This essay examines the cyber-based ‘New Federal State of China’ (NFSC), a transnational movement founded by Chinese businessman and self-described billionaire-in-exile Guo Wengui in alliance with Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Through a digital ethnography of the NFSC’s online ‘farms’, I trace how followers transform exile politics into affective labour—performing loyalty, investing money, and circulating belief as both moral capital and speculative value. The essay argues that the NFSC network exemplifies the logic of communicative and algorithmic capitalism, under which participation substitutes for transformation and faith becomes a fungible asset.

A carved stone discovered in Qinghai Province in 2020 drew wide attention in June 2025 when a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed that it was an inscription from the reign of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang (r. 221–210 BCE), a claim that seemed to extend Qin influence to the Tibetan Plateau. […]

Laoye left Louisiana like an outlaw cowboy, abandoning all his earthly possessions, and hitting the road. The flat-screen TVs, the piles of clothes, the closet full of USB cords? No longer needed. Just a backpack of essentials and he was out the door. He would be back, he promised, but Louisiana was now squarely in […]

In April 2025, Aqiang, a renowned gay rights advocate, published an online article titled ‘Condemning Gay Elders for “Marriage Fraud” Is as Absurd as Blaming Ancient People for Not Using the Internet’ (谴责老年gay‘骗婚’, 与骂古人不上网一样搞笑). By marriage fraud (骗婚 pianhun), Aqiang was referring to the practice of gay men marrying unwitting straight women, who then become […]

Jin Xing 金星 (literally, ‘golden star’, or ‘Venus’ in English) is a household name in mainland China. Since undergoing gender-affirmation surgery in 1994, she has established herself as a dancer, television personality, businesswoman, and, most prominently, transgender icon. From 2015 to 2017, The Jin Xing Show (金星秀) on Dragon Television (东方卫视) made her China’s first […]

One summer a few years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to attend an LGBTQ+ youth camp in a city in southern China, where I made many friends. After each day of classes, we hung out in the sweaty heat, chatting and laughing, discussing politics and society, and going to underground […]