Internet Vulgarities in China

Jian Xu is Associate Professor in Communication, Deakin University, Australia. He researches Chinese digital media and celebrity studies using critical approaches. He is Editor-in-Chief of Communication Research and Practice, official journal of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA). He is the Series Editor of Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies with Bloomsbury Academic.Dino Ge Zhang is a media anthropologist and Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His current research primarily focuses on socio-technical, aesthetic and affective dimensions of contemporary internet cultures/arts in the Sinophone world. He is the Founding Editor of the Bureau of Low Theory, a web database dedicated to internet culture and underground theory from China.

The book dives deep into China’s puzzling ‘anti-vulgarity’ campaigns. This ground-breaking volume reveals how the government uses the ambiguous and often arbitrary label of ‘vulgarity’ as a tool for media and cultural governance. From web novels and online music to e’gao spoofs and fan circle cultures, the diverse chapters delve into all manners of ‘internet vulgarities’ and their regulation across China’s evolving digital landscape. This makes the book an indispensable guide for understanding the complex interplay between cultural production, state control, and the paradoxical nature of Chinese market socialism. It is a must-read for anyone hoping to truly grasp the oftentimes baffling dynamics of digital media, cultural policies, and governance in post-socialist China.Florian Schneider, Chair Professor of Modern China, Leiden UniversityThe book puts together twelve thought-provoking chapters that analyse previously often-overlooked, so-called ‘vulgar’ corners of Chinese internet culture. The contributors collectively challenge the dominant narratives of Western-dominated frameworks in cultural studies and internet studies by illustrating the sociopolitical significance of vulgarity in Chinese digital cultures. A must-read book for scholars and students interested in understanding the politics and governance of Chinese digital media cultures.Matthew Ming Tak Chew, Associate Professor, Lingnan University, Hong KongWhat makes this volume especially significant is its insight into the politics of naming and the aesthetics of ‘vulgarity’ as forms of governance. Reflecting Wittgenstein’s view of language games as mirroring reality, the chapters collectively show that ‘vulgarity’ is not merely descriptive, but a performative category that structures the rules of cultural and political life. The Chinese case demonstrates how language games themselves provide the fundamental logic of social governance. This is an essential contribution for scholars of media, digital culture, and politics in China and beyond, and a rich resource for understanding how aesthetics, ideology, and power intersect in the digital age.Professor Haiqing Yu, RMIT University, AustraliaAmidst all the glowing stories of the high-tech blitz in China, this book presents an urgent intervention. It opens up the space for the everyday, vernacular uses of new technologies and cheerfully and rightfully embraces vulgarity. It shows how, against all odds, the internet continues to allow for a sense of futurity, hope, and play – fostering multiple rather than singular dreams. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the politics and social implications of internet culture in China today.Professor Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam

• 1. (Introduction): Judgement of ugliness: The politics of ‘anti-vulgarity’ in China’s media and cultural governance Part I: Internet Cultural Products 2. Messy realities and power secrecy: Contested and persistent presences of vulgarities in the governance of Chinese web novels 3. Legitimising musical taste: ‘Vulgar internet songs’ from ‘Mice loves rice’ to PG-One 4. Boy’s love as ‘vulgar’ culture? The discourse of anti-boys’ love and the cis-heteronormative governance against BL-adapted web dramas in China 5. Vulgar spirits of games and play from state to society: An alternative history of videogames in China Part II: Vernacular Internet Cultures 6. ‘Toxic Chicken Soup’ as a genre: The dialectics of hope and its governance on We Media 7. Ball-ache, dick hair and serial cunt words: The role of vulgarity in Chinese internet language 8. Negativity as vulgar? The rise of self-mockery culture and its governance 9. In search of the opposite of the canonical: eGao Red Classics and its regulation Part III: Subcultural Online Communities 10. Vulgarising a subaltern taste on Chinese social media: The rise and fall of hanmai rap and social shake dance 11. Eroticised internet celebrity and vulgarity in China: The case of Aoi Sola 12. ‘Chasing idols in a rational way’: Governing toxic ‘fan circle’ culture in China