This paper examines representations of marginalised masculinity in the fiction of Mo Yan and Zhu Wen, showing how male subjectivity is reshaped by ideological residues of the socialist past and the socio-economic upheavals of post-Mao China. In the late 1990s, state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform and large-scale layoffs produced a precarious population of displaced workers, with employees in crisis-ridden or shuttered factories—both younger and middle-aged—among the hardest hit. Their lives were shaped simultaneously by the lingering legacies of Maoist collectivism and the disruptive forces of market reform. Post-Mao writers increasingly responded to these transformations through new narrative forms that foreground social insecurity, gender anxiety, and the destabilisation of masculine identity. Focusing on Mo Yan’s Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh (1999) and Zhu Wen’s Ah, Xiao Xie (1999), this study addresses a gap in scholarship on Chinese masculinity by offering a gender-focused analysis of marginal male protagonists caught between obsolete socialist certainties and unstable market futures. Approaching these works from a gendered poststructuralist perspective, it explores how they portray men’s struggles, resilience, and failures under conditions of institutional decline and economic insecurity. Through detailed analysis and comparative reading, the paper demonstrates how Mo Yan and Zhu Wen critique the erosion of welfare, challenge dominant gender discourses, and represent masculinity as unstable and contested. In doing so, it contributes to a deeper understanding of marginality, gender crisis, and the broader cultural anxieties surrounding masculinity in post-Mao China.

ABSTRACT What is the relationship between masculinity and football in a more contemporary account? In this study, I contextualize footballers within the general idea of Chinese manhood and the uniquely ethnic world in southwest China, concluding that a discussion of a masculine crisis has been reconfigured by the transformations in post-Maoist China. The analysis section is fourfold: I first provide a gendered political economy in which modern football has become an ethnic passion in southwest China. I then view football as a profession, focusing on how particular actors – at managerial, first team, and youth team levels – move back and forth in managing their uncertain, precarious and gendered careers. Moreover, I take a cultural approach to re-interpret the idea of ethnicity in crafting masculinity in the field of football. Finally I bring in an intersectional perspective to evaluate gendered access to ethnic football resources so that I could further examine the ways how masculinities in ethnic southwest China have been crafted and maintained in these football journeys.

Gendered Genres: Women’s Poetry in Postmao China

Since China’s reform era began in 1978, millions of rural-urban migrant workers, known as nongmingong 农民工, have moved to cities for better wages. However, they remain marginalised in the very urban spaces they sustain. This article examines how these workers challenge China’s distribution of the sensible − the system of what is perceptible, shaped by the urban-rural divide − through their performances. Specifically, I analyse Wang Wei’s Temporary Space (2003), Song Dong’s Potted Landscape (2002), and the 2014 Yue Yuen shoe factory protest. Forms of dissensus include how the nongmingong assert recognition in spaces where they are rendered invisible, challenge control structures like the hukou system and labour policies, and disrupt exploitative urban-rural relationships. These acts enable the nongmingong to contest dominant representations and forge new subjectivities that exceed how they are currently perceived in post-Mao China.

Abstract: This article interrogates Can Xue’s short story “Skylight” through Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia, identifying four intersecting registers—schizophrenic, poetic, grotesque, and reader voices—that together form a narrative “symphony.” Drawing on clinical psychiatry, cultural history, and aesthetic theory, the article argues that the narrator’s hallucination-like monologue reflects both literal schizophrenic symptomatology and the social stigma surrounding mental illness in post-Mao China. Poetic digressions introduce sensory lyricism that destabilizes linear prose, while grotesque bodily imagery contests Socialist Realist norms and echoes Daoist ideas of metamorphosis. The text’s radical fragmentation obliges readers to stage these voices internally; using Bourdieu’s habitus and cognitive accounts of inner speech, the essay frames reading as a socially inflected, quasi-auditory performance. By dispersing narrative authority across competing discourses, “Skylight” collapses the boundaries between metaphor and embodiment, sanity and madness, rendering the act of reading itself a site of embodied, polyphonic resistance.

Abstract Why did it take so long for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to adopt the concept of national security (国家安全, guójiā ānquán ) into its political lexicon? The present article is the first to fully uncover the conceptual roots of national security in the PRC in order to show the conditions of possibility necessary for the concept to gain performative political power in its political discourse. Looking at the conceptual history of security shows how Chinese political leaders for a long time wielded threat politics without using the term security. While there are studies that have pointed out the introduction of the concept in post-Mao China, and studies that focus on the contemporary applications of the term, the article contributes to this literature by providing a fully-fledged conceptual history of security in mainland China that goes beyond the era of the PRC and connects the conceptual development with political conditions of possibility. By doing so, the article explains why the PRC used other concepts than security in its threat politics compared to other major powers to wield similar performative power. Uncovering the conceptual roots of internationally relevant notions and practices in non-democratic political orders is vital to understand how security operates beyond liberal democracies that most critical studies of security focus on. This highlights the tension between revolution and security in the context of the PRC.

Abstract The challenge of addressing contentious and repressive histories in authoritarian regimes that have undergone post-totalitarian transitions presents precious opportunities for historical justice, as the representation of history and the production of historiography are decentralized from the central state. Using the production of Chinese local gazetteers in post-Mao China as a case and drawing upon a combination of historiographical, archival, and field methods, we investigate three critical negotiation fields where gazetteer compilers, who also held government ranks, interacted with central leaders and other local bureaucracies to exert discretionary control over local historical production within their jurisdictions. This decentralized negotiation over historiography illuminates the intricate interplay between ideology, agency, and tradition in the production process of the Chinese county gazetteers, offering nuanced insights into modern Chinese history and the complexities of historiographical writing under authoritarian governance. Overall, our article shows that knowledge production under authoritarian rule is more interactive and horizontal than thought, and that historiographical writing can adapt to and challenge authority in pursuit of historical justice.

ABSTRACT This article explores four perspectives for settling the China-Taiwan problem, as a multilateral less than a bilateral issue. A Western united front, led by Washington, is the key to enable Taiwan to withstand any of the options: maintaining the status quo; gaining independence; Chinese military occupation; and peaceful (re)unification. Apparently, the prevailing status quo cannot continue much longer, given Mainland China’s increased strength and Taiwan’s growing isolation—unless it is internationally backed . Given the nearly unanimous external commitment to Beijing’s One China principle, independence is hardly conceivable. For Beijing, it implies not only war but also threats to sever diplomatic relations with governments that recognize Taiwan. However, unlike Mao’s China, which was practically immune to Western sanctions despite its military and economic weakness, and because of its isolation, post-Mao China is stronger, yet paradoxically more vulnerable. Severing relations would undermine China’s economy, and the Communist Party survival. War, the third option, while catastrophic to Taiwan still could, with Western aid, inflict disastrous damage also to China. Optimally, the fourth option, guaranteed and shielded by the West, is peaceful unification based on bilateral negotiations. An inevitable complication, what to do with Taiwan’s armed forces, is discussed based on historical precedents.

ABSTRACT Shide, commonly understood as “teacher ethics”, has been a key concept in Chinese official educational discourse and daily life, particularly since the turn of the twenty-first century. Despite its prominence, the historical development of shide has received little critical attention. This study addresses the gap by analysing digitised archives of the People’s Daily from 1982 to 2012, employing a conceptual history approach. It reveals how the state has used the concept of shide to tame teachers, situating it within broader political designs. Key themes of this conceptual history include the propagation of shide models, the expanding use of shide in the wave of marketisation, the implementation of accountability systems, and alternative usages of the concept outside government intentions. This article aims to unveil the power structure behind the concept of shide, thereby challenging its naturalised perception. The significance of this study is twofold: first, to demonstrate how the role of teachers has been shaped according to the changing needs of the state; and second, to call for scholarship on the history of the teaching profession that centres teachers themselves, rather than viewing them merely as instruments within broader socio-political systems.

In recent decades, Chinese literary studies has shifted away from center–periphery models, favoring frameworks that emphasize multiplicity and decentralization. While this turn has opened space for new perspectives, it risks overlooking persistent hierarchies that continue to shape literary careers, where certain publishers remain more central to an author’s advancement than others. This essay reconsiders the center–periphery framework through an analysis of Huizu wenxue, a literary journal published in Changji, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Despite its geographic distance from China’s dominant literary hubs, Huizu wenxue has long served as a key platform for Hui literature. Drawing on interviews, as well as textual and paratextual analysis, I demonstrate how the journal functions both as a launchpad for emerging Hui authors and as an institutional anchor for a nationwide Hui literary community. Through dedicated columns that showcase new Hui talent and events that foster professional networks, Huizu wenxue has, since its inception, continually played a central role in shaping Hui literary production and supporting authors’ careers. Because it operates from the margins of the People’s Republic of China’s yet wields significant influence within Hui literary circles, I argue that Huizu wenxue is best understood as a “peripheral center.”

Sheng Keyi (b. 1973) is a prominent post-Mao woman writer of rural origin. Having migrated from a village in Hunan province, she has personally experienced rural-to-urban migration, marginalised status and inequality. Drawing on her background, she adopts an unconventional narrative style to portray rural migrant women in the city of Shenzhen—women who endure intersecting forms of oppression shaped by gender, class, and the rural–urban divide. This paper seeks to fill a research gap in studies of Chinese migrant literature by examining Sheng Keyi’s novel Northern Girls from a poststructuralist feminist perspective. It analyses the representation of rural migrant women, female subjectivity and acts of transgression in the novel. Moreover, it explores how the author articulates her own critical voice to challenge patriarchal norms, urban social hierarchies, and dominant discourses that marginalise, dismiss, and devalue rural migrant women. This paper argues that Northern Girls subverts prevailing stereotypes that reduce rural migrant women to either obedient factory workers or sex workers, instead foregrounding the complexity of female subjectivity through the protagonist’s acts of resistance. Sheng Keyi’s narrative exposes the suffering, exploitation, and injustice faced by these women. By addressing themes of subjectivity, marginality, inequality, and transgression, this paper contributes to both the feminist study of contemporary Chinese women’s writing and the broader understanding of Chinese cultural dynamics, gender relations, and the social realities of marginalised populations in post-Mao China.

Due to cultural policies, film censorship, and the history of foreign imperialism in China, Christianity is perceived to carry a Western ideology and is rarely depicted in mainstream Chinese films and dramas. Director Feng Xiaogang is a unique example of a filmmaker who has incorporated Christian elements into several of his films. This study examines how Christian elements manifest in Feng’s films by analyzing the evolution of Feng’s approach towards Christianity from ridicule with deconstruction to reflection and identification with the tenets of the faith. Feng skillfully circumvents prevailing cultural, social, and political constraints to incorporate thematic elements such as redemption, life, and death into his films, providing audiences with strong emotional experiences and value recognition. These dynamics take place within the interrelated contexts of Feng’s status as a military veteran, Chinese cultural policies and film censorship mechanisms, and the rapid growth of Christianity in post-Mao China. This article is useful for filmmakers exploring religious symbolism in constrained environments, scholars of Chinese cinema and cultural policy, and policymakers examining the intersection of ideology, censorship, and artistic expression.

This article examines Christian Zionism in the Chinese Christian context. Based on research conducted in China and Israel, as well as online research, I analyse Chinese Christian Zionism and its specific characteristics. Attachment to Israel is discussed here as an element of the effort made by reform-era believers to contextualize Chinese Christianity, its role, significance, past, and future, within China and beyond its borders. Accordingly, Chinese Christian Zionism is examined through the relationship between Christian Zionist ideology, the Back to Jerusalem missionary movement, and attempts to promote a monotheistic narrative of Chinese history. In addition, Chinese Christians’ interest in Israel is strongly related to the relationship between modernity and tradition, an issue of pivotal importance in post-Maoist Chinese society and the crisis of meaning experienced in the reform era.

This article examines the reception of Ernst Gombrich and Karl Popper in post-Mao China between 1980 and 1995. By situating these two scholars’ works within the context of the Cold War, I interpret their translation into Chinese after the end of the Cultural Revolution as a reanimation of their Cold War politics, while excavating cosmopolitan convergences across the East-West divide at the height of ideological factionalism. My argument traces this repoliticization through three interconnected spheres: a politics of method that moves away from determinism and integrates art and science; a disciplinary drift from textually oriented aesthetic theory to visually oriented art history; and a translingual negotiation in contemporary art discourse centered around the term “experimentation.” The article presents a version of global art historiography that foregrounds time-bound dialogues charged with political urgencies over the universalization and proselytization of disciplinary ideas, and it offers concluding remarks on its implications for a “global art history.”

ABSTRACT We study the promotion of provincial level officials between 1978 and 2022 and cannot find empirical support for the meritocratic argument. Work ties with top leaders, particularly with the leadership core, have provided provincial officials with advantage in promotion. Methodologically, we use official individual fixed effects to estimate a cleaner effect of social ties and show that previous research has underestimated this impact. This study contributes to the debate about elite politics in contemporary China and offers a firmer empirical grounding for understanding the political foundation of China’s economic policies and overall development.

abstract: Against the rising tide of marketization sweeping across China in the 1980s and 1990s, many people sought profitability by opening up private video exhibition sites to showcase bootleg videotapes. By drawing on a wide range of written sources and material artifacts—including interviews, fictional works, and photographs—this article pays special attention to how the experience of going to the video hall was remembered by the video-goers. Through an investigation into Chinese people's multisensory encounters with the video hall, this article calls for a contextualized reevaluation of such a prominent urban space against post-Mao China's turn to market reform.

In the landscape of China’s mass organisations, the Communist Youth League (CYL, Zhongguo gongchan zhuyi qingnian tuan 中國共產主義青年團) deserves special attention. Conceived as a means of connecting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to young people aged 14-28 (14-25 before 1982) and involving them in organised political activity, the CYL has traditionally provided the institutional basis for the political socialisation and mobilisation of young people in support of CCP policies, monopolising what ...

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In his recent book, Jie Li explores the intricate evolution of Chinese Sovietology in the 1980s and 1990s, unearthing the deeper political motives and ideological implications behind Chinese scholarship on the Soviet Union.According to Li, Chinese Sovietology was not merely a neutral academic pursuit; rather, it often functioned as a means of internal legitimation-providing intellectual support for China's post-Mao reforms and, subsequently, reinforcing the regime's authority in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident.Li's core argument is clear: "Chinese Sovietology did not focus on the USSR