This essay maps the evolving landscape of quality journalism in China, exploring where reliable information thrives under increasing restrictions. Analysing the roles of state-owned institutional media alongside diverse, independent voices—including professional content creators, citizen journalists, and those working transnationally—it demonstrates how these actors operate both within and beyond established media structures. The essay also discusses the challenges posed by platform dominance.

In authoritarian systems, the media is often seen as a tool of propaganda, designed to suppress dissent and reinforce state control. While this perception captures a significant aspect of such regimes, it oversimplifies the dynamic ways in which the media functions in these contexts. In China, local television news, particularly the genre known as minsheng […]

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.’ […]

As China’s economy struggles in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people have been leaving cities and returning to the countryside. In Southeast Guizhou Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, the CunBA (村BA), or Village Basketball Association, has offered some respite from the economic gloom. Teams compete in front of raucous crowds for prizes such […]

As in many other rural villages across China, the 300 or so residents of Upper Jidao in Guizhou Province have been ‘living with tourism’ (to use Hazel Tucker’s 2003 book title) since the early 2000s, when rural tourism development was widely and enthusiastically promoted by the Chinese State as the path to rural poverty alleviation […]

This essay delves into the language ideologies of the Uyghur diaspora community in the United States and their efforts to maintain their heritage language. It argues that the language ideologies of these Uyghurs significantly influence their language maintenance practices, such as forming social connections with like-minded individuals and enforcing rules at home for language maintenance. Additionally, the ongoing settler-colonial process of eliminating Uyghur identity in the Uyghur homeland is fostering a transnational language ideology that views the Uyghur language as integral to Uyghur identity and speaking Uyghur as a form of resistance.

How does settler-colonial imperialism operate in Asia, and what are the ways in which Asian Indigeneities become mobilised? To address this question, in 2017, I brought together scholars who are observing various settler-colonial and imperial dynamics and developments across Asia for a panel discussion titled ‘Asian Settler-Colonialisms and Indigeneities’ at the 116th annual American Anthropological […]

Over the past four decades in China’s forward march to capitalist modernisation, the nation’s vast urban expansion has been contingent on demolition and relocation. Since Xi Jinping came to power, projects such as the ‘Traditional Village’ heritage scheme have sought to gear development towards a new era in which Chinese heritage sits at the core. […]

Under Xi Jinping, China’s policies towards minorities have taken an aggressively assimilationist turn. But even before the Xi era, for many of the ethnic minorities of China’s borderlands, the early twenty-first century was a time of social upheaval that generated profound anxieties about culture loss. The ‘Open Up the West’ (西部大开发) development campaign, launched in […]

In the summer of 2023, the British Museum hosted a major exhibition titled ‘China’s Hidden Century’ (British Museum 2023). This ambitious display aimed to present the political, economic, and social transformations of China under the late Qing Dynasty in the nineteenth century. On a microlevel, it aspired to show the creativity, diversity, and resilience of […]