Censorship In China Research Articles

An Inquiry into Gender and Queer Issues in Chinese-Language Sci-Fi Film: A Case Study of The Soul

Abstract This paper explores the complex portrayal of gender and identity in Cheng Wai-ho’s 2021 science fiction mystery, The Soul. Set in a near-future grappling with RNA-based memory transfer and gender reassignment, the film intertwines technological advancements with social issues like tongqi, marriage trafficking, and transgender representation. Utilizing theories by Prosser, Stryker, and Salamon, the analysis examines how the film depicts transgender characters Wang Shicong and Prosecutor Liang, focusing on their experiences within a system of power dynamics and the exploitation of vulnerable groups. By contrasting the mainland and uncut Netflix versions, the paper delves into the boundaries of Chinese censorship regarding LGBTQ+ themes. This study argues that while The Soul challenges heteronormativity and reveals the complexities of intersectional identities, it also offers opportunities for further critique of its limitations in representation. The film’s contribution to Chinese cinema lies in advancing conversations on gender and sexuality while highlighting the need for social reform.

Political Expression in Non-mainstream Metaphorical Music:Exploring the Metaphorical Musical Works of Hong Kong, China-based Artist Wong Yiu Ming

The intensification of authoritarian ideology and censorship in China has made it increasingly challenging to communicate politically sensitive messages through cultural products (Ye and Zhao, 2023). To navigate these constraints, it is crucial to examine the strategic use of political metaphors in music. This dissertation explores the political metaphors embedded in the musical oeuvre of Wong Yiu-Ming (Anthony Wong), a prominent artist from Hong Kong, China. Through a comprehensive analysis of imagery and textual content, this study investigates how these metaphors facilitate the expression of political orientations and assesses the impact of Wong's identity and actions on his audience. The findings suggest that non-mainstream music holds a distinct political significance compared to mainstream music. Metaphorical representations in non-mainstream music effectively challenge state power by circumventing censorship, leveraging the global industrial network, enabling political expression, and aligning with the artist's multifaceted identity.

Judicial Differences of Sexual Harassment Between China and South Korea

This essay explores the differences in the legal treatment of online sexual harassment (OSH) in China and South Korea. China's Civil Code addresses sexual harassment by emphasizing the violation of a woman's dignity, but the legal consequences are minimal, typically resulting in fines comparable to civil disputes. In contrast, South Korea classifies sexual harassment as a crime under the Criminal Act, with punishments including imprisonment. The analysis identifies three key disparities. Firstly, China lacks a clear specification of what constitutes sexual harassment, while South Korea provides detailed definitions. Secondly, South Korea treats OSH as a severe offense on par with rape, leading to stricter enforcement and deterrence. However, in China, OSH cases are often addressed as defamation or infringement of portrait rights rather than distinct sexual crimes. Lastly, social media censorship in China hampers tracking and locating perpetrators, granting them more leeway to evade punishment, while South Korea actively prosecutes OSH as a sexual crime. Addressing these disparities, the abstract suggests placing sexual harassment in China's criminal legislation and implementing supplemental laws to support its enforcement.

Internet Censorship in China: Looking Through the Lens of Categorisation

Despite the fruitful insights articulated by existing scholarship on internet censorship in China, the lack of a systematic overview of the field not only hinders reciprocal dialogue across different studies, but also prevents a reflective consideration of directions that could shed further light on the topic. To fill the gap, this study introduces the concept of “categorisation” as the analytical lens to scrutinise and synthesise the extant studies on censorship. It proposed two possible ways of categorising the current development of the topic: one is the macro–meso–micro level of analysis, and the other is about data and metadata. Our discussion addresses three contributions to studying internet censorship in China: the emerging computational methods for exploring censorship deletion practices on the micro level, the relevance of hard-to-observe, organisation-specific factors to understand the operationalisation of censorship, and method triangulation to strengthen the validity and reliability of studies of censorship phenomena.

Outsiders in Media: Sense of Foreignness and the Support of Censorship in China

Outsiders in Media: Sense of Foreignness and the Support of Censorship in China

An Enduring Tradition: The Interrelation Between Confucianism, Internet, and Chinese Censorship Strategy

An Enduring Tradition: The Interrelation Between Confucianism, Internet, and Chinese Censorship Strategy

Особенности и проблемные аспекты функционирования социальных сетей в контексте китайской информационной политики периода пандемии

In this article, the author analyzes some features of the functioning of social networks in the context of a pandemic using the example of China. Mainly based on foreign publications, it is shown how social networks influence the phenomenon of infodemic in the context of health emergencies. This problem is considered in the context of the issue of government regulation of public opinion during a pandemic. As an example, the article cites the state’s use of social networks WeChat and Weibo in the coronavirus situation. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the “duration” criterion in the process of disseminating online opinions. The author also shows how Chinese censorship affects the dissemination of information in the context of emergency situations, demonstrating this problem using the example of information asymmetry. The COVID19 pandemic has forced us to rethink established approaches to organizing interaction between society and the state in emergency situations. It has become clear that mobile social networks can be used to improve the quality of responses to problematic situations in society and thatthe expression of public sentiment on online platforms represents a weather vane of real social trends. Social networks can both separate and unite the state and society in the fight against emergency situations.

Best TV show you have never seen: Maintaining collective identity among the Twitter fandom of Chinese dangai drama Immortality

In recent years, Chinese web dramas based on danmei/boys' love novels have gained considerable popularity among English-speaking fandoms inhabiting social media platforms such as Twitter. However, with the current tightening of Chinese censorship on nonheterosexual content portrayed in media, many TV series have been indefinitely shelved, including the already filmed Immortality (n.d.). Despite this abrupt development, the Immortality fandom continues to engage in numerous activities with the purpose of maintaining unity and continuous interest in the series. Through becoming active promoters of other elements of Immortality's transmedia universe and partaking in behaviors meant to establish their superiority over other fandoms, fandom members invoke genuine feelings of belonging and fulfillment. Additionally, this behavior indicates fans' reluctance to part with the established online community and its activities due to the degree of emotional fulfillment found not only in the collective consumption of Immortality but perhaps more so the lack thereof.

Carnivalesque communities: Thai TV dramas and the Chinese censorship

ABSTRACT This paper explores how Thai television dramas, which have been a staple of the nation’s TV landscape for many decades, have made new inroads in mainland China. Despite intense censorship by the Chinese state, China’s extremely large market enticed the Thai media industry. Control over what citizens can see on websites has also created an obstacle for which fan communities must find ways to bypass. The paper outlines both the historical process of Thai TV dramas’ inroads into the Chinese market and the different tactics Thai media companies and Chinese fan communities employ to circumvent Chinese state censorship. Based on interviews with various actors, including Thai TV media personnel, Chinese fansub groups, and fan communities, the paper argues that Chinese fan culture surrounding Thai TV series is a mixture of a subversive community that rebels against state control, as well as a constantly negotiating subculture that adopts various practices to break out from state censorship. Chinese youth today show that consumption is a site of contestation, rather than a site of control and manipulation.

Orientalist afterlives: Theorizing discourse about Peppa Pig and China

In recent years, there have been numerous English-language reports on the purported censorship of Peppa Pig in China. This article goes beyond this discourse to explore both how this British animation was translated into Chinese popular culture and how English-language news outlets subsequently responded to Peppa’s presence in China. Firstly, it examines how the dubbing of Peppa Pig into Chinese facilitated promotional claims about the universal appeal of this animation. Secondly, it shows how Peppa Pig’s subsequent popularity in China prompted a promotional shift towards a self-conscious localization of the brand with the release of the film 小猪佩奇过大年 (Peppa Celebrates Chinese New Year). Thirdly, this article explores how English-language news reporting became distorted in its claims about the extent of Peppa Pig’s censorship in China. Theoretically, I argue that both the localization of Peppa Pig and English-language journalistic discourse about the animation in China have been permeated by an afterlife of Orientalism. As an afterlife, this is a discourse that lacks the all-encompassing qualities of Edward Said’s classic Orientalism, but that continues to draw upon the Orientalist idea of an absolute distinction between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’.

Relay activism and the flows of contentious publicness on WeChat: a case study of COVID-19 in China

ABSTRACT This paper explores a case of public contention against the censoring of a feature article about a COVID-19 whistleblower on the Chinese social media, WeChat. Moving beyond the normative theory of the public sphere and publics, we draw on Kavada and Poell's theory of ‘contentious publicness’ which is flexible enough to capture the complexity, diversity and hybridity of digital contention in the context of China. Through a combination of textual analysis and participatory observation, this article analyses how citizens challenged the censorship system and attempted to keep Dr Fen's story online through what we call ‘relay activism’. Informed by the three dimensions of ‘contentious publicness’, we analyse the materiality of the communication infrastructure of WeChat and the temporal and spatial relations of the public contention (focusing primarily on WeChat and GitHub). In doing this, the paper contributes a more comprehensive approach to examining the social, structural and participatory characteristics of the contestation of censorship in China.

The Eyes of Power: Intellectual Vision in Contemporary Chinese Local Film Censorship

As a socialist country with a large population, China has a tight censorship system in various visual fields, including film, television and online communities. To censor films, China’s central and local film authorities have successively established their own censorship systems. This article analyses the contemporary formation of local film censorship committees by combing through the history of film censorship in China. By discussing the relationship between intellectuals and the power behind film censorship, this study seeks to penetrate why and how intellectuals are co-opted by power and define the location of intellectuals in Chinese politics. Authorities reviewing films in a screening room symbolizes their ‘powerful’ gaze in the darkness, this visual mechanism of intellectual complicity with power, which requires Chinese filmmakers to learn how to survive under the combined influence of ‘self-censorship’ and intellectual vision. Furthermore, when exploring film censorship in contemporary China, the political logic of socialist China needs to be touched upon, where film censorship experts are in fact only the eyes of the power, not the power itself.

Estimating the Cost of Internet Censorship in China: Evidence from a Gamified Remote Platform

We exploit internet censorship intensity changes due to political events to study the impact of internet censorship on online laboor work in China. With a unique dataset from the Ingress (video game) community platform, a difference-in-differences design shows that an increase in China’s internet censorship intensity during politically sensitive dates, while not affecting the amount of volunteer working time, reduces online labour work efficiency by eight percent for volunteers from mainland China relative to those elsewhere. This efficiency loss due to internet censorship can be a proxy for the labour productivity loss for Chinese oversea e-commercers, freelancers and other related online workers.

Censorship and the Postal Service in China during World War One

This paper focuses on the first state-organised nationwide postal censorship in China during World War I (WWI). The war had far-reaching effects on China, both in terms of the subsequent development of the internal political situation and her international relations. Although scholars share a meaningful view of China’s ‘internationalisation’ during and after WWI, the immediate impact on China is rarely discussed. One area where the war did have a significant effect was Sino-European postal communication, as this was probably the first time that mail was subjected to censorship in China. This research draws on material from the diplomatic archives to discuss how the nationwide postal censorship was established in China and how it impacted the public during the war. It argues that WWI was a crucial moment for the Chinese government in establishing a comprehensive and nationwide system of postal censorship. Censorship was a government policy for war purposes and, most of all, something that was requested by both China’s allies and enemies. This article suggests that this form of censorship during and after WWI overall reflects both that the Chinese government regarded it as a strategy to prevent information leakage, but that it was also a useful tool in domestic policy and diplomacy.

Twitter-based Chinese economic policy uncertainty

Given the strict censorship in China, would tweets about Chinese economic policy uncertainty by global Twitter users contain valuable information above and beyond existing indices? We construct novel daily and monthly frequency "censorship-free" indices of Twitter-based Chinese economic policy uncertainty from March 2010 to April 2022, based on a total of 76,765 tweets that contain words about Chinese economic policy uncertainty. Our uncertainty index reasonably spikes during major economic policy events. Shocks to our index are significantly associated with future Chinese stock market returns as well as investment, consumption, unemployment, and production while existing Chinese economic policy uncertainty indices are not significantly related to economic outputs.

Internet censorship in modern China: tight control and a flexible settlement system

The article considers the features of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, the stages of its formation, origins of specifics and modern problems of controlling information in the media. Material addressed the current theme of the CPC's fight against anti-historical research with reference to the new law on the rights and interests of military personnel; at the same time, it gives some examples of soft selective censorship of Internet user messages in China. The cultural origins of the phenomenon of Chinese censorship reveal many aspects related to the assessment of the CCP's policy towards the media by Chinese and foreigners. The work used research materials of Russian and foreign specialists in the field of state censorship in China, current information of Chinese news websites and legislation in the field of information control.

Assessing the Chinese Censorship System: The Case of LGBTQ Representations in Entertainment

<b>Assessing the Chinese Censorship System:</b> The Case of LGBTQ Representations in Entertainment

Selective Censorship on Rightists and Leftists? An Observation and Analysis of Censored Social Media Posts in China

ABSTRACT This study examines whether social media censorship in China is selective for online social groups of different ideologies, namely rightists and leftists, what content generated by these groups is censored, and what censorship methods are employed on the two groups. To answer these underexplored questions, we observed censorship practices on Sina Weibo for a full month and collected and analyzed the censored social media posts of both rightists and leftists. Our analysis confirmed the existence of selective censorship on posts by the two groups.

Disperse and Preserve the Perverse: How Hip-Hop Censorship Changed Popular Music Production in China

How do states censor an artistic genre that challenges the social norms? The answers to this question in the existing literature are mostly based on investigations of particular artists or artworks of the genre, while the impact on the entire genre field remains unchecked. This paper explores how censorship of an artistic genre changes artistic forms of that genre while also triggering strategic reactions from the artists of closely related genres. Using an original dataset of 53,364 songs released on a Chinese online music platform, I study the impact of Hip-Hop censorship in China in 2018 on Hip-Hop as well as Pop, Rock, and Folk songs in terms of how they sound and what topics they write about in the lyrics. I propose a novel approach to measuring sound similarities and topic prevalence in song lyrics using computational tools including Music Information Retrieval (MIR), neural networks, and topic models. I found that Hip-Hop songs produced after the censorship sound significantly different from those before, with a bigger impact on popular songs than unpopular ones. Moreover, genres of similarly restricted production sound more like Hip-Hop after the censorship, while genres of large-scale production sound less “Hip-Hopy”. The censorship also made Hip-Hop musicians engage less with topics related to violence, smoking, or drinking but more with sexual content in a covered form. The findings thus suggest a model of dispersion in explaining the mechanism of censorship in cultural production.

Linking global leadership to domestic legitimacy: Comparative analysis of perceptions of Xi and Obama

AbstractObjectivesAs a one‐party state, the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party rule and the leader, Xi, stems from unique sources. This article examines those sources of legitimacy in China and compares those with the United States and its leader, President Obama.MethodsData from the 2014 Pew Global Attitude Survey are analyzed using ordered logistic regressions to test three main hypotheses: the vertical trust leakage hypothesis, the new Cultural Revolution hypothesis, and the parallel upward mobility hypothesis.ResultsXi's anti‐corruption efforts against governmental officials create perceptions of Xi as a moral leader who protects citizens from corrupt local officials. Growing censorship in China prevents intellectuals from questioning Xi's power. The Chinese Dream campaign spearheaded by Xi blends nationalism and populism.ConclusionThe findings suggest that Xi's strategy to portray him as a moral leader, the suppression of intellectuals and advocacy of the Chinese Dream campaign yields strong confidence from Chinese citizens.