‘Political depression’ (政治性抑郁), first introduced into Chinese online discourse in the summer of 2019, is a term that gained wide circulation during the Covid-19 pandemic. At first, it was associated with anger and despair at the authorities’ mishandling of the Wuhan outbreak and its rapid slide out of control. Later in the prolonged crisis, it […]
The chaos and sheer human density of Kowloon are often synonymous with Hong Kong. Multilevel arcades of little restaurants sit alongside street markets selling keepsake magnets. In these busy streets, up a quiet staircase, hide a few surviving independent bookstores. These bookstores became regular stops on my fieldwork visits in Kowloon. By the door in […]
This essay examines the 2024–25 Haitang Incidents, a crackdown on danmei (‘boys’ love’) authors producing online male-male erotica, and argues that these events marked a shift from heteronormative ideological policing to predatory state brokerage. Challenging optimistic narratives of queer resistance, it introduces the notion of ‘ugly beauty’ to analyse danmei’s ecological rupture. It traces how revenue-driven ‘oceangoing fishing’ law enforcement, platform capitalism, and political depression fracture the community, while also sustaining danmei as a fragile but resilient survival strategy in post-Covid China.
Editors’ introduction: The following piece, written by Lee Wai Kwan and translated by Yiwen Liu, originally appeared in Initium Media on 28 November 2025. In republishing it here in the Made in China Journal with the permission of Initium, we hope to connect voices of the Hong Kong community to wider audiences who might benefit […]
China’s foreign student programs, many initiated under the banner of the unity of socialist countries and Afro-Asian solidarity, were originally designed to project international recognition of the newly established People’s Republic of China. Yet, these initiatives unfolded within an environment where government agencies closely monitored public expression and everyday life. For foreign students, daily life was mediated by state-managed hospitality, limited mobility, and surveillance. On the Chinese side, distrust of foreigners was pervasive at that time and actively cultivated by the authorities. All this caused foreign students to experience a feeling akin to what today is known as political depression.
In 2019, more than a million people poured onto the streets of Hong Kong, with many returning week after week. The song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ soon emerged as the movement’s unofficial anthem. What began as a protest against an ill-advised extradition bill quickly became, for many, the city’s last stand against Beijing’s tightening grip. […]
Over the past few years, industrial policy and manufacturing capacity, especially in the high-tech sector, have been at the centre of great power rivalry between the United States and China. The White House has been pressuring companies from its East Asian allies, including the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, to invest in the United States and open […]
Rejecting calls from an unknown number, blocking suspicious accounts on social media, turning down a job offer too good to be true: these days, almost all of us have had some interactions with online scams. With luck and vigilance, this amounts to little more than a nuisance; yet, for the many who fell victim to […]
In 1947, the acclaimed Chinese writer and linguist Lin Yutang stunned the world with an invention: the first Chinese-language typewriter with a keyboard. Lin poured years of effort and his life’s savings into the design, which he named MingKwai, ‘clear and fast’. Despite its celebrity and Lin’s high hopes, the MingKwai never went into production, […]
For some in the West, being a journalist in China—especially one at a state media organisation—is seen as little more than parroting party propaganda. This caricature not only disregards the courage and dedication of many Chinese journalists but also misrepresents the complex realities they navigate as mere state coercion. How does censorship actually operate inside […]
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