Blogging on the ‘Little Red Book’

About 20 minutes into our conversation, Jiao paused as though gathering her thoughts. ‘Actually, the timing of this interview is coincidental,’ she said, ‘I’m planning to resign this week and blog full-time.’ She quickly added: ‘But this is my choice. Compared with my current job, I have more freedom as a mum blogger on Xiaohongshu.’ The notion of ‘freedom’ (自由 ziyou) was a recurring theme among the mum bloggers interviewed, often serving as a key motivation for their commitment to the precarious work of blogging.

With plans to become a full-time blogger, Jiao now aims to post daily on Xiaohongshu (小红书, literally ‘Little Red Book’), a prominent social media platform in China. To stay motivated, she joined a WeChat group called the ‘Xiaohongshu Mum Bloggers Self-Discipline Check-In Group’ (小红书母婴博主自律打卡群), which has nearly 400 members. In this group, mum bloggers ‘check in’ (打卡 daka) by sharing their daily posts, helping one another stay committed to regular updates. Originally a workplace term referring to clocking in with a timecard, daka has taken on a new meaning here, symbolising the commitment of these women to staying visible and consistent on Xiaohongshu.

While the term daka mirrors traditional workplace discipline, Jiao and others emphasise how ziyou sets mum blogging apart from conventional jobs. The widespread use of ziyou in everyday language in China dates back to the introduction of the Reform and Opening policies in the late 1970s, which promoted a socialist market economy and expanded the idea of ziyou to encompass a broad array of concepts ranging from individual freedom (个人自由) to consumer freedoms (消费自由), reflecting a general shift towards greater personal autonomy (Zhang 2008).

Accompanying the discourse of ziyou is the state’s post-2008 economic restructuring, particularly through the 2015 ‘Internet Plus’ (互联网+) policy, which aimed to integrate internet technologies with traditional industries to drive economic growth and promote ‘mass entrepreneurship and innovation’ (Zhang 2023: 12). Through state sponsorship, these efforts have given rise to platform capitalism and the ‘She Economy’ (Zhang and Jurik 2021)—a concept that highlights women’s roles as both consumers and entrepreneurs in economic development. Such shifts reflect what Yang (2021) describes as ‘state-sponsored platformisation’—a strategy that aligns with China’s state-capitalism agenda. While it creates new career paths for women, it also channels their consumer and entrepreneurial activities into a broader state-driven framework of economic restructuring.

With the rise of the ‘She Economy’, Xiaohongshu has emerged as a leading social media and e-commerce platform for women. Branded as a ‘lifestyle platform’, Xiaohongshu (n.d.) combines ‘authentic, community-shared content’ with e-commerce. According to the Qian-Gua Database (2024), a third-party organisation specialising in Xiaohongshu data analytics and consultancy, women make up about 80 per cent of Xiaohongshu’s active users, with urban mothers representing 22 per cent of this group. As China’s influencer economy expands, many mothers are drawn to the platform to build audiences by sharing their lives, from childcare to consumption.

However, mum blogging on Xiaohongshu is just as precarious as other new-media work (Duffy et al. 2021). Some participants go months without sponsorship, and even the more experienced bloggers cannot guarantee consistent deals. The uncertainty is exacerbated by Xiaohongshu’s algorithmic governance. Despite the instability, many mum bloggers persist, often citing ziyou as a key reason for continuing.

This raises a paradox: How can freedom be both empowering and a source of precarity? How is this freedom truly experienced? Drawing on digital ethnography conducted in 2023 and 2024, this essay examines how mum bloggers understand and live ziyou. Rather than treating freedom as an abstract ideal, through in-depth interviews and participant observation, this research reveals the complex ways in which empowerment and exploitation are deeply intertwined.

Ziyou as a Gendered Hegemony

How can freedom simultaneously empower individuals and push them to accept precarity? Claudio Sopranzetti (2017) identifies two primary perspectives. The first, rooted in Marxist theory, views freedom as a tool for exploitation, masking systemic oppression behind the illusion of empowerment. The second, influenced by early Foucauldian thought, frames freedom as a way to produce governable subjects who feel ‘obliged to be free’ (Rose 1999: 87). While both perspectives offer valuable insights into how power and freedom intersect, Sopranzetti critiques their tendency to portray people as passive figures trapped in false consciousness, failing to account for the complexity of lived experiences.

Mum bloggers’ experiences and desires can hardly be dismissed as mere illusions. To understand the paradox, Gramsci’s (1971) concept of ‘hegemony’ provides a compelling framework that respects women’s agency. According to Gramsci, power operates not solely through coercion but also through individual consent. This perspective helps explain why mum bloggers embrace precarious work: freedom is framed as desirable within the context of their gendered experiences and challenges. Their consent, shaped by these motivations, ultimately upholds the hegemonic system by masking the realities of systemic inequality.

For many women, shifting to mum blogging has paradoxically become a way to navigate the gendered precarity of traditional workplaces. Most of the mum bloggers interviewed had worked in corporate roles before becoming full-time bloggers. Jiao, for example, left her corporate job after a frustrating meeting with human resources (HR). Despite exceeding her performance targets by 110 per cent, she was warned her contract could be terminated without compensation—an implicit push out, she suspected, especially with a new hire joining and no new projects on the horizon.

Jiao had for months played with the idea of leaving her corporate job, especially as her part-time blogging income already rivalled her salary. She had hesitated, worried about the uncertainty of blogging, but the HR meeting brought a harsh realisation: her corporate job was less stable than she thought. Thus, full-time blogging became her way of managing the insecurity of traditional employment. Freedom was central to Jiao’s decision. ‘Mum blogging provides me with a lot of ziyou,’ she explained. ‘I can control my work hours, unlike in my previous job, where I rushed for early subways and spent full days doing unappreciated work. It drained me. Even on lighter days, I felt mentally exhausted.’ She regretted not being able to be there for her child after she became a mother. To Jiao, freedom implied two facets: positive freedom to control her time, and negative freedom from rigid work structures (on this distinction, see Berlin 1969).

Similarly, Hu, a former finance worker, cited freedom as her reason for embracing full-time blogging. ‘It [ziyou] is about having control over my time. I like staying up late and sleeping in, so a job with flexibility suits me.’ Hu’s sense of freedom in blogging sharply contrasted with her previous job in finance, where the high-pressure ‘996’ culture (working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week) dominated. She witnessed colleagues facing serious health issues, including miscarriages, and realised the environment conflicted with her plans to start a family and take care of her wellbeing. Ming, another mum blogger, left her accounting job after struggling to balance work and family following her child’s birth. ‘After becoming pregnant, I felt so overwhelmed and exhausted,’ she recalled. ‘With nobody to help after my baby was born, I had to manage everything alone. Returning to my previous job was impossible. That’s how I picked up mum blogging on Xiaohongshu.’

In post-socialist China’s workplaces, the pressures on women can be intense. Many face gender discrimination, limited maternity support, and a hidden ‘motherhood penalty’ that cuts wages by about 12 per cent per child (Yu and Xie 2018). Thus, for many urban mothers, mum blogging has emerged as a practical alternative to navigating these pressures in traditional employment settings.

The Feminine Entrepreneurial Subject

Freedom goes beyond coping with gendered precarity in traditional workplaces. ‘I can pursue what I love, fulfill my value, and not have to give up my family for my career,’ said Hong, who described ziyou as the greatest benefit of blogging. She highlighted three key aspirations shared by many: ‘doing what you love’ (DWYL), ‘achieving value’, and ‘work–life balance’.

Hong enjoyed documenting her life. She was already active on social media before she became a mum blogger, frequently reviewing and sharing product experiences. On discovering Xiaohongshu when her child was six months old, she took the plunge. ‘I thought, why not? I’ve always loved taking pictures of my babies and sharing stuff. Why not make some money doing it?’ Hong’s sentiment, shared by many other bloggers, highlights a shift from traditional employment towards more fulfilling, passion-driven work. However, the DWYL ethos that is central to this sense of freedom often obscures the precarity of blogging.

For Hong, ‘achieving her value’ is another key aspect of freedom. Living with her husband’s family, she started as a full-time stay-at-home mother but felt that her lack of income left her without a say in family decisions especially when it came to financial matters. Hong’s decision to become a mum blogger was therefore a practical strategy to gain economic independence and challenge her prescribed position in the family. However, for Hong, the significance of freedom goes beyond this reason. It encompasses the pursuit of her ‘value’ (价值) and self-fashioning as a self-reliant career woman. Reflecting on her mother and sister-in-law, whom she sees as having sacrificed their potential to achieve their ‘value’ for childrearing, she explained: ‘My sister-in-law paused her work for six years for her kids. Six years! That could be a woman’s golden years.’ Hong believes her generation represents a more progressive mindset—one that strives to balance career with family responsibilities, refusing to prioritise one at the expense of the other.

Hong’s description of freedom carries an affective dimension, resonating with Foucault’s (1985) concept of freedom as being part of processes of self-fashioning through what he calls ‘technologies of the self’—techniques through which people constitute themselves. Consequently, freedom involves transforming oneself into an ethical subject through one’s actions (Foucault 1985: 27). For Hong, this process is about achieving her value by pursuing work about which she is passionate, all while balancing her domestic responsibilities.

While emphasising achieving personal value through a career, Hong’s vision of freedom remains rooted in traditional gender roles. Like many others interviewed, Hong is acutely aware of the unequal division of domestic labour. Yet, she expressed a sense of inevitability, feeling that the only viable solution was to adapt her professional path. Many mothers felt that blogging helps them reconcile career ambitions with these gendered expectations, however challenging these are. This dynamic reflects a neoliberal feminist ideal (Gill 2007), in which career and family are portrayed as compatible goals.

The Rise of Gendered Ziyou Hegemony

Hegemonic systems create frameworks for individuals to navigate social structures marked by domination (Roseberry 1994). In China, ziyou has emerged as a form of hegemony, functioning not only as a personal ideal but also as a collective response to the socioeconomic and political transformations of the post-reform era. The concept of ziyou in China has evolved significantly (Zhang 2008). First introduced through Fu Yan’s early-twentieth-century translation of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, it initially linked personal freedom with national liberation. In the early years of the People’s Republic, ziyou emphasised collective interests under socialist collectivism. However, as we have seen, Reform and Opening redefined the concept to encompass more personal freedoms. Subsequent labour reforms further connected ziyou to market-driven employment, shifting from state-guaranteed jobs to flexible work with greater personal choice and risk.

The impacts of privatisation extend to social life, ethics, and self-perceptions. Ong and Zhang (2008) note that as urban state enterprises privatise, individuals are encouraged towards self-reliance over state dependency. This shift fosters a mix of private freedom and authoritarian control, as the Party-State, social sectors, and individuals collaboratively promote market-oriented values, moulding citizens into self-reliant subjects aligned with state interests (Ong 2006: 4).

These transformations have profoundly gendered impacts. China’s Reforms and Opening have shifted the country away from socialist egalitarianism towards more traditional gender roles. Women’s employment dropped sharply between 1988 and 2002, largely due to public sector layoffs (Ding et al. 2009). Privatised childcare and education further burdened women, pushing many to ‘return home’. Consequently, the state has actively shaped a neoliberal feminine identity, positioning women at the intersection of individualism and re-traditionalisation (Zhang 2023). Policies addressing demographic decline, such as the Three-Child Policy, have reinforced these dynamics, alongside a revival of Confucian ideals (Greenhalgh 2024). President Xi Jinping’s 2013 address to the All-China Women’s Federation epitomised this trend, emphasising women’s roles in upholding family values and promoting a state-led revival of Confucian patriarchy (Zheng 2016: 260).

Thus, the intersection of Confucian traditions and neoliberal governance has profoundly shaped the lives of contemporary Chinese women. The state and market-driven revival of Confucian patriarchal ideals is often framed within the discourse of ziyou, ostensibly to enhance women’s autonomy. In this setting, mum blogging and the promise of ziyou seem to offer young mothers a way to reconcile conflicting gender roles. Ziyou has thus emerged as a hegemonic framework for them, not only to ‘make sense of’ but also to ‘make do’ with the shifting socioeconomic landscape (Sopranzetti 2017: 69). It serves as a framework through which these women interpret their lives as emancipated and as a strategy to manage new forms of gendered precarity shaped by post-socialist neoliberal reforms and patriarchal capitalism in China.

Algorithm Governance and Mutual Warming

On the evening of the 24^th of every month, the WeChat group of mum bloggers often buzzes with nervous energy. The next day, Xiaohongshu announces users’ account status for the coming month, determining whether their accounts will function smoothly or face restrictions. Some bloggers share tactics for damage control in case their accounts are flagged, while others post prayerful memes, hoping their accounts remain unaffected (see Figure 1).

One blogger admitted that she often lost sleep that night. The month I spoke to her, she was particularly anxious because she had been actively engaging in what mum bloggers call ‘mutual warming’ (互暖)—a visibility-boosting strategy in which bloggers exchange likes and comments. While effective, it risks detection by Xiaohongshu’s algorithms as a violation of platform rules. To play it safe, she had stopped participating on the 20^th of the month and was now waiting tensely for the 25^th.

Blogger Su described mutual warming as ‘guerilla warfare’ against Xiaohongshu, as it operates with careful coordination. Each day, an organiser invites members from the WeChat group to join a smaller group of 20 to 30 participants, ensuring control over group size. In these smaller groups, bloggers share their posts, and members engage by liking, saving, and commenting using their secondary Xiaohongshu accounts, following strict rules to avoid detection by the platform. For instance, they wait at least a minute between actions, as hasty interactions might raise algorithmic suspicion.

These tactics and participation in ‘visibility labour’ (Abidin 2016) reflect bloggers’ pressure to maintain visibility, which is critical for securing sponsorships. At the same time, Xiaohongshu commodifies visibility by encouraging creators to purchase paid promotions to boost traffic. Many bloggers are acutely aware of the platform’s commercial motives. As Jiao noted: ‘Getting natural traffic on a post with an advertisement is nearly impossible. The platform wants to make money by selling traffic.’ Yet, many interviewees find these promotions too costly. Blogger Xin explained: ‘It costs at least 108 yuan per promotion, and that only gets you around 20 likes, sometimes even less.’ Thus, mum bloggers have turned to mutual warming as a more affordable alternative, circumventing Xiaohongshu’s expensive and unpredictable promotion system.

To sustain visibility, bloggers must also navigate Xiaohongshu’s algorithmic rules and regulatory frameworks. Research on Instagram influencers has highlighted strategies like ‘engagement pods’, where users mutually boost each other’s content through coordinated liking and sharing (O’Meara 2019). Mum bloggers on Xiaohongshu have refined this approach: they not only boost one another’s posts but also shift between platforms, using WeChat to sidestep Xiaohongshu’s algorithmic control.

These strategies have emerged in response to Xiaohongshu’s tightening restrictions. In January 2021, Xiaohongshu launched ‘Pugongying’(蒲公英), its official brand collaboration platform that regulates and commercialises individual content creators. Unregistered ads risk being flagged by algorithms, resulting in visibility restrictions or removal of posts. Central to this system is the ‘Pugongying Health System’ (蒲公英健康系统), which rates bloggers as ‘healthy’ (健康) or ‘abnormal’ (异常) based on their behaviour, with ratings released monthly on the 25^th. Actions like ‘abnormal traffic data’ can result in an abnormal status, and three consecutive ‘abnormal’ ratings result in permanent exclusion from Pugongying. This compels bloggers to self-censor and carefully coordinate their mutual-warming pods.

Thus, platformisation offers mum bloggers new entrepreneurial opportunities, but their freedoms are simultaneously curtailed by algorithmic control. In this tightly regulated digital ecosystem of market and surveillance, freedom becomes a continuous process of negotiation. Mum bloggers internalise the ‘algorithmic gaze’, shifting between platforms and mimicking organic behaviour to evade detection. When asked about the origins of these strategies, Su described them as ‘folk theory’ (民间理论), a form of community-developed knowledge born out of trial and error. Through these practices, mum bloggers demonstrate their agency by engaging in ‘algorithmic imaginations’ (Zhang et al. 2020), constructing alternative knowledge to navigate the opaque systems of algorithmic control.

The Paradox of Freedom in the Platform Economy

Shifts in sociopolitical, economic, and gender dynamics in post-socialist China have given rise to a gendered hegemony of ziyou, which mum bloggers use to self-fashion as entrepreneurial feminine subjects. The revival of Confucian patriarchal ideals, driven by state and market forces, is often framed within this discourse of ziyou, ostensibly enhancing women’s autonomy. In this setting, the promise of ziyou in mum blogging offers young mothers a means to navigate conflicting gender roles, making ziyou both a way to interpret their lives as emancipatory and a tool for managing the gendered precarities brought about by post-socialist neoliberalism and patriarchal capitalism in China.

However, as we have seen, freedom paradoxically imposes controls. In the platform economy, this paradox is even more accentuated: while platformisation offers mum bloggers freedoms and entrepreneurial opportunities, it simultaneously restricts and commodifies them through algorithmic governance. Nonetheless, mum bloggers demonstrate resilience, using personal and collective strategies to navigate these constraints. This creates a layered landscape of freedom and unfreedom, empowerment and exploitation, negotiated through bloggers’ agency. Their experiences challenge a monolithic view of oppression versus resistance, instead showing how the state, platforms, and mum bloggers themselves collaboratively shape a dynamic negotiation of power.

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