In January 2025, I was chatting online with a few friends about the ongoing controversy surrounding the construction of a factory for Chinese carmaker BYD in Brazil, which had just come under scrutiny after the country’s Public Labour Prosecution Office accused it of ‘slavery’, following an investigation into the working conditions of Chinese labourers at […]

‘I am a pig’—these are the words that interrupt Chu Yuxun as she peacefully writes her first impressions of the new school. Looking up, she sees a male student in a basketball jersey stammering the humiliating sentence before bolting away. Three more male students follow in quick succession. Fed up with these peculiar encounters, Yuxun […]

This essay is written precisely so that it could be dismissed. —Paul Mann (1991: 141)   Gary Zhexi Zhang (2021) first coined the term ‘Sinopessimism’ as a speculative counterpart to Afropessimism, imagining a future in which China becomes the object, rather than the subject, of global racialisation. While Zhang’s usage was primarily a thought experiment, […]

‘I have saved up 50,000 yuan, planning to buy a house in Hegang. I will budget 30,000–40,000 yuan for the house itself, and the remaining 10,000 for living supplies.’ This post went viral on the Chinese online forum Baidu Tieba in May 2019, attracting more than 10,000 comments and extensive journalistic coverage (Longtoulaoda 2019). In […]

Co-living residents highlight the present, exploration, and fluidity as central to their ‘experience orientation’, viewing these traits as essential to the uniqueness of their life. Interactions within co-living spaces tend to emphasise the present. Upon leaving, the roommate relationship typically concludes, with any further developments being largely serendipitous and not a primary focus during the […]

In the Chinese music scene, women have traditionally been confined to roles embodying elegance and obedience. This is exemplified by groups such as the 12 Girls Band, whose success, built on performing traditional instruments such as the guzheng (古筝) and pipa (琵琶), aligns with societal expectations of femininity, reinforcing Confucian stereotypes of Chinese women as […]

The Chinese diasporic media operates within a fragmented and turbulent environment. It is exceedingly difficult to deliver uncensored, meaningful content that can connect communities and reflect the complex realities of life both within and outside China. Over the past decade, Xi Jinping’s administration has tightened its grip on Chinese society by expanding state control and […]

In late March 2022, Shanghai imposed its strictest lockdowns since the Covid-19 outbreak two years earlier. Amid China’s stringent zero-Covid policy and crackdown on personal freedoms, internet searches for ‘conditions for immigrating to Canada’ surged, drawing the attention of authorities. To circumvent censorship on emigration-related searches, Chinese netizens adopted the code word run (润), whose […]

The People’s Daily (人民日报) publishes important announcements on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It covers high-level politics, economic achievements, diplomatic breakthroughs, and other serious topics. So, on 14 December 1984, a reader might have been surprised to see the paper run the playful headline ‘Interprovincial Dating Project’ (跨省市恋爱协作) (People’s Daily 1984). The article […]

This essay re-examines the Great Translation Movement (GTM) as an activist-journalistic initiative that challenges the authority of the Chinese Party-State by exposing its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Highlighting a problematic aspect of the GTM, it calls into question its oversimplified portrayal of the Chinese people, as it perpetuates national character discourse by attributing societal issues to perceived inherent traits of the populace rather than holding the regime to account. The GTM’s engagement with Chinese political discourse appears to be driven by its coordinators’ alignment with Euro-American right-wing populism, fostering self-racialisation and internalised racism that ultimately distort dissent within China’s political landscape.