDEX

Keywords: Republican China, pornography, obscenity, modernity, morality, print culture, the

cult of qing, Dream of the Red Chamber, Zhang Jingsheng.

AUTHOR

YUSHU GENG

Yushu Geng is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge

CB3 9EF, UK. Her research focuses on gender and women in late nineteenth and early twentieth-

century China. [email protected]


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Knowing Male Subjects: GloballyMobile Chinese Professionals andthe Aesthetics of the ConfucianSublimeDerek Hird

EDITOR'S NOTE

Manuscript received on 1 August 2019. Accepted on 10 February 2020.

1 Facing me across the table in a central London café was a tall, athletically built young

man called Xianyang. He was from eastern China, in his mid-twenties, and working for

a London-based multinational IT company when I met him. It was September 2014, and

Xianyang was one of ten PRC-born (People’s Republic of China) Chinese male

professionals that I interviewed at that time, their ages ranging from early twenties to

mid-fifties. I was curious to know their understandings of themselves as globally mobile

Chinese men working in the heart of Western capitalism. Many of my participants had

gained higher education degrees in the United Kingdom (UK). Xianyang had left China

for the UK to study as an undergraduate and had continued his studies at the

postgraduate level. His university memories mostly hinged around his quest for a white

girlfriend and his envy of the success of his white male classmates in dating white girls.

2 Xianyang eventually found a UK-educated Chinese girlfriend, yet he had difficulty

building friendships with his white British middle-class male classmates (although not

his non-white classmates). He told me: “They were all very polite, very gentlemanly,

but I sometimes wondered if what they said was deep down what they really thought.”

Xianyang’s suspicions about the integrity of his white British middle-class classmates

extended to misgivings about their sexual behaviour, which he hesitantly described

when articulating his goal for his own gendered subjectivity:


32

Appearance-wise, I want to be an English gentleman, but internally I prefer to be aChinese gentleman. British guys dress well and are very polite, but internally Idon’t think [pause], the way they treat girls [pause], and some of the things [pause].I talked with my girlfriend [pause]; she doesn’t actually like British guys. She thinkssome of them are playboys; I don’t know if it’s true. But I want to become a Chinesegentleman.

3 When previously analysing the masculinities of professional Chinese men in London, I

mentioned the “ambivalences and contradictions” apparent in Xianyang’s and other

men’s sense of their masculine identities (Hird 2016b). This article probes further into

such ambivalences: their sources, manifestations, significance, and consequences. It

explores globally mobile, London‑based Chinese middle‑class male professionals’ sense

of their own gendered and cultural identities in the context of China’s twenty‑first

century postsocialist modernity.1 In doing so, it shows how Chinese middle‑class men’s

sense of themselves connects with wider national debates about China’s orientation in

the world.

4 To make sense of the desire “to become a Chinese gentleman,” I introduce the notion of

the postsocialist Confucian sublime, a vision of a cultural order of increasing appeal to

well‑educated, middle-class Chinese men.2 As I will demonstrate through the concept of

the Confucian sublime, globally mobile professional Chinese men, in discursive

representations and self-presentations, may transcend ambivalence towards Western

modernity through embracing an imaginary of the Confucian sublime that provides a

sense of wholeness and attainment both at a personal level and for China’s place in

contemporary globality.

Chinese masculinities and the nation

5 At the turn of the twenty-first century, Zhong Xueping diagnosed post-Mao Chinese

male intellectuals as suffering from a “male marginality complex”: a “preoccupation

with the weakness of the country, the culture, and Chinese men” (2000: 37). Male

intellectuals’ sense of marginalisation was compounded by their feeling emasculated by

the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Western men, and Chinese women. But, Zhong

emphasises, male intellectuals were unwilling to remain in the margins; on the

contrary, they harboured a desire to build a strong, potent Chinese masculinity

recognised across the world. Indeed, in Zhong’s view, the search for a reinvigorated

masculinity has always been inherent to China’s quest for a modern national identity

(ibid.: 14).

6 Since the mid-nineteenth century, the response of China’s male intellectuals to the

imposition of Western modernity has taken the forms of cultural repudiation, such as

the anti-Confucianism of New Culture intellectuals in the early twentieth century, and

cultural nationalism, seen in the 1980s root-seeking movement and the post-

Tiananmen revival of “traditional” culture. Yet both cultural “nihilism” and cultural

nationalism share a “desire to ‘masculinize’ Chinese culture” (Zhong 2000: 169). The

New Culture intellectuals sought ways to banish China’s reputation as the “sick man of

East Asia,” the root-seekers celebrated a tough, earthy peasant manhood, and today’s

Confucian revivalists acclaim retro-models of masculinity from China’s classical canon.

It is hard to disagree with Zhong’s observation that “issues of masculinity constitute an

intrinsic part of our understanding of Chinese modernity” (ibid.: 12).


33

7 Why might Chinese intellectuals show such conflicted feelings towards Western

modernity? Reworking a proposition found in Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History, the

Russianist Frank Seeley (1952: 92-4) suggested that in their role as localising conduits of

Western culture under the unequal terms of Western expansionism, non-Western

intelligentsias are inherently conflicted in their identification with Western and local

cultures and feel alienated from both. Toynbee’s mistake, in Seeley’s view, was to

overestimate the allegiance of non-Western intelligentsias to Western cultural

imperialism. In a similar vein, Werner Meissner (2006: 42-3) notes that Russian,

German, Arab, and Chinese intellectuals, among others, were and/or are equivocal in

their endeavours to modernise their societies, caught between Western and local

“spiritual cultures.”

8 Do Chinese male professionals feel caught between two cultures, alienated by both? Do

they veer between cultural nihilism and nationalism? Are they explicit – or tacit – male

chauvinists? Many Chinese male professionals have been educated in Western

countries and are often regarded as being the most “Westernised” segment of China’s

population. According to modernisation theory, the middle class are the ever-

Westernising and ever-expanding vanguard of China’s developing society: they are the

ones who will ensure that China and the Chinese become more like the “advanced”

economies and societies. Yet the spirit of the Chinese male intellectual tradition, of

which some of my participants portrayed themselves as the inheritors, informs the

views of today’s highly educated middle-class male professionals. I argue in this paper

that some – perhaps many – Chinese middle-class men feel highly ambivalent about

their cultural affiliations; and some of them seek to transcend their quandary through

the aesthetics of the Confucian sublime: the seductive vision of an idealised Confucian

political order, ruled over by virtuous men.

9 The split subject of non-Western modernising nations and his affiliations with local

value systems are analysed below through the postcolonial approaches of Homi Bhabha

(1994) and Partha Chatterjee (1993), and via the notions of the “cosmopolitan patriot”

and the “cosmopatriot” offered by Kwame Anthony Appiah (1997) and Jeroen de Kloet

(2007), respectively. My understanding of ambivalence and its transcendence in the

Chinese context is informed by Zhong Xueping’s (2000) concept of the “knowing

subject,” whose male paranoia is sublimated into a universalising vision of the world.

To aid my theorisation of the Confucian sublime I have turned to Ban Wang (1997).

Cosmopolitanism, ambivalence, and the Confuciansublime

10 Notions of cosmopolitanism and ambivalence are useful for examining gender, class,

cultural, and national dimensions in middle-class Chinese masculinities. Kwame

Anthony Appiah has written of the “cosmopolitan patriot”: a “rooted cosmopolitan,”

the cosmopolitan patriot has his or her own sense of cultural home, yet also enjoys the

differences afforded by cultural homes of others (1997: 618). Jeroen de Kloet has

developed the figure of the Chinese “cosmopatriot” who imbues Chineseness with a

sense of cosmopolitanism and vice versa (de Kloet 2007: 134). For de Kloet, Chinese

cosmopatriotism occurs in three ways: cultural struggles that localise globally

circulating ideas and practices (exemplified in Chinese hip hop); cultural criticism that

disrupts notions of cultural purity (as in the art of Xu Bing); and playful anticulturalism


34

that abandons any pretentions towards cultural essences (as in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu

Hustle). Cultural struggle is the category that most aptly fits the ambivalence of Chinese

middle-class men’s conflicted aspirations to, on the one hand, globally circulating

ideals that include progressive gender attitudes, and, on the other hand, embedded

notions and practices of masculinity that perpetuate national and male chauvinisms.

Lisa Rofel (2007: 111) conceptualises this general phenomenon as “domestication of

cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China’s place in the world,” and provides an

example of her young Chinese female informants, who desire to be single, autonomous

global consumers, yet simultaneously wish to inhabit the conventional role of the

“respectable, married woman” (ibid.: 125-6). For De Kloet and Rofel, Chinese

localisations of globally circulating notions and practices are characterised by

ambivalence and contradiction.

11 The works of Homi Bhabha and Partha Chatterjee on the formation of colonial

subjectivities and the cultural sphere in the historical context of India provide helpful

perspectives on the formation of middle-class masculinities and claims to national

cultural identities that are occurring in contemporary China. Bhabha (1994: 55)

proposes that colonial subjectivities are typified by a split subject that exhibits

ambivalent and divided identifications, rendering the notion of pure cultural identity

unsustainable. On the one hand, the colonial subject wishes to mimic the behaviour and

lifestyles of elite metropolitans; on the other hand, he or she also wants to forge a

cultural identity that differs from the colonisers’. These tugs in contradictory

directions in the subjectification process reveal “the boundaries of colonial discourse”

(ibid.: 96).

12 In the current era, notions of cosmopolitanism premised on Western metropolitanism

rework the discourses of colonial times, inscribing an otherness in non-Western

contexts that is simultaneously desired and derided. Chatterjee points out that the

search for postcolonial modernity inevitably connects with historic struggles against

Western modernity. Using the example of Bengal, Chatterjee (1993: 7-9) argues that

from the mid-nineteenth century – before the political challenge to imperialism –

colonised non-Western elites asserted an inner domain of spiritual culture built on

difference from the West. Key elements in the spiritual-cultural sphere were the family,

the position of women, and national forms of literature and art, which were to be

wrought modern yet simultaneously marked by national essence.

13 In semi-colonised China in the second half of the nineteenth century, the earliest

generation of modernising figures associated with the foreignlearning faction (yangwu

pai 洋務派) or self-strengthening movement (ziqiang yundong 自强運動), such as Zeng

Guofan 曾國藩 (1811-1872), Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 (1823-1901), Zuo Zongtang 左宗棠

(1812-1885), and Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909), similarly made a division between

spiritual and material spheres. “Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for

application” (Zhongxue wei ti, Xixue wei yong 中學為體, 西學為用) became their core

guiding principle. In postsocialist China, Zeng Guofan has become a totemic model of a

patriotic, well-educated Chinese man, due to his welcome of Western technology where

it strengthened the nation, but also his cultivation of a strongly Confucian moral image

(Meissner 2006: 49). Zeng’s association with the foreign-learning faction marked him as

a cosmopolitan-like figure of his time. A hero of Chiang Kai-Shek’s, Zeng became a

taboo figure during the high socialism of the Mao years, but since the 1980s has been

acclaimed by cultural nationalists as “an exemplary Confucian man of literary and


35

professional achievements and moral excellence” and a seminal moderniser of industry

and education (Guo 2004: 53, 55).

14 Zeng’s case is but one example of how male Chinese scholars throughout Chinese

history have striven to bring themselves and Chinese society towards an idealised

realm of Confucian‑based order of harmonious social relations. As a process, this

involves the containment of sexual desire and the perfecting of one’s moral character

through self-cultivation (Louie 2015: 113). If sublimation is “the converting of libidinal

energies to serve culturally acceptable goals” (Wang 1997: 13), then this is the

Confucian sublime.

15 From its earliest days, the Confucian sublime has been associated with lofty visions of

political rule by virtuous men: “Grandeur belonged to men’s vigorous enterprises and

moral pursuits” (ibid.: 105). It was thus coded masculine (yang 陽) in the dominant yin-

yang cosmological system. According to Mencius, the Confucian gentleman was

distinguishable for his cultivation of “an infinitely magnificent and strong” masculine

vitality: 陽剛之氣 ( yanggang zhi qi, manly and unyielding spirit) (ibid.: 106).3 This

masculine grandeur has been maintained for millennia through misogynistic

suppression of the feminine (ibid.: 118). During the Republican Era, China’s foremost

twentieth-century Chinese aesthetician, Zhu Guangqian 朱光潜 (1897-1986), built on

this rejection of the feminine in his hybrid Chinese-Western conceptualisation of the

sublime (ibid.: 114-22). In his highly influential Psychology of Literature (Wenyi xinli xue 文

藝心理學, 1936), Zhu equated the Western sublime with the notion of yanggang zhi qi,

emphasising its correlation with strength (gang 剛); he aligned the beautiful, in

contrast, with the idea of (feminine) gentleness and softness (rou 柔) (ibid.: 115).4 Maoist

discourse continued the elevation of a masculine aesthetic, albeit in socialist hues, as a

means of containing the feminine at a time when women were enjoined to “hold up

half the sky” (ding banbian tian 頂半邊天) (ibid.: 107-14).

16 Chinese male intellectuals’ sense of besiegement and ambivalence towards “body and

self” in the shifting contexts of the immediate post-Mao era led them to search for a

new sublime to transcend their sense of conflictedness and in which to locate a “new

self” (Zhong 2000: 12). In the root-seeking literature of the 1980s, nature is the sublime

state into which male writers projected their idealised selves, expressed through

earthy, untamed, free-spirited – and male-dominated – peasant-farmer lives and values

in works like Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang 紅高粱, 1986) and Han Shaogong’s Da

Da Da (Bababa 爸爸爸, 1985) (Zhong 2000: 159). Han’s “manifesto” for root-seeking

literature posits ancient Chu culture as a mysterious, half-primitive, yet strongly

masculinist pre-Confucian idyll (Zhong 2000: 154-5). It was through such imagined

cultural roots that the root-seekers fashioned strongly patriarchal and patrilineal

accounts of uncontaminated Chinese cultural identity (ibid.: 163). These re-

masculinised and re-racialised fantasies of the Han people’s rural origins provided

refuge from male intellectuals’ despair with their personal and China’s realities; and

replaced as cultural ideal the (by then discredited) urban socialist utopia promised by

the Great Helmsman.

17 Male paranoia was transcended through its sublimation into a “universal wholeness”

based on “an internal whole self,” constituting a male subject that refused to

acknowledge himself as a fragmented self, but rather saw himself as a “knowing subject

capable of eventually returning to the center of an orderly world” (Zhong 2000: 100). In

this knowing subject’s view, the external world is fragmented, not himself. The features


36

of the orderly world or sublime realm within which the knowing subject aspires to exist

are influenced by the “dominant fiction” of the subject’s discursive and social

environments (ibid.: 98).

18 The Confucian moral order was the sought-after sublime for the majority of “knowing

male subjects” in China’s imperial era; since then, dominant notions of the sublime in

China have demonstrated commingling of Western and Chinese conceptions, such as in

Zhu Guangqian’s theoretical assemblage, the convergence of socialism and Confucian

paternalism in Mao, or the return-to-nature romanticism of the root-seekers. In the

idealised Confucian sublime, postsocialist knowing male subjects mix together

yearnings for Confucian moral order and hierarchy, cultivated personhood, and

globally projected Chinese male power. Yet their attraction to a Confucian cultural-

spiritual ethos coexists with their desire for recognition at a global level as enlightened

modern male subjects committed to gender equality. Not accepting of marginalisation

in the world’s eyes and tugged ambivalently between “Chinese” and “Western”

modernities, some eventually find a sense of completeness in a Confucian-inflected

moral order with global reach.

Methodology

19 In the following pages, I explore ambivalence and its transcendence in political and

cultural representations of Chinese masculinities and in Chinese middle-class men’s

self-narrations. My primary sources include contemporary Chinese news articles, TV

drama, literature, and data from interviews that I conducted with professional Chinese

men in London. I investigate diverse spheres because of my conceptualisation of

masculinities as fluid assemblages of multiple discursive practices that individuals

negotiate in subjectification processes (Song and Hird 2014). My analysis is informed by

critical masculinity studies, which insists upon a focus on gendered power relations

(O’Neill 2015). For the interviews, I followed methods associated with narrative inquiry,

a methodological approach that is particularly suited to exploring the experiences of a

single person or a small number of people (Cresswell 2012: 73-4; Kim 2015: 161).

Narrative inquiry can be used to investigate personal experiences of an event or

phenomenon, such as this paper’s exploration of gendered transnational mobilities and

imaginaries. The interview data that are generated through narrative inquiry methods

are likewise the result of an assemblage of multiple contingent elements, including

“dominant and changing discourses, (…) biography, perspective, interests, and the

immediate pertinences of the process” (Gubrium and Holstein 2012: 40).

20 Through bilingual adverts in Chinese and English circulated by community

organisations, friends, and associates, I recruited ten research participants, all of whom

were professional Chinese men living in London. London was chosen as the site of

inquiry because of the significant numbers of highly educated Chinese men from the

PRC living and working there, many of them graduates of universities in the UK.5 Most

of my participants had come to the UK to study and were educated to at least the

Master’s level. Their ages ranged from early twenties to mid-fifties; and they had lived

in the UK for between three and 26 years. Four were married (all to Chinese women and

all had children), three were partnered (including one civil partner), and three were

single; eight identified themselves as straight and two as gay. They worked in media

(three), architecture (two), and the others in finance, design, computing, commodities


37

research (in large British private-sector companies), and academia. I interviewed each

participant for one to two hours between October 2014 and March 2015 and

subsequently had follow-up discussions with five participants in informal social

situations.

21 My approach builds a story of transnational Chinese masculinities shaped by my

involvement in the co-creation of interview data, selection of discursive instances,

choice of theoretical lens, and ultimately interpretation of all these elements. I do not

seek to claim that my findings are “representative” of all transnational Chinese

professional men. In the spirit of constructivist grounded theory, the scholarly value of

this paper may rather inhere in its provision of “concepts and hypotheses that other

researchers can transport to similar research problems and to other substantive fields”

(Pace 2012: 9, drawing from Charmaz 2000).

Political and cultural representations of Chinesemasculinities

22 Masculinist Confucian tropes have found their way back into political and popular

discourse during the reform era. It is significant that since taking power in 2012, Xi

Jinping has emphasised the importance of the moral order of the family to Chinese

society, calling for attention to “the family, family education, and family values”

(zhuzhong jiating, zhuzhong jiajiao, zhuzhong jiafeng 注重家庭, 注重家教, 注重家風).

Explaining the “unique role” of women in the family, Xi has identified their main

service to the country as caring for the elderly and educating children (Nehring and

Wang 2016: 4). By describing the perfect wife as “virtuous” (qi xian 妻賢) and the

perfect mother as “kind” (mu ci 母慈), Xi has reproduced the well-worn trope that the

stability of the household, headed by a patriarch, rests on the shoulders of the virtuous

wife and good mother.6 As examples of good mothering, Xi has cited two stories that

every Chinese schoolchild knows: the devotion of Mencius’ mother to her son, and

General Yue Fei’s mother’s insistence that he defend the country rather than care for

her. Xi has recounted that his own mother seared the story of Yue Fei into his memory

when young.7 His message is clear: a good mother sacrifices her own interests for those

of her son.

23 Xi’s approach to the family emphasises Confucian and nationalist elements. His choice

of Mencius and Yue Fei as masculine models underlines the ancient ideal that Chinese

men should balance 文 (wen, cultural attainment) and 武 (wu, martial valour) and also

seizes the chance to laud the fervent nationalism with which Yue Fei is associated. In

speeches, Xi has encouraged hierarchal Confucian family relationships by exhorting

younger brothers to respect elder brothers (di gong弟恭) and all children to be filial (zi

xiao 子孝). According to Xi, Confucian family morals were espoused and practiced by

socialist heroes such as Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Mao Zedong.8

24 Xi clearly values the moral order of Confucianism as a means of promoting cultural

nationalist, masculinist, and generational hierarchies; and he undoubtedly recognises

how Confucianism served the interests of imperial rule for 2000 years. In this context,

the aesthetics of the sublime envisioned by Xi, evidently a knowing subject in this

regard, take on a strongly Confucian hue. Yet Xi has also stressed his commitment to

gender equality before the United Nations General Assembly9 and the All-China


38

Women’s Federation.10 His pronouncements on gender and the family exemplify the

kind of ambivalence to modernity and linkage of the spiritual-cultural sphere with

national identity that Chatterjee outlined.

25 Besides political discourse, popular culture is a prominent vehicle for the propagation

of masculinist and cultural nationalist values. A recent development in TV drama is the

blending together of cosmopolitanism, male privilege, and Chinese cultural

exceptionalism. As Geng Song (2018) has pointed out, the online novel turned hit TV

series Love Me, If You Dare (Ta lai le, qing bi yan 他來了, 請閉眼), broadcast in 2015,

presents an interesting case study through the cosmopolitan characterisation of its

male lead, Bo Jinyan 薄靳言, a Western-educated Chinese professor of criminology who

helps the police with murder cases. Bo is both intellectual and middle class, as much at

home in Western society as in China. And yet Love Me, If You Dare reproduces a

stereotypical pattern of sexual relationships in reform era Chinese films, as a

hierarchal relationship exists between the globe-trotting, highly educated Bo and his

girlfriend Jian Yao 簡瑤, in which Bo is unquestionably dominant and Jian is

subservient and uncomplaining (Song 2018: 32-3). Bo is also the dominant party in his

relationship with his close male friend, Fu Ziyu 傅子遇, who plays an almost feminised

role in supporting Bo’s ambitions. As Song points out, this “is reminiscent of the yin/

yang hierarchy in same-sex relationships in the Chinese space” (ibid.: 36). A Confucian-

inflected framework of family and social relationships is at work in the background

here.

26 A further relevant point is that Bo’s immense mental acuity and work ethic enable him

to outperform Westerners and solve tough murder cases with ease. Bo’s confident

outsmarting of his white counterparts, coupled with his cosmopolitan fluency in

Western languages and cultures, positions him as a master of the global stage. Behind

this triumph of Chinese male intellectuality there lies a vindication of the value given

to education in the Chinese tradition, and the notion that self-disciplined scholarliness

is the route to success. Bo vanquishes Chinese men’s emasculation by Western men and

Chinese women with ease, resolving the anxieties and ambivalence that well-educated

Chinese men feel about their place in the world. He is an idealised model of Chinese

masculinity in early twenty-first century globality: a cosmopolitan, privileged, and

confident knowing male subject, who inhabits a Chinese masculinist and culturalist

sublime.

27 A confident, cosmopolitan, middle-class intellectual Chinese masculinity also animates

the persona and writings of the novelist Feng Tang 馮唐(b. 1971). Medically trained,

possessing an American MBA, and an ex-consultant for an American management

consulting firm, Feng lauds the sexual openness of Western writers such as

D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, and interacts with his fans in sexually suggestive

ways. Referring to Feng’s activity on his hugely popular page on the social media

platform Weibo, Pamela Hunt writes:

Reading his posts, one cannot fail to miss a trend on his page, wherein youngwomen (and very occasionally, men), post pictures of themselves posing with one ofmore of his books. The photos are clearly intended to be cute or even provocative,with the occasional inclusion of pictures of partially nude women. They arefrequently accompanied by emojis of hearts or kisses, and references to Feng Tangas their “Dream boy.” These pictures are then reposted by Feng with the suggestivephrase “Tonight we are really enjoying ourselves.” (Hunt 2018: 118)


39

28 Hunt discusses the rampant male sexuality in Feng’s work through Sheldon Lu’s (2000)

notion of the transnational libidinal economy, which produces “masculinist, macho and

sexually aggressive” Chinese men, especially desirous of white women, as seen in

Chinese TV dramas and other cultural works since the 1990s (2018: 107).

29 Yet while Feng and his characters are formed through enthusiastic exposure to

Western women, brands, and popular culture, the spirit of the historical figure of the

talented and libidinous young male scholar (caizi 才子) simultaneously permeates Feng

and his fiction (Hunt 2018: 114). For instance, Feng’s protagonist in his Beijing Trilogy

attributes the “lascivious” air on Peking University’s campus to the presence of caizi

there for centuries, and Feng has written about sharing an enjoyment of “white-

skinned women” with Li Yu 李漁 (1611-80 CE), author of the erotic classic, The Carnal

Prayer Mat (Rouputuan 肉蒲團), whose protagonist is a philandering young scholar

(Hunt 2018: 115, 117).

30 Feng’s evocation of the well-educated and highly sexed caizi locates Feng within a long-

standing Chinese male-centric tradition that marginalises and objectifies women. In

Feng’s works, Maoist high socialism is presented as inhibiting; it is the “historical

culture of sensuality” to which Feng returns (Hunt 2018: 115). Feng’s authorial persona

and fictional protagonists share the cosmopolitanism of Bo Jinyan in Love Me, If You

Dare, but they inhabit the Confucian traditions of the privileged male scholar in even

more pronounced ways. Ultimately, Feng presents himself as a knowing male subject,

nested in a caizi-inflected, male-centred imaginary of the sublime, a fantasy realm

where both men and women can apparently reach a state of bliss.

Chinese professional men’s self-narratives

31 I return now to Xianyang’s account of his life in the UK as a Chinese man, with which I

began this article. We have already established that Xianyang desired a white woman

for a girlfriend, which can be understood in the wider context of globally mobile

Chinese men, in everyday life and on the television screen, seeking affirmation of their

sexual attractiveness from desirable white women. Viewed through the lens of the

Chinese male marginality complex discussed above, this quest can be understood as

globally mobile Chinese men’s desire to possess as strong and potent a sexuality as that

of white men, and to overcome their and China’s history of emasculation. As Joane

Nagel (1998) has influentially argued, the strength of a nation and its men are

inextricably linked in modern nation-building.

32 Although Xianyang wanted to cultivate the attributes of a Chinese gentleman, he still

wished to look like the sophisticated young middle-class men in his university classes

and had sought to mould an outward appearance that reflected the sartorial elegance

and refined manner that he admired in British middle-class men. But he emphasised

that “dressing is a very superficial thing: what matters more is how you think – your

inner content (neihan 內涵).” In that sentence, Xianyang revealed his ambivalence

towards the “modern” masculinity that he aimed to emulate. On the one hand,

Xianyang admired his classmates’ suave demeanour, he wanted to look like them, to

possess their social skills, to be as sexually attractive as they seemed to be; on the other

hand, he had a sense of an inner, cultural, Chinese masculinity that did not square with

the masculinity projected by his classmates. Revealingly, Xianyang confided that one of


40

his heroes was the author and ex-management consultant Feng Tang, saying that Feng

combined the historical attributes of Chinese wen masculinity with savviness in

contemporary global business culture.

33 Xianyang added that what he meant by “Chinese gentleman,” (a term he had said in

English hitherto), was the junzi 君子, the archetypal moral exemplar of the Confucian

canon. He elaborated:

Like in more ancient times, Tang, Song: the scholars of the Confucian school (rujia

儒家) were polite, they took care of their family, they cared about society’sproblems, they took care of the whole universe. I think that’s the most importantthing – they always considered the well-being of the whole people, regardless ofnation. I don’t really like the notion of nation, government, party, ChineseCommunist Party. Junzi care more about the people and focus on internalcultivation. A good definition of the junzi is that they do not do immoral things thatthey could do when they are alone; they could benefit from doing them, but theydecide not to do them. I think the basic idea combining external and internalgentlemanly characteristics works regardless of country. If you’re a good man, youhave these good characteristics, and if you treat people that way, people will likeyou. I don’t just see myself as Chinese, I like to be a global citizen. In high school Iwrote an article and developed a theory to prioritise things in my mind – the firstthing I wrote was I would die for was “all under heaven” (tianxia 天下), thenparents, then country (guojia 國家), then my woman, then myself.

34 Xianyang sets out here a cosmopolitan model of junzi masculinity that transcends

national boundaries in its use of the Confucian concept of tianxia, “all under heaven.”

Within this larger global context, Xianyang retains a strong sense of the distinctive

characteristics of scholarly Chinese masculinity, its strengths, priorities, and its goal of

sublime self-perfection encapsulated in the junzi ideal. Indeed, the way of the junzi has

historically been considered “the foundation of the sublime spirit” (chonggao jingshen de

genji 崇高精神的根基) in Chinese aesthetics (Zhu 2016: 42-3).

35 Xianyang’s reconstruction of the junzi as an idealised transnational figure forges a

confident Chinese male cultural identity in a sublime vision of a global tianxia. It

combines the polished, urbane “external gentlemanly characteristics” that he observed

in his British classmates with a steadfast attention to “inner cultivation” of lofty moral

practices. The inner spiritual dimension to Xianyang’s masculinity encompasses

precisely those elements that Chatterjee identified as the chief concerns of postcolonial

elites: paradigms from national literatures, the family, and marital relations.

Xianyang’s domestication of a cosmopolitanism masculinity reveals his ambivalence

and unease about the masculinities of Western modernity, and his need to transcend

this ambivalence – and his fragmented self – by seeking the harmonious order of junzi

and tianxia. Xianyang is far from alone in this: in recent Chinese political discourse,

both concepts have been promoted as counterpoints to established Western

frameworks of world order. Elsewhere, I have analysed the presentation of junzi as

Chinese national archetype and leaders of an imagined “junzi nation” (Hird 2017).

William Callahan sets out how tianxia is formulated as “a patriotic form of

cosmopolitanism,” offering a top-down “hierarchical system that values order over

freedom, ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy and human rights”

(Callahan 2008: 753, 759).

36 Xianyang was not the only admirer of junzi masculinity that I met. Bradley, the son of

officials, in his mid-twenties, and a design professional, had moved to the UK from


41

southern China for his secondary school education. In similar fashion to Xianyang, he

emphasised self-cultivation of a junzi masculinity:

Mencius put it clearly: life is about self-cultivation. Confucianism puts it ascultivation of personal morals. Yu Qiuyu11 says the junzi is the cultural ideal ofChina, like the samurai is for Japan. China needs more self-cultivation to be taught;the attention paid to creams, designer clothes, hairstyles, doesn’t make forinteresting character.

37 The different perspective that Bradley gained from living in the West led him to

pinpoint what he saw as a major problem with contemporary Chinese society, namely

the lack of a culturally specific moral counterbalance to the hyper-consumerism that

has spread in recent years. He continued:

What’s missing is that self-cultivation is not being taught. I realised the importanceof that after I came to the West. I think self-cultivation is a natural thing. The wayyou explore knowledge, change your views, have an ideal that you want to become.You want to become good at this and that – you are cultivating already.

38 Bradley’s choice of words – “what’s missing” – reveals his sense of his own and Chinese

society’s incompleteness. Bradley’s search for meaning beyond consumerism and a

sense of wholeness in his life led him to Confucian practices of self-cultivation, which

he explicitly linked to national cultural identity discourses propagated by public

intellectuals such as Yu Qiuyu, who argues that the junzi model of self-cultivation is the

core of Chineseness. Bradley’s transcendence of his sense of incompleteness as a

Chinese man, his becoming a knowing subject, is linked very clearly into a vision of a

strong national culture for the Chinese nation.

39 I had asked Bradley, as I did Xianyang, for an account of his life in the UK as a Chinese

man. Instead, he propounded his views on the weakness of China and the need for

Chinese men to embrace their cultural destiny through walking the path of the junzi. As

he saw it, the antidote to the amoral hyper-consumerism imported from the West was

the practice of self-cultivation. In Bradley’s view, Chinese gentlemanly masculinity was

crucial not only for his own sense of manhood, but also for the health of the Chinese

nation as a whole: masculinity and national culture came together for him through the

sublime figure of the junzi.

40 The promotion of a masculinity founded on Confucian self-cultivation was not merely

desirable, Bradley argued, but vital, due to China’s political system. He posited Chinese

political difference on a cultural foundation:

I guess the Chinese way is harsher, more strict. Because Confucian self-cultivationcultivates one towards power, like a man who can hold so much power withoutbeing corrupt – that’s a much higher standard. I don’t think Western men need to,because you have factions in government, you have independent trade unions, youwill never give a man that much power, therefore there is no need for one singlecharacter to have such high moral standards as Xi Jinping 習近平(1953-); or WenJiabao 溫家寶 (1942-). Wen Jiabao is considered a man of strong morals. And noWestern man will ever be equal to him in the amount of power he can amass.

41 Bradley’s notably male-centred rendering of Chinese politics asserted that the stability

of the system hinged on the moral self-cultivation of its leaders. As Guo Xuezhi points

out, in the Confucian tradition the combination of a ruler’s active ethical responsibility

for self and society is conceptualised through the figure of the junzi as moral model and

ideal political leader (2001: 55-7). The connection between politics, morality, and the

sublime is present in China’s most canonical Confucian texts: “The tendency to render

political rule and moral integrity as an experience of the grandiose and the lofty is


42

quite pronounced in the Confucian Analects” (Wang 1997: 105). Exhilarated by Xi

Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, Bradley talked of the CCP staying in power, like a

dynasty, for two or three hundred years, provided that its leaders successfully fostered

junzi morality.

42 The qualities that Bradley wished to see in elite Chinese men came together for him in

the figure of the nineteenth-century general Zeng Guofan, whose popularity among

contemporary cultural nationalists I discussed above. Bradley emphasised that Zeng

cultivated a masculinity that incorporated Confucian (and some Daoist) principles,

while advocating strengthening of the nation through adoption of Western

technological, military, and educational innovations. Besides admiring Zeng for saving

the nation from the chaos of the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864), Bradley most

appreciated Zeng’s strength of moral character; which Guo Yingjie has summed up as

“the four principal ideals of the Confucian man (achieving self-perfection, managing

the family, governing the empire, and bringing order to all under heaven)” (2004: 62).

For Bradley and other contemporary well-educated cultural nationalists, it is Confucian

self-cultivation, coupled with a globally informed perspective, as exemplified by Zeng,

that produces the moral fibre and vision in elite men that is required to safeguard

China’s political and cultural integrity, social stability, and economic prosperity.

43 The assertion of a superior moral core at the heart of Chinese masculinity and Chinese

national culture, particularly with regard to the family, women, and self-control, was a

prominent feature of the opinions of another four of my research participants, all

professional Chinese men, during the interviews I carried out in London in 2014. These

participants expressed disappointment with aspects of British men’s behaviour,

especially in family contexts and relations with women. They felt that there was an

unacceptably high level of absent fathers in UK families, and that British men were not

as filial (xiao 孝) as they should be. They contrasted this with their sense of Chinese

men’s acceptance of responsibility for their families, especially in terms of duties of

care towards their children and parents. My participants also felt that British men were

unacceptably sexually lewd towards women on the streets and even in the workplace.

Further examples of irresponsible behaviour that they gave included British men’s

public drunkenness, aggressiveness, and football hooliganism.

44 Contrasting with such adherence to mainstream Confucian values, one man whom I

interviewed, Zhen Feng, articulated the alternative vision of the Daoist-inflected Chu

cultural sublime proposed by Han Shaogong in the mid-1980s. A media professional, at

54 years of age Zhen was the eldest participant in my study. His adolescence had

coincided with the Cultural Revolution, during which he was sent to the countryside, as

was the case with many of his contemporaries. During his twenties, in the first decade

of the reform era, he was strongly influenced by root-seeking literary works’ focus on

masculine subjectivities coloured through images of song, dance, and union with the

natural world. After coming to the UK in the late 1980s for postgraduate study, this

self-styled “man of Chu” refused to return to post-Tiananmen China. Yet despite his

opposition to mainstream Confucian and CCP discourses, he was also a knowing subject

whose resolution of his internal conflicts rested on the inherently patriarchal vision of

untamed Chu culture sketched out by root-seeking writers.

45 With the exception of the “man of Chu,” most of my participants’ critiques of British

masculinity cohered around the notion of self-control and responsibility, which they

believed that they, as Chinese men, possessed, whereas British men did not. Their


43

views, including those of Xianyang and Bradley, echo historical Confucian expectations

of self-restraint in men on the wen (literary) path, including the containment of sexual

passion, as noted above, and the deeply embedded characterisation of non-Chinese

people as relatively unrefined (Dikötter 1990). Their insistence on the superiority of a

distinctly Chinese approach to family and gender relations, often through concepts

central to the Confucian tradition, designates them as knowing male subjects; and,

further, demonstrates their commitment to a Chinese spiritual-cultural sphere built on

a vision of a sublime Confucian moral order clearly differentiated from perceived

Western values and practices.

Conclusion

46 The Confucian sublime is one of a number of alternatives to the Christian sublime of

equality before God that continues to inform Western visions of societal perfection. In

the face of globalisation and the failures of socialism, people across the world are

resorting to distinctive cultural identities to understand themselves and gain a sense of

belonging to a particular society (Thomas 2005). In China, the urban middle class is

increasingly turning to Confucianism (Pang 2019: 197-228). The Confucian sublime

offers an attractive vision for those well-educated Chinese men who feel the pain and

humiliation of emasculation at personal and national levels. Its cosmopolitan,

universalising tendencies, promulgated through concepts such as junzi and tianxia,

provide a transcendent solution to the love/hate relationship they have with Western

culture. Perceiving themselves as marginalised and emasculated by the CCP, Western

men, and women’s “rise,”12 Chinese male intellectuals and highly-educated

professionals in the reform era are turning to deeply historically embedded models of

masculinity to regain a sense of manhood and male privilege compatible with Chinese

cultural identity in the modern world. As I have discussed above, this trend manifests

in recent TV drama series, literary works, and authorial personae, and in middle-class

men’s self-representations. It is facilitated discursively at the highest levels of the CCP.

47 Educated Chinese men’s “cosmopatriotic” domestication of aspects of Western business

masculinities and cultivation of embedded Confucian masculinities constitutes a

strategic effort to insert themselves more advantageously into local and global power

relations of gender, class, and nation. But the turn to a Chinese spiritual-cultural

sphere also re-animates yearnings for the Confucian sublime (or minority alternatives

such as the Chu cultural sublime), in which the lofty and the grandiose is associated

with male power and integrity. While some contemporary proponents of the Confucian

sublime may genuinely believe in its “magic power” to solve the world’s problems,

their enthusiasm for it contributes to “a hegemonic practice calculated to reinforce the

discursive formation of Confucian values and thereby empower themselves in the

contest for influence and control over national identity and the future directions of the

nation” (Guo 2004: 88). The self-cultivating moral vision expressed through junzi,

tianxia, and xiao ideals, propounded by Xianyang and Bradley and other “knowing male

subjects” among my participants, echoes and reaffirms a culturalist, masculinist

sublime that intrinsically disavows and represses the feminine. In this light, espousals

of a junzi masculinity, no matter how principled their presentation, reflect and

contribute to discursive practices and power relations that effect classed, gendered,

and sexual privileges for well-educated Chinese men. As I have shown, the culturalist


44

and masculinist nationalism that has grown out of feelings of resentment and

humiliation often facilitates or espouses male and Chinese chauvinism.

48 Modernisation narratives argue that modern societies are typified by the

disappearance of “tradition” and progressive change, resulting in greater

individualism, social equality, and democracy. Yet, the evidence shows the continuing

significance of historical modes of masculinity for Chinese men today, and the

persistence of patriarchal hierarchies in contemporary gender relations. These findings

undermine modernisation narratives that posit China’s globalisation process as

inevitably resulting in the jettisoning of “traditional” gender identities and practices

and the disappearance of gender discrimination. The role of Chinese middle-class men

in perpetuating class, gender, and other hierarchies complicates professional Chinese

men’s claims of moral integrity, undermines the idea that the middle class is inherently

progressive, and challenges the notion that economic development unproblematically

delivers social democratisation.

49 Envisioning Chinese middle-class masculinities as ambivalent, ambiguous, and

contradictory helps facilitate a clearer view of China’s postsocialist modernity – the

context in which these masculinities have emerged – as inherently conflicted; the latest

iteration, as it were, of a process that began in the middle of the nineteenth century. In

other words, ambivalent masculinities point to wider societal ambivalences. Indeed, it

could be argued that China’s postsocialist modernity is constituted upon ambivalence,

ambiguity, and contradiction. Yet there are growing numbers of well-educated,

knowing male subjects who now believe that the Confucian sublime resolves their

anxieties about their own subjectivities and their nation’s place in the world. The

Confucian sublime is an imaginary of increasing appeal to China’s middle-class men.

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NOTES

1. I recognise that “middle class” is a contested term, not least in China, and that the so-called

middle class or middle stratum in China is particularly heterogeneous and inchoate however it is

defined (see e.g. Li 2010). Most of my informants worked for private companies; three worked for

state or third-sector organisations. None of them held managerial positions senior enough to

warrant elite “gold‑collar” status. Professionals (zhuanye renshi 專業人士) are generally

considered one of the middle strata in prominent Chinese sociologies of class (see e.g. Lu 2010),

hence my designation of my informants as middle class. I follow Zhang Xudong’s definition of

postsocialism in the Chinese context, which captures how newly emerging formations are

informed by a persisting mission of differentiation from a Western-inflected global capitalist

order: “the post‑in postsocialism indicates a new socioeconomic and cultural-political subjectivity

which prefigures the new but is embedded in an order of things that does not readily recognize

the ideological claim, political legitimacy, and cultural validity of capitalist globalization for the

totality of human history and its future horizon” (2008: 12).

2. In current Chinese aesthetic discourses, 崇高 (chonggao, “lofty and towering”) is the most

common way of rendering the sublime; other terms include 壯美 (zhuangmei, “magnificent and


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beautiful”), 宏壯 (hongzhuang, “great and magnificent”), 至大 (zhida, “extremely grand”), 至剛

(zhigang “extremely strong”) and 雄偉 (xiongwei, “masculine and mighty”). Comparative concepts

include 陽剛之氣 ( yanggang zhi qi, “manly and unyielding spirit”), 風骨 ( fenggu, “wind and

bone”), 雄渾 (xionghun, “masculine whole”) (Wang 1997: 8, 10). However, my focus in this essay is

not on how the sublime or its equivalents have been or should be rendered in Chinese, but in

tracing the sublime, through the lens of contemporary Chinese masculinities, as a movement

towards transcendence of male anxieties and desires and ultimately emancipation in a

masculine- gendered realm. Exemplifications of this sublimation process abound in Chinese

philosophical writings, literature, and film (Wang 1997: passim).

3. “Manly and unyielding spirit” is Haun Saussy’s translation of yanggang zhi qi, which Wang Ban

commends for encompassing “both the literal surface and deep cultural connotations of the

phrase” (1997: 272 n. 9).

4. Zhu’s friend, the poet Liang Zongdai 梁宗岱 (1903-83), attempted to construct a feminine (yin

陰) based theory of the sublime, which anticipated some avant-garde literature attempts in the

late 1980s to de-masculinise the sublime (Wang 1997: 118-22).

5. The UK is the most popular destination for overseas study among the Chinese middle class

besides the US (Xue 2019).

6. Xi Jinping 習近平, “在會見第一届全國文明家庭代表時的講話” (Zai huijian diyijie quanguo

wenming jiating daibiao shi de jianghua, Address at the first national meeting of representatives

from civilised families), Xinhuanet, 15 December 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/

2016-12/15/c_1120127183.htm (accessed on 6 May 2019).

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Somini Sengupta, “Xi Jinping Vows to ‘Reaffirm’ China’s Commitment to Women’s Rights,” The

New York Times, 27 September 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/world/asia/china-

united-nations-womens-rights.html (accessed on 6 May 2019).

10. “習近平: 組織動員婦女走在時代前列建功立業” (Xi Jinping: zuzhi dongyuan funü zou zai

shidai qianlie jiangong liye, Xi Jinping: organise and mobilise women to walk in the forefront of

the times to render meritorious service and build successful careers), Xinhuanet, 2 November

2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/leaders/2018-11/02/c_1123654725.htm (accessed on

31 July 2019).

11. Yu Qiuyu 餘秋雨 (1946-) is a well-known writer and commentator on – and strong proponent

of – Chinese cultural heritage. In Hird (2017) I analyse his conceptualisation of the junzi.

12. For analysis of Chinese white-collar men’s anxieties about women’s demands for gender

equality, see Song and Hird (2014) and Hird (2016a).

ABSTRACTS

This article probes the sources, manifestations, and significances of the ambivalences and

contradictions in London-based Chinese middle-class male professionals’ sense of their own

gendered and cultural identities in the context of China’s twenty-first century postsocialist

modernity. In doing so, it shows how Chinese middle-class men’s sense of themselves connects

with wider national debates about China’s orientation in the world. To make sense of the desire

of some respondents “to become a Chinese gentleman,” the article introduces the notion of the


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postsocialist Confucian sublime, a vision of a cultural order of increasing appeal to well-educated,

middle-class Chinese men. The article argues that the Confucian sublime offers globally mobile

professional Chinese men the opportunity to transcend their ambivalence towards Western

modernity by providing a sense of wholeness and attainment both at a personal level and in

relating to China’s place in contemporary globality.

INDEX

Keywords: Chinese, professionals, middle class, men, masculinities, ambivalence, postsocialist

modernity, Confucian sublime

AUTHOR

DEREK HIRD

Derek Hird is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Lancaster University and Deputy Director of

Lancaster University Confucius Institute. Department of Languages and Cultures, County Main,

Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK. His research interests include transnational

Chinese middle-class masculinities, Chinese male beauty cultures, and happiness and health in

Chinese populations.d.hird[at]lancaster.ac.uk


49


The Road Home: Rebellion, theMarket and Masculinity in the HanHan PhenomenonPamela Hunt

EDITOR'S NOTE

Manuscript received on 5 August 2019. Accepted on 19 June 2020.

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, and

the organisers and attendees of the second conference of the China Academic Network on Gender

for their comments on the first version of this paper. The author gratefully acknowledges the

support of the Leverhulme Trust.

1 I start with an image of the novelist, blogger, and filmmaker Han Han (韓寒, born 1982).

Part of an advertising campaign for Nescafé coffee, it appears at the end of a two-

minute film that was broadcast online in 2011.1 Han Han sits on a rocky outcrop, red

desert and a bright blue sky behind. He is dressed in a leather jacket, blue jeans, and

sturdy boots, with a gleaming motorbike parked beside him. He is looking directly at

the camera with a somewhat defiant expression, a red cup of coffee in his hand. “Live

out your boldness!” (Huochu ganxing! 活出敢性!) cries the slogan at the top.

2 This image encapsulates several narratives that run through cultural production in

postsocialist China. They also run through the Han Han phenomenon (Han Han

xianxiang 韓寒現象), the term used to describe the rapid rise to fame of this multi-

hyphenate pop culture icon. In the first instance, in featuring this bestselling novelist

and so-called “literary bad boy”2 as a leather-clad biker, we are presented with the

image of culture meeting market meeting counter-culture, a trope that commentators

have repeatedly observed throughout post-reform China (Barmé 1999; Fumian 2009).

We might think of this advertisement as a variant of Geremie Barmé’s (1999) concept of

packaged or bankable dissent, as the iconography of resistance – the bike, the leather


50

jacket, the choice of the outspoken Han Han as figurehead – is packaged for

consumption of both coffee and celebrity.3 It is also a depiction of transnational mobility:

far-reaching economic and cultural flows appear not just in the sense of a multinational

conglomerate reaching into the local market, but also in the way pieces of this picture –

the clothes, the mode of transport, the landscape, and even the colour palette – seem to

have travelled to China via the West, or specifically America’s Southwest, land of the

Easy Rider and Marlboro Man.4 Finally, this image might also be read in terms of a

celebration of a certain kind of masculinity: bold, macho, adventurous, and mobile.

3 It is this image of the mobile man that I will focus on in this article. Why, one might

ask, does this mode of “doing man” hold such an appeal? Masculinity has re-emerged as

a topic of concern within contemporary China. In the era of market reform and

opening up to the world, it is discussed, critiqued, and carefully reconstructed

according to shifting and diversifying ideas about ideal manhood. Public debates about

how Chinese men ought to behave – be that as modern Confucian gentlemen (Hird

2016, 2017), enlightened fathers (Li and Jankowiak 2016), or tough “wolf warriors” (Liu

and Rofel 2018) – are held with mounting frequency, and cries of a “crisis” are often

heard (Song 2010; Hird 2012).5 Meanwhile, a growing number of gender scholars have

sought to make masculinity visible within China studies, highlighting the ways in

which it intersects with, and sheds further light upon, major points of concern in the

postsocialist era, including the shifting position of the intellectual vis-à-vis the state

(Zhong 2000); the rise of consumerist values (Baranovitch 2003; Osburg 2013; Hird

2016); and China’s interactions with the rest of the globe (Louie 2015; Hird and Song

2018). Studies such as these have highlighted the transnational influences on

contemporary Chinese gender, which have created new and hybridized ideals of

masculinity, alongside the continuing importance of longstanding local understandings

of “real men” as constituting wen 文 or cultural attainment, and wu 武, or martial

valour (Louie 2015, 2016; Hird and Song 2018).

4 The Nescafé image is all the more interesting because it is a variation on a theme: Han

Han has repeatedly been framed as an icon of countercultural movement, never far

from a vehicle and the open road. What is the attraction of this form of masculinity for

Han Han and postsocialist Chinese cultural production? What connects mobility and

men, and what are the implications of this connection? What are we to make of the

visual echoes of Western rebellious men in scenes such as this? How does this mode of

masculinity connect both a countercultural stance and a celebration of consumer

culture?

5 This article will explore the way in which masculinity is presented within the Han Han

phenomenon. It will do this first through a visual and textual analysis of a series of

advertisements and media appearances featured in print and online, and his previous

literary works, before turning to his 2014 debut film The Continent (Houhui wuqi 後會無

期). While Han Han has attracted a significant level of academic attention, no scholar

has considered in detail the way in which he represents and performs masculinity. I

argue here that this is a major facet of his public persona and his works. I argue also

that this masculinity is consistently interwoven with a road discourse in which, across

various texts, moving down the open road is celebrated as a way of achieving freedom,

rebellion, and self-discovery. The connected themes of movement and masculinity

running through the Han Han phenomenon are enmeshed in and reflect upon such

issues as the complex interplay between global and local in China, and the tangled,


51

ambivalent responses to continuing marketisation. The trope of mobile masculinity,

moreover, cuts into Han Han’s rebellious reputation, as the recurring image of

freewheeling outlaws rely on conservative gender ideals, with the result that women’s

voices are frequently silenced.

The Han Han phenomenon

6 To understand why Han Han is such a compelling figure to explore in terms of rebellion

and mobility, it is necessary to consider his career and position in Chinese popular

culture. The label of “phenomenon” refers to the weight of attention and controversy

that he has garnered, but also to his sheer ubiquity across several different media and

sporting platforms. Born in 1982, he first came to fame aged 17 upon winning a

nationwide writing competition. Despite dropping out of high school, he proceeded to

write eight wildly popular novels that made him one of China’s highest paid writers

(Strafella and Berg 2015: 353). His blog, launched in 2005, rapidly became the most read

in China (ibid.), leading to the print publication of several essay collections.

7 Han Han became associated with frank and fluent writing, filled with word play,

satirical humour, an eagerness to deflate pomposity (including his own), and a

willingness to highlight the hypocrisies lurking within Chinese society, from phoney

nationalism to pretentious writers and critics.6 His talent for pushing at political and

cultural boundaries of acceptability is combined with a nonchalant, ironic attitude that

Xu Zhiyuan captured well when he observed – somewhat critically – that “he never

betrays any anxiety or confusion. He is so cool… (hen ku… 很酷...)”7

8 The sense of restlessness that fills much of Han Han’s work is echoed in his own career,

as he has leapt into a number of different roles, ranging from magazine editor to app

designer and film director.8 However, the career move that perhaps most marks him

out as distinctive came earlier, in the form of his turn to rally car racing in 2003, a field

in which he has excelled.9 As Veg points out, Han Han’s many different roles grant him

financial independence, a major factor in his ability to speak out. Crucially, his racing

career creates a source of income that, unlike private publishing, is entirely separate

from the state control of culture and media (Veg 2019: 225).

9 Amidst all of this, and in contrast to his image as a man “outside of the system” (ibid.),

Han Han has regularly appeared in national and international media, be it through

magazine interviews or online paparazzi-style exposés. TIME magazine named him one

of the 100 most influential people in 2010, while he has been nominated as “man of the

year” by Yazhou Zhoukan 亞洲周刊 and Southern Weekly 南方周末 (Veg 2019: 226), as

well as GQ China in 2010.10 He regularly features on the front cover and in photoshoots

for men’s magazines such as GQ and Esquire China.11 While Han Han’s association with

the more highbrow publications has attracted more attention, his presence in lifestyle

magazines such as these is no frivolous detail, as they remind us of his image as

intellectual-meets-pinup and his close ties to pop culture and consumer society.

Moreover, the explicit validation of him as an ideal man brings to the fore the gendered

aspect of the Han Han phenomenon.12

10 In the postsocialist era, when state, artists, and consumers have had to negotiate

between residual socialist institutions and a rapidly growing market economy, the

cultural field is often discussed in terms of ideological uncertainty, ambivalence

towards reform, and a blurring of formerly clear boundaries (Lu 2007: 204-10; Zhang


52

2008; Hockx 2015: 16). Han Han, who embraces marketisation and celebrity culture

whilst simultaneously critiquing the effects of market reform, has been identified by

several scholars as a prism through which we might consider the shifting ways that

consumerism, culture, and dissent interact in this period (Fumian 2009; Yang 2013;

Coderre 2014; Strafella and Berg 2015; Veg 2019). Many of these consider whether Han

Han’s rebellious reputation is tenable when he is also so closely implicated with the

consumerism that has come with market reform. Some, such as Yang, Coderre, and

Veg, argue that his commercial presence still allows for, and even provides greater

support for, his role as public intellectual and critic. Others, such as Strafella and Berg,

depict the Han Han phenomenon as mere “spectacular rebellion” (Strafella and Berg

2015: 364).

11 The majority of these studies have focused on his essays and the provocative political

positions that they have taken over the past 20 years. Few have engaged with his

fictional and cinematic output. Those that do, such as Coderre (2014) and Hockx (2015),

demonstrate how attention to media beyond his blog posts reveals further nuances in

the relationship between rebellion and the cultural market, and the ways that Han Han

himself negotiates between these positions. Han Han’s films and public appearances

bring to vivid life a series of other tropes in the broader cultural landscape, such as the

interplay between global and local experiences, ambivalent responses to market

reform, and, of course, gender.13

12 Whether they focus on his essays or his fiction, no previous study has considered

masculinity in Han Han’s work.14 As I intend to show in the remainder of this article,

the representation and performance of masculinity in the Han Han phenomenon

intertwines with his role as artist and entrepreneur in crucial ways, and cuts across his

image as mainstream celebrity and as rebel. As well as pointing to a residual

conservatism in his writing and actions, Han Han’s masculinity leads to, or even relies

upon, a silencing of female voices. The oppositional space that he appears to occupy

outside of the system is therefore reserved for men alone.

“Hen MAN”: Han Han, consumer culture and the road

13 The picture of Han Han as an adventurous outlaw wedded to the road has been

repeated across several other advertising campaigns. In the mid-2000s, the Japanese

car company Subaru began a series of adverts featuring Han Han, who is also a member

of their rally car team; in one poster his face appears alongside the car, accompanied by

the slogan “I go my own way” (Wo xing wo lu 我行我路). This image is a permanent

banner above Han Han’s own blog. The car used in his second film, Duckweed (Chengfeng

polang 乘風破浪) (2017), is also a Subaru. The campaign is therefore an example of the

porous boundaries between consumer product, Han Han’s racing career, and his works.15 In 2010, a video for Chinese clothing company Vancl featured Han Han walking alone

down a road, wearing a backpack, as his voiceover declared, somewhat ironically, “I’m

nobody’s spokesperson” (Bu shi shei de daiyan 不是誰的代言).16 Volkswagen Polo

continued to draw upon Han Han’s association with the road and his reputation as

maverick creative in a short film made in 2014, which concluded with Han Han striding

down an empty road stretching out into the distance, to the slogan “Create your own

significance” (Chuangzao ni de yiyi 創造你的意義). In 2013, the outdoor clothing

company Camel produced a series of posters of Han Han in various rugged outdoor


53

locations, from a tropical forest with a snake dangling menacingly in the background,

to a snowy mountain range, icicles clinging to his beard. These are accompanied by

Camel’s slogan of “Take on the world” (Dantiao shijie 單挑世界); reports on this

campaign observed that Han Han was looking “very manly” (hen MAN 很MAN).17

14 Again, beyond indicating the sustained tie between Han Han and consumer culture,

these campaigns tell us much about the enduring appeal – and the lucrative potential –

of an adventurous, mobile masculinity. In consistently framing Han Han as rugged

outlaw, these brands tap into Western, now global, symbols of counterculture and

individualist adventure: the rugged lone wanderer, the Indiana Jones-type explorer, the

leather-clad rebel without a cause. The image of Han Han that appears here has become

a vital part of his public persona and, as I will suggest, is woven into the fabric of his

work. The integration between brand and work appears not just through blog banners

and product placement, but through a more generalised spirit that infuses each advert

and Han Han’s own cultural production. The synergy that is created encourages us to

read his work and his public appearances, including his performance and

representations of masculinity, in an intertextual way.18

15 The narrative of the journey has not been plucked out of thin air, for aside from Han

Han’s career as a racer, a countercultural wanderlust runs through virtually all of his

writing and film. He has written several essays about his experiences on the racing

circuit, offering a lively insight into that world. In 2013 he published a volume of essays

based on his driving experience, collected under the title Drifting Here and There (Jiu

zheme piaolai piaoqu 就這麼飄來飄去).19 At least half of the volume is taken up with

photographs of Han Han. Showing him taking a sharp corner on a motorbike,

celebrating on the winner’s podium at the race track, striking a heroic pose on the roof

of his car and more, they continue to make the case for Han Han as a freewheeling

individual with a hint of machismo. Nods to the road continue in the title of his 2002

novel Like A Speeding Youth (Xiang shaonian la feichi 像少年啦飛馳) and his 2010

collection of essays, Setting Out (Chufa 出發); the Taiwanese edition for this latter

collection included an English-language title on the book jacket: On the Road (Han

2010-1).

16 In his fiction, Han Han repeatedly makes a direct connection between the road and a

macho masculinity. This is most clear in His Country (Ta de guo 他的國) (2009) and 1988: I

Want to Talk with the World (1988: Wo xiang he zhege shijie tantan 1988: 我想和這個世界談

談) (2010-2). The former features Zuo Xiaolong 左小龍, a young man who dreams of

driving the circumference of China, and sees his motorbike as “an extension of his

masculine strength” (Han 2009: 2).20 Zuo’s motorbike, we are told, is “like his woman –

he didn’t like the idea of anyone else riding it,” thus swiftly making apparent the

possible links between macho road discourse and the objectification of women (4). 1988

follows the road trip of Lu Ziye 陸子野.21 His own surname a homophone for road (路),

Lu is infected with a restless desire to drive “far from here” (Han 2010-2: 188). The

narrative is filled with lines such as “I dreamed of taking a trip in a fast car with a

beautiful woman beside me, speeding off into the distance” (ibid. 116), and the

observation that “You’ve got to visit a brothel if you want to really know a city. For a

man, that’s the quickest and best way of getting to know a place” (ibid. 220). Mirroring

Han Han’s other engagements with the road, the novel therefore recalls – at least

initially – a Dean Moriarty-esque, macho mobility.


54

17 The Han Han phenomenon is therefore laced with a celebration of the road as a site of

nonconformity and adventure. The formula appears through the plotlines of his novels

but is also supported through slogans, visual hints, and homages dotted through

corporate sponsorship and his own marketing. Much of the iconography appears a

deliberate tribute to American cultural traditions, an indicator of the cultural flows

that continue alongside globalisation. It would be a mistake, however, to read the

phenomenon merely as a declaration of some form of cosmopolitanism, or simply aping

Western values and role models. The celebration of the road as a site of excitement and

self-discovery also chimes with changing experiences of travel within China, as well as

with longstanding local archetypes of mobile men.

Chinese journeys

18 Han Han’s personal experience and interests only partially explain the appeal of road

discourse for Han Han and the Chinese public. It has become commonplace to observe

that over the past four decades China has become a country of migrant workers,

business travellers, overseas students, and tourists; it is a nation that travels. Much of

this movement is increasingly undertaken by car. As Coderre argues, Han Han’s link to

the road is partly a reflection of the shift towards automobility that China has

undergone since the 1990s (Coderre 2014: 16).22 The country has undertaken a

monumental highway-building project, creating a network that aims to link the largest

cities across the country. Standing at 11,605 km in 2000, by 2014 the network measured

104,438 km, having overtaken the United States in 2012.23 Private car ownership,

virtually unheard of before the 1980s, has increased from 820,000 registered in 1990 to

35.34 million in 2007 (Coderre 2014: 16). For those social classes that can afford it, travel

for leisure has increased phenomenally, implicated with discourses of modernity and

an exploration of concepts of freedom and personal development (Nyíri 2006). The

flipside of the discursive coin to migrant workers dogged by the derogatory label of

mangliu (盲流, blind drifting), the concept of travel “off the beaten track” has become a

way of finding adventure and discovering oneself, creating a collection of seductive and

somewhat amorphous ideas that Han Han’s campaigns tap into (Vasantkumar 2014;

Chen and Weiler 2014).

19 Before these vast changes in infrastructure, and a growing appetite for “modern”

autonomous travel, the journey has long been a significant trope in Chinese cultural

production (Lee 1985; Cai 2004: 127-54; Hunt 2016). Depictions of travel are an effective

means of surveying the nation in the contemporary age, exploring China’s historical

change, its developing economic might, and its engagement with other parts of the

globe.24 Automobility is a particularly evocative mode of transport in a time of rapidly

growing consumer power and fast-paced moral shifts that have prompted pressing

questions about freedom and autonomy (Featherstone, Urry, and Thrift 2005).

20 At this juncture, we might remind ourselves that mobilities studies scholars have

demonstrated the gendered nature of travel and travel discourse throughout history,

including road movies and road novels (Cresswell and Uteng 2012). Susan Hanson

summarises this as a dualism that “equates women and femininity with the home, the

private, with domestic spaces and restricted movement.” Meanwhile, men are equated

with “the not-home, the public… and expansive movement” that brings “excitement,

challenges, new experiences, encounters with the unknown” (2010: 9).


55

21 Equally, as has been well documented, within China travel has also historically been

associated with masculinity, part of the outer wai (外) that was reserved for men while

women were either literally or discursively consigned to the inner nei (內). Within this

framework, travel is not only reserved for men, but is a means of strengthening

masculinity, as was the case for male literati sojourners, whose travel allowed them to

establish homosocial bonds (Mann 2000; Huang 2007).

22 In the depiction of Han Han as manly and mobile, then, we are not just subject to

echoes of Western-inspired cowboys but also more locally-sourced male sojourners.

Framed as a writer-turned-wanderer, he appears as a postsocialist member of the

travelling literati, perhaps. More obvious are the references to the youxia 遊俠 or

knight-errant, or the haohan 好漢 or “good fellow.” Emerging as an archetype of

manliness in the popular culture of the Ming dynasty, most famously in Water Margin

(Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), haohan were physically strong and emotionally restrained,

prizing homosocial bonds above all else (Jenner 1993; Boretz 2010). Youxia are also

associated with male friendship, honour, and loyalty (Vitiello 2000; Zheng 2015).

Crucially, such cultural ideals are closely associated with movement and marginality

and especially the jianghu 江湖, the world on the margins populated by roving outcasts

and outlaws. In turning their back on the mainstream and prioritising homosocial

relationships to those with the state, residents of the jianghu carry with them the hint

(or more) of subversion. Masculinities in the Han Han phenomenon are therefore

another example of how the cultural field in the postsocialist era is marked by

hybridity and simultaneous “discontinuity and continuity” (Zhang 2008: 10). The roving

men that appear in the Han Han phenomenon are assembled out of a range of global

and local cultural resources as well as Han Han’s personal experiences of the road. They

reflect the way that globalisation and global cultural flows help create a set of

coordinates for “doing man,” but also, and crucially, they demonstrate the tenacity of

local masculine ideals.

23 The next section will consider the link between mobility and masculinity in more detail

through a discussion of The Continent, which picks up the discourse of the road again.

Once the narrative is under Han Han’s more direct control, journeys and mobile

masculinity are presented as rather more complex subjects than we see in his

advertising campaigns. However, the resulting depictions of travel and of masculinity

are remarkably similar to the images we have seen celebrated in the advertisements. As

above, mobile men are developed out of global and local cultural archetypes; and these

depictions cut across, and complicate, the overlaid messages of adventure and

rebellion.

The Continent

24 Han Han’s directing and screenwriting debut earned over 100 million USD at the box

office and mixed reviews (Cai 2017).25 Just as Han Han’s writing reveals an ambivalent

assessment of the results of postsocialist market reform, rejecting any suggestion of

idealism, he approaches the trope of the journey here with ambivalence, both

celebrating the open road and deflating the heroic ideals that might be associated with

it. This approach, in fact, aligns itself with that of the road movie genre, a culturally

ambiguous event shot through with “forlorn uncertainty” even as it celebrates the joy

of movement (Laderman 2002: 19, 50). As we will see, The Continent keeps to many other


56

tropes associated with the road movie genre, including the journey as revealing the

state of the nation and the self. The film also recreates the road movie’s ambiguous

relationship with consumerism and the market, resulting in narratives that are part

rebellion and part conservatism. Moreover, in building on a link between the road and

manliness, Han Han follows the tendency for the road movie genre “to presuppose a

focus on masculinity” (ibid.: 21).

25 The story follows the journey of three men: Hu Sheng 胡生, Ma Haohan 馬浩漢, and

Jiang He 江河. These close friends live on an island at the easternmost point of the

country, in a depressed hometown that is about to be demolished. When Jiang He, a

teacher and an aspiring novelist, is relocated to a school in the westernmost part of

China, the three of them decide to take a road trip to drop him off. The car they drive

provides us with another indication of the permeable boundary between Han Han’s

artistic work and his commercial responsibilities: it is a Volkswagen Polo Cross, its logo

prominent throughout the film.26 The journey across the length of the country prompts

a critical view of the nation, which appears to be filled with gangsters and con artists,

grimy motels and pool halls. The individuals they meet along the way are largely

cynical and lonely, battered by the maelstrom of market reform.

26 The three men are highly flawed, even buffoonish, and at first sight they appear to

epitomise Chinese masculinity in crisis. Hu Sheng is known as the village idiot, so slow

that he is accidentally left behind. Ma Haohan is an impetuous, pompous figure, given

to grandiloquent speeches and ambitious plans that are swiftly deflated into nothing.

Jiang He is a quiet man whose naïve belief in the goodness of others brings disaster on

the travellers several times throughout their journey. Their trip is a series of misturns,

failed hook-ups, breakdowns, and thefts, and ends with a particularly hurtful argument

that causes Ma and Jiang to part ways. It is therefore reasonable that commentators

have presented the film as a pessimistic portrait of contemporary China (Cai 2017).

27 However, the cynicism and disillusionment that run through this film are belied by the

way that the journey itself is shown on screen. The Volkswagen glides through a

variety of visually stunning landscapes across the Zhoushan islands, Shanghai, Inner

Mongolia, and Sichuan. As the camera lovingly pans over the car’s body, and as we

watch it send piles of autumnal leaves swirling into the air, speed across a bridge over a

spectacular gorge, or hug the corners of a road winding through a pine forest, it as if

we are viewing a rhapsody on (or commercial for?) the aesthetics of the automobile and

the open road. More than a celebration of the beauty of natural landscape (or an

extended sales pitch for the Volkswagen), the montages become a somewhat

unexpected showcase of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) vast highway projects

and engineering prowess. The film therefore provides further support for Coderre’s

suggestion that Han Han’s celebration of automobility, no matter how critical in intent,

is nonetheless “playing into the hands of a crucial part of the postsocialist market

economy” (Coderre 2014: 19).

28 Moreover, the journey prompts a process of introspection and self-discovery that

ultimately leads to a form of redemption, particularly in the case of Jiang He. At the

film’s conclusion, he returns to his hometown. He has published a novel based on their

road trip, later adapted into a television series. It has become so successful that the

town has finally become a thriving tourism centre, prompting a renaissance on the

island and saving their hometown from destruction. It is telling that Jiang’s

achievements are established through overwhelming commercial profit as well as


57

literary prowess, reflecting Han Han’s own career path and seeming to reinforce a

major message of the postsocialist literary field (Kong 2005): that success is measured

in money made.27 In such a way, mobility initially brings about unsteadiness and

anxiety, prompting a critical survey of the nation and the masculine self, but ends in

resolution through artistic achievement and wealth.

29 It is clear that the resolution and reward that the road brings are only available to men.

Throughout the film, the journey is tightly linked to masculinity. As is the case with his

novels, and, following a trope that runs through Chinese discursive tradition and road

movies, travel in the film is essentially a male pursuit. Women act either as objects to

be visited and moved on from, such as Zhou Mo 週沫 and Liu Yingying 劉鶯鶯, or as

docile passengers, as is the case with Su Mi 蘇米, whom Jiang tries (and initially fails) to

rescue from a gang leader. Su Mi’s line, coolly delivered to Jiang, says it all: “I would tell

you all my stories if I had the opportunity. Unfortunately, I have none.” There is simply

no space for women’s stories in this film, or for their character development. Thus, for

all Han Han’s iconoclastic reputation, the film ultimately reinforces the familiar,

restrictive idea of masculinity as equated with action and travel, and femininity with

domestic passivity.

30 Equally, while the narrative initially appears to show male friendships breaking down,

several moments reinforce, rather than deflate, the romance of homosocial ties. These

are presented to us in a set of scenes of male bonding recognisable to anyone familiar

with the buddy or road movie genre: the friends sit in comradely (and manly) silence,

for example, as they gaze out over the ocean; they share their most secret dreams and

thoughts by an open campfire in the western deserts; they relieve themselves together

by the side of the road in what we might think of as an act of homosocial urination.

This last is a particularly clear example of the ways in which global iconography of

renegade, travelling masculinity have circulated into Chinese cinema, paralleling as it

does a famous scene in Easy Rider (1969), in which three men also line up along the side

of the road, and pee into a similarly lovely, lonely landscape. A visual echo such as this

reminds us that, as we saw in the earlier advertising campaigns, The Continent is

drawing on what is now a globally ingrained sense of countercultural, mobile

masculinity.28

31 At the same time, the journey also contains clear nods to a more local understanding of

the link between mobility and masculinity. The name Haohan, for example, is an

obvious near-homonym for the roving haohan. Continuing this theme, Jiang He’s name

is close in sound and semantics to jianghu; the point is pressed home when Zhou Mo

calls him “Jiang Hu” in error. Jiang also calls to mind another archetype of Chinese

masculinity: the caizi 才子, or talented scholar. This figure, who rose to prominence

between the Yuan and Qing dynasties, continues today as an attractive male role model

(Louie 2002; Song 2004; Hird 2017). Imbued as he was with wen qualities, the caizi had

immense literary talent, something that Jiang proves in producing a phenomenally

successful novel. The caizi was depicted as handsome but delicate (often described as

“fragile” or even “effeminate”), tallying with Jiang’s sensitive air, bookish glasses, and

soft voice. Finally, and crucially, the caizi held great sexual appeal that sprang from his

literary prowess (Louie 2002; Song 2004). It is significant, therefore, that in the final

frames of The Continent, Jiang returns home as a successful author with a woman – Su

Mi. In the traditional formula of the caizi, his wen or literary talent has resulted in

female adoration and material success.


58

32 Jiang therefore appears initially as an example of marginalised masculinity (Connell

2005): a man who lacks power and authority as a result of his lower socioeconomic

position (and his ambivalent responses to market reform and its consequences). In an

attempt to compensate for this, he engages in behaviour associated with hegemonic

masculinity; here, he combines the roving, marginalised working-class figure of the

haohan with the more elite, literary caizi. Jiang He therefore appears as a synthesis of

both wen and wu, the ultimate in successful masculinity (Louie 2002: 15).

33 Despite his identity as a man set apart from the centre, Jiang therefore still manages to

benefit from “the patriarchal dividend,” which is “the advantage men in general gain

from the overall subordination of women” (Connell 2005: 79). The narrative echoes

what Xueping Zhong (2000) identified in 1980s fiction: the “besieged” male, who is

filled with anxiety over his perceived marginalisation in society and China’s national

and cultural weakness. In response, he displays a strong desire to discover a

heteronormative, patriarchal male identity. Similarly, although The Continent appears

at first to delve into flaws of contemporary Chinese men, Han Han is careful to

demonstrate that Jiang is still able to conform to the kind of masculinity that is granted

voice and authority. It is in the relative fates of Jiang He and Su Mi, then, that the wider

implications of representing mobile masculinities in the Han Han phenomenon become

clearest. If marginal men like Jiang compensate for their marginality through

adherence to longstanding conservative performances of masculinity, then these

performances depend on, and replicate, ideals of femininity as docile and silent. Su Mi,

already missing out on the adventure and redemption that has come with the journey,

becomes little more than a body upon which Jiang finally establishes his ideal

manliness.

34 Devin Orgeron (2009) argues that road movies are in fact an expression of a yearning

for stability, and a desire to return home. There are homecomings in abundance in The

Continent: in a literal sense, as Hu Sheng and Jiang He return to their island; and, more

importantly, in the sense of a return to an ideal masculinity, one that was sadly lacking

at the beginning. The road is therefore not just a masculine space, but one that helps

(re)construct a true and dominant masculinity in the face of crisis. There is also a

return in the sense that the mobile men in Han Han’s film are visual echoes of his own

written work and his carefully cultivated public image. The restless misfits in The

Continent are spiritual brothers of Han Han’s Lu Ziye in 1988 or Zuo Xiaolong from His

Country, and exude the same freewheeling energy as Han Han the rally car racer and

essayist. They repeat the same mantras as the Vancl-clad, Subaru-driving Han Han and

reveal the same secret: that one can find oneself and one’s masculine self-worth on the

road.

35 I return to the topic of Han Han’s close involvement with other brands not to suggest

that he is somehow inauthentic or less culturally significant. It is to highlight, firstly,

that this mode of masculinity – mobile, adventurous, and supposedly counter-cultural –

has a widespread and tenacious appeal. Within masculinities studies, scholars have

called for paying renewed attention to “global masculinities” (Connell 1998). Within

Chinese masculinities studies, there has been a flurry of recent scholarship considering

the transnational Chinese man, although these have tended to focus on middle-class

fathers and businessmen (Louie 2014; Song and Hird 2018). The performance of

manhood that appears in the Han Han phenomenon, with its recollection of a globally-


59

recognised, leather-clad adventurer, combined with echoes of youxia and haohan,

demonstrates that other types of masculinity also have transnational appeal.

36 Han Han’s association with other brands also illustrates that in considering Chinese

celebrity it is increasingly difficult to isolate their works from their commercial

presence. As others have argued, Han Han is a pertinent example of how consumption

and the cultural market intertwine with cultural production. More than this, he also

indicates how market forces contribute to the construction and our reception of ideals

of masculinity as they move across the globe and across film, text, and advertising. If

his preoccupation is with men who are mobile, the Han Han phenomenon also provides

us with a compelling example of how an image of masculinity can move across different

media, attached to the coattails of a highly mobile artist, circulating rapidly across

devices and platforms.

Conclusion

37 Whether we consider his commercial presence or his creative work, the Han Han

phenomenon repeatedly produces a celebratory picture of the mobile man who is a

bold maverick, engaging in autonomous travel that leads to agency, creativity, and

material reward.

38 The phenomenon therefore provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the multiple

ways that mobility and masculinity link together in cultural imagination. First, and

most obviously, in keeping with the conventions of road movies across the world, and

with discursive traditions within China, the road tends to be reserved for men, and the

making of men. Only men travel, and as they travel they discover their “true”

masculinity. This leads, happily enough, to their reaping the patriarchal dividend and a

spiritual return home. Secondly, masculinity is mobile in the sense of moving concepts

of men: models and images of men travel to us across time and across space, be it from

the ancient jianghu or late twentieth century America. Thirdly, the Han Han

phenomenon provides us with an example of a masculinity that moves across different

media, with a highly mobile artist, circulating from Internet banner to online video to

big-screen cinema, and reinforcing itself as it does so. It is an irony, then, that the

actual image of masculinity that he presents us with remains somewhat unchanging.

39 What, then, is the appeal of this mobile man for the Han Han phenomenon and

postsocialist cultural production? It is in part a product of Han Han’s idiosyncratic

career path as writer and filmmaker meets racer, and the shifting experiences of travel

and automobility in post-reform China. But the key to the image of maverick mobility is

that, for all its outlaw trappings, it produces a form of masculinity that is at its heart

deeply conformist. As they turn their backs on the mainstream, whether this means

wandering the metaphorical jianghu or driving along lonely highways, both Han Han

and his characters cling to hegemonic masculinity and the benefits it confers on those

who can display it. The mobile men in the Han Han phenomenon find agency, fraternal

bonding, creative achievement, and sexual adventure as they move, and they are

therefore able to simultaneously occupy positions of rebel and of authoritative, “real”

man.

40 A focus on Han Han provides valuable insights for masculinities studies; and a focus on

masculinity adds a new angle to our conversations about the Han Han phenomenon and

cultural production in postsocialist China. In the first instance, the phenomenon is an


60

effective demonstration of two of the major strands of Chinese masculinities studies at

work: in the call-backs to films such as Easy Rider, manhood appears as an example of

“globalization [inflecting] the configurations of masculinities (…) with transnational

dimensions” (Hird and Song 2018: 1). At the same time, references to longstanding

archetypes such as the haohan and the caizi reveal the continuing influence of

traditional modes of masculinity and that “inside the new clothing of Chinese man

today, we can still find the historical Chinese man” (Louie 2016: 4). Moreover, Han Han

and his notably coherent representation of masculinity serve as a reminder of the

importance of considering consumer culture, celebrity, and branding opportunities.

Commercial ties reinforce, help circulate, or even drive certain elements of Han Han’s

work, including his construction of gender.

41 In the second instance, by focusing on masculinity in the Han Han phenomenon, we are

provided with a reminder – should we ever need one – of the “usefulness” of gender in

the study of postsocialist China (Scott 1986; Hershatter and Zheng 2008). Discussions of

Han Han tend to revolve around either his status as deviant genius (Yang 2013: log) or

sell-out. A gendered lens contributes to this discussion by demonstrating that both his

participation in the cultural market and his cultural rebellion are coloured by his

construction of masculinity. The mobile, rebellious masculinity that Han Han helps

build is not significant simply because of what it tells us about men in postsocialist

cultural production; it also demonstrates that the construction of masculinities such as

these is a project in maintaining patriarchal hierarchies. The rebel outlier images that

Han Han develops are inconsistent with the conservative masculinity that they

eventually return to, revealing that his cultural rebellion is curtailed not only by his

commercial interests but also by his gender performance. But beyond this, the mobile

masculinities are built upon, and reinforce, representations of women as passive and

voiceless objects. The Han Han phenomenon gives us stories of men who, as the song

goes, “were not born to follow,” but they lead us ultimately to conservative

performances of masculinity and women’s silence; for all Han Han’s iconoclastic

reputation, his narratives of movement involve a few steps back.

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NOTES

1. “韓寒活出敢性雀巢咖啡廣告” (Han Han huochu ganxing Quechao kafei guanggao, Han Han

lives out his boldness in a Nescafé coffee advertisement), Youku, 22 November 2011 https://

v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzI0ODA4MDQ4.html (accessed 21 May 2019).

2. Simon Elegant, “Han Han: China’s Literary Bad Boy,” Time, 2 November 2009, http://

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931619,00.html, (accessed 21 May 2019).

3. Barmé coined the term “bankable dissent” to refer to the “street cred” and market value that

dissident writers and artists accrue regardless of their level of artistic prowess. Here any outright

proclamations of resistance against state or authority have been entirely bypassed.

4. I am grateful to Professor Rebecca Karl for pointing out the connection between this image and

the Marlboro advertising campaigns.

5. The sense of a crisis is neither new nor reserved for Chinese masculinity but is regularly

declared around the world (Louie 2015: 4-8). For a discussion of the problematic nature of the

concept of a “masculinity in crisis” see Connell (2005: 85); Whitehead (2002).

6. For detailed analyses of the most provocative essays, see Fumian (2009), Hockx (2015: 94-107),

Strafella and Berg (2015), and Veg (2019: 225-234).

7. Xu Zhiyuan 許知遠, “庸眾的勝利” (Yongzhong de shengli, The victory of the masses), http://

book.ifeng.com/culture/1/detail_2010_05/11/1504069_0.shtml (accessed 1 st November 2019).

Cited in Veg (2019: 237).

8. See Hockx (2015: 101-05) for details of the literary magazine Party (Duchuangtuan 獨創團) and

its demise. See Hockx (2015) and Wen and Bi (2015) for a discussion of the app ONE (yige 一個)

which was launched in 2012. In terms of film, besides The Continent, Duckweed earned over 1

billion RMB at the box office in 2017; Pegasus earned 1.78 billion RMB. Data from Zhongguo

piaofang, http://www.cbooo.cn/ (accessed on 7 November 2019).

9. An account of Han Han’s racing career is provided in Tim Struby, “China’s Literary Bad Boy Is

the Most Interesting Race-Car Driver in the World,” New York Magazine, 13 December 2016, http://

nymag.com/speed/2016/12/han-han-is-the-most-interesting-race-car-driver-in-the-world.html

(accessed 1st November 2019).

10. “年度媒體人: 韓寒. 我們要去更深處” (Niandu meiti ren: Han Han. Women yao qu geng

shenchu, Media man of the year: Han Han: We have to go deeper), GQ China, 7 September 2011,

https://www.gq.com.cn/celebrity/news_134226c037500269-2.html (accessed on 1 st November

2019).

11. Han Han featured on the cover of Esquire China in 2006, 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2014.


65

https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzI0ODA4MDQ4.html




http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931619,00.html




http://book.ifeng.com/culture/1/detail_2010_05/11/1504069_0.shtml




http://www.cbooo.cn/

http://www.cbooo.cn/

http://nymag.com/speed/2016/12/han-han-is-the-most-interesting-race-car-driver-in-the-world.html




https://www.gq.com.cn/celebrity/news_134226c037500269-2.html

https://www.gq.com.cn/celebrity/news_134226c037500269-2.html

12. A thorough detailing of Han Han’s physical appearance is a trope even in the loftier

publications. See Osnos’s paragraph-long description of Han Han’s “soft cheekbones and

glittering black eyes,” David Pilling’s reference to his “mop of hair,” leather jacket and “boyish

disarming grin,” or Ian Buruma’s account of his “shaggy-haired looks…and cool sassiness.” Evan

Osnos, “The Han Dynasty,” The New Yorker, 27 June 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/

magazine/2011/07/04/the-han-dynasty (accessed 21 May 2019); Pilling, “Lunch with the FT: Han

Han,” Financial Times, 21 April 2012, https://www.ft.com/content/3be0e84e-8896-11e1-

a727-00144feab49a (accessed on 1st November 2019); Ian Buruma, “Essays by Han Han, the

Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar,” The New York Times, 4 September 2016 https://

www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/books/review/han-han-problem-with-me.html (accessed on

1st November 2019).

13. This is contrary to Wasserstrom’s statement that, for China-watchers, it is only Han Han’s

essays that “matter.” Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Make Way for Han Han,” Words without Borders, 15

November 2012, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/make-way-for-han-

han (accessed on 1st November 2019). Cited in Hockx 2015.

14. Few studies have considered gender in Han Han’s work overall. For an exception, see Jiang

2017, who provides an analysis of female marginalisation in Duckweed. Beyond academia, Han

Han’s attitude towards women has begun to attract attention. For example, see Xie Bingqiang 謝

秉強 “除了周國平還有那些震驚國人的‘直男癌’言論” (Chule Zhou Guoping, haiyou na xie

zhenjing guoren de ‘zhinan’ai’ yanlun, Apart from Zhou Guoping, what other ‘straight male

cancer’ arguments have stunned the nation?), Pengpai xinwen, 14 January 2015, http://

www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1294158 (accessed on 21 May 2019).

A summary of the latest controversy to surround Han Han is provided in Pamela Hunt, “Why Are

China’s ‘Real Men’ All Second-Rate Stereotypes?,” Sixth Tone, 23 October 2017, https://

www.sixthtone.com/news/1001037/why-are-chinas-men-all-second-rate-stereotypes%3F

(accessed on 21 May 2019).

15. For his detractors, it is an example of why Han Han will never be a serious social critic. See

Lydia Liu’s comments in Evan Osnos, “The Han Dynasty,” The New Yorker, 27 June 2011, https://

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/04/the-han-dynasty (accessed 21 May 2019).

16. “韓寒‘我是凡客’PS視頻火熱出爐” (Han Han “Wo shi fanke” PS shipin huore chulu, Han Han

“I am Vancl” Brand New Video), TheChinaToday, 2 November 2010, https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=FMmxiDuMYHM (accessed on 21 May 2019). The Vancl campaign also included posters

of Han Han, which went viral online and prompted a series of memes.

17. “韓寒與駱駝非凡戶外世界” (Han Han yu Luotuo: feifan huwai shijie, Han Han and Camel:

Special outdoor world), Xinlang caijing, 15 January 2013, http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/

20130115/092514288961.shtml (accessed on 21 May 2019).

18. The idea of reading famous figures intertextually chimes with celebrity studies outside of

China. See Moran (2000), DeCordova (1999), and Boyle (2010).

19. Many of these essays are collected in Han (2016).

20. To complete the picture of rugged machismo clinging to phallic objects, this is followed by

the observation that “if the ban on guns were lifted, he’d have got one of those, because they too

were an extension of power” (2009: 2).

21. See Coderre (2014) for a thorough analysis of the novel in terms of the road novel genre.

22. Seiler defines automobility as “the interlocking set of economic, social, philosophical, legal,

political and aesthetic structures and psychological dispositions that facilitates automobile use

on a grand scale” (Seiler 2012: 358).

23. 國家統計局 (Guojia tongjiju, National Bureau of Statistics), www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/

(accessed on 21 May 2019). See also Bosker, Deichmann, and Roberts (2018).

24. See also the metaphors of mobility that Chinese leaders have employed as they steer the

country through reform, including more recently Xi Jinping’s call at Davos 2017 for nations to


66

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/04/the-han-dynasty




https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/books/review/han-han-problem-with-me.html




https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/make-way-for-han-han




http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1294158




https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001037/why-are-chinas-men-all-second-rate-stereotypes%3F








https://www.youtube.com/

https://www.youtube.com/

http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/20130115/092514288961.shtml




http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/

http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/

join China in the “economic train of success,” or his 2019 declaration that China was facing a

“new Long March.”

25. See Cai 2017 and Chen 2015 for more positive appraisals. For a more negative take, see

Clarence Tsui, “‘The Continent’ (‘Hou Hui Wu Qi’): film review,” Hollywood Reporter, 28 July 2014,

www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/continent-hou-hui-wu-Qi-721872 (accessed on 21 May

2019).

26. An advertising campaign for the car at the time included the title of the film and images of

the starring actors.

27. The implicit rejection of the superiority of a mythical “pure” literature untainted by the

market mirrors Han Han’s famous online spat with Bai Ye in 2006, discussed in detail by Fumian

2009.

28. There are numerous other examples of non-Chinese pop culture in the film, for example the

soundtrack, which features several international hits, including Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the

World” and Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera.” The film opens to “Dongji Island’s Song” (Dongji dao de ge

東極島的歌), a rewriting of “On Kazakhstan,” the fictitious national anthem in Sacha Baron

Cohen’s 2006 film Borat.

ABSTRACTS

Han Han has attracted a significant amount of popular and scholarly attention since he rose to

fame in 1999. While the majority of commentators have concentrated on his ambiguous position

as rebel-meets-entrepreneur, this article considers the way in which masculinity is performed

and constructed in the Han Han phenomenon. It discusses Han Han’s commercial appearances

before turning to his debut film The Continent (2014). The article points to the recurring figure

of the adventurous mobile man, demonstrating that this celebration of masculinity on the move

is the result of global cultural influences, local traditions of manhood, and new market forces.

Founded as it is on a conservative understanding of gender and mobility, Han Han’s performance

and construction of masculinity cuts into his reputation as a “deviant genius,” demonstrating

further ways in which his cultural rebellion is limited. In particular, this article highlights the

ways in which his masculinity is constructed at the expense of women and non-hegemonic men.

INDEX

Keywords: masculinity, mobility, Han Han, road movies, rebellion, celebrity, postsocialist

cinema

AUTHOR

PAMELA HUNT

Pamela Hunt is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and

Junior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her research focuses on representations of

masculinity and mobility in contemporary Chinese literature and film. Oxford China Centre,


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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/continent-hou-hui-wu-Qi-721872

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/continent-hou-hui-wu-Qi-721872

Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Rd, Oxford OX2 6LU, United

Kingdom.pamela.hunt[at]orinst.ox.ac.uk


68


Visual Encounters in GlobalShanghai. On the Desirability ofBodies in a Coworking SpaceAurélia M. Ishitsuka

EDITOR'S NOTE

Manuscript received on 1st August 2019. Accepted on 4 March 2020.

Introduction

創新立異與獨具設計感的聯合辦公空間

無論是個人和公司都能在此交流,

“合坐”一張桌

“合作”一個項

“合做”一個夢想

Our innovative and beautiful workspaces are home to a diverse community of companies

and individuals who

INTERACT

COLLABORATE

AND DO BUSINESS WITH ONE ANOTHER

1 Founded by a white South African entrepreneur with his Hong Kongese architect wife,

the Hub is a coworking space provider that has been operating in Shanghai since late

2015.1 In April 2018, at the time of its acquisition by an American giant among the

shared office providers, it already had 24 locations across Asia – 15 in Shanghai alone,

with the others in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Vietnam – and more than 10,000 members.2


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As indicated by the promotional material quoted above, the Hub’s marketing strategy is

to emphasise the collaborative dimension of the coworking experience: it attracts free-

lancers, start‑ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and branches of multinational

corporations not only by promising reduced costs, office service, flexibility, and a “fun”

working environment, but also, and more importantly, by promoting itself as a

platform that facilitates social interactions.3 In other words, it claims to be, besides an

office space, a cross-border community.

2 While the Hub’s sales pitch of being more than a place where people “work alone,

together” (Spinuzzi 2012) should not be taken at face value, it has, at least for some of

its patrons, become tangible: the Hub occupies a central position in the everyday lives

of foreign and Chinese young mobile professionals in Shanghai. As such, it can be

counted among the emerging globalised local communities that have appeared with the

rise of Shanghai as a global city (Chen 2009), a process that has prompted the question

of to whom the city really belongs (Sassen 2009: 20). The issue of urban belonging is

addressed here by way of an examination of the socio‑spatial logics of inclusion and

exclusion in the Hub. This approach follows recent warnings by scholars of

globalisation against understating the relevance of emplacement and embodiment in

the study of transnational subjects (Conradson and Latham 2005; Dunn 2010; Niekrenz,

Witte, and Albrecht 2016). Hence, my study takes the body as its primary scale of

analysis, leading to the following reformulation of the question of belonging: what

kinds of bodies and arrangements of bodies are desirable in the Hub?

3 Bodies appear in this study as they become legible through visual encounters. Here, I

conceive of visual encounters in three ways. First, this notion refers to what Sara

Ahmed calls the visual economy of recognition, which is the process by which, during

social contacts, individuals see the difference between familiar and strange others. In

this perspective, encounters are face-to-face interactions that reopen past encounters;

as individuals read others’ bodies along gender, racial, and class histories, they

recognise those who belong and those who are out of place (Ahmed 2001). I frame this

distinction in terms of desirable and undesirable bodies, a terminology that conveys

the importance of self-image and appearance in a coworking environment imbued with

the new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello [1999] 2011). Second, I also treat

visual encounters in the sense of depicted encounters, since the object of analysis is not

only social interactions in the physical space, but also their representation in the

various media used in the Hub: a mobile app, silent video displays, and promotional

posters. Finally, this expression reflects the attention accorded by the study to how

bodies gaze and are exposed to view in the coworking space.

4 As a methodological choice, the visual approach assumes that the analysis cannot be

disentangled from the position of the ethnographer on site. The standpoint of this

study is that of an Asian-French female researcher in her late twenties who spent

several days a week in the Hub for a total of ten months, spread out over a period of

two years (2017‑2019). I was first introduced to the coworking space by a Chinese male

friend working in a European start-up based at the Hub’s location in the commercial

area of Xintiandi. In the spring of 2017, my friend would regularly let me into the space,

where I would work alongside him and his colleagues. Upon returning to Shanghai the

following year, I subscribed as a member to get access to multiple Hub locations before

switching, for the final phase of my fieldwork, to a pay‑per‑hour plan. Early on I built

close connections with the team around my initial informant and then expanded the


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investigation by participating in events and interacting with young professionals in the

Hub, with whom I conducted interviews on an ongoing basis. Although I presented

myself as an academic researcher of young professionals, activities such as writing my

fieldnotes on a laptop, taking part in video conferences with colleagues abroad, and

joining lunches and events made me indistinguishable from other members of the

community.

5 Through a visual ethnography of bodily encounters, I first explore the dilemma faced

by a company that promises its members the experience of a class-exclusive

community while depending on unskilled labour to maintain its facilities. I then turn to

the ways in which the coworking space encourages, for its patrons, a blurring of the

lines between work and play, professional and intimate. On the basis of this analysis of

spatial organisation and social norms of interaction, I propose that what is at stake in

the visual management of bodies is not only the reproduction of social differentiation

but also the management of desire.

In and out of sight: The visual paradox of undesirablebodies

Keeping them out: The community watch and the stranger

6 In 2005, Brad Neuberg, an employee of a start-up in San Francisco who has been

credited with coming up with the idea of the coworking space, was unhappy with the

lack of social ties between patrons of the rent-an-office space where he was working: “I

couldn’t figure out how to have freedom and community at the same time.”4 He was

confronting an issue that “gives philosophers a headache with no known cure”

(Bauman 2001: 20), and if his solution to reconciling the two needs had no immediate

impact in the field of philosophy, it did become a successful business model across the

world. Before long it had spread from the West Coast of the United States to China’s

east coast (Wang and Loo 2017). While some local brands in Shanghai focus solely on

coworking as a resource sharing space (Wu 2018), the Hub is loyal to Neuberg’s initial

aspiration: it presents itself as a “community” (社區 shequ) of “members” (會員

huiyuan), terms that emphasise the collective dimension and obscure the commercial

contract on which the relationship between the Hub and its clients is based.

7 This vocabulary echoes a physical structure that is carefully designed to provide a

sense of community. Most of the surface is taken up by a common area, and larger

firms that require separation are placed in see-through offices enclosed by glass walls

that do not break the impression of an entirely open space. The connecting node of the

common area is a large space with tables, sofas, chairs, and a bar that offers

complimentary coffee, tea, soda, and beer (see Figure 1). In the Hub’s terminology, this

is called the “living room” (客廳 keting), an analogy with the residential home that

matches the ambition to abolish the borders between work and private life.

8 The coworking space thus perfects a strategy that employers have long pursued: to

provide a homelike working environment that would reduce stress and increase

productivity (Hochschild [1997] 2001). To foster everyday interactions, the Hub

encourages its members not only to work, in the strict sense of the term, but also to

eat, drink, and socialise, notably by engaging in daily events organised by the

“community team” (社區團隊shequ tuandui).


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9 This refers to the portion of the staff responsible for managing memberships, and

whose main role is, to borrow the Hub’s own expression, “to bring people together.”

Figure 1. The Hub’s living room. Members are working on their laptops, holding meetings, andconversing by the coffee maker

By the sink behind the counter, a cleaning lady can be seen washing cups

Credit: photo courtesy of the author

10 Access to the Hub, a for-profit company first and foremost, is subject to payment. Doors

with electronic locks delimit the physical boundaries of the space: from the outside,

clients have to swipe their member cards or use the app on their phone to unlock them,

while from the inside, pushing a button suffices. For those who do not wish to sign a

monthly membership contract (starting at 1,800 RMB), the Hub eventually introduced

an option to “pay-as-you-go” (15 RMB/hour), which enables anyone to scan on arrival a

barcode that will unlock the door, allowing admittance to the space under a minute-

based payment scheme. This access method, which gives members the freedom of

joining and leaving as they please, reveals that the Hub exhibits core elements of an

aesthetic community whose social bonds, “like the attractions on offer in theme

parks (…) are to be experienced on the spot,” rather than those of a community built

around “ethical responsibilities” and “long-term commitments” (Bauman 2001: 71-2).

In this regard, one can say that the Hub sells the experience of a community. Ideally,

this experience should be available anywhere, which drives the multiplication of the

Hub locations around the world. It shouldn’t be, however, within anyone’s reach: the

price of entry works as a selective mechanism that prevents poor bodies from coming

in. In this way, the Hub is a class-exclusive space that resembles Shanghai’s most

expensive leisure venues (Farrer 2009).

11 The Hub’s concern with controlling the bodies entering and exiting the space derives

from the need to make members pay for using the facilities as much as from the

necessity to maintain its image as a high‑end working environment. In practice,

however, control is rendered difficult due to the contradiction in the branding of the

Hub as a global nexus that connects flows of information, money, and bodies. The doors

to the space are constantly being opened during regular office hours by members who

leave the premises temporarily to smoke, shop in the next‑door mall, eat outside, or


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meet clients. Moreover, one of the Hub’s selling points is that it functions as a platform

for business transactions, which makes it imperative that the coworking space is not

strictly limited to its members. Therefore, the Hub not only hosts external events, but

also allows members to bring in “visitors” (訪客 fangke). While registering visitors at

the front desk is mandatory in theory, it is seldom implemented in practice. As most

facilities cover several floors, each of which is directly accessible via an elevator,

members and their visitors don’t feel compelled to stop by the reception desk at the

main entrance.

12 On occasion, the need to regulate access noticeably affects the Hub’s image as a

welcoming and friendly space. This happened one day in November 2018, when

members at the Xintiandi location found a notice posted by the entrance doors

reminding them to swipe their membership cards to enter, as opposed to the common

practice of holding the doors open to let each other in. Most importantly, it asked them

to report strangers to the community team (see Figure 2). The image of a surveillance

camera, which corresponds to the numerous actual cameras installed in the space,

underlines that the intention is to keep the community “safe” (安全 anquan). This

rhetoric of safety recalls the imperative of watching out for possible intruders that is at

the heart of neighbourhood watch schemes in American and British middle-class

residential areas (Ahmed 2000). Like the good neighbour, a Hub member is expected to

protect the community from the threat of “suspicious” (可疑 keyi) persons attempting

to enter the space. Members are supposed to recognise the strangers even without any

description provided. The only piece of information given is that the stranger is

someone who is “trying to enter [sic]” (尾隨 weisui, lit. follow) while not belonging to

the category of “us” (我們自己 women ziji). Following Sara Ahmed (ibid.), we can

understand the absence of information not as an accidental omission of the markers

that identify the stranger, but rather as an indication that the knowledge on which the

identification is based is commonsensical. In other words, it becomes superfluous to

explicitly state how the stranger looks or acts, since a shared knowledge of the

stranger’s appearance is assumed.

13 In Shanghai, the bodies that are already recognised as strange others are those of the

Chinese rural‑urban migrants. As in other major Chinese cities, the low-paid labour

force is created by internal migration from rural areas in the less developed interior

(Roulleau‑Berger and Shi 2005). These migrant workers are considered undesirable

urban subjects, much like the immigrant workers who undertake a large part of

low‑skilled work in global cities in the rest of the world. The migrant workers often live

under precarious conditions and constitute a stigmatised population associated with

social disorder and crime (Zhang 2001). The potential peril that they represent is

associated in the public imagination with an “unattractive physical appearance”

characterised, for example, by “unfashionable, dirty and work‑worn clothes” (Guan and

Liu 2014). Considered a disturbing presence in the cityscape, these migrants are subject

to close watch: they are targeted by police controls in the street (Han 2010) and chased

from gated residential compounds (Pow 2007). And yet, global cities cannot do without

these bodies as they perform the physical and affective labour that renders the lifestyle

of the upper and middle‑classes possible (Zhang 2010). When the Hub enlists its

members to watch out for strangers, it faces the same dilemma. It strives to keep out

undesirable rural-urban migrant bodies but delegates to them the “dirty work”


73

(Hughes [1951] 1994) required to maintain the coworking space. The tension is resolved

through the conditioning of their access.

Figure 2. A bilingual notice pasted on one of the entrance doors of the Xintiandi location

In the background, one sees one of the two elevators allowing direct access to other floors


Letting them in: Marking and masking rural-urban migrant bodies

14 To fulfil the managerial dream of complete flexibility, the Hub is open 24 hours, seven

days a week. Unlike some services, such as membership renewal, that are not available

at all times, the task of watching out for intruders must be performed constantly. When

the community staff are not present – at night-time and during public holidays – this

task is carried out by security guards. The irony is that the security guard is himself a

migrant worker (Pow 2007). Therefore, the Hub needs to distinguish unuseful and

therefore suspicious bodies from those performing a necessary function. Clothing is

central to this operation, as the wearing of uniforms is what identifies a specific subset

of rural-urban migrant bodies as the ones who should be let in. These work outfits

function as a laissez-passer. They render evident the purpose for entering and thus

enable stigmatised bodies to be physically included in the coworking space, where they

perform the constant maintenance required to keep the Hub running.

15 Security guards are not the only migrant workers tolerated in the proximity of the Hub.

As only snacks can be purchased in the Hub, ordering food to eat with colleagues in the

living room is an affordable and time-efficient alternative for members who do not

bring home-cooked dishes and do not wish to eat at a restaurant. If digitalisation has

dispensed the flow of information of its immediate materiality, the delivery of food and

packages still requires working bodies. In this sense, the deliverymen give physical


74

presence to the otherwise invisible human infrastructure on which China’s digital

economy rests (Yu 2017). Throughout the day, and especially during lunchtime, a

constant stream of bodies in bright-colour uniforms and motorbike helmets passes up

and down the stairs and elevators that lead to the Hub’s various floors. Although the

deliverymen are allowed to approach the coworking space, they are never actually let

inside. Those carrying packages are forbidden to pass the reception desk, where they

are expected to hand over their parcels to the community team. As for the food

couriers, they cannot even cross the threshold but have to leave the meals on the shelf

of an in-between space delimited either by two glass doors or, on the upper floors, the

elevators and a glass door (see Figure 2). As part of what maintains the hygiene of the

community (Ahmed 2000: 25), this area resembles an air lock that keeps the community

pure from pollution in the form of rural‑urban migrant bodies.

16 Some tasks, however, cannot be performed without physically letting the strange

bodies inside the space. Cleaning cups, putting them in the dishwasher, wiping tables,

adding water to teapots, resupplying the coffee machine with coffee beans and milk,

caring for plants, putting chairs back in place at the end of the day, cleaning toilets,

taking out garbage – these are all responsibilities of the cleaning ladies. Male janitorial

staff only come in sporadically to repair plumbing or failing electrics. On the one hand,

the presence of middle-aged female workers is less disruptive than that of the myriad

deliverymen, as there are far fewer of them (each one is assigned her own floor). On the

other, they are a constant presence within the coworking space between 7 am and 7

pm, Monday to Friday. The cleaning ladies are thus let into the space while the

deliverymen are kept out, a difference in access that translates into a difference in the

uniforms worn. The outfits of the cleaning ladies consist of dark trousers and a black

sweater with the Hub’s white logo that stand in sharp contrast to the colourful

uniforms of the deliverymen. While the latter’s uniforms serve a safety function by

making them visible in traffic, the uniforms worn by the cleaning ladies have an

aesthetic purpose instead. The choice of dark uniforms makes them unobtrusive but

nevertheless distinguishable inside the otherwise colourful living room of the Hub,

effectively rendering them invisible until such time that they are deemed useful

(Hanser 2008: 107). The dark clothing thus fulfils the dual requirement of marking the

undesirable bodies while rendering them discreet.

17 The need to offset the disturbing presence of these bodies appears clearly through the

visual narratives conveyed by promotional posters and videos, which are prominently

displayed in the living room, albeit muted so as to avoid any disturbing noise. Unlike

the members and the community team, the cleaning ladies are not represented in these

media, and neither, it goes without saying, are the security guards or deliverymen.

Although the visual absence is somehow coherent with the Hub’s hiring practices,

which rely on the outsourcing of cleaning and security staff, it is nevertheless striking,

because some of the services provided by the cleaning ladies do appear on screen. For

example, one short video features a man who is sitting in a shiny clean toilet looking

for paper. Cut to a shot outside, where a young Asian man with big white wings on his

back is running through the tree‑lined streets of the former French Concession,

wearing sneakers and the Hub’s sweater. The final scene returns to the toilet to show

the be‑winged man throwing toilet paper to the first man through a small window,

saving him from potential discomfort in a timely manner. This video is one in a series

promoting Hub Angels, the name given to the otherwise faceless staff that members

can contact on the Hub’s mobile application for assistance. The choice of representing


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the task as if done through magic reflects the will to conceal the actual work needed to

maintain the space. Furthermore, the substitution of the middle-aged migrant female

body performing its task for divine intervention by a young male body illustrates the

inconceivability of representing dirty bodies on screen, as it would disrupt the idea of a

homogeneous and pure community. In this regard, the Hub’s visual management of

dirty bodies illustrates how those who “cannot be physically removed” are “eliminated

culturally” (Bauman 2001: 57) and, in particular, how the non-recognition goes to the

point of erasing the labour they perform.

18 Undesirable bodies have to be kept in sight and under surveillance so as to control their

access to the Hub, as well as out of sight, noticeable only when necessary. However, as

shown by the case of the security guard, these bodies are also looking subjects. The

cleaning ladies are supposed to keep an eye on the space: they need to spot dirt so they

can make it disappear. As looking also means working, they sometimes deliberately

look away. In the open space of the Hub, looking away becomes especially important as

a technique to avoid work, because there is no “backstage” (Goffman 1956) save for a

changing room the size of a closet. In this setting, both hiding in plain sight (for

example by standing behind a pillar or sitting in a chair facing the wall) and avoiding

eye contact (by looking down at their smartphone) are acts that seek to avoid being

seen as a subject who can see. Since being seen means being identified as a working

body, invisibility is not only imposed on the cleaning ladies but can also be a way to

resist the labour regime, all the more since being noticed as a service worker can lead

to having to execute tasks outside of one’s regular duties, as on one afternoon in

November 2018 when a start‑up celebrating an employee’s birthday asked “the ayi” to

take a group picture.5 As eleven people, including the ethnographer, posed and smiled,

she struggled to press the right smartphone button. When she finally managed to take

a picture, she performed the work of fixing desirable bodies on screen.

Desirable bodies on display: From self-branding toperfect matching

Managing successful bodies, exposing attractive selves

19 First and foremost, the Hub’s desirable bodies are those of the clientele: mobile

professionals who come mostly from China or various countries in Europe, North

America, and Asia. The majority are entrepreneurs, project managers in small foreign

companies, start‑uppers, and freelancers in their late twenties and thirties, with the

exception of a few middle-aged white-collar workers who are mostly seen going in and

out of their private offices. In addition to the clients, the community team can also be

counted among the desirable bodies. These employees are all Chinese and mostly, if not

exclusively, female, reflecting the conventional gendering of hosting work. Like many

Chinese Hub members, they are recent university graduates who have studied abroad,

often in Australia, Europe, or North America. Unlike the cheap labour of migrant

workers, they are directly employed by the Hub rather than through a subcontractor.

Team members, then, not only support the community but are part of it. Their

inclusion in the community is mirrored by their representation in the videos displayed

in the living room and by the freedom they have to wear their own clothes, which


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makes them visually indistinguishable from the clientele as soon as they leave the

reception desks.

20 Clients and community staff employees dress in a manner reflecting their membership

in a globally mobile middle class. They wear clothes and accessories purchased abroad,

whether on a business trip to Hong Kong, a visit to friends and relatives in Europe, or

on vacation in Japan. While the homogeneity of style can in part be explained by the

class-selective admission to the space, the location of the premises, in gentrified areas

with high-end shopping malls and boutiques for international luxury brands, creates

further incentive to look fashionable. When, twice a year, the living room of the

Xintiandi location is used to store clothing for the Shanghai Fashion Show that takes

place in a nearby park, employees and clients who do not pay attention to their

appearance might quickly feel out of place. The style of clothes favoured by Hub

members is in line with a global start-up culture originating from Silicon Valley that

privileges more or less casual outfits over business formal attire (Casanova 2015: 14).

Although these young professionals might dress up in suits, with polished leather shoes

and high heels, to attend formal meetings or events, they otherwise prefer urban cool

leisure wear and sneakers.

21 The relaxed way of dressing conveys not only global mobility but also sportive activity.

As they arrive in the morning or return after the lunch break, Hub members will notice

the sports bags carried by their peers, which signal that they are coming directly from

a session at a nearby gym. The Hub actively promotes this lifestyle by showing videos of

members working out in the living room. Each location offers some opportunities for

exercise – such as stationary bicycles, table tennis equipment, and weekly yoga

classes – and showers free of charge. With the physical training comes a heightened

awareness of diet. When the deliverymen come with lunch orders, the number of

expensive Western-style salads and Japanese set meal reveals the dietary preferences of

the members. The habit of my main informant, who would invariably ask via his app

that the kitchen use less oil when preparing his order of Chinese food, is characteristic

of a prevalent attitude toward healthy eating. Despite taps for beer and soda being

prominently placed in the living room, Hub members use them in moderation, as many

are concerned with limiting their sugar intake. By contrast, coffee cups quickly

accumulate in the sink. This observation illustrates how the concern with a healthy

lifestyle becomes entangled with considerations related to work performance. The

members’ taste for coffee responds to the need to focus for long hours and therefore,

like a stress-releasing yoga session, promises to increase productivity.

22 Through this shared lifestyle, members work on themselves to come closer to the ideal

managerial body: one that is active and flexible (Longhurst 2001). These bodily

attributes correspond to the overall values of the new spirit of capitalism, which

celebrates individuals who are mobile, connected, and adaptable (Boltanski and

Chiapello [1999] 2011). Just as older Chinese businessmen’s bodily bulk, cultivated over

years of business dinners featuring heavy drinking, symbolises power and wealth (Hird

2009: 131; see also Osburg 2013), young professionals’ fit bodies are a sign of success

and self-control. For the purposes of self‑branding, the display of an attractive body is

no more important than making known the intense bodily management through which

it was allegedly produced. Unlike many other forms of bodily labour, most notably the

affective labour of women, the process of attaining the perfect body is not erased here

but recognised as “work that adds value” (Otis 2011: 17). Moreover, while this lifestyle


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may be enjoyable, the value is inextricably linked to it being collectively perceived as

strenuous. For example, young professionals in the Hub make a point of mentioning the

discipline needed to wake up early and make it to a gym session before work. What may

at first seem contradictory to the “fun” working atmosphere of the Hub is in fact the

meritocratic justification of their status: sacrifices have to be made and returns

postponed to climb the ladder of success.

23 The members therefore see their bodies as investments, and so does the Hub. For the

company, desirable bodies become profitable through “ambient marketing” (Hearn

2008: 210). In one promotional video that shows interviews with members, a 50-year-

old white male shares his excitement at working in an environment where he is

“surrounded by hip urban excited millennials.” As youth signifies innovation, the

presence of young bodies on screen and in the physical space is used in the marketing

of the space to attract larger companies. In the same way as age plays into the mise-en-

scène of bodies in the Hub, so does race. During a tour in April 2018, led by the

community staff to showcase the space to potential clients, a group of middle-aged

Chinese businessmen deliberately framed the pictures they were taking so as to include

white young professionals. Due to the “international flavour” that comes with foreign

presence (De Giorgi 2017: 115), whiteness becomes a commodity that the Hub uses to

attract Chinese clients, not unlike in Shanghai’s clubbing scene.

24 The logic of displaying bodies in the Hub shares several commonalities with

cosmopolitan nightlife venues in the city. An ethnographic study of disco clubs in the

1990s argues that young Chinese find an exhibitionist pleasure in being observed in an

international setting; this gives them a sense of being modern consumers and desirable

commodities belonging to a cosmopolitan world (Farrer 1999). Likewise, in the Hub,

being seen in the company of transnational businessmen, Chinese and foreign, makes

urban Chinese professionals feel they are part of a global community. The same is true

for non-Chinese clients, especially those who come from smaller cities in their home

countries, for whom exposing themselves in a coworking space in one of the foremost

metropoles in the world becomes a way to gain status. In the visual consumption of

bodies, only the gaze of the desirable others is consequential: recognition by those

whom the members themselves consider desirable is what to produce a sense of

communal belonging.

25 To be subjected to the gaze of one’s peers entails being exposed to the judgement of

others. In early January 2019, a Chinese woman working out of the Xintiandi location

posted on the common wall of the Hub’s mobile application a picture of a toilet seat

covered by a layer of toilet paper. She commented on the picture by expressing her

dissatisfaction with this kind of behaviour, stressing the lack of manners reflected by

this act. For her, the toilet paper was evidence of someone squatting over the toilet

bowl as if using a latrine of the type most common in China. In her comment, she also

explained her disappointment as related to the expectation that other members of the

coworking space would have the education necessary to properly use a sitting-style

toilet. Apart from showing how mutual observations among members can easily

become a tool of surveillance that disciplines behaviours, the anecdote illustrates that a

similar habitus and shared values are what members are looking for upon joining the

Hub. Since a coworking space is where one hopes to gain professional recognition and

expand one’s network (Gandini 2015), the member’s dismay can be read as a reaction to


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a perceived failure on the part of the Hub to filter out persons who do not fit the

criteria of a potential partner.

Meeting each other’s eyes: Looking for the ideal partner

26 Hub members who frequent the same facilities will familiarise themselves with each

other and build social ties, but do not have the same opportunity to connect with

members who are based in other locations in Shanghai or even in other cities in Asia.

To encourage social bonds despite the lack of physical proximity, the Hub has launched

a mobile application. Its users – that is, members and community team employees – can

build up their profiles by uploading pictures, filling out job positions, and entering

hobbies. The application encourages the inclusion of information on leisure activities

and personal preference, not because the Hub is a place for informal interactions but

rather because such data play a part in the choreography of enterprising interaction

(de Peuter, Cohen, and Saraco 2017). The spirit of capitalism that infuses the Hub does

not differentiate between work and play, as members need always to appear active,

always engaged in a new project, and through this constant drive they are brought

together with likeminded individuals (Chiapello and Fairclough 2002: 192). On the

common wall, posts promoting users’ businesses mix with personal announcements,

forms of expression that contribute equally to the image of desirable bodies as bodies

with desires.

27 The conflation of professional and personal desires that characterises the project of

neoliberalism (Lordon 2014) is perfectly captured by the networking feature of the Hub

application, which is modelled on a popular dating application. The user can choose to

follow other members by a swiping motion, and thereafter keep track of members they

follow and who follow them, as well as review a list of mutual followings (see Figure 3).

By selecting an attractive profile picture, the user can present him or herself as the

ideal professional and sexual partner. In the Hub, the desirable bodies are the

sexualised ones, in contrast to the otherwise frequent representation of undesirable

foreign migrants, whose sexualised bodies appear as a problem or even a threat in

nationalist discourse (Goh 2014). Here, sex is not associated with promiscuity or

rampant hypersexuality but with glamour. Through the application, the Hub provides a

space for legitimate sexual desire – one of the drives bringing members together.

28 In its marketing, the Hub openly promotes a narrative of the coworking space as a site

for both professional and sexual encounters. For example, a flyer advertising a bachata

class scheduled for March 2018 depicts a man in a suit and a long-haired woman in a

red dress closely intertwined; the caption makes explicit that the class is an occasion to

“meet romance and opportunity.” To give another example, a promotional video

playing on a loop in the Nanjing Road location features a male Chinese start-upper

looking into the camera, testifying that the Hub is a great place for “meeting potential

employees.” The video continues with a shot of a young man: “It’s easy to get dates [in

the Hub]. ‘Do you wanna check this out?’ Boom! It’s the perfect set up.” Both the poster

and the video draw on old tropes of heterosexual romance. One showing a man leading

a woman in a popular social dance, the other glorifying a man tricking a woman into

his arms.

29 While the dating narrative is predominantly heteronormative, some visual media

suggest same-sex encounters. A poster promoting the Hub’s networking application


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shows “Francisco” and “Jin” meeting at the counter (see Figure 3). On the left, we can

see the application’s interface, indicating that this was how the two met. This

encounter between two men can be read in two ways. First, it can be interpreted as a

homosocial encounter conveying the idea that business happens when men meet other

men. Even though female bodies are as present as male ones in the coworking space,

professional encounters between women are lacking in the promotional material. A

second way to understand the poster is that it depicts a romantic encounter between

two men since, as shown above, the Hub’s application is designed for both dating and

business. The ambiguity of the poster testifies to the increasing visibility of male gay

identities in the transnational business environment (Connell and Wood 2005).

Although the space remains heteronormative, the Hub makes no effort to conceal male

homosexual encounters, since these help its brand as a company that meets liberal

expectations for tolerance and diversity.

Figure 3. Picture of a poster advertising the Hub application’s matchmaking function


30 The meeting between the two men is also symptomatic of the Hub’s celebration of

interracial encounters. One of the most emblematic examples is a promotional video

starting with the question: “Why can’t love happen in the most unlikely place?” It

depicts a meeting of an Asian woman and a white man in their early thirties. In the

common restroom, we see the woman, wearing a scarf over a lavender jacket, looking

at herself in the mirror as she applies scarlet lipstick. Next to her is a bespectacled man

in a beige blazer also looking in the mirror to groom his hair. When the woman

accidentally smears lipstick on her cheek, the man assists by handing her a tissue.

Following a close-up of her smiling at him, the video ends with the two walking out

together. On the wall of the corridor are the words: “If you never try, you’ll never

know” (see Figure 4). This story clearly draws upon a legend in the world of start-ups:

the meeting between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife and business partner

Priscilla Chan. Today, it is popular knowledge that the couple met while queuing up for


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the bathroom at a Harvard fraternity party.6 This success story, which echoes the one

of the Hub’s founding couple as well the many other “joint-venture marriages” in

Shanghai (Farrer 2008), encapsulates the configuration white male – Asian female as an

ideal romantic and business partnership.

31 The reproduction of this same configuration in the physical space betrays the racial

and gender division of labour of a workplace catering to foreign start‑ups. In the Hub, I

saw many variations of the scene in which the man engages the woman through the

simple gesture of handing her a tissue, as Western male entrepreneurs sought out

Chinese women to collaborate on their projects. With globalisation, educated women

appear as perfect candidates wherever businesses are forced to adapt to a variety of

codes across different markets and demand for cultural mediation consequently

increases (Sassen 2010). For Hub members who dream of taking a share of the local

market, the desirability of Chinese female professionals as intermediates who can help

navigate the linguistic and practical obstacles of doing business in the region is bound

up with the erotic appeal of Chinese female bodies. The women who find themselves as

partners or employees of white entrepreneurs may find that these arrangements meet

their sexual preferences and conform to their taste for working in a cosmopolitan

environment, but they are less likely to embrace their assigned role as mediators: some

complain that translation, booking hotels, and assisting visiting clients from abroad is

not part of their job description. The view that their professional expertise is not

properly recognised or valued exposes the relative lack of alignment between personal

and business desires for those further down the hierarchy (Lordon 2014: 101-2). In

promoting encounters between members, the Hub offers equal opportunity for white

men and Chinese women to fulfil their racialised sexual desires but gives advantage to

the former’s fantasy of entering the Chinese market.

Figure 4. Picture of a muted video displayed on the Hub’s screens that tells the story of a romanticencounter between two members in the restroom



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Conclusion

32 One day in May 2018, a member left his spot at the counter in the living room to give a

tour to a new colleague. As he was leaving, he asked the man sitting next to him to keep

an eye on his belongings. As if to suggest that this was a normal service to ask of a

fellow member, he added: “Because we’re a great community, right?” The audible

sarcasm in his voice suggests that a closer analysis of speaking bodies could help

disclose the gap between the members’ perceptions and the Hub’s discourse. On the

basis of this visual ethnography, it is nevertheless clear that any voicing of

disagreement is unlikely to materialise into practices that are visibly disruptive. As

members commit to the Hub only insofar as they remain paying clients, those who do

not adhere to its spirit can simply choose not to renew their membership. Those who

continue to pay the subscription are therefore the ones satisfied with the experience of

community sold by the Hub.

33 The community as commodity is produced through a visual management of bodies. In

the virtual space, the Hub celebrates rather than conceals markers that distinguish

different types of desirable bodies. Diversity is seen as adding value to the space on the

condition that it does not challenge the visual homogeneity of the fashionable and fit

bodies that reflect the members’ active lifestyle. By contrast, the rural‑urban migrant

bodies needed to perform dirty work are entirely left out of virtual representations.

Because they are indispensable in the physical space, their strange bodies are tolerated

but masked and marked through the use of uniforms. An open space like the Hub,

however, which needs to function as a platform connecting flows of information,

money, and bodies, cannot be kept pure through spatial organisation alone. For this

reason, it puts both members and employees to work as its eyes: members are asked to

watch out for strangers, just as security guards are posted to monitor the space.

34 Rather than challenging the visual hierarchy of the space, the practices of the Hub’s

occupants further reinforce it. While members seek to increase their own visibility so

as to earn recognition within an international professional community, cleaning ladies

tend to hide from sight in order to avoid extra work. The divergence in how groups at

different positions in the global division of labour inhabit the space comes from

different meanings associated with the acts of looking and exposing oneself to the

views of others. For undesirable migrants, work and play remains distinct as the new

spirit of capitalism does not extend to them; to be seen is to be identified either as an

abject being or as an object employed in the maintenance of the space, whereas to

watch means to perform their job as monitors and caretakers. Conversely, for the

desirable mobile professionals, to be seen and to look mean mutual recognition as

working subjects who are also social beings in search of social connections that are

both profitable and enjoyable.

35 Finally, the hierarchy of bodies in this globalised local community entails a

differentiation between subjects with and without desires. While the Hub reduces

unskilled workers to functional bodies, it recognises members as subjects who have

professional interests, social needs, and sexual drives. As shown by the selective

promotion of racial and gendered arrangements of bodies, these desires are

nevertheless only acknowledged as long as they are likely to further capitalist

accumulation. The coworking space is a site where the project of aligning individual


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passions and business interests reaches new levels of intensity. In early 2019, as the

space was redesigned following the change of ownership, the Hub’s slogan “Work hard,

have fun” disappeared from the walls. Instead, a new motto appeared on mugs and the

cleaning ladies’ (still black) uniforms: “Do what you love.”

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NOTES

1. For reasons of anonymity, I use a pseudonym in place of the company name.

2. This paper focuses on the Hub prior to the changes in interior design and organisation that

started to be implemented in January 2019.

3. While both texts insist on the collaborative dimension of the coworking space, the English

version differs from the Chinese one, which in a more literal translation reads: “In [our]

innovative and uniquely designed coworking spaces, anyone, whether a person or a company,

can interact, share a table, share a project, share a dream.” (Chuangxin liyi yu duju shejigan de

lianhe bangongkongjian wulun shi geren he gongsi dou neng zai ci jiaoliu, hezuo yi zhang zhuozi, hezuo yi

ge xiangmu, hezuo yi ge mengxiang).

4. Joel Dullroy, “Coworking Began at Regus... but Not the Way They Think,” Deskmag, 4 April 2012,

http://www.deskmag.com/en/coworking-did-begin-at-regus-but-not-the-way-they-think-362

(accessed on 28 July 2019).

5. Unlike the members of the community team who are called by their English names, the

cleaning staff are never addressed by name but instead by the word ayi 阿姨 (literary “aunt”), a

familiar form of address broadly used for middle-aged women.

6. Madeline Stone and Paige Leskin, “The 16-Year Relationship of College Sweethearts Facebook

CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan,” Business Insider Australia, 1st August 2015, https://

www.businessinsider.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-and-priscilla-chans-12-year-relationship-in-

photos-2015-7 (accessed on 14 December 2019).

ABSTRACTS

The rise of Shanghai as a global city prompts the question: to whom does it belong? This article

addresses the issue by examining the desirability of bodies in one of the city’s cosmopolitan

spaces: a coworking space patronised by an international clientele. Drawing on an analysis of

visual encounters in both physical and virtual spaces, it shows that the logic of belonging in the

coworking community is based on the distinction between two kinds of bodies: the desirable one


85



https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-and-priscilla-chans-12-year-relationship-in-photos-2015-7






of the transnational professional and the undesirable one of the rural-urban migrant worker.

While the latter is reduced to its working function, the former appears as a body complete with

desires, whose interactions with others blur the separation of the professional and the intimate

in line with the new spirit of capitalism. This visual ethnography provides insights on how

economic changes reshape Shanghai’s urban life not only by reproducing local patterns of social

exclusion, but also by encouraging racialised desires suited to capitalist accumulation on a global

scale.

INDEX

Keywords: coworking space, community, bodies, visual encounters, new spirit of capitalism,

global city, Shanghai

AUTHOR

AURÉLIA M. ISHITSUKA

Aurélia M. Ishitsuka, PhD candidate, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Université de

Genève, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (ENS, EHESS, CNRS), 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris,

France, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5169-0748.aurelia-milika.ishitsuka[at]ehess.fr


86

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5169-0748

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5169-0748


Article


87

Poverty Alleviation in China: TheRise of State-Sponsored CorporatePaternalismCamille Boullenois

Introduction

1 Wiping out poverty by 2020 has been one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top

policy priorities. Since taking office, president Xi Jinping’s government has granted

massive funding to what has become China’s strongest poverty-reduction campaign

ever. Official statistics show that poverty reduction funds allocated by the central

budget more than doubled between 2012 and 2018, with a particularly notable jump in

2016 and 2017 (Figure 1).1


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Figure 1. Poverty reduction funds allocated from the central budget (billion renminbi)

Source: Central budget and final accounts Public Platform. http://www.mof.gov.cn/zyyjsgkpt/zyddfzyzf/zfxjjzyzf/

2 But the impact of these policies on social hierarchies has been seldom discussed. This

article bridges this gap, first of all by examining the allocation of poverty funds by

eight rural county governments under the Xi administration, and secondly by

examining the impact of poverty alleviation discourse and policies on social hierarchies

in a ninth rural county.

Theory and literature review

3 This article examines how the approach and priorities of local governments in

allocating poverty alleviation funds shapes the distribution of power and resources at

the local level.

4 Poverty, and the policies intended to reduce poverty, are inherently political because

they touch upon the distribution of resources and the issue of “who gets what, when

and how” (Lasswell 1936). They are also political because they touch upon moral

understandings of who is a socially worthy individual and why. Whether poverty is

seen as something one should be proud of, as in Maoist China, or something shameful,

as in most contemporary societies, these different perspectives have a profound impact

on social hierarchies (Yang, Walker, and Xie 2019).

5 These simple considerations have long been obscured in mainstream academic

literature because, as anthropologist James Ferguson (1994) lamented, much of the

scholarship on poverty has depoliticised questions of resource allocation. Embedded in

the conceptual apparatus of “development” theories, the focus of developmental

studies has remained largely “technical and managerial.” These studies tried to

understand what policies worked or failed and why, but usually did not question what

“working” meant, or what were the impacts on social hierarchies and power relations.

6 Part of the academic literature has nonetheless sought to explore the political

implications of public approaches to poverty (Bernstein 1977; Heyer, Robert, and


89

Williams 1981; Galli et al. 1981; Ferguson 1994). Following a constructivist approach

rather than a positivist or a structuralist framework, these studies focused on the

impact of development work on the distribution of power and resources, worldview,

and perceptions (Ferguson 1994).

7 Few studies of poverty alleviation in China, so far, have benefited from this approach,

though the sheer intensity of Chinese poverty alleviation policies makes it a very

interesting case study. Poverty alleviation policies constitute a major focus of public

action and condense a large part of the public budget. In Henan’s X County, one of the

counties studied in this paper, special poverty alleviation funds amounted to 273

million yuan in 2018, slightly more than local government revenues coming from

taxation (272 million yuan) and from general non-taxation sources (97 million yuan).2 As

a result, the way these funds are distributed has important consequences on social

stratification locally.

8 Poverty in China has long been highly political. Chinese leaders fear that poverty

contributes to social instability and reduces the regime’s legitimacy (Duckett and Wang

2015: 26). Nonetheless, the Chinese discourse on poverty has been increasingly framed

as a scientific, rather than a political issue. As a case in point, the Third Plenary Session

of the 18th CCP Central Committee in 2013 proposed the formation of a “scientific and

effective social governance system” that would “scientifically implement poverty

alleviation management.” Mun Young Cho’s study of the dibao (低保, minimum

livelihood guarantee) in China illustrates the shift towards a more numerical,

economic, and scientific rationality (Cho 2010).

9 This shift has occurred progressively since the market reforms of the 1980s, and the

welfare system that emerged was fragmented and deeply unequal, with serious

regional imbalances (Carrillo and Duckett 2011). In the 1980s and 1990s, the most

prominent approach to poverty alleviation in China was, as Wu Guobao argued, “a

trickle-down regional economic development strategy, in which the income growth of

poor households is expected to be realised via regional economic development” (Wu

1997).

10 But growth-led poverty alleviation policies failed to effectively reduce poverty because

they support well-connected and large projects instead of small producers. According

to Duckett and Wang (2015), such growth-led poverty alleviation policies were

undermined by the commodification and privatisation of welfare during the 1990s. In

addition, Park, Wang, and Wu (2002) showed that problems in selecting the recipients

of poverty alleviation funding led to little actual impact on poverty.

11 Comparing two Chinese provinces, Donaldson (2011) also found that the large

infrastructure and industry development projects were less effective than micro-

projects in alleviating poverty. In another study, Shenggen Fan and Connie Chang-Kang

(2006) explained that the Chinese government’s focus on intercity highways was not as

effective in reducing poverty as the construction of lower-quality roads in remote areas

would be. According to Jonathan Unger (2003), credit meant to assist the poor went

instead to enterprises, in the belief that they would provide jobs. Ben Hillman (2003)

also argued that health and education stagnated, as infrastructure and industrial

growth were prioritised.

12 In the early 2000s, rising inequality and social instability led to another policy shift,

towards more inclusive growth and more redistribution (Ngok and Huang 2014).

Several nationwide social insurance schemes were rolled out and progressively


90

included migrant workers and rural residents. The 2000s were also characterised by tax

reforms benefiting the rural poor, and by increases in poverty alleviation funds.

Overall, however, although great strides were made in reducing poverty, rural welfare

has remained minimal and regressive (Gao et al. 2013), and subsidised loans have not

always found their way into the hands of poor people (Fan, Zhang, and Zhang 2002).

13 The dibao, in particular, became one of the major pillars of poverty reduction in China,

but its conceptualisation and implementation changed over time. Originally thought of

as a way to support laid-off workers during the transition to the market economy, the

program was then redirected towards prioritising aid to the old, the sick, and people

unable to work (Cho 2010; Gao 2017; Solinger 2017). As Yang, Walker, and Xie (2019)

showed, this re-targeting of dibao programs has diminished the stigma associated with

being taken care of by the state, but it has also limited the program’s ability to

significantly reduce poverty. Overall, the extant literature shows that the dibao makes a

significant difference in the poverty of its recipients, but has a very small effect on

overall poverty (Chen, Ravallion, and Wang 2006; Shi Li and Sui Yang 2009; Golan,

Sicular, and Umapathi 2015).

14 Since coming to power in 2013, Xi Jinping’s government has been credited by analysts

with several innovations in poverty alleviation approaches. First, the “precision

poverty alleviation” (jingzhun fupin 精準扶貧) approach aims to target poor households

rather than whole villages, and to create custom-made projects adapted to their needs,

in order to allocate funds more accurately. Second, in line with Xi’s focus on

eradicating corruption and the misallocation of funds, the government has sought to

increase and better supervise the role of Party institutions in village-level poverty

alleviation (Tan 2018). Poverty alleviation criteria were established on which officials

are evaluated, alongside established criteria such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and

social stability.

15 However, since Xi Jinping came to power, little research has provided a comprehensive

overview of the poverty alleviation approach followed by the Chinese government. In

addition, very little research has paid attention to the impact of poverty alleviation

policies on social hierarchies and the respective roles of different social groups on the

ground.

16 The article seeks to bridge this gap by exploring how poverty alleviation approaches in

rural China shape the distribution of power and resources at the local level. It argues

that the “trickle-down” approach to poverty alleviation, which repeats 1990s growth-

led patterns of poverty alleviation, results in strengthening local hierarchies of wealth

and power and consolidating a new social elite group in the countryside.

Data and methods

17 Three types of data were used: poverty alleviation budgets of eight counties, interviews

in a ninth county, and official documents and articles. First, the research is based on a

detailed study of poverty alleviation budgets published on local government websites

in eight poverty-stricken counties. The county is a relevant spatial division since this

“level of government is primarily responsible for delivering public services, managing

local state-owned enterprises, and coordinating the economy” (Hillman 2010). In May

2019, according to the Chinese government website, there were 570 counties identified

nationwide in China that received special central funding to fight poverty alleviation.


91

18 The counties chosen here are from three different areas:

Guizhou Province. Per capita GDP in 2018: 41,244 yuan.3 Daozhen, Pan, and Puding counties.

Guizhou is a poor province by Chinese standards, and in 2019 it hosted 47 poverty-stricken

counties, among the most numerous in China.

Henan Province. Per capita GDP in 2018: 50,152 yuan. Sui, Fengqiu, and Xichuan counties,

and X County. Henan’s economy is among the least economically developed in China,

although the province is one of the most populated.

Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces. Per capita GDP in 2018: 55,611 yuan and 43,274 yuan,

respectively. Antu and Gannan counties. Jilin and Heilongjiang represent the old industrial

north, with a traditionally stronger economy but an impoverished population. They have a

few poverty-stricken counties.

19 Not all counties have published detailed poverty alleviation budgets online. The

counties surveyed in this article were mainly chosen for the availability of such

information.4 Different counties, especially in different provinces, also use varying

categories and appellations for funding items. For instance, some budgets put

environmental projects in the “infrastructure” category, while other budgets have a

separate “environmental” category. As a result, I had to modify existing categories in

order to make the budgets comparable. Likewise, the timeframes are not exactly the

same. In two counties (Daozhen and Pan), budgets covered the 13th Five-Year Plan, and

in two counties (Puding and Gannan), budgets covered the years 2018 to 2020; while the

other counties covered respectively 2018 (Fengqiu and Antu), 2019 (Sui), and a

provisional budget 2020 (Xichuan). As I studied proportions of funding within each

budget, this discrepancy did not make comparison impossible.5

20 The second type of data on which the article is based is a set of interviews with ten

recipients of industry poverty alleviation funding in 2018 and 2019 in a ninth county in

Henan: X County, unidentified because of the sensitive content of my interviews. Like

the other two Henan counties cited previously, X is part of the national poverty

alleviation program, and is an important part of the Central Plains Economic Zone.

Interviewees were asked about their motivations to be part of poverty alleviation

programs, about their perceptions of the local state’s poverty alleviation work, as well

as the implementation of these programs and the impact on their businesses.

Interviews were analysed using qualitative methods and were used to provide insights

into the perceptions of poverty alleviation programs by their local participants.

21 Last, I have drawn on a wide range of official documents published on government

websites, and on local newspaper articles, which provide insights into the

implementation of poverty alleviation policies, and into the different arguments and

sensitivities relating to poverty alleviation among the central leadership and the local

government. In particular, I reviewed all available newspaper articles and officials

documents related to industry‑poverty alleviation since 2014 in the nine relevant

counties.

22 The combination of ethnographic and quantitative data, as well as textual material,

provides crucial insights into the official and popular discourse on poverty, as well as

the impact of poverty alleviation policies on social hierarchies.

23 The article proceeds as follows. The first part, based on comparative analysis of poverty

alleviation budgets and official documents, shows that local governments use a

“trickle-down” approach to poverty alleviation, by focusing on infrastructure spending

•

•

•


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and economic growth rather than direct financial transfers and social insurance

provision to poor households. The second part, based on interviews and ethnographic

data gathered in X County in Henan, shows that both the local state and local

companies are the major beneficiaries of this approach, which strengthens local

hierarchies of wealth and power and consolidates a new social elite group in the

countryside.

A “trickle down” strategy

24 This section examines the allocation of poverty alleviation funds in eight rural counties

and provides evidence that local governments allocate funds to infrastructure

development and economic growth, rather than direct financial transfers and social

insurance (Figure 2). It highlights a market-oriented approach to poverty alleviation

that relies on trickle-down effects, reproducing patterns that China experimented with

in the 1990s.

Figure 2. Allocation of poverty alleviation funds by sector (million RMB)

Source: County-level official documents about poverty alleviation projects

“If you want to get rich, build roads first”

25 The well-known Chinese saying “If you want to get rich, build roads first”6 is

particularly illustrative of rural China’s poverty alleviation approach. The lion’s share

of poverty alleviation funding is devoted to infrastructure spending, and in particular

to the construction of roads and bridges (Figure 3).7


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26 The integration of rural road improvements within poverty alleviation projects dates at

least back to the period 1995-1998, when a “Roads Improvement for Poverty

Alleviation” (RIPA) project was implemented with the assistance of the World Bank

(Hajj and Pendakur 2000).

27 In recent years, the central government has renewed its efforts to build rural roads.

From 2013 to 2018, China has built and renovated 1.28 million km of rural roads in an

effort to eliminate poverty. According to the Chinese news outlet Xinhua, this

infrastructure effort is deemed essential to eliminating the physical isolation of remote

villages, and integrating their members into the country’s social and economic life.8

28 The budgets give further details about the types of roads built under poverty

alleviation projects. They are mostly local and serve towns and villages. In Gannan

County, for example, all road projects are concrete four-grade roads (the lowest road

grade of the Chinese classification, usually characterised by limited road width and low

quality) of 160, 120, 94.36, and 57.14 km, respectively. In other counties, projects are

even smaller and more local: in Daozhen County, for example, out of 573 road

construction projects, only 18 are longer than ten kilometres. Most connect villages to

neighbouring villages, or groups of houses within villages.

29 In addition to roads and bridges, local governments dedicate funding to housing and

village infrastructure projects, which mainly include construction of “middle-class”

(xiaokang 小康) housing, renovation of old houses, and the improvement of public

infrastructure in residential communities. But Pan County, in Guizhou, is the only

surveyed county with more than 50% of the infrastructure budget dedicated to housing

and village infrastructure (arguably, because Pan County’s budget includes “villagers

self-funding” for housing).

30 Although widely publicised, in most surveyed counties, relocation projects are also a

minor part of the surveyed poverty alleviation budgets. Only in Daozhen County do

relocations amount to a significative proportion of housing projects.

31 The third largest item that stands out in poverty alleviation infrastructure is

investment in photovoltaic systems. In three counties (two in Henan and one in Jilin)

out of the eight surveyed, this makes up more than 15% of the infrastructure budget,

and in one case (Antu County in Jilin), more than 40%. This accent on solar energy is in

line with the central government’s strategy, announced in 2014, to alleviate rural

poverty and reduce the solar energy industry’s overcapacity by deploying photovoltaic

systems (Geall et al. 2017).


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Figure 3. Allocation of infrastructure poverty alleviation funds (RMB)

Helping companies boost the local economy

32 Behind investment in infrastructure, the second largest part of the rural poverty

alleviation budgets is “industry poverty alleviation” (chanye fupin 產業扶貧), which

makes up more than 25% in five out of eight case-study counties, and more than 40% in

two cases.9

33 Policies based on supporting major businesses to boost the local economy in poor

regions constituted one of the main poverty alleviation approaches in the 1990s. Under

the name of “industry poverty alleviation,” this approach has also been part and parcel

of poverty alleviation since the inception of the “targeted poverty alleviation” plan by

Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013.

34 Fengqiu county’s budget, in Henan, gives a relatively detailed account of the industry

poverty alleviation program (Figure 4). Among the biggest items in this category,

“subsidies and infrastructure construction for employment bases”, “investment in the

collective economy” and “subsidies to private limited liability corporations” stand out.

As the following section will show, funding under these items is largely distributed to

existing local enterprises.


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Figure 4. Fengqiu County government, allocation of industry poverty alleviation budget in FengqiuCounty

Source: 2018 County-level poverty alleviation projects in Fengqiu County.

35 A close examination of media reports and official documents in the other surveyed

counties suggests a similar emphasis on corporate actors and cooperatives.

36 Overall, the budgets and local media reports in the eight survey counties suggest that

local governments generally choose to support existing companies through subsidies

and investment, rather than encouraging new entrepreneurship. This is consistent

with the central government’s discourse: under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the

government supports the largest enterprises in order to provoke a “trickle down”

effect in the local population. According to this strategy, “The carriers for these

policies are mostly key enterprises,” as Kun Yan (2016) argued.

37 In Puding County in Guizhou, for example, an official document mentions that 46 tea

industry production and processing enterprises in the county, including six provincial-

level leading enterprises and 12 municipal-level leading enterprises, are involved in the

project.10 In Daozhen County, a local news article explains: “Relying on leading

enterprises [will] promote industrial growth” and it will also “lead the poor households

to increase their income.”

38 Sui County in Henan is the only surveyed county that mentions promoting

entrepreneurship among the poor population. An official document describes the

government’s strategy to “help poor households with labour ability and willingness to

develop a business to select quasi-industrial projects; guide poor households with no

working ability and no willingness to develop a business to transfer their land

contractual management rights.”11 Cooperatives, family farms, and companies will be

given subsidies and loans based on their ability to provide employment for poor

households and returning migrants, the article explains.

39 The frequent emphasis on poor households’ willingness to work shows that, for local

governments, at least part of the problem of poverty is the result of poor mental

dispositions of poor households. As an article mentions: “From the perspective of

concrete practice, it is difficult for some poor people to eliminate their lazy habits.”12


96

As a result, the government must rely on “ideological education” to encourage poor

households to work in poverty alleviation workshops and increase their income (ibid.).

40 This argument hints at a paternalist approach to poverty alleviation, seeking to “bring

discipline to the lives of the poor so that they can become competent actors who (…)

recognise and act on their interests as freely choosing agents of the market” (Soss et al.

2009). Poor people are considered bad market actors who need incentives and coercion

from the government to enforce rational and disciplined behaviour.

From “social assistance” to a “self-help” approach

41 In contrast to infrastructure spending and subsidies to enterprises, the surveyed

budgets are characterised by a striking absence of direct financial help, subsidies to

poor households, and living allowances.

42 Only in one case (Daozhen County) do funds allocated to “public services” represent

more than 20% of expenditure, and in three cases (Sui, Xichuan, and Fengqiu) more

than 5%.13 What is more, even within this category, the amounts actually reserved for

subsidies to poor households appear even sparser, while the vast majority of “public

services” funding is used for building health and education infrastructure.

43 In Daozhen, for example, 86% of public services funds are dedicated to building and

renovating schools (44%), constructing health centres (40%), and cultural centres (2%).

Only 14% is dedicated to subsidies for poor households: 7% in the form of social

insurance, and 7% in the form of subsidies and allowances. This small amount of the

budget, according to local newspapers, allows for preschool, primary, and secondary

education subsidies, as well as health subsidies and compensation for major illness

insurance.14

44 Sui County stands out, with a more significant commitment to direct subsidies to poor

households. Health subsidies make up 37% of the public services budget, providing

basic medical insurance premium reduction and free medical examination, in addition

to 6% of the budget dedicated to supporting poor elderly people. Another 12% of the

budget is reserved for creating “public welfare jobs” such as cleaning professions, and

11% to education subsidies. These subsidies are reported to have helped 33,545

households in the county, providing skills training and student assistance, as well as

pre-school education.15

45 Part of the explanation for the scarcity of direct financial help, subsidies to poor

households, and living allowances, is that most of the direct financial help to poor

households is given in the form of social insurance, in particular the “dibao,” a

minimum livelihood guarantee payment for people below the poverty line. Social

insurance is usually not included in government budgets and has its own system of

funding and expenditure.

46 However, there is evidence that funding for the dibao has begun to stagnate in the

countryside and has decreased in urban areas (Solinger 2017). Part of that stagnation is

explained by the falling number of recipients as absolute poverty diminishes in China.

47 In this regard, local budgets in the eight surveyed counties offer only scant data (in

contrast to the abundance of data on poverty alleviation projects). In one case,

however, Puding County in Guizhou, available data show the evolution of the budgets

dedicated to the minimum livelihood guarantee for people below the poverty line.


97

Since 2011, the number of local recipients of the rural dibao has steadily decreased.

Despite the increase in the rural dibao standard (the amount received by each recipient

per year), the total expenditure spent on rural dibao per year diminished between 2015

and 2017 (Figure 5). Although figures about the number of poor households in Puding

County are unavailable, an article mentioned that the county had been removed from

the list of poverty-stricken counties in April 2019.16

Figure 5. Rural dibao in Puding County

48 The scarcity of direct financial help also illustrates a shift in poverty alleviation

programs from a “social assistance” approach to a “self-help” approach, and from

redistribution-based to market-based. According to Kun Yan (2016), this shift was first

promoted in the 1990s. But a further shift towards economic growth and marketisation

was concretised under Xi Jinping, promoting the idea of competitive activity and

individual participation in the market. As a 2017 People’s Daily article put it: “The

introduction of market mechanisms and market forces to participate in poverty

alleviation is an effective way to improve the accuracy and efficiency of poverty

alleviation (...) The market approach is based on the autonomous decision-making and

market transactions of the poor.”17 The Chinese government turns away from charity

and direct financial support to poor households, because giving directly to villagers is

understood to run counter to the idea that poor people must become self-sufficient and

enterprising.

49 This also implies that poverty is considered from the angle of temporary and residual

problem-solving, rather than equity and redistribution, as illustrated by this news

report: “After escaping from poverty, [poor people] no longer need the minimum living

guarantee provided by the social safety net. From this perspective, the social safety

net’s protection of the poor is short-term and temporary.” A long-term social safety net

would “force the poor population into a passive position of accepting relief, and fail to

spur enthusiasm for life and work.”18


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50 The Chinese approach to poverty alleviation reveals a strategy that seeks to orient

individuals towards market-conforming behaviour. This approach also reproduces

patterns that were observed in China in the 1990s, despite the drawbacks highlighted

by scholars and which the Hu/Wen administration sought to address (Wu 1997; Park,

Wang, and Wu 2002; Unger 2003; Hillman 2003; Shi, Luo, and Sicular 2011; Donaldson

2011; Duckett and Wang 2015).

The rise of state-sponsored corporate paternalism

51 What are the social and political consequences of this return to a growth-led poverty

alleviation approach for local communities? How is poverty alleviation perceived, used,

and framed locally? The second part of this article, based on ethnographic and

interview data in X County, explores the impact of poverty alleviation on the local

distribution of power and resources. It highlights the central role of local company

owners in poverty alleviation programs, and the emergence of a new state-sponsored

corporate paternalism that is profoundly reshaping the local distribution of power and

resources.

Transformation of authority patterns: Entrepreneurs in charge oflocal welfare

52 A poverty-stricken county on the banks of the Yellow River in Henan, X County shows a

similar pattern in its allocation of poverty alleviation funds to those studied in the

eight other counties, as Figure 6 shows.

53 Like the other case-study counties, X County has also adopted strategies that put local

companies at the centre of poverty alleviation work. This is accomplished by funnelling

funds to companies, which in turn are responsible for redistributing the funds and

providing employment to poor households.

54 This strategy is implemented, first of all, under the form of 126 “employment bases”

(jiuye jidi 就業基地), which employ, according to one local article, “more than 7,000

people [in X County] including nearly 3,000 people from poor households.” Hong, a

local entrepreneur in the wood business, explained that through this “poverty

alleviation employment base” scheme, the local government provides enterprises with

subsidies and loans, as long as they agree to hire workers from poor households.19

55 Another interviewee, a business owner in the same industry, provided more details

about how the employment base scheme works:

The government helps companies with preferential measures. The governmentgives subsidies and funds to companies, and helps them take loans. Then,companies help the poor with [this] money [by providing employment]. This iswhat we call “companies lead workers out of poverty.”20


99

Figure 6. Allocation of poverty alleviation funds in X. County in 2018

56 A second way industry poverty alleviation works in X County is through shareholding

cooperatives. Yue, the leader of an agricultural cooperative in X County, explained that

cooperatives must have a minimum of five members to register with the local

government. He initially invested 4 million yuan in his cooperative, about 60% of the

total investment, which gave him the power to make all decisions regarding the

company. Today, 60 families participate in the cooperatives by providing their land and

getting dividends in return.

57 The cooperative, Yue explained, is in fact like a shareholding company, but benefits

from advantageous tax policies. This confirms findings from the scholarly literature.

Farmers’ cooperatives have experienced rapid expansion in the last two decades in

China, encouraged by fiscal incentives and policy support (Deng et al. 2010). But field

studies have shown that most of these agricultural cooperatives were shell

cooperatives or de facto “commercial enterprises controlled by officials, business

entrepreneurs, and merchants” (Hu et al. 2017).

58 Now, Yue said, his cooperative is part of the poverty alleviation program. Over the last

five years, the county has invested first 1.2 million then 0.96 million yuan in the

cooperative. The cooperative, in turn, must transfer a fixed amount (1,000 yuan per

year) to poor local households (about 200) in the form of dividends each year during

the next five years:

[Poor households] take the government’s money to buy shares in my company. Thatmoney is given to them (...) In total, [they each invest] 8,000 RMB, and they can get1,000 RMB of dividends each year.21

59 In both the employment-base scheme and the cooperative scheme, two mechanisms are

at play: a trickle-down mechanism (boosting local companies will have positive results

on the local poor population), and subsidies or dividends distributed to poor

households who participate in employment or cooperative shareholding schemes.

60 In effect, by reaching poor households through the intermediary of companies, the

local government pushes business owners into the crucial role of service providers and

community leaders and lends them legitimacy as central actors of the poverty

alleviation effort.

61 That legitimacy relies on a perception of society as naturally hierarchical, and of

business owners as welfare providers. In this regard, industry poverty alleviation


100

schemes accelerate the rise, observed by An Chen (2014), of new patterns of authority

centred around business owners, allowing for a cost-effective mode of local

governance.

62 The legacy of a traditional Confucian model, with its “emphasis and acceptance of

hierarchical structure” and on the “interdependence of human relations” (Leung and

Nann 1995), may arguably also play a role in the reconstruction of local authority

patterns centred around business owners. Such patterns bring back a tradition of

Chinese welfare in which a gentry class, while “politically, economically and socially

privileged, [was] also expected to undertake social responsibilities and to promote the

well-being of ordinary people and serve the interests of their own communities” (Pan

2017).

63 The idea of placing welfare into entrepreneurs’ hands also taps into widespread

popular beliefs and narratives, inherited from the county’s last decades of economic

development, which present them as pioneers who lead fellow villagers out of poverty.

As a local entrepreneur explained: “A business, in reality, is a social service enterprise.

It can lead the non-employed labour force (…) and give them a good life.”22 This idea is

also widespread among non-entrepreneurs in the county. A young self-employed man,

for example, argued:

Wealthy entrepreneurs are successful because they were brave, audacious,industrious, and intelligent. If you support them, they will make the best of thisopportunity and help the community develop. On the other hand, if you supportpoor people, they will waste their opportunities.23

Welfare funds captured by local entrepreneurs

64 This poverty alleviation approach serves the business interests of the business owners

who take part in poverty alleviation schemes.

Turning its back on previous policies that relied on relief money, and inspired bycentral policies, the county has now turned to companies to develop the localeconomy (…) What “industrial poverty support” actually supports are the twofoundational industries of the county that were created from scratch.24

65 For many local businesses, this support is invaluable. Securing a labour force, paid for

at least in part by the government, is a major advantage of participating in industry

poverty alleviation schemes. Poverty alleviation policies also allow business owners to

capture valuable funds and resources for their own interests. For example, although

Hong took part in the scheme, she decided not to hire poor workers. She already has

several workers who have been working in the factory for several years: “Most of these

[poor] people are lazy, which is why they are poor. They do not want to work. Instead,

they waste their time drinking or gossiping with neighbours.”25

66 Hong told me that most company owners, like her, circumvented the policy by making

poor households sign their names on a document but not hiring them. “Companies hire

poor people only on paper,” she said. “In fact, they prefer to hire good workers who are

not necessarily poor.”26

67 Loans and funding provided by the local government are also essential. For example,

poverty alleviation funds have allowed Yue’s cooperative to grow: “It brings money so

that I can use it; isn’t it a big help for me? It is capital, and with that capital I can invest

in many projects.”27


101

68 In addition, the tax cuts associated with poverty alleviation programs help local

companies. Several interviewees have indicated that they hadn’t paid any tax during

the last few years: “Here, we pay basically no tax. You see, our factories receive lots of

preferential policies because we are in a poverty-stricken county.”28

State co-optation and reinforcement of existing businesshierarchies

69 Poverty alleviation schemes also reinforce existing hierarchies by reinforcing the

power of the already best-connected and best-performing companies.

70 Poverty alleviation policies supporting small entrepreneurs from poor households

exist, but they are scarce. As part of a program led by the municipality, the county has

put in place a policy to grant subsidies to 40 “self-employed poor people.” One of these

“self-employed poor people,” Liu, told me his story. Liu had worked for ten years as a

driver in a big city before coming back to his village. He was categorised as a “poor

household” by his village committee. His is now among the twenty remaining “poor

households” in a village that counts many successful entrepreneurs in the car parts

industry.

71 Two years ago, Liu was approached by the committee, under the supervision of county

and township officials. They categorised him as “capable of development” and offered

him a subsidy of 8,000 yuan, as well as a 50,000 yuan loan from the bank. This was a

fantastic opportunity, he said. He was able to buy several cows, raising their number

from three to eight, and to modernise his farming installations.29

72 But such support for entrepreneurship on provided to poor households is marginal in

the local state’s poverty alleviation strategy. The scope and funding for self-

employment pales in comparison with the scope and funding for established

businesses. According to local budgets, in 2018, the funds dedicated to

entrepreneurship represented less than 0.2% of the industry poverty alleviation funds.

In addition, funding for self-employed households is limited to agricultural self-

employment, while support to established enterprises targets various agricultural and

industrial sectors.

73 The county’s “returning migrant workers entrepreneurship park” is a good illustration

of this bias towards big businesses. Despite its name, the park mainly comprises big

companies from outside the county – mostly from South China and Hong Kong – which

have settled there to benefit from tax cuts and low wages. Other companies include X

County’s leading enterprises, but very few run by return migrant entrepreneurs and

none by poor households.

74 Within the business community, the poverty alleviation programs also enforce the

existing hierarchy by supporting the strongest and most connected local companies.

Beneficiaries of subsidies, in practice, are often selected through close contacts with

the local government.

75 Hong explained, for example, that companies must meet standards – in size and in

number of employees – in order to participate to industry poverty alleviation schemes.30 A further selection is then made among the selected companies, between those that

do receive the subsidiaries, and those that do not. Although Hong was selected to

participate to the industry poverty alleviation scheme, she never actually received the


102

subsidies. All she got was 2,000 yuan to buy a big board saying “poverty alleviation

employment base,” which she stuck on the factory’s wall. She blamed that failure on

the local government’s corruption. Only well-connected entrepreneurs, she said, could

receive the subsidies the government had promised to give them.31

76 Another interviewee, Wang, explained that the local government planned to give the

factory subsidies for participating to the poverty alleviation scheme, but Wang did not

receive them, and “did not fight to get them.”32

77 Yue, by contrast, obtained the poverty alleviation subsidies. The industry poverty

alleviation program, Yue explained, is administered by the local county government

finance department:

The application is instructed by the Finance Bureau (…) then it is approved by apanel of experts (…) at the township government level (…). The city must know howmuch money you will spend and how you will spend it (…) because the FinanceBureau cannot spend 1.2 million renminbi for no reason (…) and they can inspect[the cooperative].

78 Although he did not mention it, he himself likely benefited from his privileged position

as a township official in order to obtain poverty alleviation funding.33

Political patronage of businesses

79 State support comes at a cost. The official discourse emphasises that it gives

entrepreneurs a special responsibility to take on a central role in poverty alleviation.

As leaders chosen and nurtured by the government, they have a debt towards both the

local state and the local population:

Wang [a local entrepreneur] absorbed all of the twenty-three poor households inhis village into his factory. He said: “As a person, I must know how to be grateful.This factory was built by the government. I must repay society.34

80 The co-optation and the flow of funding and subsidies that comes with state support

also enable the government to secure a strong control of business actors. These

measures also feed into perceptions of business actors as unable to function without

government help. The local official media contribute to such perceptions. A local article

mentions that in one company, after having built a new workshop and bought new

equipment, “the operating capital was stretched and the company in dire difficulties.

Fortunately, the township coordinated 500,000 yuan of poverty alleviation loans to

cover its urgent need.” Industry poverty alleviation schemes thus entrench local

officials as the most prominent holders of local power, and encourage strong

interventionist policies on their part.

81 While benefiting companies, poverty alleviation schemes also increase their

dependency on the local government, and subject business owners to continuing

support from the state. In the long run, entrepreneurs themselves have observed that

local state support distorts the market and maintains companies that would have

otherwise collapsed.

82 As a result, not all local entrepreneurs were enthusiastic about participating in state-

led poverty alleviation programs. One entrepreneur, for example, explained why he

refused to take the government’s poverty alleviation subsidies:

We don’t want to accept government subsidies (…) We feel more comfortableearning our own money (…) There is no free lunch in the world. If you take this


103

money, you will be very tired, the government will make visits, will give yousubsidies according to projects, depending on if you want to expand [yourbusiness].35

83 The corporate paternalism that local governments encourage also runs contrary to

some entrepreneurs’ ideas and expectations about their role in society. Some

interviewees challenged the idea that entrepreneurs should be welfare providers.

Wang, for example, explained: “They also require us [to help], but I think that, as long

as [the government] distributes the poverty alleviation money to workers, we don’t

need to do that.”36 To him, the main responsibility of companies is to perform well in

order to boost the local economy and provide jobs. Like several other interviewees, he

does not fully agree with the ideal of corporate paternalism encouraged by the local

state.

Conclusion

84 The article has argued that poverty alleviation in rural China predominately focuses on

infrastructure investment and support to the local economy, rather than on social

insurance, education, and household subsidies. Support to local companies, the article

argues, entails co-opting established enterprises, rather than supporting new

entrepreneurship among poor households. Overall, the Chinese approach to rural

poverty alleviation highlights the emergence of a state-sponsored corporate

paternalism that strengthens local hierarchies of wealth and power.

85 This approach to poverty alleviation is not redistributive in that it does not intend to

challenge or alleviate current social inequalities and does not target poor households.

As the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce puts it, this approach promotes

the “great ideal of first benefiting the rich, and finally achieving common prosperity.”37

Overall, this approach does not bode well for long-term poverty reduction in China,

since researchers largely pointed out that it increased inequality while not efficiently

reducing poverty (Unger 2003; Hillman 2003; Shenggen Fan and Connie Chang-Kang

2006; Donaldson 2011).

86 This approach, moreover, is undergirded by a local official discourse that is essentially

market-oriented and considers poor people either lazy and unwilling to work; or sick

and unable to work. For the former category of poor people, the official discourse calls

for forcibly integrating them into the market economy. Only poor people in the latter

case are considered an acceptable target of state-sponsored welfare.

87 All in all, this approach resembles the neoliberal perspectives identified, in other

contexts by Ferguson (1994) and Harvey (2007), where market dynamics are considered

the central mechanism for governance and welfare, and where business-friendly

policies are adopted in the belief that they will trickle down to the poor. But the

Chinese discourse and policies differ from these neoliberal perspectives in that

companies and company owners are forced to play an active role in poverty alleviation.

While the approach to poverty reduction follows a trickle-down principle, the state

actively seeks to make the trickle-down process work by forcing companies to play a

role in alleviating poverty.

88 This has many important implications. On the one hand, this approach marks the rise

of a new type of state-sponsored corporate paternalism, intended to coax local business

owners into becoming service providers and community leaders. This, in turn,


104

accentuates patterns of authority and power centred around business owners and local

governments.

89 On the other hand, however, the case of X County shows that local business owners are

divided in their reactions to state-sponsored corporate paternalism. Among the local

business community, two types of discourse coexist. One sees business owners as

natural social leaders and responsible for the well-being of their local community. The

other, on the contrary, considers individuals as self-reliant in the market economy and

does not give business owners a role in ensuring the welfare of their community. Due to

these mixed reactions, it is still uncertain whether the current Chinese administration,

which has chosen to strongly support corporate paternalism and to enhance the social

role of business owners, will manage to impose this approach onto local communities.

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NOTES

1. In the central budgets, these numbers represent the poverty alleviation funds given by the

central government to local governments (中央財政補助地方專項扶貧資金 Zhongyang caizheng

buzhu difang zhuanxiang fupin zijin).

2. Statistics compiled by author based on official budget figures from the Chinese government.

3. All GDP estimates come from World Bank data from 2019.

4. This may limit the generalisation of findings, to the extent that counties that have not

published data online may have different patterns of funds allocation from counties that have.

5. The budgets were all downloaded in May 2019 from local government websites. The links have

since been deleted. Here is the link to a depository where all excel files can be downloaded:

https://gitlab.com/cboullenois/poverty-alleviation-budgets-china-2019 (accessed on 15 March

2020).

6. Yao xiang fu xian xiu lu 要想富先修路.

7. Infrastructure refers to explicit categories labelled as such in the budgets, as well as items

(housing infrastructure, environment projects and photovoltaic energy, and the construction of

schools and clinics) that were labelled separately in some budgets.

8. “China Focus: Rural roads important to poverty-relief in China,” Xinhua, 15 January 2018,

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/15/c_136897242.htm (accessed on 12 July 2019).

9. Industry poverty alleviation corresponds to projects that were explicitly labelled as such in the

budgets.

10. “普定縣聚焦‘四大主導產業’破解產業扶貧難題” (Puding xian jijiao ‘si da zhudao chanye’

pojie chanye fupin nanti, Puding County focuses on ‘four big pillar industries’ to solve industrial

poverty alleviation difficulties), 普定縣全面小康辦 (Puding xian quanmian xiaokang ban, Puding

County well-off society office), 26 December 2018, http://www.gzstjj.gov.cn/rdzt/xkdt/jyjl/

201812/t20181226_3721039.html (accessed on 12 July 2019).

11. “睢縣農業產業扶貧政策指導意見” (Sui xian nongye chanye fupin zhengce zhidao yijian, Sui

County agricultural industrial poverty alleviation policy guiding opinions), Sui County


107

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741019001255

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741019001255

https://gitlab.com/cboullenois/poverty-alleviation-budgets-china-2019

https://gitlab.com/cboullenois/poverty-alleviation-budgets-china-2019

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/15/c_136897242.htm

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/15/c_136897242.htm

government website, http://www.suixian.gov.cn/news/news_view.asp?newsid=18097 (accessed

on 12 July 2019).

12. “淅川縣: 產業扶貧帶動就業扶貧助力脫貧” (Xichuan xian: chanye fupin daidong jiuye fupin

zhuli tuopin, Luanchuan County: Industry poverty alleviation drives employment and helps

poverty alleviation), Henan Provincial Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development website, 2

February 2019, http://www.hnsfpb.gov.cn/sitesources/hnsfpb/page_pc/gzdt/cyfp/

article30ee0c4d094b45009f1de3eaff624f44.html (accessed on 12 July 2019).

13. “Public services” refers to many diverse categories such as education, health, social

insurances, subsidies to poor households, but also construction of schools and clinics.

14. “道真縣: ‘十二項扶貧工程’確保1.3萬貧困人口脫貧” (Daozhen xian: ‘shi er xiang fupin

gongcheng’ quebao 1.3 wan pinqiong renkou tuopin, Daozhen County: 12 poverty alleviation

projects allow 13,000 people to be lifted out of poverty), People’s Daily - Guizhou channel, 15 August

2017, http://www.guizhou.gov.cn/xwdt/mtkgz/201709/t20170927_1032486.html (accessed on 12

July 2019).

15. “河南睢縣: 教育扶貧為貧困學子保駕護航” (Henan Sui xian: jiaoyu fupin wei pinqiong xuezi

baojia huhang, Henan Sui County: education poverty alleviation helps poor students), People’s

Daily -Henan channel, 13 November 2018, http://ha.people.com.cn/n2/2018/1113/

c378398-32281103.html (accessed on 12 July 2019).

16. “貴州省政府正式批准18個縣(區,市)退出貧困縣序列” (Guizhou sheng zhengfu zhengshi

pizhun 18 ge xian (qu, shi) tuichu pinkun xian xulie), Guizhou Provincial Government officially

approved the withdrawal of 18 counties (districts, cities) from the poverty-stricken counties),

News.sina.com, April 2019, https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2019-04-25/doc-ihvhiqax4982715.shtml

(accessed on 12 July 2019).

17. “構建政府與市場協同發力的大扶貧格局” (Goujian zhengfu yu shichang xietong fali de da

fupin geju, Building a pattern of great poverty alleviation in synergy between the government

and the market), People’s Daily, 19 June 2017, http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0619/

c40531-29346981.html (accessed on 15 March 2020).

18. “補精神之鈣, 添脫貧動力” (Bu jingshen zhi gai, tian tuopin dongli, Reinforce the spirit, boost

the dynamism of poverty alleviation), People’s Daily, 6 May 2018, http://opinion.people.com.cn/

n1/2018/0506/c1003-29966937.html (accessed on 12 July 2019).

19. Interview conducted in X County in August 2018.

20. Interview conducted in X County in April 2018.

21. Interview conducted in X County in March 2019.



24. Article published on X County’s government website, 2017.










34. Article published on X County’s government website, 2018.



37. “高雲龍同志在全國‘萬企幫萬村’精準扶貧行動先進民營企業表彰大會暨扶貧日論壇上的講

話” (Gao Yunlong tongzhi zai quanguo ‘wan qi bang wan cun’ jingzhun fupin xingdong xianjin


108

http://www.suixian.gov.cn/news/news_view.asp?newsid=18097

http://www.suixian.gov.cn/news/news_view.asp?newsid=18097

https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2019-04-25/doc-ihvhiqax4982715.shtml

https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2019-04-25/doc-ihvhiqax4982715.shtml

http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0619/c40531-29346981.html




http://opinion.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0506/c1003-29966937.html




minying qiye biaozhang dahui ji fupin ri luntan shang de jianghua, Comrade Gao Yunlong’s

speech at the National ‘10,000 Enterprise help 10,000 villages’ Precise poverty Alleviation Action

Advanced Private Enterprise Awards Conference, at the Poverty Alleviation Day Forum), All-

China Federation of Industry and Commerce website, 16 October 2018, http://www.acfic.org.cn/

wqbwc/ldjh/201811/t20181107_69523.html (accessed on 12 July 2019).

ABSTRACTS

Since taking office, president Xi Jinping’s government has granted massive funding to what has

become China’s strongest poverty-reduction campaign ever. Based on the study of detailed

budgets in eight rural counties, as well as ethnographic and interview data in a ninth county, this

article explores how poverty alleviation programs shape the distribution of power and resources

in rural China. It argues that poverty alleviation in rural China predominately focuses on

infrastructure investment and support to the local economy, rather than on social insurance,

education, and household subsidies. Support to local companies, the article argues, entails co-

opting established enterprises, rather than supporting new entrepreneurship among poor

households. Overall, the Chinese approach to rural poverty alleviation highlights the emergence

of a state-sponsored corporate paternalism that strengthens local hierarchies of wealth and

power.

INDEX

Keywords: poverty alleviation, paternalism, public welfare, rural China

AUTHOR

CAMILLE BOULLENOIS

Camille Boullenois is a sociologist and China expert trained at Sciences Po, Oxford, and the

Australian National University. She now works as a consultant at Sinolytics in Berlin,

Pasteurstrasse 8, 10407 Berlin, Germany.camille.boullenois[at]gmail.com


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http://www.acfic.org.cn/wqbwc/ldjh/201811/t20181107_69523.html





Current Affairs


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Changing Repertoires of Contentionin Hong Kong: A Case Study on theAnti-Extradition Bill MovementHiu-Fung Chung

Introduction

1 The movement opposing the Extradition Law Amendment Bill (反對修訂逃犯條例

faandeoi saudeng toufaan tiulai, below Anti-ELAB movement) in Hong Kong has reignited

a new protest cycle after a period of abeyance following the 2014 Umbrella Movement

(UM). Back in February 2019, the HKSAR government put forward a proposal to amend

existing ordinances to allow Hong Kong to detain and transfer fugitives to countries

and territories where there is no formal extradition agreement, including mainland

China. Although the bill, according to government officials, was triggered by a 2018

murder case in Taipei, public concern about the authorities’ motivations gradually

turned into contention inside and outside the Legislative Council (LegCo). After massive

demonstrations in June 2019, unceasing waves of protests have expanded the

imaginations and modes of political resistance among Hong Kong citizens. In terms of

movement strategy, the organic combination of “peaceful, rational, and non-violent”

(woleifei 和理非) actions and “militant” (jungmou 勇武) confrontations demonstrated an

unanticipated evolution of the contentious repertoire of Hong Kong social movements.

Indeed, this seemingly dramatic change emerged incrementally from a specific political

context, rather than transforming rapidly.

2 This short article examines how the Anti-ELAB Movement reconfigured former

movement experiences and produced new meanings of political resistance in Hong

Kong. It begins with a brief review of the development of the contentious repertoire in

post-handover Hong Kong before the debate over the extradition law amendment in

early 2019. After contextualisation, the article then focuses on the three distinctive

dynamics underlying the parallel forms of action that have emerged between June 2019

and January 2020. In order to capture the trajectory of changing repertoires, original


111

data gathered from protest onsite surveys will be presented, complemented by press

reviews. These onsite surveys were carried out by a team of researchers from four Hong

Kong universities at nearly all major protests during this period, assisted by a group of

trained helpers.1

Contentious repertoire in post-handover Hong Kong

3 As a hybrid regime, Hong Kong had rarely witnessed highly disruptive or even violent

social mobilisations either before or after the transfer of sovereignty because of its

institutional setting and conservative protest culture (Ku 2007; Fong 2013; Cheng

2016). Even after the momentous demonstration against national security legislation on

1 July 2003, mass protests and rallies tended to follow the principal of being “peaceful,

rational, and non-violent” (woping, leising, feiboulik 和平, 理性, 非暴力), seeking

government concessions through large turnouts (Cheng 2016). Although some protests

adopted more direct forms of action, such as occupation (zimling 佔領) during the pier

protection campaigns in 2006 and 2007, most were non-violent and symbolic in a bid to

appeal to broader society (ibid.). Although they addressed a variety of issues, these

peaceful protests all sought to protect diminishing civic freedom and to liberalise the

quasi-democratic political system of this city (Ma 2007). From the early 2010s onward, a

new form of activism focused on livelihood issues rooted in the increasing interactions

between Hong Kong and mainland China emerged across residential neighbourhoods,

and adopted more confrontational actions targeting tourists, new migrants, and

parallel traders from the mainland (Chen and Szeto 2015; Yuen and Chung 2018).

Nevertheless, not until the movement to Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP,

Joeng ngoi jyu woping zimling zungwaan 讓愛與和平佔領中環) and the subsequent UM did

Hong Kong’s contentious repertoire undergo a significant transformation in terms of

scale and intensity of participation.

4 The emergence of OCLP should be understood in the context of political setbacks in

Hong Kong’s democratisation. As stated in the Basic Law, universal suffrage for the

election of the Chief Executive and for the Legislative Council (LegCo) in Hong Kong was

supposed to be achieved as early as 2007 and 2008, but the arrangement was rejected

and further postponed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (Quanguo

renmin daibiao dahui changwu weiyuanhui 全國人民代表大會常務委員會) in 2006. At the

same time, routinised mass protests had gradually lost their disruptive and shocking

impact. In the face of stagnation of democratisation, pro-democracy activists began

contemplating the necessity and justification of more radical means. Against this

backdrop, legal scholar Benny Tai 戴耀廷 proposed occupying the city’s core financial

district in order to force the Beijing and Hong Kong governments to make concessions

on democratic reform in early 2013. After more than one-and-a-half years of

preparation, the planned campaign transformed spontaneously into the UM, marked by

police use of tear gas on 28 September 2014.

5 What both local and international societies witnessed in the following 79 days was the

largest civil disobedience campaign in contemporary Hong Kong history. Early on, the

regime shifted its response to this unpredicted event from a strategy of repression to

attrition, effectively creating a stalemate (Yuen and Cheng 2017). On the movement’s

side, internal dissension over action escalation and central leadership eventually


112

widened the cleavage between woleifei and jungmou protesters, undermining the morale

of participants as time went on.

6 The failure of the UM resulted in further movement radicalisation, notably marked by

“localism” (buntou zyuji 本土主義) and its growing appeal to young people in Hong

Kong. Historically speaking, localism in Hong Kong originated from left-wing

progressive activism in the mid-2000s, and was adopted by right-wing activists to

articulate their anti-mainland political agenda starting in the early 2010s (Ku 2012;

Chen and Szeto 2015). In the aftermath of the UM, new political groups such as

Youngspiration (Cingnin sanzing 青年新政) and Hong Kong Indigenous (Buntou manzyu

cinsin 本土民主前線) quickly appropriated the discourse of localism that called for a

more ideologically radical, pro-independence political agenda. Calling for priority to be

given to Hongkongers, these localist activists used more confrontational repertoires in

some “recovery operations” (gwongfuk hangdung 光復行動) whilst targeting

mainlanders in residential neighbourhoods during the years 2015 and 2016.

7 The Mongkok civil unrest (Wonggok soulyun 旺角騷亂) in February 2016 brought tactical

radicalisation to a new climax. To counter the government crackdown on unlicensed

street vendors, Hong Kong Indigenous mobilised its supporters to protect hawkers

whom hygiene officers had attempted to remove, as well as to preserve local street

market culture (Yuen and Chung 2020). The action escalated after the police arrived to

carry out crowd control operations, with protesters adopting more confrontational

means, such as digging bricks out of the pavement and throwing glass bottles at police

officers (Chan and Ng 2017). From then on, more conflictual interactions between

protesters and the police appeared in Hong Kong’s street politics. As Yuen and Chung

(2018) highlighted, despite a violent outcome, the localist camp actually gained more

popularity and sympathy, as indicated by the 15% of votes that went to localist

candidate Edward Leung (梁天琦) in the 2016 LegCo by-election, although public

support of radical action remained low on a broader scale.2

8 In order to supress nascent radicalism, the regime adopted a hard-line approach to

delegitimise the localist camp as well as to hamper the pro-democracy movement

(Yuen and Chung 2018; Cheng 2020). Targeted repression via legal and political

measures was illustrated by the fact that many arrested in the Mongkok clashes were

charged for rioting, assaulting police officers, and other associated crimes. Between

April 2018 and June 2019, 23 of them were found guilty of rioting and sentenced to the

maximum term of imprisonment. In late 2018, nine leading figures of the UM were

charged with incitement to commit public nuisance, incitement to incite public

nuisance and other related crimes.3 The oath-taking controversy in late 2016 (Yuen and

Chung 2018) was followed by disqualification of elected lawmakers and prohibition of

electoral participation by proponents of Hong Kong independence and self-

determination.4 What followed between late 2016 and early 2019 was a period of

abeyance for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, with a decline in people’s

perceived collective efficacy in influencing political process and the absence of large-

scale mobilisation (Lee, Yuen, Tang, and Cheng 2019).

9 Nevertheless, it should be noted that the conditions and resources for mass

mobilisation remained in place because of dissatisfaction towards unimproved

governance and social inequality remained unrelieved, coupled with the sustaining of

movement networks at the grassroots level (Chung 2019; Lee et al. 2019).


113

Dynamics of contention in the Anti-ELAB Movement

10 As shown in the previous discussion, incremental change in the contentious repertoire

in post-handover Hong Kong was primarily driven by the cumulative experience of

social movement and regime intervention (Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 19-20). Before

explaining the underlying dynamics of change in repertoire, it is helpful to recap how

the momentum of the Anti-ELAB Movement was built up.

11 The extradition bill definitely aroused immense concern from the public following the

release of the amendment proposal in February because of local citizens’ deep distrust

toward the mainland legal system. However, as the Hong Kong government failed to

lessen people’s worries, the 28 April demonstration initiated by Civil Human Rights

Front (CHRF) unexpectedly attracted the largest turnout for a rally since the aftermath

of the UM.5 Inside the LegCo, intense debates took place in May 2019, while more than

270,000 signatures of Hong Kong citizens were collected through various online

petitions against the amendment proposal before one million citizens protested in the

streets on 9 June.6 The first use of tear gas by police three days later during the clashes

in Admiralty and Central was a critical moment. Protesters arrested on 12 June were

charged with rioting for the first time during the Anti-ELAB Movement. Regarding this

unexpected repression, CHRF called for another demonstration on 16 June during

which “five demands” (ng daai soukau 五大訴求) were officially presented. From then

on, the “five demands” became a collective action frame that gave legitimacy to various

movement activities in the subsequent months (Benford and Snow 2000). Coined by

localist leader Edward Leung in his election campaign in 2016, the prevailing slogan

“liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” (Gwongfuk Hoenggong, sidoi gaakming 光復

香港, 時代革命) in the meantime began to gain more popularity among movement

supporters, representing people’s “vivid revolutionary imagination unthought of

before” (Ku 2020). What made this extraordinary uprising “revolutionary” can be

understood in three interrelated aspects.


114

Figure 1. A poster with the slogans “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times” and “Hongkongers,resist!” Credit: ANTIELAB Research Data Archive.

Solidarity with diversity

12 Within the movement, a high and persistent degree of solidarity within diversity

provided a normative ground for tactical radicalisation and innovation of parallel

repertoires beyond street politics. Codified by action protocols such as “no splitting

and no severing of ties” (bat fanfaa, bat gotzik 不分化, 不割席) and “brothers climbing a

mountain together, each one with their own effort” (hingdai paasaan, gokzi noulik 兄弟爬

山, 各自努力), this norm of solidarity first redressed the cleavage between pacifism and

militancy during and after the UM. It also united supporters from different

biographical availabilities and action orientations, giving impetus to a popular

movement with diverse social bases.


115

Figure 2. Graffiti stating “Disband Hong Kong Police” during the protest on 1 October 2019. Credit:Dorothy Wong.

13 On the one hand, solidarity is essentially affective. Social movement scholars have

highlighted the importance of emotion in motivating collective actions and

constructing collective identity (Jasper 2011). By calling their counterparts “hands-and-

feet” (sauzuk 手足), protesters showed strong emotional attachment to each other,

regardless of whether they had actual personal connections. As the movement went on,

accumulated grievance towards police brutality and unresponsive government

reinforced the affective solidarity within the movement. According to the onsite survey

conducted on 18 August, an exceptionally large number of protesters surveyed felt

anger towards the HKSAR government (92.2%) and police officers (93.5%).7 When the

emergency bill was announced in October 2019, the movement slogan “Hongkongers,

add oil (keep it up)!” (Hoenggongjan, gaajau! 香港人, 加油!) shifted to “Hongkongers,

resist!” (Hoenggongjan, faankong! 香港人,反抗!), reframing and repositioning the

city-wide contention towards an open battle against government

repression (Ting 2020). After the tragic death of a 22-year-old university student

in November 2019,8 the new slogan of “Hongkongers, revenge!” (Hoenggongjan, bousau!

香港人, 報仇!) represented even stronger resentment towards the regime. Among the

protesters surveyed during the Human Rights Day march on 8 December, 80.4%

strongly agreed that the militant protesters had sacrificed themselves for the peaceful

protesters, and 68.7% felt guilty when seeing them arrested. The combination of guilt

and anger is often a powerful driver of social movements in solidarity with powerless

others (Rodgers 2010).

Table 1. Protesters’ views on tactical radicalisation (from June to December 2019)

Jun

17Jul 1

Jul

21

Aug

18

Aug

25

Sep

15

Oct

14

Oct

20

Dec

8


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Radical protests

can force the

government to

listen to the

people.

53.2 40.5 54.3 48.9 55.4 62.2 66.1 62.4 65.2

Radical protests

will alienate the

general public

61.2 54.9 33.1 37.4 24.5 27.6 35.8 30 26.8

Only when

peaceful assembly

and

confrontational

actions are used

together can the

impact of protest

be maximised

79.6 71.0 81.6 86.1 89.8 89.1 90.3 90.6 90.2

When the

government fails

to listen, the use of

radical tactics by

protesters is

understandable

/ 83.5 94.7 94.2 94.6 91.9 98.2 97.5 97.5

N = 717 1169 680 806 395 911 662 921 902

Note: Respondents were required to indicate to what extent they agree with these statements. Thefigures show the percentage of respondents who chose “agree” and “strongly agree.” Other choicesinclude “so-so,” “disagree,” “strongly disagree,” and “don’t know”.

14 Moreover, this sense of affective solidarity incorporates a pragmatic consideration

alongside the impulse for movement escalation. According to most onsite surveys

conducted between June and August 2019, more than 90% of the protesters surveyed

believed the protests should continue if the government did not make any concession

beyond suspending the bill, while around half supported further protest escalation.9

Within the same period, the percentage of participants who agreed that combining

peaceful and confrontation actions had the most effect increased from 79.6% on 17 June

to nearly 90% on 25 August, and the figure remained constant over the next four

months (Table 1).


117

Figure 3. Protesters occupying Harcourt Road in Admiralty on 1 July 2019. Credit: Dorothy Wong.

Diffusion of escalated contention

15 Diffusion refers to a process of spreading forms of contention, an issue or particular

framing from one site of struggle to another (Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 31). Stepping

towards July 2019, street politics went beyond the standard locations and familiar

routes in previous mass mobilisations. An array of small-scale protests emerged across

residential communities (sekeoi 社區). Different professional groups, such as journalists,

lawyers, flight attendants, creative workers, and civil servants, organised their own

demonstrations, and even joined political strikes in a rare move for Hong Kong’s pro-

democracy movement (Chan and Pun 2020).

16 Similar to many networked protests, the rapid diffusion of contention in the Anti-ELAB

Movement was highly related to the decentralised, horizontal organisation afforded by

the extensive use of social media and mobile technology. In particular, the online

forum LIHKG (lindang touleonkeoi 連登討論區) and a bundle of Telegram groups

functioned together as central communication platforms for immediate onsite tactics

and deliberation over long-term strategies. As a Reddit-like platform, LIHKG facilitates

the crowdsourcing of leadership connected to robust feedback loops (Ting 2020).

Compared to other popular platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram is considered by

protesters to be a more reliable encrypted messaging tool that can provide higher

security and protection. For street confrontation, platformised coordination enacted

the motto of “be water” (jyuseoi 如水) in stark contrast to the static occupying strategy

during UM. As many commentators have already pointed out, conflictual interactions

between Anti-ELAB protesters and the police force added fuel to the escalation of

violence from both sides (Lee 2019b; Ku 2020; Ting 2020). While police-protester clashes

had diffused to residential areas, it increased the chance for movement bystanders to

perceive police use of indiscriminate and excessive violence. According to a public

opinion survey carried out in mid-November, 83% and 73% agreed that the HKSAR


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government and the police force, respectively, were overwhelmingly responsible for

the escalation of violence, but only around 40% blamed the protesters.10 The public

receptiveness of radical tactics was also supported by strong public approval of the

movement goals, unresponsive authorities, and police brutality (Lee 2019a). In response

to police misconduct and the desire for truth-seeking over contested events,11

protesters launched a series of Citizens’ Press Conference (Mangaan geizewui 民間記者

會) as platforms for protesters, victims of police abuse, and experts to speak out.

17 At the same time, moderate protesters “escalated” their engagement by creating a wide

range of peaceful activities throughout the movement, ranging from collective singing

of the movement anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” (Jyunwing gwonggwai Hoenggong 願榮光

歸香港) to forming “human chains” along metro lines. These will be elaborated in the

next section. Indeed, diffusion went beyond local society. The extensive global outreach

of the Anti-ELAB Movement represents a watershed in Hong Kong movement history

(Ku 2020), ranging from media campaigns and thematic demonstrations in different

foreign cities to non-governmental public diplomacy.12

Deepening everyday politicisation

18 Also noteworthy was a development towards everyday politicisation, referring to the

process of inventing alternative ways and practices of performing and enacting politics

in ordinary and “normal” settings (Roussos 2019). The politicisation of everyday life in

the Anti-ELAB Movement was characterised by widespread connective action,

community activism, and economic resistance, especially in the latter months of

protest. Table 2 captures the general pattern of Anti-ELAB protesters’ individual

participation between September 2019 and January 2020.

Table 2. Individual means of participation (from September 2019 to January 2020)

Sep

15

Sep

28

Oct

1

Oct

14

Oct

20

Dec

8

Jan

1

Frontline protest

Pass on resources to the

frontline46 50.6 34.8 52.3 39.4 53.5 48.4

Stop police advances 9 9.1 3.1 12.7 6.5 13.5 13.1

Protest outside police

station/ / / / 17.5 / /

Resource donations

Donate money to protest-

related groups42.2 59.3 53.1 42.1 44.2 44.5 49.2

Donate money online 46.7 51.9 47.2 54.5 48.2 41.7 43.6

Donate resources other

than money43.7 46.2 38.6 47.3 41 47.3 46.1


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Community activism

Sing “Glory to Hong

Kong” publicly78.2 80.5 77 86.1 79.4 78.9 77.6

Express opinion on

“Lennon Wall”67.6 69.1 61.6 67.2 56.6 60.7 60.4

Shout protest slogan from

window at home55.3 53.6 48.6 52.6 47 53.7 55.6

Lunchtime flash-mob / / / / / 33.9 31.4

Join “human chain” 64 64.9 61.4 64 57.8 61.3 56.5

Economic resistance

Participate in any form of

strike/ / / / / 57.7 52.8

Buycott pro-movement

business/ 69.9 68.4 86.4 81.3 98.8 98.9

Boycott pro-government

business/ 86.2 83.4 89.7 88.5 98.5 98.1

Online and connective

action

Share pro-movement

messages and information78.2 82.7 74.5 83.7 78.4 75.4 76.4

Express pro-movement

opinions online74.4 74.1 67.3 79.3 72.4 71.2 72

Sign online petition 79.6 89.6 81.7 90.3 86.3 79.1 81.6

None of the above 0.7 0 0.6 0.2 0.4 1.6 0.5

N = 911 405 640 662 921 902 1306

Note: The figures are the percentage of respondents who have participated in that kind of protestactivity.

19 Moving towards July, many urban public spaces were filled with “Lennon Walls”

(Linnung coeng 連儂牆).13 Hong Kong pro-democracy supporters started to create a

Hong Kong Lennon Wall using Post-it sticky notes and other creative displays outside

the headquarters of the HKSAR government in Admiralty during the UM. From that

time on, the colourful mosaic has become a spatial practice and expressive channel for

citizens to voice their dissent. Other new community-based expressive actions such as

“human chains” and belting out slogans at home were gradually routinised, sustaining

a sense of involvement for movement supporters.


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Figure 4. A poster promoting the yellow economic circle. Credit: ANTIELAB Research Data Archive.

20 The most remarkable everyday resistance was political consumerism. From September

2019 to January 2020, the protesters surveyed who had buycotted pro-movement

businesses (“yellow” shops, wongdim 黃店) increased significantly from 69.9% to 98.9%,

while boycotting pro-government or pro-police businesses (“blue” shops, laamdim 藍

店) also showed a steady rise over those months (Table 2). For the first time, the Hong

Kong pro-democracy movement employed economic means of action to create

“alternative political resources in an acute imbalanced bargaining structure between

protesters and the government” (Chan and Pun 2020). Although it is still too early to

judge whether or not this economic leverage could bring substantial political rewards

as long as the economic structure does not change (ibid.), these habitual practices

actually resulted in revenue drops for some protester-targeted “blue” businesses such

as Best Mart 360 and Maxim’s Group.14 Facilitated by mobile apps that list the locations

and information of “yellow” shops, the pro-movement “yellow economic circle”

(wongsik ginzaihyun 黃色經濟圈) was formed and enacted in an attempt to counter the

influence of Chinese capital and to achieve a sustainable and autonomous local

economy in the long term.

Concluding remarks

21 This short essay attempts to contextualise the evolution of the contentious repertoire

throughout Anti-ELAB Movement and analyses its underlying dynamics. At the time of

writing, the unceasing waves of protest still had no end in sight. On 24 November 2019,

the pro-democracy camp won 85% of the seats in District Council elections. This

unexpected landslide victory has critical implications for the LegCo elections in late

2020, as well as for the 2021 Chief Executive election. It is foreseeable that, under the


121

new governing principle of “total governance” (quanmian guanzhi 全面管治) since 2014,

the Beijing government will adopt a more repressive approach to Hong Kong in

handling dissents in the future.

22 Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Anti-ELAB Movement entered a

period of “enforced abeyance” (beibik jauzi 被迫休止) in early February 2020, yet

contentious campaigns have not totally died down.15 As sociologist Ching-kwan Lee

pointed out, the Anti-ELAB Movement itself is a “permanent revolution” (winggau

gaakming 永久革命), and is in the process of constructing a “Hong Kong community”

(Hoenggong gungtungtai 香港共同體) based on affective solidarity and flexible forms of

resistance rooted in people’s everyday lives.16 With the enactment of the Hong Kong

National Security Law (Gongkeoi gwokngonfaat 港區國安法) on 30 June 2020, Hong Kong

pro-democracy protesters now face a higher risk of punishment, and whether citizens’

political freedoms can be protected remains unclear. Furthermore, many people also

fear the erosion of Hong Kong’s judicial independence because its unique common law

jurisdiction does not align with China’s judicial system (Chan 2018). Nevertheless, after

a summer of freedom and a traumatic autumn in 2019, this popular movement has

already become a “long revolution” against authoritarian encroachment.

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NOTES

1. The research team was led by Professor Francis Lee L. F. of The Chinese University of Hong

Kong, Dr. Samson Yuen of Lingnan University, Dr. Gary Tang of The Hang Seng University of

Hong Kong, and Dr. Edmund W. Cheng of City University of Hong Kong. The author was an onsite


123

coordinator for more than ten surveys and was responsible for preliminary analysis of the survey

data. For a detailed discussion on the survey methodology, please refer to Yuen (2019).

2. According to a public opinion survey during March 2016, around 70% of Hong Kong

citizens agreed that people should always follow peaceful and non-violent means when

struggling with the authorities and striving for their own demands. See “Survey

Findings on Views on Social Conflict in Hong Kong Released by Hong Kong Institute of

Asia-Pacific Studies at CUHK,” Communications and Public Relations Office, The

Chinese University of Hong Kong, 6 April 2016, https://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/

press_detail.php?1=1&1=1&id=2230&t=survey-findings-on-views-on-social-conflict-in-

hong-kong-released-by-hong-kong-institute-of-asia-pacific-studies-at-cuhk (accessed

on 24 February 2020).

3. Holmes Chan, “Leading Hong Kong Umbrella Movement activists found guilty of

public nuisance,” Hong Kong Free Press, 9 April 2019, https://hongkongfp.com/

2019/04/09/breaking-hong-kong-umbrella-movement-activists-handed-verdicts-

public-nuisance-trial/ (accessed on 24 February 2020).

4. “眾志倡民主自決周庭被DQ 選舉主任指沒有真心真誠擁護基本法” (Zungzi coeng

manzyuzikyut Zau Ting bei DQ syungeoizyujam zi mutjau zansam zansing jungwu geibunfaat,

Demosisto advocates democratic self-determination, Agnes Chow is disqualified by

returning officer for her insincerity toward the Basic Law), Ming Pao, 28 January 2018,

https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%e8%a6%81%e8%81%9e/article/20180128/

s00001/1517077081428 (accessed on 30 June 2020).

5. “影像: 反逃犯條例修訂大遊行民陣指人數高達13萬” (Jingzoeng:

faantoufaantiulaisaudeng daai jauhang manzan zi jansou goudaat 13 maan, Image: CHRF

claims more than 130,000 people joining anti-extradition bill amendment protest),

Initium Media, 28 April 2019, https://theinitium.com/article/20190428-photo-

extradition-law-protest/ (accessed on 24 February 2020).

6. “反引渡修例聯署合集” ( Faanjandou saulai lyuncyu hapzaap, The collection of Anti-ELAB

petitions,” Citizen News, 9 June 2019, https://www.hkcnews.com/FOO-petitions/?

fbclid=IwAR3eWF2KKtNzRQRY76zdDPGjIYBbdw8uDQE26UC5CRCjKTsoxbZSY4yDmoY#/. (accessed

on 24 February 2020).

7. The sample size of the 18 August survey was 806.

8. Hillary Leung, “Hong Kong Student Who Fell from Height During a Protest Dies,” Time, 8

November 2019, https://time.com/5721979/hong-kong-student-brain-injury-death/ (accessed on

24 February 2020).

9. Hiu-Fung CHUNG 鍾曉烽, “不斷抗爭, 持續 ‘升級’: 反修例運動參與者的民意走向” (Bat tyun

kongzang, cizuk ‘sing kap’: faan saulai wandung samjyuze dik manji zauhoeng, Anti-ELAB protesters’

opinion on movement escalation), Stand News, 13 August 2019, https://www.thestandnews.com/

politics/不斷抗爭-持續-升級-反修例運動參與者的民意走向/ (accessed on 24 February 2020).

10. “民調: 逾八成受訪者稱政府警方需為暴力升溫負很大責任” ( Mandiu: jyu baatsing saufongze

cing zingfu gingfong seoi wai boulik singwan fu handaai zaakjam, Public opinion survey: more than

80% of interviewees believe government and police are largely responsible for violence

escalation,” Radio Television Hong Kong, 15 November 2019, https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/

component/k2/1492480-20191115.htm?fbclid=IwAR1QCPrIuiqYkFV37YCx9dIyR6FR-

ykVNTP7YLbY-SrdF-_jFxGYOSxDRto (accessed on 24 February 2020).

11. The 21 July Yuen Long attack and 31 August Prince Edward metro station protest were two

prominent cases.

12. Further elaboration on movement internalisation would be helpful, but it is beyond the

limited scope of this short article.


124

https://time.com/5721979/hong-kong-student-brain-injury-death/

13. This practice refers to the Prague Lennon Wall, a monument to John Lennon’s peace ideals

created after his death and representing the pursuit of free speech and non-violent rebellion by

young Czech people against the communist regime during the 1980s.

14. “優品 360 盈利急挫八成稱社會運動打壓營商環境” (Jauban 360 jinglei gapco

baatsing cing sewuiwandung daangaat jingsoengwaanging, Drastic decrease in profit Mart

360 claims social movement impeding business environment), StandNews, 24 June 2020

(accessed on 30 June 2020); Jinshan Hong and Yvonne Man, “Chain Hated by Hong Kong

Protesters Sees Double Digit Drop,” Bloomberg, 19 November 2019, https://

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-18/chain-store-hated-by-hong-kong-

protesters-sees-double-digit-drop (accessed on 24 February 2020).

15. Francis Lee Lap-fung 李立峰. “社會運動下的抗疫和抗疫下的社會運動”

(Sewuiwandung haa dik kongjik wo kongjik haa dik sewuiwandung, Anti-pandemic during

social movement and social movement in the anti-pandemic era), Ming Pao, 20 February

2020, https://news.mingpao.com/ins/%E6%96%87%E6%91%98/article/20200220/

s00022/1582098559971 (accessed on 30 June 2020).

16. Ching-kwan Lee 李靜君. “‘觸動靈魂深處的反送中革命’ 社會學解析” (‘Zukdung

lingwan samcyu dik faansungzung gaakming’ sewuihok gaaisik, A sociological analysis of the

“soul-touching” Anti-ELAB movement), The Storm Media, 1st December 2019, https://

www.storm.mg/article/2010112 (accessed on 24 February 2020).

AUTHOR

HIU-FUNG CHUNG

Hiu-Fung Chung is a research assistant in the Department of Public Policy at the City University

of Hong Kong. Room B7506, Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, City University of Hong Kong, Tat

Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong [email protected]


125


Book reviews


126

GROSE, Timothy. 2019. Negotiating Inseparability in China:

The Xinjiang Class and the Dynamics of Uyghur Identity.

Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Ildikó Bellér-Hann

1 The institution of the Xinjiang Class (neidi

Xinjiang gaozhongban 內地新疆高中班)

was introduced in China in 2000. Based on

the Tibetan model (neidi Xizang

gaozhongban 內地西藏高中班), the four-

year boarding school was designed to

provide high-quality Chinese language

education for disadvantaged Uyghur and

other minority students mostly from a

rural background. Through generously

funding such students in China’s

predominantly Han-populated cities far

away from their homeland, the Xinjiang

Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the

program was supposed to integrate

minority youth into mainstream Chinese

society, imbuing them with Chinese

values and thereby contributing to the

stability of the “restive” north-western

borderland. The main objective of the

study is to assess the overall outcomes of

this educational policy.

2 Based on 30 months of fieldwork in Beijing and in various oases of the XUAR between

2007 and 2017, Timothy Grose’s book focuses on the Uyghurs, who make up the

majority of the Xinjiang Class. He never received permission to participate in everyday


127

school life and instruction, but using a snowball method he managed to interview 64

Uyghur graduates (male and female) about their experiences. He also draws on oral

histories and official documents issued by the Ministry of Education, the Xinjiang

Department of Education, and individual schools hosting Xinjiang Classes. Research was

conducted both in Chinese and Uyghur. Grose’s central analytical concepts are the state

and Uyghur ethnic identity as defined by the state. It soon becomes clear that official

recognition of ethnic diversity (rather than simply denying it) may engender discord:

minority ethnicity has both beneficial and detrimental aspects. Preferential policies in

the early years of market reforms included benefits in the fields of family planning,

employment, and culture. From the 1990s, however, affirmative action gave way to

intensifying discrimination that circumscribed use of the Uyghur language and culture

in general, including religious expression. These repressive policies culminated in the

mass incarcerations that began in 2016, which can be interpreted as a determined

effort to secure the full assimilation of the Uyghurs.

3 Grose’s exploration of Uyghur self-positioning vis-à-vis the Chinese state and diverse

identity discourses builds on earlier scholarship. Modern Uyghur identity emerged in

the borderlands of the Chinese and the Russian Empires. State policies shaped but did

not invent collective identities. This continued after 1949, when minzu 民族 designation

cemented Uyghur collective identity, albeit threatened by heavy-handed restrictions

and the promotion of Han migration to the XUAR. While this narrative is well known,

Grose breaks new ground when illuminating the multiple strategies through which

Xinjiang Class graduates creatively relate to state-ascribed identities.

4 Chapter One introduces the institution and the motivations of the Chinese Communist

Party. The boarding school offers able pupils an escape route from poverty and the

prospect of studying at a top university in Eastern China. Behind the rhetoric of

promoting inter-ethnic communication, the political objective is to create a fully

Sinicised minority elite. About 80% of Xinjiang Class pupils are Uyghurs from southern

Xinjiang. The presence of non-Uyghurs justifies reliance on Chinese in the classroom,

where the curriculum is monolingual. Contact with Han is limited to the teacher-pupil

relationship in the classroom: Han students live and study on the same campus, but in

separate buildings. When inter-ethnic encounters with Han do occur, they tend to be

played out in terms of competition and discursive patronising by the Han.

5 Minority boarders are subjected to a strict regime of study and are required to wear

standardised uniforms. Quotidian expressions of religiosity as well as veiling are

forbidden. The absence of the Uyghur language in the classroom contradicts the

principles of minzu policies, which encourage use of the mother tongue. While Uyghur

students comply with the schools’ religious policies, they subvert its language policy by

using Uyghur systematically outside the classroom.

6 Chapter Two investigates how Uyghur students assert their ethnic identity away from

their homeland. Ethnographic vignettes and interview excerpts testify to creative

responses to the state’s efforts to replace indigenous with patriotic loyalties. Taking

advantage of the relative freedom of conditions in Inner China, Uyghur pupils embrace

transnational Muslim cosmopolitanism, from which, however, Chinese Muslims (Hui

回), who form a separate ethnic group and display greater cultural proximity to the

Han majority than the Uyghur, remain excluded. Different modes of communication

require diverse modes of language. While face-to-face communication relies

overwhelmingly on Uyghur as an expression of corporate ethnic identity, electronic


128

communication allows some space for the inclusion of Chinese. Everyday resistance is

particularly salient in dating practices, where communal and family pressure inhibit

inter-ethnic romantic relationships and intermarriage.

7 Chapter Three explores Xinjiang Class graduates’ career choices after they have

completed another four years of college away from Xinjiang. Defying government

propaganda that encourages them to pay back their debt to the government by

returning to work in Xinjiang, many Uyghurs seek employment either abroad or in

other parts of China. However, as we learn in Chapter Four, few are successful and most

return to Xinjiang eventually, often reluctantly, yielding to family pressure,

administrative constraints concerning their mobility and place of residence, and

economic insecurity. Religion poses a particular dilemma when deciding whether to

return to Xinjiang or not. In Han-majority regions it is difficult to follow a halal diet,

while within Xinjiang the increased surveillance and extreme restrictions placed on

religious practice were seen as major drawbacks.

8 The overall conclusion is that the Xinjiang Class ultimately fails to achieve its desired

outcomes. During their eight to nine years away from the homeland, Uyghur graduates

resist integration: if anything, living in Han-majority surroundings strengthens their

Uyghur ethnic identity.

9 This comprehensive yet concise study of the experiences of Uyghur Xinjiang Class

graduates studying in Eastern China is timely. Grose captures the complex relationship

between Uyghur agency and state efforts to impose primordial ethnic identity. The

study is a major achievement, especially in view of the fact that conditions for data

collection on such a sensitive topic by a foreign researcher were already becoming very

difficult. Rather than present the Xinjiang Class in terms of Chinese exceptionalism,

Grose makes appropriate comparisons with other nation-building projects, including

British India, colonial France, and the United States government’s dealings with Native

American children.

10 By the time field research for this study was concluded, the Chinese state’s relationship

with the Uyghurs had deteriorated dramatically. It remains to be seen whether

assimilation by coercion will prove any more successful than the failed policy of

attempting to create a comprador elite by means of boarding schools.

AUTHOR

ILDIKÓ BELLÉR-HANN

Ildikó Bellér-Hann is Associate Professor at the Departmentof Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University ofCopenhagen. Dept. of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies,Karen Blixen plads 8, Copenhagen 2300 S., Denmark.

[email protected]


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KENDALL, Paul. 2019. The Sounds ofSocial Space: Branding, BuiltEnvironment, and Leisure in UrbanChina. Honolulu: University ofHawai’i Press.Tim Oakes

1 I first visited the southwestern Chinese

city of Kaili 凱里 in 1987. At that time, the

city, with its many secretive Third Front

factories, was still closed to foreigners,

and I was quickly picked up by local public

security officers and put on the next bus

out of town. But Kaili – existing as it did in

the midst of Guizhou’s Miao 苗 minority

heartland – intrigued me, and in 1993 I

returned to conduct dissertation research

on ethnic tourism development in the

region. I was again shoed out of town, but

this time due to local officials’ insistence

that if I wanted to study ethnic tourism I

would have to spend time in the villages.

“Kaili is just an industrial city,” one

municipal cadre told me, “there’s no

ethnic tourism here.” I ended up spending

most of the rest of the year living in

tourist villages, returning to Kaili only to

catch a train to Guiyang, meet with


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prefectural tourism officials and guides, or check in with village friends who had

opened businesses or worked there.

2 As he relates in his ethnography The Sounds of Social Space, Paul Kendall was told

something similar when he first went to Kaili to study the relationship between

everyday musical practices and the social production of space. He begins the book with

a quote that sounded very familiar to me: “Don’t waste your time in Kaili” (p. 1). But

unlike me, Kendall stayed put, and ended up spending nine months in the city between

2011 and 2012 (with follow-up trips over subsequent years). The Sounds of Social Space is,

in part, about why Kaili’s residents continue to view their city as an inauthentic

cultural space that visitors should have little interest in compared to the surrounding

countryside, despite the government’s sustained efforts to transform the city from the

grubby industrial place I caught a glimpse of in 1987 to a branded “ocean of song and

dance” (gewu haiyang歌舞海洋) (p. 4) for tourists. The central, and most compelling,

issue that Kendall explores is this tension – he variously calls it a contradiction, a gap, a

conflict – between the government’s efforts to brand Kaili as a destination of authentic

ethnic culture, on the one hand, and the rise of leisure consumption and high decibel

public spaces, on the other, which has rendered the outdoor production of that

“authentic culture” nearly impossible. Put in more general terms, this is a tension

between state development planning and the chaotic processes of rapid urbanisation, a

theme on which there are countless variations throughout China.

3 Kaili’s branded “authentic culture” of minority song and dance is mobilised by the

broader Chinese discourse of yuanshengtai 原生態, which as Kendall notes, conceives of

authenticity in terms of an almost primeval original-ness and connection to the natural

environment. This renders yuanshengtai implicitly rural and distant from “civilised”

cities, making any effort to brand an urban space as yuanshengtai fraught from the

start. Kendall’s ethnography demonstrates ably that Kaili’s residents understand this

problem. Not only do they insist that the urban space of Kaili is definitely not

yuanshengtai, but they celebrate – with a certain sense of superiority vis-à-vis the

villages – their own inauthenticity as “fake” minorities. As Kendall reminds us, cities

are after all not meant to be ethnic, even as Kaili’s government has gone out of its way

to make the city look like a minzu 民族 theme park. Perhaps my favourite moment in

the book comes in the form of an extended quote from a Kaili hip-hop dancer

disparaging the Miao cultural “brainwashing” of the city’s residents by the incessant

ringtones on everyone’s mobile phone playing jingles by the Miao singing star Ah You

Duo 阿幼朵. For Kendall, the key to understanding the gap between branded and lived

Kaili lies in the city’s soundscape, rather than in the built environment that has received

the bulk of state investment for tourism promotion. While the city might look ethnic, its

chaotic soundscape reminds us not of yuanshengtai authenticity but rather of the high-

decibel environment of cities throughout China.

4 But The Sounds of Social Space is not just about a gap between state branding and the

everyday musical practices of residents, for Kendall is astute enough to understand

that an oppositional relationship between “the state” and “the people” is not only

simplistic but also inaccurate. In this context he offers a critique of Lefebvre’s well-

known spatial triad that otherwise animates the book theoretically and conceptually.

Kendall’s book offers an ethnographically informed engagement with Lefebvre’s

theories of social space. While I would quibble with his claim that China Studies has

seen limited engagement with Lefebvre (works by Wing Shing Tang, Hyun Bang Shin,


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and Yingjin Zhang come to mind), I applaud Kendall’s insistence on not “applying”

Lefebvre’s framework to a Chinese “case” but rather engaging with the conceptual

limitations of Lefebvre on an empirical level. Those limitations revolve around the

obvious difference between the contexts of Lefebvre’s post-War French urbanism and

contemporary China. Kendall questions what he finds to be Lefebvre’s tendency toward

an oppositional understanding of the relationship between lived and conceived space.

He argues instead that “an examination of the relational production of lived space in

fieldwork settings indicates a blurring of the lived and the conceived that is not

altogether recognized by Lefebvre” (p. 137).

5 The Sounds of Social Space is nevertheless not a theoretical book, and Kendall’s reading of

Lefebvre, while mostly on target, is brief. More philosophically inclined readers will

probably find themselves wanting more theoretical engagement to bolster Kendall’s

arguments about social space. But the book offers a strong ethnographic account, and

in my reading anyway, just enough engagement with theory to be useful but not so

much that it gets in the way of the empirical story being told. That empirical story is a

rich one about how the social soundscapes of the city are produced and contested, how

public spaces emerge in the wake of declining industry and work-unit sociality, and

how folk musical production becomes a transient casualty of breakneck urbanisation.

Kendall insists that this “small city” has a great deal to tell us about many of the larger

processes transforming urban China today, and he’s right. I for one am glad he didn’t

listen when encountering that familiar message: “Don’t waste your time in Kaili.”

AUTHOR

TIM OAKES

Tim Oakes is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. UCB 260, Boulder, CO

80540 USA. [email protected]


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HO, Ming-sho. 2019. ChallengingBeijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’sSunflower Movement and Hong Kong’sUmbrella Movement. Philadelphia:Temple University Press.Justin Kwan

1 With Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of

Heaven, Ming-sho Ho provides one of the

most comprehensive accounts of two

major social movements in Taiwan and

Hong Kong. Both the Sunflower

Movement (Taiyanghua xueyun 太陽花學

運) and the Umbrella movement (Jyusaan

wandong 雨傘運動) have garnered interest

due to the efforts that civil society and

youth groups have played in

strengthening democracy in their

respective societies. From 18 March to 10

April 2014, Taiwanese activists occupied

the national legislature to protest against

the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement

(CSSTA), aimed at facilitating economic

integration with China. Less than five

months later, a similar large-scale protest

occurred in Hong Kong from 26

September to 15 December, advocating for

greater democratic rights and universal

suffrage for the Chief Executive election. Ho’s book offers an account of the “origins,


133

the processes, and the consequences” (p. 18) of these two movements by examining

their evolution, movement mobilisation, and domestic and international outcomes.

2 This book is comprised of an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. In his

introduction, Ho highlights a divide in the traditional social movement literature and

adopts a synthetic approach to bridge these two perspectives. The first half of his book

adopts vocabularies from the mainstream approach on networks, opportunities, and

threats to forward his argument, while the second half of his book uses a

constructionist approach that focuses on movement leadership, the creativity of

protesters, and the role of emotions as modes of analysis.

3 After introducing six analytical puzzles that are explored throughout the book, Chapter

One begins by diving into the historical parallels between the two case studies. Starting

in the 1970s, Ho interweaves the social movement histories of Taiwan and Hong Kong

into a single fluid narrative. This chapter will be valuable to readers unfamiliar with

both places, as it provides an overview into both the institutional and political factors

that have resulted in Taiwan’s democratic success and Hong Kong’s hybrid regime.

Chapter Two examines “China’s impact,” providing a better understanding as to how

the China factor has manifested itself in both places. Rejection of economic integration

with China and the country’s growing sharp power, he argues, has reinforced local

identities. Ho provides a novel perspective as to why Chinese identity has been largely

rejected in both places, aptly noting that “China perfected the skill in exerting

authoritarian influence first in Hong Kong and Taiwan before applying it to other

countries” (p. 70).

4 The third chapter examines the “forging of movement networks” by examining the

linkages between different social movement actors (e.g. students, NGOs, and opposition

parties) and the pre-existing activism in both societies. Chapters Four and Five provide

detailed accounts of the sequence of events in both the Sunflower and Umbrella

movements through the framework of “opportunities, threat and standoff” (p. 148).

Chapter Six then applies the theoretical concept of “improvisation” (p. 152-3) to better

understand how the proliferation of these strategic responses occurred without prior

planning.

5 Finally, Chapter Seven examines the post-Sunflower and post-Umbrella activities that

led to the shift from activism into electoral politics. This chapter makes an important

contribution in explaining how new political parties emerged and claimed victory in

competitive elections. The conclusion then revisits the theoretical contributions of this

book and the spillover effects these movements will have on the future of these two

societies.

6 Ho’s contextualisation of Hong Kong and Taiwan within the larger social movement

literature is impressive. However, one important point that could have been further

elaborated upon is the relationship between these social movements and the larger

institutional frameworks under which Taiwan and Hong Kong operate. As a sociologist,

Ho is focused on the social structure of the movements, rather than the political

outcomes created by the political institutions. While Ho synthesises his arguments in a

novel manner, improved methodological dialogue with other disciplines could provide

further explanation as to how the respective political institutions in Taiwan and Hong

Kong also shaped the outcome of protest politics. Taiwan’s democratic system was

ultimately better prepared to address the demands of protesters compared to Hong

Kong’s semi-democratic hybrid regime. This ultimately shaped the diverging


134

trajectories of these two societies. For instance, as these youth-based political parties in

Taiwan became integrated into the island’s democratic electoral system, the Hong Kong

government’s inability to handle grievances resulted in reverberating political conflicts

that disqualified many of these young activists-turned-politicians from office. While Ho

provides a detailed analysis of where the Sunflower and Umbrella movements diverge

in terms of leadership, types of mobilisation, and protest strategies, some readers will

wonder how these differences have impacted the subsequent political participation of

youth activists in Taiwan and Hong Kong after 2014. Similarly, the book does not delve

into the differences in institutional design and government policy responses that

resulted in a divergence in both the attitudes and goals of protesters in Taiwan and

Hong Kong. While no one author can be expected to account for all of these different

aspects and theoretical approaches, this additional level of comparative analysis could

have further complemented the structural analysis of these two movements. Despite

these minor limitations, Ho’s book provides a comprehensive yet succinct overview for

anyone who wishes to better understand these two social movements.

7 At the time of writing, both Hong Kong and Taiwan are at critical junctures in their

developmental trajectories. The recent imposition of the National Security Law in Hong

Kong has come as a stark response from Beijing to the 2019 anti-extradition bill

protests. Likewise, Taiwan’s January 2020 election and the victory of President Tsai Ing-

wen has also raised questions about the island’s own autonomy and the impact the

“China factor” has on the health of Taiwan’s democracy. While international coverage

of both events has been extensive, Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven is a highly

effective and much-needed contribution to the studies of Taiwan and Hong Kong,

providing the historical context and grounding to understanding current events in

both societies. Ho’s book adds to the growing body of literature that understands both

Taiwan and Hong Kong not through their colonial pasts or their relationships with

China, but by re-positioning both societies at the centre of their own subjectivities.

8 The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the

views of the associated organization.

AUTHOR

JUSTIN KWAN

Justin Kwan is a Program Manager at the Asia PacificFoundation of Canada, 900-675 W Hastings St, Vancouver,BC V6B 1N2, Canada. [email protected]


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VEG, Sebastian (ed.). 2019.Popular Memories of the MaoEra: From Critical Debate toReassessing History. HongKong: Hong Kong UniversityPress.Els van Dongen

1 In the shadow of the cultural and

anthropological turns, recent historical

scholarship on the Mao era (1949-1976)

has manifested an interest in “everyday

life,” rituals and performance, and the

lived experience of those at the

“grassroots” levels of society (see among

other examples Leese 2011; Brown and

Johnson 2015; Yang 2016). This detour

from elite politics and factionalism has

been enabled by the availability of a

greater variety of sources, including oral

histories, memoirs, diaries, previously

unavailable archival documents, semi-

official and unofficial books, material

objects, and visual sources. This trend also

involves greater attention being paid to

the representation of the Mao era in

media such as literature and film,

museums, and performance and visual


136

arts, and to the relation between history and memory (recent titles include Li and

Zhang 2016; Ho 2018; Chen 2020). But how do we reconcile these developments with the

seemingly static official narrative as famously outlined in the 1981 “Resolution on Party

History”? Are history and memory on divergent paths?

2 Popular Memories of the Mao Era, edited by Sebastian Veg, makes two relevant

contributions in addressing this intricate question. Firstly, it posits that the intellectual

narrative of trauma and victimhood as expressed in the 1980s’ scar literature (shanghen

wenxue 傷痕文學) and the 1990s’ nostalgia narrative of the “educated youth” (zhiqing 知

青) have made room for a more critical and public debate since the 2000s. In other

words, the “popular” or minjian 民間 (literally among the people) and “alternative

memories” of the Mao era are “increasingly discussed publicly in a critical,

historiographical manner” (p. 9). Secondly, attentive to the dynamics of history-

making, the volume argues that popular memory in this sense is more than merely “an

alternative to official history”; it is also “a mechanism for the social construction of

knowledge” (p. 10). Whereas the “broad set of narratives” advanced by individuals and

communities that make up memory are “often contentious rather than consensual,”

the “body of socially and politically sanctioned knowledge” that is history is supported

by a certain degree of “professional or social consensus” (p. 10). The book aims to delve

into the “processes,” “social and institutional negotiations” and “mechanisms” through

which private memory becomes publicly endorsed history (p. 10).

3 The volume’s organisation seeks to reflect the tensions between the private and public

spheres and between elite and popular memory that have arisen in this process, but

each section also covers a different set of sources. Part One, “Unofficial Memories in

the Public Sphere,” focuses on journals, the internet, and museums, respectively. Jean-

Philippe Béja sketches the arrival of unofficial journals such as Jiyi 記憶 (Remembrance)

and Zuotian 昨天 (Yesterday) and Chinese samizdat (self-published) works . Wu Si,

former chief editor and acting publisher of Yanhuang Chunqiu 炎黃春秋 (Annals of the

Yellow Emperor), documents the journal’s engagement with public memory issues.

Drawing on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, Jun Liu investigates social memory and the

spread of counter-historical narratives on social media, whereas Kirk Denton explores

the possibility of alternative history through the lens of the so-called “Red Era” series

of museums at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Anren 安仁, Sichuan.

4 Part Two, “Critical Memory and Cultural Practices,” probes the changing relation

between elite and popular discourse and memory through literature, documentary

films, and art. Sebastian Veg analyses three works of reportage, historical

investigation, and fiction on the Great Famine (1959-1961), including Yang Jisheng’s

Tombstone (2008), as new forms of critical assessment of the Mao period. Next, Judith

Pernin outlines how independent documentaries have contributed to historical

discussions on the Mao period and which methods have been employed to this end.

Finally, Aihe Wang considers private and visual memory and its relation to public

history through both her research and her personal experience as a member of the

underground art group Wuming 無名 (No Name).

5 Part Three, “Unofficial Sources and Popular Historiography,” looks into the interaction

between elite and popular discourses by means of archival records and memoirs. Frank

Dikötter challenges the image of total compliance under Mao through sources such as

Party archives, self-published memoirs, and interviews. Reading against the grain,

Daniel Leese taps on rarely used political-legal documents as a source of alternative


137

memories. In the last of the book’s ten chapters, Michael Bonnin argues for the

importance of unofficial and semi-official sources on the rustication (xiaxiang 下鄉)

movement, including testimonies and publications by former officials and the

rusticated youth themselves.

6 On the whole, the volume introduces readers to major developments regarding how the

Mao era has been remembered and interpreted among various communities across the

past decade, and the ways in which state and market have interacted in this process.

Beyond historiographical and methodological considerations, the volume acquaints

those interested in the history of the Mao and reform eras with a vast collection of

primary sources. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of the volume renders it a

highly valuable teaching resource. One aspect of ambiguity in the volume concerns the

use of the term “popular memories,” which conventionally evokes the counterpart of

“official history” in socialist societies (p. 3), an opposition the volume in fact aims to

problematise. The “classic” binary “official/unofficial” also features throughout the

volume, with some authors leaning more towards “alternative memories” than towards

mechanisms of knowledge production. This ambiguity reflects the muddled realities of

contemporary China, where processes of memory-becoming-history are volatile and

rather unpredictable. What happens to publicly endorsed narratives following renewed

repression? And how does this affect existing negotiation mechanisms? These and

other questions on how, why, and when the pendulum of history-making swings back

are perhaps for a follow-up volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BROWN, Jeremy, and Matthew D. JOHNSON (eds.). 2015. Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in

China’s Era of High Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHEN, Lingchei Letty. 2020. The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years.

Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

HO, Denise. 2018. Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge

University Press.

LEESE, Daniel. 2011. Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA:

Cambridge University Press.

LI, Jie, and Enhua ZHANG (eds.). 2016. Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist

Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.

YANG, Guobin. 2016. The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China. New York: Columbia

University Press.


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AUTHOR

ELS VAN DONGEN

Els van Dongen is Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological

University, Singapore. School of Humanities, 05-08, 48 Nanyang Avenue,

639818 Singapore. [email protected]


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