The lives of Africans in Guangzhou have been negatively affected by China’s tight visa and residency restrictions as well as police control – whether it is through direct visa checking, which can lead to deportation, or indirect surveillance through shopping malls where Africans do business, the hotels they stay at, and neighbourhood committees where Africans reside. Most African importers are on a thirty-day tourist visa or a visitor visa lasting one to two months, which is too short for them to place orders, wait for factory deliveries and oversee shipping. Only a minor fraction of them have obtained longer residency permits (maximum one year) to stay in China to run cargo businesses or stores. Some are there illegally, either on fraudulent visas (sometimes provided by fraudulent visa agencies) or overstaying due to lack of funds for buying a ticket home.

Illegal immigration or overstaying, plus concerns over criminal activities such as drug trafficking,^[3] have brought Africans to the attention of police, especially since the implementation of the 2013 immigration law to combat the ‘three illegals’: illegal entry, illegal residence and illegal work.^[4] The commercial zones of Xiaobei 小北and Guangyuanxi 广园西, where there are high concentrations of Africans, are heavily policed (see figure 2). Africans are frequently stopped by police to check visas and residential permits, often as an exercise in shaking them down, which has allegedly become a lucrative business for underpaid local police.^[5] In 2009 and 2012, there were two rallies against police raids and racial profiling of African-owned businesses. The most recent clash between the police and the African population occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed below.

Not all African communities have been affected equally by the efforts of police control and monitor. A veteran Chinese NGO worker mediating between the Immigration Department, Foreigner Management Police Stations 外管所and various African communities told us that Chinese authorities are more vigilant in dealing with allegedly troublesome Nigerians than with other Africans such as Malians and Guineans, who are perceived to be more peaceful and low key. Similarly, Gordon Matthews and the other authors of The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace have noted that some members of other African communities even cooperated with police raids against Nigerians.^[6] The Igbo Nigerians are the most conspicuous communities in Guangzhou, thanks to their religious presence (such as in the Sacred Heart Cathedral), business success, inter-racial marriage with Chinese women,^[7] and a history of open protests against police raids and the zero COVID policy. They also have a unique political identity and diaspora strategies that differ from other African nationals.

‘Troublesome’ Nigerians versus ‘peaceful’ Guineans

We first encountered the Igbo identity when our informant, Achebe (pseudonym), a young Igbo Nigerian, told us that his beret carries the unyielding spirit of Biafra, the secessionist movement in Nigeria that began in the 1960s. He was introduced to us by a Nigerian scholar in 2021, and in turn introduced us to a small Igbo community of some fifteen men working in a warehouse that was hidden behind a row of stores selling leatherware and luggage. Inside the warehouse, cartons were piled up to head height inside office cubicles (see figure 3). The piercing sound of duct tape being ripped was combined with greetings in Igbo. While we were there, Guangzhou police frequently patrolled this store, passing Africans in the narrow lane between the cubicles in an air of mutual neglect.

Daddy Obi came to China three years ago to take over a shop of a friend. His previous role as an elder of a village council has naturally translated to a consultant on communal affairs among his compatriots in Guangzhou. He explained some of the unique Igbo world view to us and spoke of how British colonialists slaughtered many of their people and that the Islamic Hausa ‘took their resources’. During the Biafra war (1960–70), the Igbos sought independence from Hausa–Fulani rule. Their effort to establish a new country called Biafra failed, and millions died as a result of the war and the ensuing mass starvation. Following their political downfall and the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, the Igbo people attempted to increase their material wealth, viewing it as a ‘weapon to fight back’.^[8] Among their initiatives are the creation of the Igba Boi community-run apprenticeship program and the resuscitation of village square meetings.^[9]

Despite being one of the most dispersed ethnic groups in Africa and the world, Igbo people have a strong sense of community and developed the unrelenting ‘Igbo capitalism’ on a global scale.^[10] Igbo people in Guangzhou are renowned for their economic acumen and diligence, and African Americans from other ethnic groups look to them as a gauge of market trends. According to Achebe, the young Igbo trader – every Igbo man – wants to be a self-sufficient leader within a cooperative community. They would sit at a table as ‘real bosses’ to share the profit among themselves equitably and reasonably. Achebe’s narrative depicts a strong individualism associated with the Igbos’ belief in their personal god – chi (a concept that is concerned more with success or failure than with righteousness and wickedness),^[11] as well as a republican ethos when it comes to community matters.^[12]

The Biafra sentiment lingers and is even projected onto the governing of Africans by Guangzhou authorities. Daddy Obi argued (wishfully) that the Chinese government should treat Igbos nicely, claiming that China would be granted access to rich resources in Igbo, including gold, zinc and petroleum, once the Igbos gained independence and established diplomatic relations with China. Unhappy that in disputes between Chinese and Igbos, the Chinese just turned to the police, he criticised China for having neither ‘human rights nor freedom’.

When we met Cibuike, a chubby Igbo in his forties, he was in a sorry plight with his Chinese girlfriend. Many Africans, Igbo Nigerians in particular, have ‘transactional marriages’ with Chinese women. It is easier for their Chinese girlfriend or wife to obtain business licences, and a relationship would grant them longer visas. However, such transactions are not one-sided. In return, Cibuike is expected to remain with his girlfriend in the long term, even bringing her home to Nigeria. His would-be brother-in-law also demanded that he buy an apartment under his sister’s name in Guangzhou as bride price. This romantic crisis happened when Cibuike’s visa was about to expire in October 2021. He was still in Guangzhou when we visited in November 2021, but he only smiled and did not explain his situation further.

Compared to Igbo Nigerians, other African nationals, such as the Guineans and Malians, attract less police attention in Guangzhou. Among the reasons for this are good diplomatic relations between their home country and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and other support networks that help to buffer potential conflicts. Guinea is among the first five African countries (the other four being Algeria, Egypt, South Africa led by Mandela’s ANC, and Sudan) that entered diplomatic or trade relations with the PRC in the late 1950s. The Malian chamber of commerce in Guangdong has been active in importing necessities to Mali, which is endorsed by the Malian government and its consulate in Guangzhou.

There are other business tactics that are low-key and help circumvent certain financial constraints, such as the alliance established between Guinean businessmen and students. The population of Guineans in China is estimated at 700, including 400 students in Chinese universities and 300 businessmen in Guangzhou and Yiwu. The Guinean government has been sending students to China since good diplomatic relations were established in 1959. Students on Chinese government scholarships have been surpassed by self-financed ones since the mid-1990s. Some Guinean students start working for their compatriot businessmen in Guangzhou even before they finish their studies. Students translate for Guinean bosses and Chinese businessmen, and Guinean businessmen can use students’ names to acquire additional foreign exchange quotas (US$100,000 a year per person) to order from Chinese suppliers. This is a legal grey area that is rarely prosecuted. Furthermore, their student visas allow them stay longer in China, making them ideal brokers between sojourning Guinean buyers and Chinese suppliers. With commission as start-up capital, they can even buy their own goods and ship them home.

Such arrangements do not exist with the Igbos. Some Igbo attend short-term Chinese classes in Guangzhou, which allows them to stay longer for business, but they cannot increase their foreign exchange limit with the student visa. There are a couple Guangzhou local colleges or vocational schools that capitalise on the needs of Africans by offering short-term Chinese or other business courses. A substantial percentage of students skip school, especially in the afternoons when they may contact business partners in Africa where the local time is morning.

Mobile churches

Religion is another cause of tension between African populations and Guangzhou authorities. African Christians in Guangzhou attend church habitually, as they do at home.^[13]  The state-sanctioned Sacred Heart Cathedral, which was built by the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris in the heart of Guangzhou in 1888 (see figure 4), now has more Africans than Chinese attending Sunday mass. When trying to enter, Liang Chen (one of the authors) was shocked to be stopped by two tall Igbo Nigerians at the entrance and had to pretend to be Christian to enter. (Other masses normally accept non-Christians. Chen never hides his non-Christian identity from the pastors to whom he spoke.) The mass was presided over by African priests and had strong African elements. African parishioners raised their hands in the air to receive the Holy Spirit, and the carolling of hundreds of Africans (mixed with a minority of Chinese) echoed under the high, vaulted ceiling. Afterwards, the parishioners left their pews to offer donations in kind – quilts, food staples, sheets. Chen approached one of the Nigerian priests after the mass, and he promptly referred Chen to a Chinese priest. The priest turned down Chen’s request for an interview regarding the reason why the mass was conducted by African expatriates.

Most of our informants preferred to attend Pentecostal services at non-state-sanctioned ‘mobile churches’. As the name suggests, the sites of these church services constantly change. However, they manage to continue operating because they generate revenue for Chinese hotel owners who rent meeting rooms for Sunday congregations and night services.

These congregations granted us freer access but, owing to their unofficial nature as well as the loud preaching and music that accompany such gatherings, these churches have become targets of police raids and surveillance. Pastor Daniel Enyeribe Michael Mbawike, a Nigerian who founded Royal Victory International Church in Guangzhou in 1997, which had Chinese congregants as well, was not granted a visa for seven years because he refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chinese government over God.^[14] Not surprisingly, other Nigerian and Kenyan pastors associated with Royal Victory International refused our request for an interview, stating fears that it could be used against them.

Pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing denominations of Christianity in Africa. Its popularity is also reflected in churchgoers in Guangzhou. Between 2018 and 2021, we joined several Pentecostal congregations on Sundays, including one led by a Nigerian couple, another by a Kenyan and two others by Congolese pastors. The congregations were attended by people from different African nations, not limited to the compatriots of the pastor, meaning that the churches afford cross-national connections to frequent participants. Our African informants told us that they can choose freely among the churches and are not obliged to develop loyalty to any one of them. Some Ethiopians, for example, attend Tewahedo churches at home, but in Guangzhou they join an Egyptian Coptic church, thanks the traditional links between the two denominations.

Our informants tell us that the pastors provide comfort for congregants facing existential issues such as business challenges and visa troubles. Indeed, much of the preaching aimed to lift the spirits of parishioners, recharge them with faith and energy to cope with everyday life, and issue moral injunctions against engaging in fraudulent or deceptive practices while in China. We witnessed many penances in which a congregant comes to the stage and kneels to receive blessings from the pastor and the other parishioners, who lay hands on him or her to heal their suffering soul. Pastors in turn ask for material contributions, including for their own homes. This is typical among Pentecostal churches: the more wealth a pastor amasses, the more he is seen as worthy of following.

Interestingly, some African Christians in Guangzhou believe the churches are declining in morality as a result of the local government’s intolerance of independent preachers. A Nigerian businessman told us that after good pastors were evicted by Guangzhou authorities, new ones coming in have proven less trustworthy and professional. Some even use witchcraft, such as juju. He believed the moral decline of pastors reinforced a trend towards immorality among congregations. He added that Chinese police contribute to moral decay by colluding with visa agents and shadowy intermediaries to charge exorbitant visa renewal fees (around US$8,000 in 2018) for those wanting to enter Guangzhou from Vietnam, where most expelled or overstaying Nigerians go. In his opinion, corrupt police and pastors made Africans more desperate for money, not God, in Guangzhou.

Pandemic governance and backlash

In April 2020, amid worldwide appalling death tolls from COVID-19, treatment of Africans in Guangzhou made international headlines. On 11 April, CNN reported on the large-scale eviction of Africans from their places of residence by Guangzhou police. Africans were asked to quarantine at home for fourteen days, yet many had been evicted by individual landlords acting on their own initiative, and the Africans were then denied access to hotels.^[15] According to a Chinese social worker we spoke to, who took part in mass screening, there were also Africans who refused to quarantine at home, protesting that it would ‘damage their freedom’. Some with visa problems hid out in friends’ places, as we learned from a few close African friends. The results of the mass screenings and mandatory hotel quarantine left many Africans short of money, food and medicine. Some could barely afford one hotel meal a day, much less an international flight back to their home country.

Just a day later, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (police) reported the exact number of African residents: 4,553, down from 13,652 in December 2019.^[16] History was repeating itself in an unsettling way. The last time Guangzhou’s Africans were officially counted was during the Ebola outbreak of 2014. The Guangzhou police appeared to be trying to use one stone to kill two birds: immigration control and epidemiological monitoring. In 2018, the responsibility for policing the community moved from the 6th Bureau of the Public Security Bureau (its exit and entry branch) to the newly founded National Immigration Administration, although the Public Security and its Foreign Management stations still oversaw mass screening of expatriates for COVID-19. Door-to-door screening involved police and residential committees who report to them.

In the same month, eleven African ambassadors to China protested against the discrimination and eviction of African nationals in Guangzhou, demanding ‘the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments’.^[17] This diplomatic backlash was largely caused by the Public Security’s limited capacity to communicate with Africans who do not speak Chinese, English or French,^[18] while enforcing stricter pandemic control measures on African communities in Guangzhou, including compulsory quarantine of asymptomatic cases.

It should be noted that different African governments responded to the plight of their citizens differently. Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, the Hon. Sam Kutesa, conveyed ‘serious concern’ about the ‘harassment and mistreatment of its nationals’ to the Chinese ambassador and called on the Chinese government to ‘address the plight of Ugandans in China’. Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefed its nationals on pandemic control measures in China and urged all ‘underground’ Kenyans to be properly documented. The most vehement response was from Nigeria, whose Congress passed a motion ‘to check the validity of all immigration documents of every Chinese person in Nigeria and the expatriate quota of all the Chinese businesses in Nigeria to ascertain the number of illegal and undocumented Chinese immigrants in Nigeria and to repatriate them to China’.^[19]

When evictions began, a group of Chinese volunteers and some of the wives and girlfriends of Nigerians delivered packaged food and water to homeless Africans, as did some African Americans. However, the police called the Chinese volunteers in for investigation, and their WeChat group was shut down. Then one of the volunteers contacted a lockdown neighbourhood committee enforcing the lockdown and organised consultation to the Africans discharged from hotel quarantine facilitated by some thirty Chinese volunteers who spoke English or French. Liang Chen and three anthropologists researching Africans in Guangzhou additionally provided consultation to the Guangzhou municipal government. African students soon took over the communication between grassroots government and their compatriots discharged from hotel quarantine in late April. They also helped to connect their compatriots with African consulates regarding visa issues and return flights. These informal links were allowed to function as the Guangzhou police lessened their control over the community following the diplomatic backlash. We even learned that Guangzhou police were admonished by higher authorities and ordered to take training on multiculturalism in Beijing.

In 2020, the visas of all Africans subject to quarantine were extended by two months by PRC immigration authorities. Hotel-quarantined Africans were given financial aid, and Guangzhou authorities even apologised to them, according to a Malian business leader. Guangzhou Foreign Affairs Bureau contacted African chambers of commerce to sponsor the repatriation of African nationals. However, these measures were short-term and remedial in nature. The crisis seems to have left no significant legacy in terms of how the Guangzhou authorities have governed African expatriates after the travel ban was lifted.

Digitisation of trade and post-pandemic rebound

In 2021, to limit the number of African traders in Guangzhou and to control the flow of money and currency, the Department of Commerce of Guangdong Province and its subordinate agencies pressured Chinese owners of trading centres to set up cross-border e-commerce platforms 跨境电商平台 among their tenant factory outlets. Individual companies registered with the platform are expected to declare exports jointly and to receive foreign currency via a joint platform account. By so doing the platforms would domesticise foreign trade and subject it to government regulation without having so many African buyers coming to China. The platforms would be responsible for the financial burden and management costs for bringing together myriad African buyers whose individual purchasing capacity might be less than a standard container. Nonetheless, it is challenging for Africans to use a Chinese platform as opposed to dealing with Chinese suppliers directly. As a result, the total volume of trade with Africa declined.

Another way to limit the number of African traders was through controlling Chinese trading centre owners and shopowners. In September 2021, the trading areas in Xiaobei were still heavily policed, and many Chinese shops were closed down by the police or the fire department because they sold expired beverage or had blocked fire exits (see figure 5). However, according to the owner of a trading centre whom we interviewed, the real reason was to stop African traders from trading in the Xiaobei district.

The attempt to limit the inflow of African traders did not work. In part owing to the worsening fiscal situation, however, local governments are more dependent on tax revenue from trading centres and shops. Even when shops were closed in Xiaobei district, in the nearby Yuexiu district, the local government reserved a zone for trading with Africans only because trading centres serve as important revenue sources for the district government.

By 2024, the African population in Guangzhou had bounced back almost to pre-pandemic levels.^[20] Africans cram shopping centres and, carrying overweight baggage, form long queues at Baiyun International Airport for their journey home. While the removal of travel bans between China and Africa is behind the recovery, the devaluation of African currencies to US dollars negatively affects the purchasing power of African traders and numbers. To save an international trade in decline, in August 2024 the Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau invited Chinese shopping mall managers to a conference on how to boost trade with Africans. Notably, a few shopping centres have actively promoted e-commerce to African and Middle Eastern countries.^[21] Online traders include African students, buyers and cargo businessmen. SHEIN, the e-commerce platform that allows for small orders from Chinese factories and fast delivery to Africa, often in two to three weeks, arrived in Kenya and South Africa in 2024. Time will tell whether the digitalisation of the local supply chain as advocated by the provincial government will reduce the physical presence of Africans in Guangzhou.

Notes

[1] The results of this survey have not yet been published.

[2] Zhigang Li, Michel Lyons and Alison Brown, ‘China’s “Chocolate City”: An ethnic enclave in a changing landscape’, African Diaspora, no. 5 (2012): 51–72.

[3] Victoria Ojeme, ‘Nigerians’ notoriety in China is unprecedented – Ambassador Onadipe’, Vanguard, 16 Feburary 2014, online at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/02/nigerians-notoriety-china-unprecedented-ambassador-onadipe/

[4] Gordon Matthews with Linessa Dan Lin and Yang Yang, The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017, p. 118.

[5] Guangzhi Huang, ‘Policing blacks in Guangzhou: How public security constructs Africans as sanfei’, Modern China, no. 45 (2019): 171–200.

[6] Matthews, Lin and Yang, The World in Guangzhou, p. 125.

[7] Yu Qiu, ‘Cleanliness and danger: Destigmatisation and identity politics in Nigerian–Chinese intimate relationships in south China’, Open Times, no. 4 (2016): 88–108.

[8] Paul Igwe, Robert Newbery, Nihar Amoncar, Gareth White and Nnamdi Madichie, ‘Keeping it in the family: Exploring Igbo ethnic entrepreneurial behaviour in Nigeria’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research (2018) 10.1108/IJEBR-12-2017-0492.

[9] Paul Agu Igwe, Chinedu Ochinanwata and Rebecca C. Emeordi, ‘Religion and spiritual influence on Igbo entrepreneurial behavior and persistence’, Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2023) 10.1080/08276331.2023.2253683.

[10] Amusi Odi, ‘The Igbo in diaspora: The binding force of information’, Libraries and Culture, vol. 34, no. 2 (1999), 158–67.

[11] Chinua Achebe, ‘Chi in Igbo cosmology’, NollyCulture, 17 March 2015, online at: https://nollyculture.blogspot.com/2015/03/chi-in-igbo-cosmology-by-chinua-achebe.html

[12] On the association between chi (personal god) and Igbo entrepreneurship, see I. Chukwukere, ‘Chi in Igbo religion and thought: The god in every man’, Anthropos, no. 3 (1983): 519–34; Igwe et al., ‘Keeping it in the family’, p. 43.

[13] On Congolese churches, see Katrine Pype, The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Media, and Gender in Kinshasa, New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.

[14] Matthews, Lin and Yang, The World in Guangzhou, p. 179.

[15] Jenni Marsh, Shawn Deng and Nectar Gan, ‘Africans in Guangzhou are on edge, after many are left homeless amid rising xenophobia as China fights a second wave of coronavirus’, CNN World, 12 April 2020, online at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html

[16] People’s Government of Guangzhou Municipality, ‘Guangzhou Municipal Government Information Office Press Conference on Pandemic Prevention and Control (73rd Session)’, 12 April 2020, online at: https://www.gz.gov.cn/zt/gzsrmzfxwfbh/fbt/content/post_5815413.html

[17] Accessed through the WeChat group of research network forum CAAC (China in Africa and Africa in China) on 11 April. It was provided by a South African scholar.

[18] I participated an aid program organised by grassroots government to communicate with Africans in quarantine hotels in late April. Many volunteers who speak English or French were recruited online. We were allocated 239 expatriates in 8 hotels, including 164 Nigerians and nationals from other 17 African countries as well as 1 Indian and 2 Pakistanis. In the beginning, only 30 percent of them could be reached by telephone, and communication was difficult. Such a language barrier probably reflects that outgoing Africans are largely ‘bush-fallers’, who are from rural areas and have a strong desire to change their destiny through adventure.

[19] Benjamin Kalu (@OfficialBenKalu), ‘The motion passed on the maltreatment and institutional racial discrimination against Nigerians living in China by the Government of China seeks to ensure that’, Twitter, 29 April 2020, https://x.com/OfficialBenKalu/status/1255471879533592576

[20] Interview with a Chinese social worker involved in management of foreigners and Africans in particular in Guangzhou as well as a Chinese shopping mall manager.

[21] For instance, Liuhua Fashion Wholesale Market is running a Facebook page; see https://www.facebook.com/gzliuhuafashion

The post Governing Strangers: African Communities in Guangzhou appeared first on The China Story.

In this show, Nymphia displayed the same queer high as Taiwan’s sci-fi writers have done since the 1990s. Although this time Taiwan’s queer imagination gained global intelligibility outside literature and on TV, both Nymphia and Taiwanese queer science fiction writers before her shared a common goal: dreaming of a different future.

Dreaming of a different future

In 1995, writing in the technical journal Wanglu Tongxun 網路通訊, the Taiwanese gothic sci-fi writer Hong Ling 洪凌 wondered what it could mean to exist in cyberspace, a concept at the core of contemporary literary science fiction:

I just returned from a place where that which can be comprehended is not set by three-dimensional physics. Saying ‘returned’ violates the normal course of current physics, because I have not moved. Actually, I have been sitting still in my little attic, with my keyboard on a cushion over my knees and my gaze never moving away from an 87 cm monitor… Somehow, the me of a few minutes ago is not the me who is now frenziedly striking the keys on their keyboard; they are indeed in two different places.

Amid a fear of the pervasive spread of the internet in the 1990s and its consequences for freedom and civilisation, the title of Hong Ling’s contribution ‘A Fatal and Magnificent Surreal Realm’ 致命華美的超現實境域 announced a hopeful perspective for the future. It is one that has permeated queer science fiction in Taiwan: the perspective of existing differently.

Sci-fi is not a popular genre in Taiwan. Anyone who visits a bookstore in the island, either now or in the 1990s when sci-fi first appeared, would realise that these texts lack a shelf of their own. The elements used by Taiwanese sci-fi writers in the 1990s are of the most varied, making it difficult to create a rigid corpus of Taiwanese sci-fi without stepping into the genres of fantasy or general literature.

Theorists in the field of science fiction have long argued that one of the central elements of sci-fi as a genre is the concept of cyberspace. It is accepted that cyberspace represents an opportunity to fulfil the fantasy of leaving the ‘prison of the meat’ in the future.^[3] However, Taiwanese queer sci-fi writers like Hong Ling dealt with the uncertainty of the future in a holistic way. They saw technology not as a way out of the problems of the present world but as central to their hopes for survival in a non-normative way. In their works, cyberspace and technology do not mean a departure from material embodied concerns, neither do they entail an adoption of a more abstract, transcendent self. In these texts, technology mediates between our fragile existences and the threats posed to human survival in order to invent queer futures.

Such is the centrality of the body in 1990s Taiwanese sci-fi that it is a genre full of desire, thirst and lust as well as blood, thinking of Hong Ling’s collection of lesbian vampire stories, Heretic Vampire Biographies 異端吸血鬼列傳, or their story ‘Fever’ 發燒, where lesbian vampires and werewolves dwell in post-apocalyptic cities following nuclear or environmental catastrophes.^[4]

Technology has allowed Taiwanese queer sci-fi writers to imagine self-expression free from sexual prejudice by embracing future uncertainty. As Hong Ling wrote: ‘Let’s meet each other online! Even if that means to encounter with fatally alienated identities and get entangled in relationships far different from the ones we already know.’^[5] As anarchic as this invitation to the future might sound, it locates technology as the means to actualise the unknown and speaks of a need to make a change in a spoiled present. Technology was not only an abstract source of inspiration for queers’ stories; it was also the means to actualise an uncertain yet desired future, and queer sci-fi writers were high on it.

In 1995, when Microsoft Word and the internet were still novelties, Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉 published what has been labelled the first modern Sinophone queer sci-fi novel and seemingly the first featuring a trans protagonist: The Membranes 膜, translated into English in 2021 by Ari Heinrich. It portrays a world where humanity has fled the surface of the Earth and found refuge at the bottom of the ocean. This novel, which has already been translated into several European languages and adapted into theatre, was written in just one month, only two years after its author learned to use Microsoft Word – a clear example of how technology was not only a fictional element but also a real tool with which to invent the future.

In a 2021 interview, Chi spoke of the high in the writing process of The Membranes as an unequivocally embodied experience mediated by technology: ‘I did not feel the adrenaline rush when writing on paper, but with a computer I felt that my writing experience was suddenly enhanced and made euphoric. I enjoyed the high a lot back then.’^[6] This is reminiscent of the passage by Hong Ling, revealing an important characteristic of Taiwanese queer sci-fi writers: their future as queer people had been foreclosed by an authoritarian present, but with the lifting of martial law in 1987 and a keyboard at hand, the horizon of possibilities for politics, culture and self-expression suddenly broadened, together with the arrival of the internet and mass electronic communications. This generation of queer writers inevitably started imagining their survival as queers in intimate relation with technology.

Other Taiwanese writers of sci-fi feel their survival threatened for different reasons not related to their sexuality, including climate collapse. Wu Ming-yi’s 吳明益 The Man with the Compound Eyes 複眼人 (2011) shows how all lives face the same fatal risk of ecological catastrophe. In the novel, Atile’i, the second son of a family on the imaginary island of Wayo Wayo, is offered as a sacrifice to the Sea God, as tradition requires. Unexpectedly, he survives. Caught in a trash vortex, Atile’i arrives on the coast of Taiwan, where he meets Alice Shih. Alice, who has just lost her husband and son in an accident in the mountains, and Atile’i, who has left behind his civilisation and everything he knew, both feel their world is over and are in need of imagining a future different from the one they could have foreseen. This situation of finding each other as the world collapses from climate change bonds them as they are forced to reimagine their lives afresh.

Wu Ming-yi first published a short story with the same title in 2002 in the journal Chung-wai Literary. In the story, a researcher employed by a tour company must film a nature reserve and replicate it virtually. While filming, he meets a man with compound eyes who advises him to set up cameras to record how purple crow butterflies (which also have compound eyes) see the world, telling him: ‘If the gaze with which animals see the world is not understood, everything will come to an end.’^[7]

In this seminal work, two key elements of 1990s Taiwanese queer science fiction are evident: a need to imagine the future afresh after undergoing a life-threatening situation (ecological disaster in this case), and technology (filming) as the mediator between humans and their possibility of a different future.

Although Wu did not write from a queer perspective or for a queer audience, one can trace his writing back to previous experiments of 1990s queer sci-fi, propelled by a similar feeling of urgency for a different future and with technology as the facilitator of that future.

The novel that developed from Wu’s short story has been translated into more than ten languages, and the acquisition of the rights for an English translation at the 2011 Frankfurt Bookfair by American publisher Vintage Pantheon was spurred precisely by the urgency and global intelligibility of its ecological message.^[8]

While the sense of emergency in The Man with the Compound Eyes is visible, the key role of technology as mediator, although present at the seminal work that served as its blueprint, is lost in the time lapse of the decade that separates the publication of the two texts.

The realistic turn of contemporary Sinophone sci-fi

After the 1990s, the role of technology seemed to have gradually lost its ability to ‘wow’ Taiwanese sci-fi writers, and its role in Sinophone sci-fi might be changing altogether.

In the popular saga The Three Body Problem 三體 (2008) by mainland Chinese writer Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, a world on the edge of alien invasion strives to save itself. The Redemptionists put all their efforts into finding a solution, via technology, to their seemingly doomed future while the Adventists welcome the invaders’ goal of taking over the Earth. Unlike Taiwan’s queer sci-fi, in this trilogy, technology does not serve as a mediator to overcome humankind’s mistakes, nor to make human life on Earth more inclusive, or at least give it an option for survival after an apocalyptic disaster. In The Three Body Problem, technology is represented in what can be read as realistic terms: as a locus where power is contested in line with current geopolitics.

Mimicking real life and no longer speculating about the future, some contemporary science fiction portrays technology as a frontier to be controlled to attain power. The United States blocking China’s access to some technological improvements can be read as analogous to the real-life Sophons; those subatomic particles in The Three Body Problem saga sent by the enemy to foreclose technological advances on the Earth. Even the poisoning and murder in real life of Lin Qi, one of the promoters of the TV adaptation of The Three Body Problem, defies the limits of fiction, taking a Hollywood murder plot into reality.^[9]

China’s global ambitions and the logistics and politics surrounding the international flow of semiconductors put unique pressures on Taiwan. This might affect Taiwan’s future artistic production and push it to take a more realistic turn following the example of mainland Chinese writers like the aforementioned Liu Cixin or Chen Qiufan 陈秋帆.

Nymphia Winds’s performance at the Presidential Office serves as an illustrative example of the distinctive Taiwanese queer imagination that emerged in the 1990s: one that uses technology as a mediator, reaches global audiences, and does not resort to realism to invent the future. Nymphia’s performance of Huang Fei’s 黃妃 ‘zhui, zhui, zhui’ 追追追 [‘Chase, chase, chase’], a classic Taiwanese diva song, at the otherwise formal setting of the Presidential Office serves to evoke the uniqueness of Taiwanese queer spirit that is so pervasive in 1990s queer sci-fi. It is a spirit that strives to find a way, from a seemingly hopeless atmosphere, to imagine a queer glittering future that, like Nymphia’s dress, blooms like it has gone bananas

Notes

[1] ‘Best of Nymphia Wind’, YouTube, retrieved 24 September 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE2gsHaIDpI

[2] Hong Ling, ‘Zhiming Huamei de Chaoxianshi Jingyu’, Wanglu Tongxun, 1995, p. 114.

[3] Sherryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. 102–3.

[4] Paola Zamperini (trad.), ‘Fever’, in Patricia Sieber (ed.), Red is Not the Only Color, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001, p. 149.

[5] Hong Ling, ‘Zhiming Huamei de Chaoxianshi Jingyu’, p. 117.

[6] Chris Littlewood, ‘Never prosthetic: An interview with Chi Ta-Wei’, Paris Review, 13 October 2021.

[7] Wu Ming-yi, ‘The man with the compound eyes’, Chung Wai Literary Quarterly vol. 31, no. 4 (2002), p. 205.

[8] Pei-yin Lin, ‘Positioning “Taiwanese literature” to the world’, in Bi-yu Chang and Pei-yin Lin (eds), Positioning Taiwan in a Global Context: Being and Becoming, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019, p. 22.

[9] David Pierson, ‘The bizarre Chinese murder plot behind Netflix’s “3 Body Problem”’, 1 April 2024, online at https://www.nytimes.com

The post Hopefully Going Bananas: Taiwan’s Sinophone (Queer) Science Fiction appeared first on The China Story.

Taiwan in recent years has made progress on human rights protection, including legalising same sex marriage, the first country in Asia to do so. The TAEDP had hoped the country would also end capital punishment once and for all. Assisted by international human rights groups such as Amnesty International Taiwan and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the TAEDP, on behalf of thirty-seven individuals currently on death row, had submitted several previous appeals to the court since 2006 without success. In addition to its argument that the death penalty was unconstitutional, the latest appeal reasoned that in the past, during the time when these thirty-seven were sentenced, the judicial process lacked certain protections that are central to sentencing today, including assessments of the contexts of the criminal act and considerations of the defendant’s social background before sentencing as well as the possibility of wrongful conviction. Among the thirty-seven death row inmates, twenty-three had been convicted of murder and nine of robbery with murder. Among them, eight cases involved sexual assault.^[2] If judged today, many of these death row inmates would likely have been sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.^[3] There were high stakes involved.

The TAEDP speculated that the court was finally willing to consider the constitutionality of the death penalty, at least partly because of the political timing – the 2024 presidential election had just finished, and the next one is still two years away.^[4] It ’did not need to take into account the political repercussions of its decision. In addition, the composition of the fifteen justices of the current court is the most liberal Taiwan has ever seen.

The legal argument

There were five important factors that the court needed to take into consideration. As summarised by Taiwan’s Central News Agency report, they were (1) the argument that the death penalty violates the right to life and equality, and it violates the principle of proportionality; (2) the fact that Taiwanese public supports the death penalty; (3) the fact that the death penalty violates a United Nations treaty on civil rights; that is, specifically the human right to life and the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as stipulated in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Taiwan ratified in 2009; (4) the argument (by retentionists) that the Constitutional Court should not determine the fate of the death penalty; in other words, the Legislature, Taiwan’s congress, should have the final say; and (5) evidence that the death penalty does not deter crime.^[5]

While this summary captures the jor legal arguments for and against the death penalty in Taiwan, it is not the whole story. In recent years, Taiwan’s standards for death penalty rulings have become increasingly stringent in accordance with the increasing democratisation of Taiwan’s political and legal system. Since 2000 there has been a relatively low rate of execution, and no executions have been recorded in Taiwan since 2020, which represents a de facto moratorium on the death penalty. The crime must meet the criteria of the ‘most serious crimes’, as stipulated in the two international covenants, and be limited to ‘intentional killing resulting in the loss of life’, meaning there must be evidence of ‘direct intent’. Additionally, judges needed to consider ten sentencing factors listed in Article 57 of the Criminal Code, such as the motive for the crime and the defendant’s character. The potential for rehabilitation is also a crucial factor that must be proven when sentencing someone to death. Legally, it had to be examined whether there is sufficient evidence to prove that the person is ‘beyond rehabilitation’.

On 20 September 2024 the court ruled the death penalty constitutional but only for the ‘most serious’ crimes involving intentional killing.  This ruling instructed judges to consider factors like intent, motive, means, extent of participation and the accused’s ability to defend themselves before sentencing. The ruling also prohibits the death sentence for individuals with mental disorders or deficiencies, reversing the current practice that allows only those who can prove that their mental conditions have affected their judgement at the time of their crime to receive a reduced sentence. Any current laws incompatible with the ruling must be amended within two years, according to the Constitutional Court.^[6] But the court also declares that the death penalty remains a ‘necessary’ form of retribution in relation to the crimes committed and to achieve ‘deterrent’ effects.^[7] The message about the legal arguments on the death penalty and the reactions to it were mixed: the TAEDP welcomed the court’s acknowledgement of flaws in the death penalty but expressed disappointment that it was not abolished, whereas the retentionists argued that by tightening standards, the court effectively abolished the death penalty without legislative consent.^[8]

The moral and political debate

The court has made its decision, but it is worth going beyond the legal arguments to capture more fully the significance of the death penalty debate. The battle over the death penalty in Taiwan was initially framed by legal scholars such as Chia-Wen Lee in as early as 2004,^[9] and later circulated in popular usages as being two conflicting value systems: one local and traditional, rooted in cultural beliefs, and the other, which advocates of abolition perceived as superior and civilised if foreign, based on international human rights law and standards. Popular sayings such as ‘the murderer must die for the murder act’ 殺人者死 are claimed to be rooted in traditional religious beliefs and evidenced in, say, retributive rituals for the immoral acts one has committed during the lifetime in City God Temple.^[10] It is no surprise, then, that the most vocal retentionists were relatives of crime victims, arguing that the suffering caused by these crimes could only be answered through ‘revenge’. Combined with widespread scepticism about the penal system’s ability to rehabilitate offenders, popular sentiment has lent an air of moral panic to debates over the death penalty, even when framed in legal terms like the deterrent effects of punishment.

The battle of opinion was intertwined with Taiwan’s partisan politics. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), divided between retentionists and abolitionists, has called for gradual and careful consideration of the issue such as in the most recent formal statement by the Lai Ching-te 賴清德 during the televised debate for the 2024 presidential election.^[11] The major opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), on the other hand, strongly opposes abolition as it asserts itself as a guardian of ‘local sentiment’, aligning with majority opinion against values it characterises as foreign and disconnected from the public, often mobilising people to vent their emotions online and offline. This emotional outpouring places a heavy burden on the Taiwan Constitutional Court, which is concerned with the legitimacy of its decisions in the eyes of the public. As Randall McGowen remarked on the death penalty historically, ‘It becomes an instrument for certain political groups to cast themselves as defenders of law and order at home, and as upholders of national integrity against outside interference.’^[12]

We should be cautious about overemphasising the idea of moral or political progress in the movement to abolish the death penalty in modern times – especially given that influential historical forces driving the abolitionist impulse since the late 1960s in the West – such as the experience of fascism and the profound horror of the Holocaust – were predominantly European in origin.^[13] But it is equally misleading to assume that traditions and beliefs are static or universally shared within any group. Legal anthropologists consistently remind us to consider the unique features of local circumstances – cultural, religious and political – in shaping people’s attitudes towards human rights issues.^[14] As a legal anthropologist, I strongly object to treating the death penalty and, by extension, human rights in an abstract or universal sense. Instead, we should focus on how traditional relationships are translated into the language of rights, and vice versa.^[15] It is also important to avoid falling into the East versus West dichotomy that has long influenced these debates, as though each were a fixed and unified entity – which they definitely are not. Since the beginning of last century, the Japanese colonial rulers and later the ruling KMT party both have tried to centralise and westernise Taiwan’s legal systems, which imposed radical changes to its civil customs. In other words, Taiwan’s culture is not static or unchanging, and invoking ‘traditional culture and values’ alone is insufficient to resolve the debate on the death penalty. The growth of democracy on the island, together with ideas around human rights, have indeed reshaped the social fabric that individuals recognise and incorporate liberal legal rules into their own life activity and self-identity. To avoid the deadlock between the two conflicting value systems on the death penalty, it is essential to understand the historical context in which local views on the death penalty – and, more broadly, attitudes towards life – are shaped by the interaction of national laws and local customs.

The social question

In a short story, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ by the late American writer Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018), the inhabitants of the utopian city Omelas live in a state of perfect happiness. However, there is a dark side to their happiness: it is dependent on the suffering of a small child who is locked away in a broom closet, naked, hungry and beaten. The moral enigma Le Guin presents in the story, as commentators have pointed out, lies in the way that the citizens of Omelas justify the perfection of their city – its beautiful music, architecture and overall way of life – by accepting the child’s torment as a necessary evil. Some individuals, however, choose to walk away from Omelas, unable to accept the moral cost of their happy existence.

Like the people of Omelas, Taiwan’s people had previously consented to the ‘necessary evil’ of the death penalty, believing it to deter crime. If bad things are done by the state, people rationalise, identifying with the victim, they won’t be done to me.

The Taiwan Constitutional Court has made its decision, meaning that the challenge to the Constitutional Court on the issue comes to an end. While the ruling DPP, often viewed as more socially liberal, has restrained its reaction, the KMT loudly expressed regret about the decision, saying the court was trying in essence to abolish the death penalty and was going against the feelings of most of the island’s people.^[16] In the meantime, the TAEDP and lawyers will have to wait for a case around which they can form a very strong argument.

The final way to abolish the death penalty is through legislation, a long way to go, as the TAEDP has expressed that the next battle is in the court of public opinion.^[17] Perhaps the story of Omelas is not a fable at all, not very different from the real world. The lessons we can take away from the story are that the legal system itself cannot address the complex meanings of life, as these require broader exploration of social dynamics and functioning, and that, in the end, the Taiwanese will need to grapple with the fundamental question of what kind of society they desire.

 Notes

^[1] Michelle Chiang, ‘Poll: 85% of public supports death penalty’, Radio Taiwan International, 27 May, 2024, online at: https://en.rti.org.tw/news/view/id/2011197

^[2] Yuchen Li, ‘Taiwan’s death penalty and debate over constitutional rights’, Deutsche Welle, 24 April 2024, online at: https://www.dw.com/en/taiwans-death-penalty-and-debate-over-constitutional-rights/a-68909105

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, ‘Death penalty abolition: A potentially historic moment in Taiwan’, News Lens, 27 June 2024, online at: https://international.thenewslens.com/article/187052

^[5] Anonymous, ‘Key arguments from constitutional court’s debate on death penalty’, Focus Taiwan, 30 April 2024, online at: https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202404300019 (retrieved 31 July 2024)

^[6] Hsieh Hsin-en, Lin Chang-shun and Teng Pei-ju, ‘37 death row prisoners in Taiwan may petition for extraordinary appeals’, Focus Taiwan, 20 September 2024, online at: https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202409200021

^[7] Teng Pei-ju, ‘Court rules death penalty constitutional for “most serious” crimes’, Focus Taiwan, 20 September 2024, online at: https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202409200011

^[8] Derren Chan, ‘Taiwan’s Constitutional Court upholds death penalty for serious crimes but mandates procedural reforms’, Jurist News, 21 September 2024, online at: https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/09/taiwan-constitutional-court-upholds-death-penalty-for-serious-crimes-but-mandates-procedural-reforms/

^[9] Chia-Wen Lee, ‘The symbolic meaning and social function of the death penalty in Taiwanese society, 死刑在台灣社會的象徵意涵與社會功’, Yuedan Legal Magazine, vol. 113 (2004): 110–29.

^[10] Paul Katz, Divine Justice: Religion and the Development of Chinese Legal Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 2009.

^[11] Jono Thomson, ‘Taiwan election 2024: Major party positions on death penalty’, Taiwan News, 8 January 2024, online at: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5074263

^[12] Randall McGowen, ‘Getting the question right? Ways of thinking about the death penalty’, in David Garland, Michael Meranze and Randall McGowen (eds), America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present, New York: New York University Press, 2011, p. 18.

^[13] Michael Meranze, ‘The death penalty: Between law, sovereignty and biopolitics’, in David Garland, Michael Meranze and Randall McGowen (eds), America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present, New York: New York University Press, 2011, p. 75.

^[14] See Philip Alston (ed.), The Complexity of Human Rights: From Vernacularization to Quantification: Essays in Honour of Sally Engle Merry, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2024.

^[15] Shaw-wu Jung, ‘Landscapes and governance: Practicing citizenship in the construction of an eco-village in Taiwan’, Citizenship Studies, vol. 20, no. 3–4 (2016): 510–26.

^[16] Derren Chan, ‘Taiwan’s Constitutional Court upholds death penalty for serious crimes but mandates procedural reforms’, Jurist News, 21 September 2024, online at: https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/09/taiwan-constitutional-court-upholds-death-penalty-for-serious-crimes-but-mandates-procedural-reforms/

^[17] Jan Camenzind Broomby, ‘After Taiwan rules to uphold death penalty, the next battle abolitionists face is in the court of public opinion’, Hong Kong Free Press, 6 October 2024, online at: https://hongkongfp.com/2024/10/06/after-taiwan-rules-to-uphold-death-penalty-the-next-battle-abolitionists-face-is-in-the-court-of-public-opinion/?utm_medium=email

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It is common for people in a region with a high degree of linguistic diversity to learn and speak different languages through social and cultural activities, such as formal schooling, interactions with friends who speak another language, and expressing opinions at official events. The patterns of multilingualism – that is, how a person uses two or more languages in different situations – vary across different communities.

For example, in northern Vanuatu, due to common intergroup marriages, intense trading networks, and ritual and cultural events, children grow up learning two or more languages.^[3] None of these languages is socially or politically dominant so linguists call this a pattern of egalitarian multilingualism. In contrast, what can be observed in Yunnan nowadays is a pattern of hierarchical multilingualism in which languages are ordered according to their dominance in different domains of life: Standard Chinese (the term refers to both the spoken and written language as opposed to Putonghua, the official spoken language) as the official language over a local major language over one or a set of minority languages.

The predominant status of Standard Chinese in Yunnan and across China is a result of decades of efforts in promoting it as a national language and other linguistic policies. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the government has promulgated a series of policies such as using simplified characters 简体字 for writing, the promotion of Hanyu Pinyin 汉语拼音 as a system for teaching standard pronunciation, and the promotion of Putonghua 普通话 as the national spoken language to deal with the challenges of significant linguistic diversity. These challenges included intergroup communication and widespread illiteracy,^[4] which have a long history in China. Putonghua is promoted as the lingua franca and used in almost all the official domains, including education, government administration and broadcasting.

The status of minority languages is also closely related to language policies. Unlike in some other provinces, the non-Sinitic languages spoken in Yunnan do not enjoy a prominent official status. This is despite the fact that China’s constitution recognises and protects the right of all nationalities to use their spoken and written language. Students of Korean nationalities in Yanbian 延边, Jilin province, for example, can choose to take the national college entrance exam 高考 in Korean rather than Chinese. However, in Yunnan province, the option for minority nationalities 少数民族 to take the exam in their own languages does not exist. Non-Han people in Yunnan do not have a chance to study their mother tongues formally, and everyone needs to study Standard Chinese at school. None of the minority groups (groups whose languages are not mutually intelligible) in Yunnan, however,^[5] have any linguistic advantages over others in the college entrance exam.^[6]

With Standard Chinese in the predominant position, it seems the minority languages in Yunnan are lumped together in an equal position – unless we look beyond official domains such as education and governmental administration. The situation at the community level is complex. The hierarchy of languages at the community level depends on whether there is one large minority language used in the region in addition to Standard Chinese and how different groups communicate with each other. I will explain how this works on the basis of my field experience working with Kua’nsi people in Yunnan.

There are approximately 5,000 Kua’nsi people in Liuhe Yizu township 六合彝族乡, which is in Heqing county 鹤庆县 in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture 大理白族自治州 of Yunnan. Kua’nsi people are recognised as part of the Yi nationality 彝族. However, their language is not mutually intelligible with the languages spoken by other Yi groups. Kua’nsi people do not consider themselves the same as other Yi groups. They refer to themselves as the ‘Kua’nsi subgroup of Yi nationality’ 彝族夸恩斯支系. Although Standard Chinese is the primary language used in education, governmental administration and other official domains, Kua’nsi remains the primary language of communication between Kua’nsi people in their villages, which are mostly homogeneous. As there is no written mode of the Kua’nsi language, Kua’nsi people will write things down in Chinese. People who did not attend school for education rely on others to read and write Chinese.

In Heqing county, more than 98 percent of the population is Bai, and therefore the major language is the local variety of Bai language, Heqing Bai. Kua’nsi people have been in close contact with Bai 白族 and more recently with Han people as well. For communication with people from outside the villages, Kua’nsi people have learnt to speak – or at least understand – Heqing Bai and the local south-western variety of Mandarin Chinese. The use of the latter is also expanding within the villages. People who are Bai or Han rarely learn Kua’nsi to fit in. I know only one Bai man who married into the village and learnt Kua’nsi.

Patterns of multilingualism have started to shift within the Kuai’nsi community. Men from older generations are likely to be bilingual in Kua’nsi and Heqing Bai, or even trilingual in these two languages and the local variety of south-western Mandarin Chinese, while women of these generations are more likely to be monolingual in Kua’nsi but sometimes have some knowledge of Bai. Younger people tend to speak both Kua’nsi and Putonghua. Some of them might have some knowledge of Heqing Bai. Although bilingualism is common, it is by no means the case that every Kua’nsi can understand Heqing Bai or Mandarin. There is still a need for interpreters, especially between elderly Kua’nsi and outsiders.

The change in the pattern of bilingualism is due to the promotion of Standard Chinese in official domains, especially through education. Each administrative village has one primary school, where Kua’nsi children start to learn Standard Chinese formally. Classroom instructions in Kua’nsi may be available for students in the first and second years of primary school to help them transition to understanding and speaking Putonghua properly, but this depends on whether the teacher is also Kua’nsi. In most cases, the teachers are not Kua’nsi but are from different ethnic backgrounds, such as Bai, Han, Naxi and other ethnic nationalities in the region, so the students are encouraged to speak Putonghua from their first year of primary school. In the primary school where I conducted fieldwork, teachers would tell the students that they must speak Putonghua in school even with their Kua’nsi peers. Teachers also mentioned to me that some students were struggling to compose Chinese sentences properly, seemingly the result of students using Kua’nsi language structure and word order to write sentences in Chinese. Thus the lack of a mother tongue in formal education not only reduces the chances of the language used in private and official contexts but also poses a challenge for students whose first language is not Standard Chinese to achieve better academic performance.

The divide in the multilingual hierarchy is not just between Standard Chinese and the minority Kua’nsi language. Often, there is tension between another relatively larger minority language and a smaller one. Before Standard Chinese gained predominance in the region, Heqing Bai was the lingua franca for different ethnic groups in the region. As a result of the long history of contact, Kua’nsi people use many borrowed words from Heqing Bai. For example, they call boiled water xwa³³si³³, which came from Heqing Bai. Although nowadays Heqing Bai is becoming less dominant compared to Standard Chinese, Kua’nsi children still pick up words and phrases from Heqing Bai, the language of their friends and teachers, when they go to Liuhe township for middle school and Heqing county for high school. People whose first language is Heqing Bai, by contrast, had little motivation for learning Kua’nsi language.

This sometimes leads to discrimination. As one former student mentioned to me, some Kua’nsi kids were mocked for their language at school. He remembered that his English teacher once asked him why he could not speak English properly as his mother tongue already sounded like a foreign language. The comment from this teacher reflects the ignorance of local non-Kua’nsi people towards Kua’nsi and how Kua’nsi people sometimes are considered exotic to them.

Hierarchical multilingualism in Yunnan highlights the broader dilemma for people of minority groups in China who must learn not just Standard Chinese but also the languages of other more dominant groups to improve their life. As the minority group in the region, Kua’nsi people need to know how to speak both Heqing Bai and Chinese (Putonghua or local south-western Mandarin Chinese) to communicate with government officials, to bargain in the market and to trade with outsiders. Hence, being a smaller minority group in the region not only means they need to learn Standard Chinese for better education but also puts them in a less equal position in many political, social and economic activities, compared to the larger minority group who can use their language in more situations. During the Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign 精准扶贫 in Kua’nsi villages, the Heqing local government sent officials there to teach the villagers how to plant cash crops to raise their annual income. These officials are mainly of Bai nationality and do not know any of the Kua’nsi language, so the villagers were helpless without an interpreter, usually the village leader. In this situation, Putonghua is the main language of communication: the village leader would translate the government officials’ speech from Putonghua into Kua’nsi and the villagers’ speech from Kua’nsi into Putonghua. If the villagers were Bai or if the officials had put effort into learning the Kua’nsi language, the conversation between the government officials and the villagers would be more direct and efficient.

A majority within a minority

Despite having a population of only 5,000 people in Heqing, Kua’nsi enjoys a more advantageous position compared with some even smaller minority groups. In addition to Kua’nsi, there are four other Yi groups in Heqing: Kuamasi, Laizisi, Zibusi and Sonaga, with populations ranging from a few hundred to just over a thousand.^[7] Although they are all considered minority groups in Heqing, they do not receive equal amounts of attention or resources from the local government.

Government projects for the revitalisation of local cultures in Heqing have focused on the dominant Heqing Bai, yet the culture, language and history of the Kua’nsi have received more attention from the local government and scholars than those of the four other Yi groups. For example, the local government sponsored the publication of an edited volume on the society, history and culture of the Kua’nsi community.^[8] My PhD project is also a language documentation and description project that contributes to the preservation of the language and culture of Kua’nsi people.^[9] Kua’nsi culture has also been branded as a tourist attraction, while the four other groups have not received similar recognition. It is well known in the region that Kua’nsi people wear their traditional clothes made from fire grass, and the local government recently organised a workshop to teach young Kua’nsi women to make traditional clothes as a means of cultural preservation. Those four other Yi groups ceased to wear traditional garb from the 1970s, let alone had a workshop to learn how to make them.^[10] People in some villages even shifted to wearing the clothes of Heqing Bai.

The lack of government recognition due to hierarchical multilingualism threatens the preservation of minority cultures and languages. The languages of all these smaller Yi groups in Heqing county are in danger of extinction.^[11] At least Kua’nsi language and culture are being documented and could be revitalised; the others will be seriously endangered if no action is taken soon.

Conclusion

The story of language use in China is not as simple as Standard Chinese versus all other languages and dialects. It must also take into account the double or multiple divides between Standard Chinese, other Sinitic languages and dialects, as well as larger minority languages and smaller minority languages according to the dynamics between languages in a particular region. The recognition of hierarchical multilingualism and its influence on minority groups illuminates the challenges faced by minority groups in contemporary Chinese society.

In addition to sponsoring research projects on documenting minority languages in China, the Ministry of Education and State Language Commission jointly launched the China Language Resources Protection Project 中国语言资源保护工程 in 2015.^[12] This is a welcome effort to protect and understand languages and dialects in China. It is also important to transfer the knowledge from research to community language preservation projects, so that minority languages can be kept alive and passed on to future generations.

Notes

[1] The data on languages spoken in China is from https://www.ethnologue.com/country/CN/#typology. Language family is the linguistic classification of languages that are genetically related and languages of the same language family developed from a single ancestral language. Languages spoken in China are from these language families: Sino-Tibetan, Kra-Dai, Hmong-Mien, Austro-Asiatic, Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, Austronesian and Indo-European as well as a couple of unclassified languages.

[2] National Bureau of Statistics, ‘Main data of the seventh national population census’ 第七次全国人口普查主要数据情况, 11 May 2021, online at: https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202302/t20230203_1901080.html. The distinction between language and dialect is not always clear and easy to draw. From a purely linguistic perspective, the difference between language and dialect is the degree of mutual intelligibility; for example the degree to which a person can understand the language spoken by another person. In the context of China, the distinction is made between the official language and other speech varieties. Putonghua is considered the only standard language of modern Chinese, and all other speech varieties of Chinese are dialects of this language; that is, Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 ‘common speech’ as the standard language versus other Sinitic languages/varieties as fāngyán 方言 ‘dialect’, although many of them are not mutually intelligible; for example Cantonese versus Shanghainese; the great differences between varieties of Mandarin in northern and south-western China. In this article, the term ‘Sinitic languages’ is used as an umbrella term. and it refers to all the speech varieties that are spoken by Han people.

[3] Alexandre François, ‘Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence’, Journal of Historical Linguistics, vol. 1, no. 2 (2011): 175–246.

[4] Bernard Spolsky, ‘Language management in the People’s Republic of China’, Language, vol. 90, no. 4 (2014): e165–e179.

[5] The term ‘minority group’ is not the same as少数民族 in this article. This aims to differentiate groups whose languages are not mutually intelligible within one minority nationality. Again, the division is made on purely linguistic grounds. During the recognition of nationality status (民族识别工作) from the 1950s to the late 1970s, the government recognised 55 nationalities out of 400 applications (Minglang Zhou, Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages 1949–2002, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003, p. 8). Small groups that are closely related to each other were lumped together, although their languages are not mutually intelligible. For example, the Yi nationality 彝族is a large nationality, but it is not a homogenous one. It contains Yi groups whose languages and cultures are quite different from each other, although related. The Yi nationality includes Yi groups like Nuosu 诺苏, Niesu 聂苏, Lalo腊罗, Kua’nsi 夸恩斯, Khatsuo 卡卓, Talu 他留 and many others. Although these groups are historically related, they do not consider themselves the same as each other. These groups are also related to Lahu拉祜, Lisu 傈僳 and Hani哈尼, which are recognised as separate minority nationalities in China.

[6] ‘One way China has tried to solve the problem of minority children not understanding Chinese is to translate language textbooks. Yunnan province, in particular, has translated the national Chinese language textbooks for first and second graders into 14 different languages. These textbooks have the Chinese and the minority language side-by-side and are used mainly as diglots [i.e. bilingual books]. The focus is on having the minority language as an aid to help the children understand the Chinese texts.’ From Heidi Cobby, ‘Challenges and prospects of minority bilingual education in China: An Analysis of four projects’, in Anwei Feng (ed.), Bilingual Education in China: Practices, Policies and Concepts, Clevedon/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters, p. 188.

[7] Andy Castro, Brian Crook and Royce Flaming, ‘A sociolinguistic survey of Kua-nsi and related Yi varieties in Heqing county, Yunnan province, China’, Journal of Language Survey Reports, 1–96 (2010). SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2010–001. Online at: https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/9202.

[8] Jinhe Gao, Jiao Xiongcai and Wang Hongzhi (eds), A Collection of Research on Heqing Baiyi Culture 鹤庆白依文化研究合集, Kunming: Yunnan Nationalities Publishing House, 2015.

[9] Huade Huang, ‘A grammar of Kua’nsi’, doctoral thesis, Canberra: Australian National University, 2024. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/316664

[10] Castro, Crook and Flaming, ‘A sociolinguistic survey of Kua-nsi and related Yi varieties in Heqing county, Yunnan province, China’, pp. 39–40.

[11] Many factors contribute to the endangerment of languages, such as reduction/shift in domains of language use, community members’ attitude towards language, governmental language policy, availability of literacy and educational materials and so on. (See the link for the discussion of these factors of language endangerment: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000183699) A language is dying out when no children learn it as their mother tongue; that is, the intergenerational transmission stops (Nikolaus Himmelmann, ‘Language endangerment scenarios: A case study from northern central Sulawesi’, in M. Florey (ed.), Endangered Languages of Austronesia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 45–72), and it is dead when the last speaker dies.

[12] More details about the project can be found at https://zhongguoyuyan.cn/index

The post Linguistic Hierarchies in Yunnan Province: A Case Study of Yi Groups in Heqing appeared first on The China Story.

A plan without a plan

China’s social credit experiments date back twenty-five years, when authorities and businesses sought solutions to problems like counterfeit products flooding the market, triangular debts – where A loans money to B, B loans to C, and C loans to A, creating a deadlock of bad debts threatening the stability of the financial system – and widespread disregard for the country’s laws and regulations. Subsequently, the central government and dozens of ministries spent decades trying to establish data-sharing systems across traditionally fragmented government units, alongside blacklists to punish severe lawbreakers and incentives to promote ‘trustworthy’ behaviour. In 2011, the then premier Wen Jiabao commented that ‘good “social credit” 社会信用 is a necessary condition for every enterprise, institution and individual to gain a foothold in society’ but lamented rampant ‘commercial fraud, counterfeiting, false reporting, and academic misconduct’.^[2]

The Social Credit System that emerged was not merely concerned with financial credit. Its focus was on regulatory compliance, or the ‘credibility’ of enterprises. The term ‘social’ 社会 did not refer to interpersonal behaviour as it commonly does in the English language. Rather, it was meant to distinguish it from a ‘national credit system’, which was the name for the system that was originally envisaged. Changing ‘national’ to ‘social’ in 2002 emphasised that the system was not to be built by the government but by ‘society’. Finally, the Social Credit System was never intended to become a fully integrated system. At best, it is a fragmented collection of different systems that typically share little more than the aim of enforcing compliance with laws and regulations.

Whether the Social Credit System has had its desired effect remains in doubt. None of the many plans issued over the years answered the fundamental question: what is social credit, and what is its ultimate goal? In 2019, this led to researchers asking local officials in China what the Social Credit System was to them, only to have the officials ask the same of them: ‘I really can’t figure it out. Is it possible that you scholars can tell me?’^[3]

Experiments were being carried out in almost every domain, yet shared understanding was completely lacking. Starting in the early 2010s, some localities experimented with scoring citizens on such criteria as whether they quarrelled with neighbours or set off fireworks during prohibited times, with the scoring being done by volunteers, not artificial intelligence (AI).^[4] Others developed local initiatives to crack down on people eating on the subway, enforced by local subway officers.^[5] During the COVID-19 pandemic, some cities blacklisted citizens for refusing to wear a mask or get tested.^[6] These were all labelled as part of the Social Credit System but in practice were rarely integrated or expanded widely.

Private companies were experimenting, too. Alibaba’s subsidiary Ant Financial developed Sesame Credit 芝麻信用 in 2015. Its aim was to find alternative ways of assigning financial credit scores, as most citizens in China still did not have credit cards or extensive credit records to draw from. Sesame Credit used big data, monitoring citizens’ shopping habits, and turning this into a three-digit score. One of Ant Financial’s executives suggested that people buying beer could be seen as less ‘trustworthy’ than those buying nappies or that playing online games could lower one’s score. Users’ scores were also affected by their friends: 5 percent of one’s Sesame Credit Score was the aggregate of scores in one’s network. Unfortunately for Ant, however, China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, ultimately did not approve of the scheme, in which Alibaba simultaneously acted as credit assessor, supplier of loans, payment service provider, and the marketplace. Sesame Credit rewarded people for shopping with Alibaba but was not an effective credit-scoring system. In 2017, the bank denied Sesame Credit an official credit licence.^[7] Sesame Credit still exists today but fulfils little meaningful function and remains fully voluntary to use.

Such initiatives remained at the fringes of the system. The real thrust of the system was the enforcement of regulatory compliance. Authorities across China set up blacklists for individuals and companies who committed severe violations of laws and regulations in the market economy. Such violations included fraud, illegally dumping pollutants in bodies of water, producing substandard medicine and more. Regulators could manually add violators to blacklists, which they planned to share with all government bodies and with the public online. At least ten million citizens currently find themselves on one of such blacklists. The consequences are severe: depending on the blacklist, some cannot travel by plane or high-speed rail, and others might see their government subsidies, professional qualifications or loans cancelled. Because the emphasis has been placed on penalising lawbreakers, it took central authorities twenty years (until 2019) before they seriously encouraged ‘credit repair’, the process of allowing people or entities to apply for removal from the blacklist, establishing a process of credit repair in the annual evaluation of cities that had hosted pilot social credit systems.^[8]

There was no grand masterplan. The vague nature of the Social Credit System grand experiment let local authorities essentially do as they wished.^[9] Few of them were concerned with whether these actions were proportional, at all related to ‘credit’, or commensurate with Xi Jinping’s ‘law-based governance’. This is commonplace in Chinese policy-making, where central authorities frequently create the contours of policy and let local officials work out the details, learning from their mistakes and successes. But the Social Credit System took it to another level by attempting to cover an extensive range of problems involving an even more extensive range of agencies – each bringing their own interests to the table. Moreover, digitisation initiatives require standardisation. Without uniform standards on questions of what data to gather and how to format or process it, it is impossible to weave fragmented initiatives into one coherent whole.

Social credit is dead

These problems led to severe backlash from China’s legal community, who criticised the overgeneralised concept of ‘credit’. They argued that ‘credit’ should remain a financial or compliance-related concept with very little relationship to social behaviour or minor transgressions like eating on the subway. They criticised the blacklists for unjustifiably restricting citizens’ rights.^[10] In 2019, China’s chief economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), ordered that local points systems could only be used for incentives, not for penalties.^[11] During the COVID-19 pandemic, criticism of the scheme increased, as many local governments began using it for such things as enforcing mask-wearing.^[12] Another problem was that companies were suddenly at risk of being blacklisted over noncompliance with contracts and loan repayments due to lockdowns. At the end of 2020, the central government launched a regulatory crackdown on the experiments, clarifying that blacklisting is only appropriate for severe violations of laws and regulations.^[13] Local governments that did not comply would see their pilots abolished. In the years that followed, most of the aforementioned experiments were cancelled or quietly abandoned.

Today, the Social Credit System finds itself stuck in purgatory. Rongcheng 荣成市, a small county and China’s ‘ground zero’ of mandatory citizen-scoring experiments in Shandong Province, made participation in its scheme fully voluntary and strictly reduced the types of behaviour covered by it.^[14] In 2024, when German journalists visited the town, they found that no one cared any more about collecting points.

Central authorities and ministries released fewer new policy documents on the Social Credit System in 2023 than in any year since 2014 – the year large-scale experimentation started. After decades of work, authorities still have not perfected basic data infrastructures. Information collected under one scheme is still not appropriately shared with other government organs and platforms.^[15]

In late 2022, the NDRC released a draft Social Credit Law for public comments. China’s government typically passes laws relatively quickly after the public comment period ends, but not in this case. The draft raised more questions about the core aims and approaches of the system than it answered.^[16] It did not clarify any concepts or concrete goals, only restating vague ambitions to establish the system in key sectors such as food and medicine production. It seemed as if the NDRC simply canvassed all government bodies for their thoughts and copied and pasted them into one document. It failed to do the things a law is supposed to do, and the Social Credit Law disappeared from public view for two full years.

Long live social credit?

In part as the result of the regulatory crackdown, in part because of continuing uncertainty about the system’s core aims, China’s Social Credit System as we know it might be dying. Still, some more focused elements of the system continue to be implemented and developed. The so-called ‘judgment defaulter’ blacklist 失信被执行人名单 is one example. This blacklist, which targets people who have an outstanding court order against them yet refuse to obey its measures, currently includes approximately nine million citizens. As it is managed by a single institution with a clear remit – the Supreme People’s Court – it does not face the hurdles of coordination and troublesome legal definitions plaguing other elements of the system.

Similarly, in the financial domain, the People’s Bank of China established its Credit Reference Centre many years ago and continues to build on it. This centre is dedicated to collecting financial information on citizens and companies (i.e. records of lending and spending) and provides it to lenders to assess potential financial risk. The central bank is also invested in a joint venture called Baihang 百行征信, co-founded with China’s tech giants, through which it attempts to coerce tech companies and commercial banks to pool data for more effective credit reporting. Although these initiatives are sometimes labelled part of social credit, they remain principally financial – not unlike credit institutions in other developed economies.

Finally, efforts in the regulatory domain are shifting towards an initiative called credit risk management 信用风险监管. The most important new initiative under this banner is the aggregation of regulatory data to create a risk index for companies. This index covers two elements: the likelihood that a company might violate laws and regulations, and the likelihood that this violation would cause severe harm to the market economy. For instance, a classical music company does not pose a particularly high risk to the market, even if it ignores all regulations, whereas small violations in a plant producing medicine could have disastrous consequences. Outcomes will be used to determine the number of random inspections to which a company is subject but will not be tied to formal punishments. One official at China’s Ministry of Transport recently recommended that this is where the weight of Social Credit System development should be.^[17]

These initiatives are not without their problems. In some experiments with the credit risk index, authorities have sought to use social media discussions of a company as an indicator of its credit risk. Social media comments can easily be manipulated by competitors and other actors for various reasons. Other experiments have used the age of the company’s legal representative as a proxy for risk, with relative youth linked to higher risk. In other words, age discrimination is a feature, not a bug, in some local experiments. The Supreme People’s Court’s blacklist for judgment defaulters also features severe penalties with little regard for proportionality: some companies were blacklisted for defaulting on a fine of just RMB 500, and their executives were banned from travelling by plane or leaving the country.

Conclusion

Some parts of the Chinese government see the Social Credit System as the solution to many problems. The courts have lauded how the Social Credit System has helped them recover billions from judgment defaulters. The NDRC, perhaps as an act of self-promotion, claimed that the system has improved the business environment by reducing ‘bad credit events’. After two years of silence, in June 2024, the NDRC released a new action plan.^[18] One of its goals is finally to move ahead with the long-delayed Law on the Establishment of the Social Credit System. Another target in the plan is to continue working on points incentives for citizens.

They have not yet resolved what ‘social credit’ actually means. Without consensus on this fundamental question, laws will have to wait. And without legal clarity, it is difficult to picture local authorities being eager to invest scarce resources in an ambiguous and controversial initiative. The plans might be little more than the dying breaths of the Social Credit System, at least as we know it.

Notes

^[1] Vincent Brussee, ‘China’s social credit score – untangling myth from reality’, MERICS, 11 February 2022, online at: https://www.merics.org/en/opinion/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality

^[2] General Office of the State Council, ‘Wen Jiabao chaired a meeting of the State Council Standing Committee to develop and deploy the planning of the Social Credit System’ [温家宝主持召开国务院常务会议部署制订社会信用体系建设规划], 19 October 2011, online at: https://www.miit.gov.cn/xwdt/szyw/art/2020/art_b3248b53edb34d4781e5e7c492cce1d3.html.

^[3] Wen-Hsuan Tsai, Hsin-Hsien Wang and Ruihua Lin, ‘Hobbling Big Brother: Top-level design and local discretion in China’s Social Credit System’, China Journal, no. 86 (2021): 1–20.

^[4] China Law Translate, ‘Rongcheng municipal credit assessment standards’, 3 February 2019, online at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/rongcheng-municipal-personal-credit-appraisal-standards/. Note: these regulations have been abolished since.

^[5] Xinhua, ‘“Untrustworthy in one place, restricted everywhere” – Where is the boundary of credit punishment?’ [“一处失信，处处受限” – 信用惩戒的边界在哪里”], 12 September 2020, online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220910115006/http://www.xinhuanet.com/legal/2020-09/12/c_1126484391.htm

^[6] Xinhua, ‘Not wearing a mask in public places counts as untrustworthiness? The Social Credit System must prevent abuse’ [公共场所不戴口罩算失信？社会信用制度要防滥用], 22 March 2020, online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220807170829/http://m.cnhubei.com/content/2020-03/22/content_12883173.html

^[7] Rogier Creemers, ‘China’s Social Credit System: An evolving practice of control’, SSRN Open Access, 2018.

^[8] Vincent Brussee, Social Credit: The Warring States of China’s Emerging Data Empire, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, chapters 5–6.

^[9] Rachel Cheung, ‘The grand experiment’, Wire China, 17 December 2023, online at: https://www.thewirechina.com/2023/12/17/the-grand-experiment-social-credit-china/

^[10] Kui Shen, ‘The road to the rule of law in the construction of the Social Credit System’ [社会信用体系建设的法治之道], China Legal Science 2019, no. 05 (2019), online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220910115025/http://fzzfyjy.cupl.edu.cn/info/1035/11343.htm

^[11] ‘National Development and Reform Commission: Personal credit scores can be used to give rewards for integrity, but cannot be used for punishment’ [发改委：个人信用分可以结合守信激励 但不能用于惩戒], China News, 19 July 2019, online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220807183035/https://www.creditchina.gov.cn/gerenxinyong/gerenxinyongliebiao/201907/t20190719_162509.html

^[12] Xinhua, ‘Not wearing a mask in public places counts as untrustworthiness?’ [公共场所不戴口罩算失信？社会信用制度要防滥用].

^[13] General Office of the State Council, ‘Guiding opinions on further improving systems for restraining the untrustworthy and building mechanisms for building creditworthiness that have longterm effect’, trans. China Law Translate, 7 December 2020, online at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/%e5%85%b3%e4%ba%8e%e8%bf%9b%e4%b8%80%e6%ad%a5%e5%ae%8c%e5%96%84%e5%a4%b1%e4%bf%a1%e7%ba%a6%e6%9d%9f%e5%88%b6%e5%ba%a6%e6%9e%84%e5%bb%ba%e8%af%9a%e4%bf%a1%e5%bb%ba%e8%ae%be%e9%95%bf%e6%95%88%e6%9c%ba/

^[14] Rongcheng People’s Government, ‘Rongcheng municipal measures on the management of personal integrity scores’ [荣成市个人诚信积分管理办法], trans. China Law Translate, 13 June 2022, online at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/18133-2/

^[15] Kendra Schaefer, ‘China’s corporate Social Credit System: Context, competition, technology and geopolitics’, Trivium Social Credit, 12 August 2020, online at: https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-corporate-social-credit-system-context-competition-technology-and-geopolitics

^[16] Jeremy Daum, ‘“Franken-law”: Initial thoughts on the draft social credit law’, China Law Translate (blog), 15 November 2022, online at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/franken-law-initial-thoughts-on-the-draft-social-credit-law/

^[17] Yiyin Liang, ‘Research on the legislative ideas of transportation credit under social credit legal disputes’ [社会信用法律争议下的交通运输信用立法思路研究], Pearl River Water Transport珠江水运, no. 3 (2024): 21–4.

^[18] General Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, ‘2024–2025 Action Plan for the Establishment of the Social Credit System’, trans. Jeremy Daum, 4 June 2024, online at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/2024-2025social-credit-plan/

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Life in prison was difficult. Food was lousy. The temperature there was unbearably hot summer and chilly in winter. There were hundreds of rules regulating prison life. Sharing food and books or keeping an orange overnight could be punished by solitary confinement without books, snacks, radio and television. Inmates were deprived not just of freedom but also of dignity, constantly scolded by the officers and exposed naked in front of surveillance cameras.

I vowed to keep a sane mind and good spirits. I saw the courtroom and prison as a stage for explaining to the public the cause of our struggle. After all, the purpose of civil disobedience is to arouse public awareness of an unjust situation through self-sacrifice. I trust that a ‘community of suffering’ can become collective resistance to dictatorship.

The anti-extradition protests changed the course of Hong Kong history. But they were part of the long struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. I will compare it with the older democracy movement that started in the mid-1980s and the Umbrella Movement of 2014 in terms of leadership styles, strategies and the framing of local identities.

Leadership: from collective actions to connective actions

In the 1980s, the movement for direct election of the Legislative Council was organised under a centralised leadership with the school principal and politician Szeto Wah, himself a member of the Legislative Council from 1985 to 2004, at the core. The first rally for democracy featured a ‘chairperson panel’ 主席台 on the stage with representatives from different civil society groups – including the Professional Teachers’ Union, Christian Industrial Committee and others – was not much different in style from the formal meetings held by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

As a student, I was stunned by this scene. Mr Szeto, as he later wrote in his autobiography, was once a member of Hok Yau Club (revealed in his book as a subsidiary group under the CPC) but was not admitted to the party.[1] He later established the most powerful teachers’ union in the territory, Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union. He adopted communist organisational tactics to fight for democracy by building strong central leadership, establishing branches and cells in different districts and schools, and recruiting members through services and material benefits.

Younger generations of social activists attacked this leadership style as the movement evolved following the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. They criticised the rigid organisational hierarchy as discouraging individual initiative and being incapable of reaching people who were not members of civil society organisations.

From 2003 to 2019, the Civil Human Rights Front had organised marches for freedom and democracy on 1 July, the day of the handover from British to Chinese sovereignty. The massive turnout of 500,000 people that year, in response to proposed anti-subversion legislation, demonstrated the effectiveness of mixing organisational and network mobilisations.[2] According to a survey, only 34.3 percent of participants were drawn in by appeals from groups they belonged to. Most of them joined the march with family members (26.6 percent) or friends (45.2 percent) after hearing about it on radio or receiving emails from colleagues or friends. Only 4.7 percent marched with other members of the same civil society groups.[3]

During the mobilisational period of the Occupy Central Movement in 2013, the leaders of the ‘Occupy Trio’ – Professor Benny Tai, the Rev. Chu Yiu-ming and myself – attempted to incorporate some bottom-up initiatives such as ‘Deliberation Day’ (a series of forums discussing democracy and related issues) and a ‘civic referendum’ (an unofficial referendum organised by the Occupy Trio to let people choose a constitutional reform package to be submitted to the government). But when the occupation erupted to support the student strike and became the Umbrella Movement, student leaders took over the leadership with the Occupy Trio and opposition party leaders providing support. Internal splits between the Occupy Trio and student leaders regarding the duration of occupation and negotiation tactics became so serious that they ended in deadlocks. The protesters who occupied the site for seventy-nine days were left confused by the lack of coherent leadership.

In the 2019 anti-extradition protests, participants demonstrated a much higher degree of flexibility in terms of leadership and strategies, as reflected in their motto: ‘Be water’. Rejecting the notion of centralised leadership, they formulated their goals and strategies through an internet forum. The decisions were made and disseminated through Facebook, Telegram channels and other apps.

Instead of occupying a specific place for a long time, people organised human chains, singing the newly written protest anthem ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ in places like shopping malls, and staging unadvertised protests during lunch breaks in different business districts. These diffused mobilisations turned out to be extremely effective and hard to suppress, given that no prominent leaders could be identified.

Strategies: from legal, peaceful protest to mixed strategies

Before the Umbrella Movement, the pro-democracy movement organised protests only within legal boundaries, seeking permission for rallies and marches from police.

The Umbrella Movement was a watershed in adopting the idea of civil disobedience, involving violations of law while upholding the principle of non-violence. Although some of participants advocated more confrontational tactics during the seventy-nine-day occupation, this ‘militant faction’ 勇武派 was marginalised by the dominant faction of peaceful demonstrators known as the ‘peaceful, rational and non-violent’ faction 和理非.

The ‘militant faction’ came to the fore during the ‘Fishball Revolution’ 魚蛋革命 of 2016 when Hong Kong Indigenous, a group promoting Hong Kong independence, confronted the police when they went to support some illegal hawkers on Lunar New Year’s eve. While there was widespread sympathy for the hawkers, and condemnation of police violence, there were mixed reactions to the violence on the part of the protesters.

The Anti-Extradition Movement, however, demonstrated an unprecedented tolerance within the movement towards different protest strategies, including violence. Besides massive rallies and other peaceful protests in schools and shopping malls, young protesters also set up roadblocks to block police deployment. When police used tear gas, pepper spray and even bullets to disperse protesters, they returned fire with Molotov cocktails. They took justice into their own hands by beating up antagonists when the police themselves were not respecting the law.

Although the majority of protesters supported peaceful struggle, surveys found people were sympathetic to violent demonstration.[4] Around 40 percent of the interviewees in a survey done from June to October in 2019 by the Chinese University of Hong Kong believed that the extent of violence on the part of protesters was excessive, but 56 percent indicated their understanding of why people had to resort to violence. Some 72 percent believed that police had used excessive force, and half of the interviewees maintained that the government was responsible for the escalation of violence.

More and more people believed that the protesters’ physical violence was a response to the structural violence of an authoritarian regime.

Identity framing: from Hong Kong Chinese to Hongkongers

As Hong Kong was a British colony populated mainly by ethnic Chinese for more than a hundred years to 1997 and is currently a Special Administrative Region under Chinese sovereignty, its people have long possessed dual identities. For a long time, Hong Kong people saw themselves first as Hongkongers but did not see that as being in conflict with the Chinese identity. However, after the 2014 Umbrella Movement and especially during the Anti-Extradition Movement, the younger generation in particular showed a strong sense of local identity. They increasingly saw themselves purely as Hongkongers, refusing to identify as Chinese.

Leaders of the pro-democracy movement in the mid-1980s held a banner with the words ‘I love China, I love Hong Kong and I love democracy’. The sense of patriotism demonstrated by this generation of democratic leaders could be seen as defiance to colonial rule. ‘Democratic reunion with China’ 民主回歸 was the dominant discourse within the pro-democracy movement. Even the organisation holding the annual candlelight vigil commemorating the Tiananmen Square crackdown bears the word ‘patriotic’ in its name.

The Umbrella Movement was also careful not to denounce Chinese sovereignty. The Occupy Trio and student leaders simply urged Beijing to honour its promise of giving Hong Kong universal suffrage as stipulated in the Basic Law. The failure of the movement to achieve democracy after such a massive showdown created a moral vacuum in the community. In an extremely depressing atmosphere, the strategies and goals of the movement were debated. We saw the rise of localism in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement. More young people argued that for Hong Kong to become a sovereign state was the only hope for democracy, which was not possible under the present arrangement within China of ‘one country, two systems’.

While people were still debating the ideas advocated by the localists, the government attempted to impose the Extradition Law on Hong Kong, creating tremendous fear among people. The law, once passed, would enable criminal suspects to be sent from Hong Kong to China for trial, which has no rule of law in the eyes of most Hong Kong people. Overstepping these legal boundaries would render the ‘one country, two systems’ formulation meaningless. The growing Beijing-directed repression of protests by Hong Kong police further eroded people’s already faint identification with China. People therefore felt more comfortable chanting the slogan ‘Hong Kong is not China’, which is not necessarily equivalent to ‘Hong Kong independence’.

According to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinions Research Institute during the high tide of the protest in late 2019, 67 percent of Hong Kong people still did not support Hong Kong independence.[5] But another survey conducted by Gary Tang found that more than 60 percent of protesters on the front line of the extradition movement believed that ‘Hong Kong independence was the only way out’.[6] I believe that truly reflects the sentiment of the younger generation.

Strengths and weaknesses of networked movements

The Anti-Extradition Movement, as a classical case of a ‘networked social movement’, achieved remarkable results despite the huge costs paid. A ‘networked social movement’ is a movement mobilised through new information and communications technologies. According to Manuel Castells, in networked social movements, the internet not only decentralises our communication routines but also liberates individuals to shape a new autonomy as people no longer need to rely on traditional political parties, civil society organisations or media to advocate their ideas and mobilise others for support. Social media such as Facebook and Instagram and self-media such as YouTube provide convenient channels with which to shape people’s mindsets. Since communication is power, acquiring this power by ordinary people will shake the political scene and lead to social change. As Castells argued: ‘Power is more than communication, and communication is more than power. But power lies on the control of communication, as counterpower depends on breaking through such control.’[7]

After reviewing a series of networked social movements such as Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring/Jasmine Revolution and even our Umbrella Movement, Castells found that this kind of movement was usually powerful in creating social and cultural change but not systematic political change.[8]

Yet the Anti-Extradition Movement succeeded in many fronts. It forced the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government to withdraw the bill, persuaded the United States Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and helped pro-democracy candidates to win a landslide victory in the District Council election in late 2019. Unlike the Umbrella Movement, which experienced internal conflicts regarding goals and strategies, the networked protesters were able to settle on their Five Demands: withdrawal of extradition bill; retraction of the word ‘riot’ to describe rallies; release of all arrested demonstrators; an independent inquiry into perceived police brutality; the right for Hong Kong people to choose their own leaders democratically and other specific goals through online deliberation.

Backlash from China and the future of Hong Kong’s democratic movement

Perhaps the success of the Anti-Extradition Movement in mobilising such a huge proportion of the population provoked Beijing’s ruthless crackdown. Some 10,000 protesters were arrested and prosecuted, accused of participating in riots. Blatantly violating the Basic Law, which specifies that Hong Kong should make its own national security laws, Beijing imposed China’s National Security Law directly on Hong Kong on 1 July 2020. Many pro-democracy leaders for example Benny Tai was prosecuted for conspiracy to commit subversion by organising the primary and vowing to veto the government budget if the prodemocracy law makers secured a majority in the Legislative Council. Tonyee Chow was prosecuted for refusing to provide information on the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. She was also charged for inciting subversion as the alliance was responsible for organising the annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 4 June crackdown. Many political groups were forced to close. Their leaders were either arrested or escaped into exile.

Independent mass media such as the Apple Daily 蘋果日報 and Stand News 立場新聞 were banned, and their owners and chief editors were arrested and charged with collusion with foreign forces or incitement. The authorities revised the school curriculum to eliminate a compulsory course Liberal Studies and make National Security Education mandatory at all levels of schooling, including university.

Elected pro-democracy district councillors were disqualified, and the rules of election were amended so that only pro-China candidates would be allowed to be nominated for the election.

Human rights–related civil society groups, including some prominent trade unions and university student unions, were forced to dissolve. Some international NGOs such as Amnesty International decided to leave because they found Hong Kong was no longer safe for their staff to carry out their mission.

Everyday resistance: from a community of resistance to a community of suffering

Open opposition has become impossible in Hong Kong unless you are willing to face the repercussions, which could mean long imprisonment. This does not mean that people’s level of rage and their urge for freedom and democracy have died down. But they can express their grievances only through subtle resistance in everyday life. ‘Yellow Economic Circles’ emerged to provide people with an arena to express their political stands through daily consumption, by patronising restaurants or shops that supported the movement, including by hanging pro-democracy posters on the wall or protest slogans printed on the receipts during the protests.

A group of dedicated Hong Kong citizens spent many days a week in court giving support to defendants charged for political reasons. When the defendants were found guilty and sentenced to jail, these citizens would chase the prison van taking them to prison to bid them farewell. Early in the morning, they waited in the queue outside the prison to visit the political prisoners. Many also wrote letters to them. We call these people ‘professional’ court auditors, van chasers, prison visitors and letter-writers owing to their exceptional devotion.

By sharing the pains of these political prisoners, people are morally and socially connected in a community of suffering. Hong Kong has thus turned from a community of resistance to a community of suffering.

The authorities are aware of the power of this moral force. They forced NGOs providing support to political prisoners such as letter-writing to dissolve. Two ‘professional’ court auditors were charged for chanting slogans in a courtroom and for making ‘inciting’ statements with ‘seditious intention’ online.[9] People were worried but still attended courtroom hearings. They were encouraged by exemplary figures like Jimmy Lai and Tonyee Chow, who stood firm to defend their rights and challenge the legitimacy of the court. However, these ‘professional’ court auditors now refrain from making noise during trials and avoid being followed when leaving the courthouse.

Faced with diminishing freedoms, people of Hong Kong still uphold their free minds. They shunned the 2023 district council election, with voter turnout sharply dropping to 27.5 percent compared to 71 percent in 2019, despite relentless efforts by the government to boost the numbers.[10] Courageous individuals still quietly brought flowers to commemorate political victims in some particular dates. This form of covert resistance will continue to inspire people to maintain rage and hope until darkness falls to dawn.

Notes

[1] Szeto Wah, The Great River Flows East: Memoirs of Szeto Wah 大江東去: 司徒華回憶錄. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2011.

[2] Chan Kin-man, ‘Civil society and the democracy movement in Hong Kong: Mass mobilization with limited organizational capacity’, Korea Observer 36, no. 1 (2005).

[3] Joseph Man Chan and Robert Ting-yiu Chung, ‘Who could mobilize 500,000 people on the streets? The paradigmatic shift of public opinions politics’ 誰能發動五十萬人上街? 民意政治範式的改變, in Interpreting July 1七一解讀, ed. Joseph Man Chan, Hong Kong: Mingpao Press, 2004.

[4] Ma Ngok, ‘The community of resistance: The 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement in Hong Kong’ 反抗的共同體: 2019年香港反送中運動, New Taipei: Left Bank Publishing, 2020, pp. 129–30.

[5] Ibid., pp. 313–14.

[6] Gary Tang’s study quoted in ibid.

[7] Manuel Castells, Communication Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 3.

[8] Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015.

[9] Kevin Yam, ‘“Decolonising” Hong Kong by embracing colonialism’, China Story, 17 June 2024, https://www.thechinastory.org/decolonising-hong-kong-by-embracing-colonialism/

[10] Kenji Kawase, ‘Hong Kongers shun patriots-only polls as turnout plummets to 27.5%’, 11 December 2023, Nikkei Asia, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-security-law/Hong-Kongers-shun-patriots-only-polls-as-turnout-plummets-to-27.5

The post Hong Kong’s Long Struggle for Democracy appeared first on The China Story.

The state’s active promotion of Chinese culture, coupled with the growing prevalence of digital platforms as effective channels for disseminating patriotic sentiments, has boosted the popularity of cultural heritage on social media. These initiatives have encouraged Chinese youth to take an active role in studying, disseminating, and consuming cultural heritage in the digital era.

Echoing this digital nationalism is China’s embrace of the global trend towards repatriation of cultural relics. Towards the end of August 2023, a three-part mini-series entitled ‘Escape from the British Museum’ 逃出大英博物馆 captured the attention of Chinese audiences on Douyin, Chinese TikTok. Created by two young content creators known as Pancake Fruit Boy 煎饼果仔 and Summer Sister 夏天妹妹, the series tells a story in which a Chinese jade teapot magically transforms into a girl and escapes from the British Museum.[2] Eager to return to China and reunite with her friends—other cultural relics held in Chinese museums—the teapot girl encounters a young Chinese journalist on the streets of London, who helps her return home. After reading a stack of tearful letters from other relics held in the British Museum to their long-lost Chinese counterparts, the jade teapot decides to return to the British Museum. The series concludes with the message: ‘We Chinese don’t go around stealing chickens and dogs. But one day, we will return home with honour and dignity. May our nation and our homes be forever safe and peaceful.’

According to The Guardian, ‘Escape from the British Museum’ garnered 370 million views by September 21, 2023, 16 days after the release of its final episode.[3] Through deliberate linguistic techniques, including quotations from ancient Chinese poetry and romantic representations of traditional Chinese culture such as Hanfu, the series deeply resonated with young people’s proactive, if selective, engagement with Chinese history and cultural heritage. At the same time conveying a soft yet politically potent message about the significance of cultural heritage to national identity. Despite criticisms of its plot, characters, and filming quality, the series sparked discussions across China’s society about the repatriation of cultural relics.

These elements Chinese official media have hailed the series for showcasing the younger generation’s concern for China’s cultural heritage. China News for instance, lauded the series as ‘a creative and profound work, imbued with a strong sense of patriotism’ and concluded with a hopeful call that ‘may more lost cultural relics find their way back home’.[4]

‘They will return home with honour and dignity’

Over the past decades, the Chinese government has endeavoured to trace Chinese cultural relics that were stolen and smuggled out of China during the officially termed ‘century of humiliation’ (1839-1945). China has successfully repatriated lost cultural artefacts, such as the bronze animal heads looted by British and French troops from the Yuanmingyuan (The Old Summer Palace) during the Second Opium War in 1860, through diplomatic negotiations, international law enforcement, negotiations, donations, and commercial buybacks. However, distinguishing between stolen cultural relics and items that were legally acquired and exported is difficult and many of repatriation efforts encounter legal obstacles. Despite international regulations advocating for the return of illicit cultural properties, such as the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, the prospect of repatriation for Chinese relics in foreign countries faces significant challenges. According to UNESCO reports, an estimated 1.6 million cultural antiquities from China are scattered across 200 museums in 47 countries,[5] with approximately 23,000 objects held in the British Museum.[6]

In contrast to the more usual global rhetoric on the repatriation of cultural heritage, including human remains, which can involve truth-telling and reconciliation and reckoning with colonial histories, the extensive discussion sparked by ‘Escape from the British Museum’ predominantly revolves around nationalist sentiments. The story of China’s century of humiliation is reflected in the displacement of these cultural relics. Now that China has risen again under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), there is a strong belief that these objects should be returned in a dignified manner. Thus, echoing with the state-promoted ‘Cultural Awareness and Self-Confidence’ campaigns, the patriotic narrative of the series encourages a strong sense of responsibility for the China’s future and traditional culture.

Bottom-up patriotism

Not so long ago, efforts to instil patriotism were predominantly led by government propaganda, including national cultural policies, messages disseminated via official media channels, and patriotic education within school curriculums. This top-down patriotic education has been in place since 1990s, following ‘The outline for the implementation of the education of the patriotism’ 爱国主义教育实施纲要 issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1994.[7]

With ‘Escape from the British Museum’ and the digital embrace of other traditional cultural elements, the Chinese citizenry, especially the youth, is transitioning from passive acceptance to proactive engagement with China’s heritage. This is particularly the case among the online younger generation, who are more susceptible to patriotism drawing from the rapid expansion of digital platforms and nationwide heritage education.

The proliferation of digital platforms has catalysed the digitalisation of the collections and published materials of museums and other heritage institutions in alignment with national cultural and economic policies. These official and public digital platforms offer the public fresh opportunities to delve into the cultural and historical legacies of China, including via online events, without needing to travel.

Bottom-up initiatives further facilitate the uptake of nation-building narratives. This robust digital nationalism underscores a deepening interconnection between cultural heritage and a collective memory of the glorious pasts, reinforcing a sense of national pride and spirit among Chinese youth. Appealing for the return of traditional relics also effectively reinforces the significance of cultural heritage and encourages romantic consumption of the past in line with the state’s promotion of national heritage.

As a result, ‘Escape from the British Museum’ emerges as a potent tool for fostering bottom-up patriotism among Chinese youth. While not directly orchestrated by the state, the short video aligned with the state agenda through their emphasis on the illustrious nature of history and cultural relics. Moreover, narratives created by individuals through digital media could potentially encourage Chinese youth to identify more closely in their everyday lives with the central themes of Chinese identity and its connection with the country’s past that is central to the government’s own cultural policies.

Notes

[1] Alimama, ‘Alimama trend report Vol 03’ 阿里妈妈经营指南Vol 03, Alimama.com, 22 January 2024, online at: https://www.alimama.com/index.htm#!/marketing-insight/article-detail?id=65aa0fb3058bcb0fc6297f10&pkey=insight&skey=ai

[2] Pancake Fruit Boy (@煎饼果仔), ‘Episode 1: Escape from the British Museum, Episode 1’ 第1集:《逃出大英博物馆》第一集, Douyin, 30 August 2023, online at: https://www.douyin.com/search/逃离大英博物馆?modal_id=7272961291529030912&type=general

[3] Amy Hawkins, ‘Viral series about Chinese teapot escaping from British Museum to become film’, The Guardian, 21 September 2023, online at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/20/viral-douyin-series-chinese-teapot-escaping-british-museum-film

[4] Shiyao Wang, ‘The series ‘Escape from the British Museum’ has concluded, but the journey of the cultural relics returning home has just begun’《逃出大英博物馆》剧终，但文物“瑰葭路”刚开始, China News, 6 September 2023, online at: https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cul/2023/09-06/10073007.shtml

[5] UNESCO, ‘The Fight against the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Objects: the 1970 Convention: Past and Future, information kit’, UNESDOC digital library, 2013, online at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227215_eng

[6] The British Museum, ‘Collection: China’, Britishmuseum.org, online at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/china

[7] The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, ‘Gazette of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China’, Gov.cn, 20 September 1994, online at: https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/shuju/1994/gwyb199420.pdf

The post Escape from the British Museum: Cultural Heritage and China’s Rising Digital Nationalism appeared first on The China Story.

AI-augmented games from China have gained commercial success worldwide. Tencent and NetEase, China’s two largest gaming companies, have achieved significant global reach with their gaming portfolios. Popular games such as Tencent’s Honor of Kings and NetEase’s Justice use AI technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing to create dynamic, adaptable non-player characters that interact with players in sophisticated ways.[2] Tencent continues to invest in its global presence, recently announcing a US$15 million investment to develop a comprehensive global esports ecosystem.[3] NetEase also has made strides in the international market with titles like Harry Potter: Magic Awakened, a mobile game co-developed with Warner Bros. This demonstrates NetEase’s strategy of leveraging high-profile IPs and partnerships to expand its global reach.[4]

The recent global hit Black Myth: Wukong, developed by Game Science, garnered over US $400 million on gaming platform Steam within three days.[5] In the game, AI enhances character animations and refines facial expressions, including for the main character, the Monkey King Wukong. AI also creates an immersive sound environment with dynamic, real-time adjustments.[6]

The tightening of the approval process for domestic game releases in 2018 and government restrictions on the time children and teenagers can spend on video games from 2021 have spurred Chinese game developers to turn to international markets.[7] The COVID-19 pandemic fueled the gaming industry’s explosive growth.[8] A wave of new gamers worldwide presented developers everywhere with a much larger audience and diverse opportunities for profit. This is evident in the case of Honkai: Star Rail, developed by Chinese game developer miHoYo, where over 40 percent of its revenue in 2023 came from overseas.[9] Released in April 2023, the game integrated AI technologies to improve the facial expressions and actions of characters, and enhance the immersive experience.[10] It won Apple’s iPhone Game of the Year Award in 2023[11] Similarly, Genshin Impact, released in 2020 by miHoYo, reached an accumulated revenue of US$5 billion by February 2024.[12] To capitalise on this global market, miHoYo established Cognosphere in 2022, a publishing arm based in Singapore. According to its website, it has 5000 employees across offices in the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan, and Singapore.[13]

AI-powered, globally appealing content

Genshin Impact is about an adventure to seven different imaginary lands;[14] its locales feature the architectural styles of six world regions, including China (Liyue), Japan (Inazumau), Germany (Mondstadt), France (Fontaine), South Asia and Middle East (Sumeru), and South America (Natlan). For example, Inazuma features structures inspired by traditional Japanese pagodas and Shinto shrines. The Cathedral of Mondstadt is a prominent example of Gothic architecture with pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and large stained-glass windows. Sumeru’s architecture features Islamic design elements such as intricate tilework, large domes, and minarets. Honkai: Star Rail features an interstellar travel story woven through with themes of commercial space travel, Mars exploration, and the climate crisis. This narrative blend of futuristic space travel and dystopian concerns has global resonance.

MiHoYo also frequently releases promotional materials such as videos combining scenes in video games with Chinese cuisine,[15] festivals,[16] and arts.[17] gameplay trailers, and songs in multiple languages to create an inclusive experience for players in different countries.[18] Genshin Impact supports thirteen text languages (English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian) and four voice-over languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean).[19]

The founder of miHoYo, Cai Haoyu 蔡浩宇, graduated with a computer science degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University. He founded the company’s AI research lab in 2020, establishing the company as a leaders in enhancing game designs with AI technologies.[20] The company developed an AI tool[21] allowing players to upload their photographs into the system and transform them into the pink-haired main character ‘March 7’ in the game Honkai: Star Rail. This AI-driven customisation enhances player engagement.

MiHoYo aims also to harness the power of large language models to generate scripts for gaming characters.[22] The company’s AI lab has co-authored academic papers with Fudan University on the topic of AI agents[23]—autonomous characters whose behaviour and dialogue can be dynamically generated. This research promises to enhance efficiency and enrich player experiences with diverse and dynamic dialogue. The challenge lies in ensuring that AI-generated narratives are contextually appropriate and meaningful.

Strengthening ‘cultural confidence’

The Communist Party of China’s policy focus on strengthening ‘cultural confidence’ 文化自信 also guides its video game industry’s global expansion. An often-overlooked section of the entertainment industry, the global video game market is in fact more than twice the size of the combined cinema and music markets.[24] Video games showcase technological innovation, cultural dynamism, and aesthetic values and are potential powerful ways to promote cultural narratives and soft power.  MiHoYo consciously infuses state-approved cultural elements in its AI augmented game design. Lumi, an all-singing, all-dancing digital avatar, for example, references the poem ‘youyou luming’ 呦呦鹿鸣 from the classical Book of Songs 诗经. The phrase means the joyful bellowing of deer but in nationalistic discourse signifies a prosperous country and harmonious society.[25] The Genshin Impact theme song The Divine Damsel of Devastation 神女劈观 is sung in the style of Peking opera. The music video drew a remarkable and over 13,000 comments on YouTube.[26]

Media reports in China celebrated Lumi, Genshin Impact, and other miHoYo products for their dedicated efforts in promoting traditional culture as IP content to a global audience, quoting glowing fan reviews that mention the attraction of Chinese culture.[27] One report credited miHoYo as an exemplary case of ‘Chinese culture going global’ 文化出海.[28]

MiHoYo has also collaborated with the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan province,[29] creating characters, narratives, and treasures in Genshin Impact inspired by gold mask and bronze sculptures discovered in the Sanxingdui archeology site, which the CPC has been touting as part of its campaign to promote the notion of continuous Chinese civilisation.[30] MiHoYo also announced its plan to develop Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail into animated films.[31] The project is supported by the Shanghai Municipal Government as part of its efforts to boost the city’s movie industry.[32]

Concerns over censorship and data privacy

The international success of Chinese gaming companies such as Game Science, Tencent, NetEase, and miHoYo, as with the short-video platform TikTok, has engendered concerns over data privacy, national security in countries including the United States and Australia, and content policy.[33] For instance, ahead of the debut of Black Myth: Wukong, a company affiliated with the game’s developer sparked controversy by issuing a list of forbidden topics for livestreams, including politics, feminism, and China’s video game industry policies.[34] The game developers have been accused of fostering a misogynistic culture within the company.[35] The lack of inclusivity and the promotion of such an anti-feminist stance alienates a significant portion of the gaming community.

Adding to this criticism, Black Myth: Wukong which draws inspiration from the sixteenth century novel Journey to the West 西游记 has significantly altered the portrayal of female characters. The original story includes powerful female characters like the Princess Iron Fan and the Female King of Women’s Country, who possess significant agency.[36] These characters have special powers and play crucial roles, either aiding or obstructing the journey of the monk and the Monkey King. Yet, Black Myth: Wukong largely sidelines female characters, simplifying and demonising them in ways that strip away their original complexity.

Regarding to the issue of data privacy, The collection of massive amounts of user data also poses ethical issues not confined to Chinese companies: the US social media giant Meta was fined for $1.3 billion for violating EU data privacy laws in 2023.[37] The issue for Chinese firms is compounded by concerns about the lack of transparency and explicit rejection of global human rights standards by China’s governing Communist Party. Faced with such concerns, Cognosphere, miHoYo’s Singapore-based publisher, has made several updates to its privacy policy outlining user rights, including over personal data, the right to rectify inaccurate data and request the deletion of personal data.[38] The company stores user data on servers located in several regions, including the United States, Hong Kong, the European Union, Singapore, and Japan.

There is still room for bilateral or multilateral negotiations about the kind of personal information about players the Chinese companies are allowed to collect, the location and monitoring of data servers and clear consent regarding the collection and use of personal data such as voice and location.

In conclusion, the global expansion of China’s AI-augmented games has largely been propelled by restrictive government policies at home. Yet while China’s gaming companies have enjoyed wide popularity and economic success internationally through inclusive narratives, successful marketing and AI technology, governments need to address data privacy. Proactive measures on data privacy and less content restriction would help the games’ potential to enhance Chinese cultural soft power.

Notes:

[1] Niall Firth, ‘How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play’, MIT Technology Review, 20 June 2024, online at: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/20/1093428/generative-ai-reinventing-video-games-immersive-npcs/

[2] Kai Er, ‘How does AI improve video games?’ AI 怎么把游戏变好玩? Sina Finance, 17 May 2023, online at: https://finance.sina.cn/blockchain/2023-05-17/detail-imyuaqhw5560477.d.html

[3] Craig Chapple , ‘Honor of Kings set for June 20th global launch after $15 billion+ revenue in China’, PocketGamer, 16 May 2024, online at: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/honor-of-kings-set-for-june-20th-global-launch-after-15-billion-in-revenue-in-china/

[4] Carson Taylor, ‘NetEase’s Shifting Global Strategy,’ Naavik, 7 November 2023, online at: https://naavik.co/digest/netease-global-strategy/

[5] Kelly Le and Ann Cao, ‘Black Myth: Wukong is increasing China’s appetite for AAA games, but next one could take years’, South China Morning Post, 24 August 2024, online at: https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3275709/black-myth-wukong-increasing-chinas-appetite-aaa-games-next-one-could-take-years’

[6] Pengpai News 澎湃新闻, ‘Dang chuantong IP yudao xiandai AI, hei shenhua, wukong yong zhongguo wenhua jingyan waiguo wangyou’ 当传统IP遇到现代AI《黑神话：悟空》用中国文化惊艳外国网友, The Paper, 21 August 2024, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_28481173

[7] Ben Dooley and Paul Mozur, ‘Beating Japan at Its Own (Video) Game: A Smash Hit From China’, New York Times, 18 March 2022, online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/business/genshin-impact-china-japan.html

[8] Simon Read, ‘Gaming is booming and is expected to keep growing. This chart tells you all you need to know’, World Economic Forum, 28 July 2022, online at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/gaming-pandemic-lockdowns-pwc-growth/

[9] Feng Ye, “Tecent, NetEase and miHoYo compete in global market” 腾讯、网易和米哈游的海外战事, 29 March, 2024, online at: https://m.jiemian.com/article/10984774.html

[10] Rebekah Valentine, ‘How Honkai: Star Rail Is Using AI Technology to Supplement Development’, IGN, 2 MAY 2023, online at: https://www.ign.com/articles/how-honkai-star-rail-is-using-ai-technology-to-supplement-development

[11] Apple Newsroom, ‘Apple Unveils App Store Award Winners: The Best Apps and Games of 2023’, Apple Newsroom, 11 November 2023, online at: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/11/apple-unveils-app-store-award-winners-the-best-apps-and-games-of-2023

[12] Nick Rodriguez, ‘Genshin Impact Revenue Record’, Game Rant, 15 March 2023, online at: https://gamerant.com/genshin-impact-revenue-record

[13] miHoYo, online at: https://www.mihoyo.com/en/?page=about

[14] Emily Rose Marlow, ‘Genshin Impact: Every Statue Of The Seven And Where to Find Them’, The Gamer, online at: https://www.thegamer.com/genshin-impact-every-statue-seven-map-location

[15] Genshin Impact, ‘Gourmet Tour: “Liyue’s Cuisine Collection” Issue No. 1 | Genshin Impact Pause (k) 0:07 / 3:50 Gourmet Tour: “Liyue’s Cuisine Collection” Issue No. 2’ , online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5Dd78jiSi8&pp=ygUfZ2Vuc2hpbiBpbXBhY3QgY2hpbmVzZSBjdWlzaW5lIA%3D%3D

[16] Genshin Impact, ‘Lantern Rite Promotional Video: Dream Upon a Lantern ‘ online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kY4raFWXtM&pp=ygUfZ2Vuc2hpbiBpbXBhY3QgY2hpbmVzZSBmZXN0aXZhbA%3D%3D

[17] Genshin Impact, ‘Genshin Impact X Sanxingdui Museum Collaboration Event Teaser’ online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_o9kN3LF5s&t=12s&pp=ygUZZ2Vuc2hpbiBpbXBhY3Qgc2FueGluZ2R1aQ%3D%3D

[18] Andrea Knezovic, ‘Genshin Impact Advertising Strategy Explained’, Udonis, 25 March 2024, online at: https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/genshin-impact-advertising

[19] Genshin Impact, “How to Change Languages in Genshin Impact”, October 4, 2020, online at: https://genshin.hoyoverse.com/en/news/detail/103728

[20] Zhu Taowei, ‘MiHoyo building Metaverse: AI Lab, Digital Avatar, and Neural Link’ 揭秘米哈游Metaverse布局：组建AI“逆熵”团队，自研Avatar，探索脑机接口, Core E-sport, 7 June 2021, online at: http://www.coreesports.net/15932.html

[21] The Paper News, ‘AI becomes a must for MiHoYo’成为了米哈游们的必选项, The Paper, 10 May 2023, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_23009338

[22] The Paper News, ‘AI becomes a must for MiHoYo’成为了米哈游们的必选项, The Paper, 10 May 2023, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_23009338

[23] Lumina, ‘AI Agent Launched! Fudan NLP Team Releases 86-Page Paper, Intelligent Society Is Close at Hand’ AI Agent启动！复旦NLP团队发86页长文综述，智能体社会近在眼前, Xinzhiyuan 新智元, online at: https://cloud.tencent.com/developer/article/2351355’

[25] Ren Jiang, ‘Between humans and deer: from the cry of the deer to longevity and prosperity人鹿之间：从呦呦鹿鸣到寿禄呈祥, The Paper, 26 May 2022, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_18266888

[26] Lumi Dances with the Moon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqeJM33NKlU

[27] Zhengguan Xinwen, ‘miHoYo Evokes Cultural Heritate to Promote Chinese Traditional Culture米哈游用非遗的形式展现中国传统文化，推动文化出口’, Sohu, 9 June 2023, online at: https://www.sohu.com/a/683502302_120546417

[28] Pan Yu, ‘The Divine Damsel of Devastation Attracts Cover Versions and Sparked Interests in Chinese Opera among Foreign Players《神女劈观》掀起翻唱“内卷”，也让外国玩家迷上中国戏曲’, The Paper, 28 January 2022, Online at: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_16493488

[29] Genshin Impact, ‘Genshin Impact X Sanxingdui Museum Collaboration Event Teaser’, Genshin Impact Youtube Channel, online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_o9kN3LF5s

[30] Christy Choi, ‘Faces of Sanxingdui: Bronze Age relics shed light on mysterious ancient kingdom’, CNN, 16 November 2023, online at: https://www.cnn.com/style/china-sanxingdui-relics-exhibition-nationalism-palace-museum-hong-kong/index.html

[31] Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, ‘Popular Chinese game to have own animation’, Government Online Shanghai, 23 September 2022, online at: https://www.shanghai.gov.cn/nw48081/20220923/015765806ffd4aab97c3395f89ca23cd.html

[32]Kevin Chu, ‘Genshin Impact Movie Update’, Screen Rant, 19 April 2024, online at: https://screenrant.com/genshin-impact-movie-update-hoyoverse-production-ufotable/

[33]  Samantha Hoffman, Tilla Hoja, Yvonne Lau & Lilly Min-Chen Lee, ‘Truth and reality with Chinese characteristics’, May 2024, online at:

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/truth-and-reality-chinese-characteristics; see also Dave Aitel and Jordan Schneider, ‘If You Play Videogames, China May Be Spying on You’, Wall Street Journal, 28 October 2020, online at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-play-videogames-china-may-be-spying-on-you-11603926979

[34] Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu, ‘Hit Chinese Video Game Seeks to Curb ‘Negative Discourse’, The New York Times, 20 August 2024, online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/world/asia/chinese-videogame-wukong-censorship.html

[35] Rebekah Valentine and Khee Hoon Chan, “How Black Myth: Wukong Developer’s History of Sexism Is Complicating its Journey to the West,” IGN, 20 November 2023, online at: https://www.ign.com/articles/how-black-myth-wukong-developers-history-of-sexism-is-complicating-its-journey-to-the-west

[36] Yanyuan Xu 許燕園, ‘Lun Xiyouji zhong san nvxing renwu xingxiang zhi yiyi ji zhuti huying’論《西遊記》中三女性人物形象之意義及主題呼應, Dissertation, Lingnan University, 2023, online at: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225&context=chi_diss

[37] Adam Satariano, ‘Meta Fined $1.3 Billion for Violating E.U. Data Privacy Rules’, The New York Times, 22 May 2023, online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/business/meta-facebook-eu-privacy-fine.html

[38] Cognosphere PTE. LTD, ‘Privacy Policy’, 18 January 2023, online at: https://genshin.hoyoverse.com/en/company/privacy

The post Games Gone Global: How China’s AI-augmented Games Found International Success appeared first on The China Story.

Research since the 1990s reveals two distinct generations of left-behind children. The first generation consisted of children born in the 1980s and 1990s. During this period most rural migrants were male, and both migration distances and duration were relatively short. In addition, parents typically did not leave the village until their children were at school. The second generation are children born after 2000. Since then, more women, including mothers, have migrated out of the villages, and migration distances and durations have also been longer than with the parents of the first generation. As a result, more left-behind children are being raised by grandparents or other relatives. In addition, parents are separating from their children at an earlier age. For instance, the percentage of zero-to-two-year-olds who remain in a village without their parents has sharply increased from the first to second generation.^[2] Compared to the first generation of left-behind children, the second generation has access to higher levels of technology and communications such as the internet and cell phones. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, children and caregivers enjoy greater communication with migrant parents; on the other hand, unrestrained use of social media and online gaming can have a negative influence on the left-behind children.

The generational differences of left-behind children have many variations. We focus here on the age of children when parents migrate and duration of parental migration, the make-up of caregivers (single parents, grandparents, other relatives and schools) and the availability of social media and the internet for children, caregivers and migrant parents.

Leaving them younger, staying away longer

The parents of the second generation leave them when they are younger and for longer periods. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, both parents tend to be at home for the first year or two of a child’s life, and it was typically fathers who left the village for work.^[3] In addition, those who left tended to seek off-farm employment closer to home. This was due to the strict hukou (household registration) system that limited migration to cities, as well as the country’s greater reliance on agriculture. Yet, after 2000, central and local party governments began to enact limited hukou reform that allowed rural people greater employment opportunities in cities. As a result, both men and women started to migrate greater distances and for longer periods. They tended to leave younger children in the village while bringing older children with them to the cities for better educational opportunities.^[4]

Parental absence at an earlier age can have an adverse effect on early childhood development. Studies find that the absence of the mother in particular has a negative effect on the cognitive development and nutrition of rural children younger than two.^[5] Rural children have delayed development outcomes compared to their urban counterparts, but it is more pronounced when mothers separate from their children within their first two years. Many studies find that parental migration has a significantly negative impact on the children’s education, resulting in lower test scores, worse school enrolment and fewer years of schooling overall.^[6] Children’s middle-school academic performance improves when migrant parents return home.^[7] More second-generation children migrate with their parents to the cities for better educational opportunities and attend urban high schools.

Stay-behind caregivers

The first generation of left-behind children typically stayed with their mother and grandparents. The women who remained in the village looked after the children as well as grandparents, the house and the farmland. During this period, almost every village had an elementary school, and there was a middle school in a nearby town or county. As more rural women entered the urban workforce, more fathers stayed behind, caring for both children and grandparents. The roughly 20 million left-behind children in 2000 represented 13 percent of rural children between the ages of 0 to 17.^[8] By 2010, 47 percent of the left-behind children did not live with either parent.^[9] In 2020, it was 46 percent.^[10] However, those living only with their father rose from 17 percent in 2010 to 24 percent while those living only with their mother fell from 36 percent in 2010 to 30 percent ten years later. The largest spike was for children living alone or with other children: from 3 percent in 2010 to 13 percent in 2020.

More students of elementary-school age, some as young as 7, have had to live in school dorms since rural elementary schools have closed or consolidated, a trend that started in the early 2000s and escalated after 2010. The boarding school experience is correlated with poorer educational and health outcomes for these rural students.^[11] Compared to non-boarding rural students, boarders tend to have lower test scores, higher rates of anaemia and higher levels of learning anxiety and loneliness. When both parents are living in a distant city or even another province, the effect is even more exacerbated. Interviews with students in boarding schools reflect this problem. An 11-year-old who lives in a dorm, sleeps in a room with 15 classmates and shares a bed says, ‘It is hard to concentrate, and I have to ask the older classmates for help with my studies.’ Moreover, he cannot visit his parents every weekend like most of his classmates in the dorm.^[12]

Left-behind children and the digital revolution

The rapid development of telecommunication technology has transformed the experience of both left-behind children and their parents. For the first generation, and into the early 2000s, landlines and mobile phones helped children connect with their migrant parents, but many poor rural migrant families, especially in inland provinces, had to rely on occasional calls put through to a school office phone or neighbour’s mobile.^[13] Local governments, with support from non-profit organisations, sponsored ‘family-connection phone rooms’ 亲情电话屋 in rural schools or villages.^[14] In contrast, the second generation has had wider access to mobiles, including smart phones, and the internet. A survey by the Research Centre for Rural Affairs (RCRA) at Wuhan University revealed that 40 percent of left-behind children have their own mobile phones, while 49 percent use their caregiver’s phone.^[15] Migrant parents can contact their children regularly using text, voice and video calls or even closed-circuit television.^[16] While distant parenting is not ideal, the technology allows for a greater emotional connection. Recent interviews with children who have parents living away from home suggest that the frequency of calls can make a difference. One girl tells us that she talks to her parents by video phone every day and feels close to family. Yet another boy rarely talks with his parents over the phone, and he feels he has no connection with his parents.^[17]

Although frequent contact is positive, the use of the internet and smartphones presents new challenges for migrant parents and caregivers. Watching short videos and playing games are the main online entertainment activities for these children, accounting for 69 percent and 33 percent, respectively. According to the Research Centre for Rural Affairs (RCRA) report, more than half the students in a sixth-grade class in Jiangxi Province spend more than ten hours on their smartphones at home during weekends. A middle-school teacher in the same province notes that students spend weekends on their smartphones instead of studying, often leaving homework incomplete. Many teachers report that students are ‘staying up late for two days at home and sleeping for five days at school, with no intention to learn’. Rural left-behind children are more than twice as likely to develop internet addiction than their counterparts with parents at home.^[18] The RCRA also found that 67 percent of migrant parents worried that their children were addicted to their mobiles, with 21 percent of parents considering the situation to be ‘very serious’.^[19] As elsewhere, studies show that smartphone dependence can adversely affect left-behind children’s physical and mental health and negatively influence their academic performance.^[20]

Hukou reform and rise of urban left-behind children

Since the inception of the hukou system in 1958, rural people living in cities have faced institutional discrimination in areas including employment, access to public education, health care and housing. The hukou reform that began in the early 2000s has had a significant influence on migrant parents and their children, offering increasing access to public education. Starting in 2000, the State Council has given rural migrants increased opportunities to convert their household registration status from rural to urban and enjoy the associated social benefits. However, these policies have been unevenly adopted at the subprovincial and municipal levels. Although the central government has emphasised that local governments provide migrant children with access to public education, many cities have set up barriers that make access difficult, such as requiring various forms of registration or fees.^[21]

Another way municipal governments control migration and education is through home ownership. High school education in China is not compulsory, and to enrol, students must take an entrance exam. To qualify for the exam, there is an official registration process that may require an urban hukou as well as proof of their parents’ home ownership.^[22] Many migrant parents have therefore left younger children behind in rural areas until they can afford to purchase an urban apartment to meet such requirements. Even then, it is challenging for migrant students to compete for a limited number of places with urban peers who have enjoyed better primary and secondary education and then, if accepted into an urban high school, to keep up with their classmates.

The hukou reforms have contributed to a generational shift in the number of urban left-behind children, from 3 million in 2000 to more than 20 million in 2010 and 25 million in 2020, the last out of an estimated total of 67 million.^[23] Since 2000, we have observed a new generation of urban left-behind children who generally belong to one of two categories: children who were born in smaller cities (county seats) with one or both parents migrating to larger cities for work, or children born in the countryside who have moved to a smaller county seat but whose parents work in larger cities.

While urban children traditionally have access to better health care and education than children in rural areas, recent studies find that urban children who are living with caregivers instead of their parents or just living with one parent experience greater mental health problems and substance abuse than urban children living with both parents.^[24] The reasons include greater isolation and lack of parental supervision. In addition, studies suggest that the children of migrant workers in cities are more likely to be bullied as well as bully other children.^[25] For numerous reasons, compared to other urban children, those with migrant worker parents exhibit poorer physical and mental health, lower test scores and weaker school attachment, and they are more prone to smoking and drinking. They also tend to have more mental health problems and higher rates of substance use than their rural counterparts.

Overall, the disadvantages left-behind children face, combined with lower cognitive and educational outcomes, can have serious consequences, including the propensity to engage in risky behaviour and to commit crimes.^[26] A 2018 prison survey of 2,670 inmates conducted by the Center for Experimental Economics in Education (CEEE) at Shaanxi Normal University shows that 23 percent of the inmates surveyed were the children of migrant workers. The data also suggests that inmates who had been left behind as children were more likely to have committed crimes in their youth as well as more violent crimes as adults than inmates who grew up with both parents. In fact, statistics show a rise in violent crime among juveniles as well as several high-profile cases of heinous crimes in which the perpetrators and victims are under 16 years old.^[27] Of course, most children who were raised by grandparents or one parent have not committed serious crimes or are incarcerated, but now, as researchers, we are observing how this experience influences adults and even their own children.

Conclusion

The first generation of left-behind children are now adults, many with their own children. While previous research examined the emotional, cognitive and health differences between children living with both parents as opposed to single parents or other caregivers, recent research is exploring how the experience of being left behind influences the behaviour and opportunities of adults. This includes types of employment, unemployment and incarceration. Recent research suggests that adults whose parents were migrant workers are more likely to have less schooling and lower cognitive test scores as well as significantly poorer socioeconomic status.^[28]

Future research may focus on several areas. First is on how the experiences of urban dwellers compare with those in rural families, especially in the context of continued urbanisation. Second is how the experience of left-behind children influences their health and behaviour as adults and whether there are any gender differences. For instance, most of the prison studies that examine the left behind experience tend to use male inmate samples and interviews. One future area of study is to include female inmates and the left behind experience. Third, given that male left-behind children come from poorer rural areas, and enjoy less or poorer quality education and limited employment prospects, they are more likely to become involuntary bachelors (‘bare branches’ 光棍), exerting greater pressure on rural social welfare systems in the future. Finally, the perspectives of migrant parents, caregivers and the children themselves should be incorporated into future studies.^[29] For instance, a recent interview with rural children of elementary school age, whose parents have migrated out of their village for most of the year, illuminates some of the feelings around bullying from the child’s perspective.^[30] ‘When your parents are away, you can feel timid, lonely and afraid’, says a sixth-grade stay-behind girl. These children may be easy targets for bullies. Moreover, she says that ‘these children are afraid to tell their caregivers or parents that they are being bullied’. When bullies think they can get away with tormenting another child, it might continue until it is too late. When asked how to resolve the situation, she said, ‘Students and teachers need to be more proactive in letting children with migrant parents know it is OK to tell teachers and other relatives what is happening.’ Thus, even for national discussions on bullying and left-behind children, including the most vulnerable voices could contribute to a solution.

Notes

[1] National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China: Facts and figures’, April 2023, online at: https://www.unicef.cn/en/reports/population-status-children-china-2020-census

[2] Ibid.

[3] Biao Xiang, ‘How far are the left‐behind left behind? A preliminary study in rural China’, Population, Space and Place, vol. 13, no. 3 (2007): 179–91.

[4] National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China’.

[5] Ai Yue, Yu Bai, Yaojiang Shi, Renfu Luo, Scott Rozelle, Alexis Medina and Sean Sylvia, ‘Parental migration and early childhood development in rural China’, Demography, vol. 57, no. 2 (2020): 403–22.

[6] Ming-Hsuan Lee, ‘Migration and children’s welfare in China: The schooling and health of children left behind’, Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 44, no. 2 (2011): 165–82. Minhui Zhou, Rachel Murphy and Ran Tao, ‘Effects of parents’ migration on the education of children left behind in rural China’, Population and Development Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (2014): 273–92.

[7] Zhiqiang Liu, Li Yu and Xiang Zheng, ‘No longer left-behind: The impact of return migrant parents on children’s performance’, China Economic Review, vol. 49 (2018): 184–96.

[8] National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2010 census can tell us about children in China: Facts and figures’, October 2014, online at: https://www.unicef.cn/en/reports/census-data-about-children-china-2013

[9] Ibid.

[10] National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China’.

[11] Aiqin Wang, Alexis Medina, Renfu Luo, Yaojiang Shi and Ai Yue, ‘To board or not to board: Evidence from nutrition, health and education outcomes of students in rural China’, China and World Economy, vol. 24, no. 3 (2016): 52–66.

[12] Interview, October 2015, Shaanxi province.

[13] Janice Hua Xu, ‘Media discourse on cell phone technology and “left-behind children” in China’, Global Media Journal, vol. 9, no. 1 (2016): 87–102.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Research Centre for Rural Affairs (RCRA) Wuhan University, ‘Nongcun Liushou Ertong Shouji Chenmi Wenti Diaocha Yu Duice Jianyi’ [Rural left-behind children’s mobile phone addiction: Problem investigation and countermeasure suggestions], 10 February 2023, online at: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/zzHnpW0fRZ1gWCUw6tTMHw

[16] Jiamei Tang, Ke Wang and Yuming Luo, ‘The bright side of digitisation: Assessing the impact of mobile phone domestication on left-behind children in China’s rural migrant families’, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13 (2022): 1003379; and Na Liu, ‘CCTV cameras at home: Temporality experience of surveillance technology in family life’, New Media and Society (2024): 1–21.

[17] Interview, July 2024, Elementary School in Shaanxi province conducted through the CEEE.

[18] Jingjing Cai, Yun Wang, Feng Wang, Jingjing Lu, Lu Li and Xudong Zhou, ‘The association of parent–child communication with internet addiction in left-behind children in China: A cross-sectional study’, International Journal of Public Health, vol. 66 (2021): 630700.

[19] Research Centre for Rural Affairs (RCRA) Wuhan University, ‘Nongcun Liushou Ertong Shouji Chenmi Wenti Diaocha Yu Duice Jianyi’ [Rural left-behind children’s mobile phone addiction: Problem investigation and countermeasure suggestions].

[20] Ibid.; and Rui Zhen, Lu Li, Yi Ding, Wei Hong and Ru-De Liu, ‘How does mobile phone dependency impair academic engagement among Chinese left-behind children?’, Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 116 (2020): 105169.

[21] Jia Wu and Junsen Zhang, ‘Suiqian Zinv Ruxue Xianzhi, Ertong Liushou yu Chengshi Laodongli Gongji’ [Barriers to school education for migrant children, being left behind and urban labor supply], Jingji Yanjiu [Economic Research Journal], vol. 55, no. 11 (2020): 138–55.

[22] Tiantian Liu, ‘Real‐estate boom, commodification and crises of social reproductive institutions in rural China’, Development and Change, vol. 54, no. 3 (2023): 543–69; and Eli Friedman, The Urbanisation of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

[23] National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2010 census can tell us about children in China’. National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China and UNFPA China, ‘What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China’.

[24] Feng Wang, Leesa Lin, Jingjing Lu, Jingjing Cai, Jiayao Xu and Xudong Zhou, ‘Mental health and substance use in urban left-behind children in China: A growing problem’, Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 116 (2020): 105135; Nan Lu, Wenting Lu, Renxing Chen and Wanzhi Tang, ‘The causal effects of urban-to-urban migration on left-behind children’s well-being in China’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 20, no. 5 (2023): 4303.

[25] Yoichiro Otake, Xiaoqun Liu and Xuerong Luo, ‘Involvement in bullying among left-behind children in provincial Chinese cities: The role of perceived emotional support’, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, vol. 28, no. 8 (2019): 943–57; Huiping Zhang, Peilian Chi, Haili Long and Xiaoying Ren, ‘Bullying victimisation and depression among left-behind children in rural China: Roles of self-compassion and hope’, Child Abuse and Neglect, vol. 96 (2019):104072.

[26] Lisa Cameron, Xin Meng and Dandan Zhang, ‘Does being “left–behind” in childhood lead to criminality in adulthood? Evidence from data on rural–urban migrants and prison inmates in China’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, vol. 202 (2022): 675–93.

[27] Nanfang Metropolis Daily, ‘Shinian Shuju Kan Wei Chengnianren Fanzui: Shezui Shaonian He Tezheng? Xiaoyuan Qiling Duolema?’ [A decade of data on juvenile crime: What are the characteristics of offending youth? Has school bullying increased?], 27 March 2024, online at: https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1794641555396609242&wfr=spider&for=pc

[28] Xiaodong Zheng, Zuyi Fang, Yajun Wang and Xiangming Fang, ‘When left-behind children become adults and parents: The long-term human capital consequences of parental absence in China’, China Economic Review, vol. 74 (2022): 101821.

[29] For an excellent example see: Rachel Murphy, The Children of China’s Great Migration. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020; Rachel Murphy, ‘What does “left behind” mean to children living in migratory regions in rural China?’, Geoforum, vol. 129 (2022): 181–90.

[30] Interview, July 2024, Elementary School in Shaanxi province conducted through the CEEE.

The post China’s Second Generation of Left-behind Children appeared first on The China Story.

In January 2022, the discovery of the ‘woman in chains’, a mother of eight shackled and maltreated by her husband in a Feng county village there, generated fresh interest in Ma’s book.^[1] Shocked by the cruelty and indifference to her plight by local villagers and authorities, people turned to Ma’s book for causes of the region’s economic and moral impoverishment—even though the book’s historical scope ends in 1949, the year the People’s Republic of China was established. In 2023, a revised version of the book, now considered a classic in the field of regional socioeconomic history, was published in mainland China. The following is abridged highlights from his interview with the Shanghai Review of Books on 28 January 2024.^[2]

Editors’ introduction

Q1: Back in the Tang and Song dynasties [618–907; 960–1279], the Huaibei region used to be arable and prosperous; it was known as the ‘land of plenty’. But thereafter until the Republican period [1912–49], the region became a so-called inhospitable wasteland. How did this change occur, and why? What was the key turning point in this historical change?

This has to do with water control. Historically, regions were ranked according to their distance to the imperial capital. Every 500 li [roughly 250 kilometres] from the capital, the region’s ranking went down one level. At the centre was the Royal Domain 王畿 [the capital and its environs], then the core regions of the Sovereign Domain 甸服, the Noble Domain 侯服, the Peace-Securing Domain 绥服, the Restrained Domain 要服 and lastly the Wild Domain 荒服. In the past, dynasties focused on developing the Royal Domain and its surrounding core regions, in part because limitations in transportation and communication made it difficult effectively to manage regions further away.

Before the Northern Song dynasty [960–1127], imperial capitals were all located between the Yellow River and the Huai River. Therefore the central government had to ensure the prosperity and stability of the Huaibei area. During the Southern Song [1127–79], the centre of power shifted to Lin’an (contemporary Hangzhou) south of the Yangtze River. Then, in the Yuan dynasty [1271–1368], the capital was moved to Dadu [modern-day Beijing], north of the Yellow River. Huaibei was reduced from a core region to a marginal one. It became a battlefield with neither southern nor northern powers willing to invest in its development. In 1128, the year after Emperor Gaozong 宋高宗 moved his capital to Lin’an [Hangzhou], the imperial official Du Chong 杜充breached the dikes on the south bank of the Yellow River in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the enemy Jurchen army’s advance. Water from the Yellow River flooded southward. The broken dikes were never repaired.

In the Ming dynasty [1368–1644], during the Hongzhi period 弘治 [1488–1505], Liu Daxia 刘大夏, a water management official, blocked the main course of the Yellow River, forcing it to flow south into the Huai River, whose course was very narrow to begin with, and it flooded. Liu did this to protect the Grand Canal [a crucial water transport infrastructure in pre-modern China]. The Ming prioritised the north when it came to water management, including protection of the capital and its surrounding regions (today’s Hebei). The court offered flooded regions tax relief but did not concern itself greatly with the effect of the floods on the lives of the common people. In the early years of the Wanli period 万历 [1573–1619], the director-general of river conservancy Wan Gong 万恭 suggested breaching a levee at Tongwaxiang 铜瓦厢 in the lower reaches of the Yellow River to divert the waters into the Daqing River 大清河 instead. No action was taken, but in 1855, there was a breach at Tongwaxiang, and the Yellow River changed course exactly as Wan Gong had prescribed three centuries earlier.

Q2: We talked about the impact of water control in the Huaibei region earlier. Apart from water control, in your book The Sacrificed Land you also described in detail the effect of grain transport and salt production on the Huaibei region.

During the Ming and Qing dynasty, especially under the Kangxi Emperor [reign period: 1661–1722], grain transport, salt production and water control all centred on Huai’an in Huaibei. Water control was the most costly of all. Under an imperial autocracy, more spending naturally meant more corruption. Frequently, 90 percent of the funds for flood control were embezzled, leading to ineffective flood control. In the Qing dynasty, although eight provinces paid part of their taxation in grains, parts of Huaibei accounted for nearly 40 percent of the whole empire’s grain tribute. The common people had to bear the costs of both the taxes—including corvée labour and providing building materials for water control projects—and the corruption.

Q3: In The Sacrificed Land you used the ‘cult of power’ to explain various social–ecological transitions and transformations in the Huaibei region since 1680. You mentioned that this concept was greatly influenced by Marxist theory. Can you elaborate on it?

I think Marxist theory can explain many things about pre-modern China. It is very useful for us to understand Chinese society. The concept of the cult of power encapsulates Marx’s argument in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that ‘executive power subordinates society to itself’.^[3] In my view, pre-modern Chinese society had no religious traditions in the Western sense. Western religions emphasise the purification of the soul through self-reflection, whereas religious worship in Chinese society is pragmatic and self-serving: people pray to Confucius for good examination results, to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin for more children and to Lord Zhao the Marshal for more wealth. In essence, religious worship in China is the worship of power. People worship gods and deities because they themselves have no power.

Confucianism assigned scholars the highest social status. But the purpose of studying is to become an official, and only by becoming a high official can you rise above other scholars and obtain power. Even Daoism and Buddhism have hierarchies. In Daoism, the Jade Emperor sits at the top, followed by other deities below him, ranked in a strict order. As for Buddhism, there is a story in the novel Water Margin where Lu Zhishen 鲁智深 [a violent man who eventually attained Buddhist enlightenment] declares his intentions of becoming an abbot, and a monk at the temple tells him that he has to begin by carrying water and looking after the vegetable patch, and work his way up. To sum up, before 1949, the only sacred thing in China was power, which people devoutly worshipped.

Q4: In The Sacrificed Land, you were critical in your analysis of power worship that was prevalent in traditional Chinese society, but you also showed great sympathy for ordinary people. How did this attitude come about?

When I was young, I read novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and imagined myself as a big shot like [the poet, general and statesman] Cao Cao 曹操 or Liu Bei 刘备 [founder of the Shu Han kingdom]. But around my third year at university, my perspective changed. After tracing my family genealogy I realised that my ancestors could not even compare to the lowest-ranking figures recorded in the Twenty-Four Histories. In fact, their likes were not recorded in any histories. Since then, I no longer viewed history from the perspective of powerful and famous men. Instead, I imagine myself as one of the corvée labourers building the Great Wall or one of those unfortunates described in a Tang poem about war as ‘bones lying by the banks of Wuding River’, a farmer, or the owner of some small business, squeezed by corrupt officials day after day. Ordinary people form the majority in history. This is also what Marxist historiography emphasises: to study history from the bottom.

I also study history from a regional perspective. Scholars outside China have devised many influential theories about Chinese history, but they are usually inapplicable to the Huaibei region, where I grew up. For example, the theory of ‘involution’ looks at the issue of diminishing returns per unit of labour in agriculture caused by overpopulation. However, the same theory cannot be applied to the Huaibei region. The Huaibei region historically had a relatively small population with a lot of land, but they could not farm it profitably because of constant flooding. During imperial times, the central government deliberately flooded the region again and again. This resulted in constant social turmoil and banditry. Peasants simply abandoned their land, which grew desolate. This had the greatest effect on the local middle class. Wealthy families could afford to keep private armies to defend themselves against bandits, while the poor had nothing to be robbed. The social structure of the Huainan region was dumbbell-shaped, with the richest families at the very top, the common people and bandits at the very bottom, and scant middle class in between. A middle-class household with an ox was the most desirable target for the bandits. A dozen people would rush into your house, snatch your ox, sell it the same evening and divide up the spoils. The common people also faced severe exploitation by officials and landlords.

Q5: You just used the reality of the Huaibei region to challenge the well-known theory of involution. This reminded me of a comparison you made in your book: some regions suffered from capitalism while Huaibei suffered from the absence of capitalism. Could you elaborate?

Capitalism developed relatively early in the Yangtze delta region. The harm caused by capitalist economic crises in that region has been well studied. However, scholars have failed to examine how places like Huaibei suffered from the lack of capitalism. Under a market economy, businesses experience profits and losses, and prices fluctuate. Farmers can decide whether to plant rice or mulberry according to the demands of the market. In contrast, in places where power is concentrated in the hands of the elite, like Huaibei, everything is subject to their arbitrary decision-making. People have no choice but to endure the greater losses and suffering that result.

In the Dictionary of Political Economy, edited by scholars including Xu Dixin 许涤新, a landlord is defined as ‘someone who rents out land’ while a worker is a ‘landless proletariat’. In reality, proletariats formed the majority of the landlords in the Yangtze delta region. According to research by economic historian Li Bozhong 李伯重, in the 1820s every household cultivated around ten mu [1.6 acres] of farmland in the Yangtze delta region. In many instances, the labour force of the household worked in factories and rented out the land to others to farm, making most landlords working class.

Q6: You used the novel Water Margin to support your research on the social and economic history of the Huaibei region, which reminded me of the book Water Margin and Chinese Society by Sa Mengwu 萨孟武. Can you talk about the reasoning behind it?

I refer to Water Margin in the context of a historiographical method called mutual verification between literature and history. I have two principles in historical research. The first is to identify and critically examine historical materials. The second principle is never use materials that I cannot verify elsewhere. As in a court trial, there must be a chain of evidence. Water Margin and other novels I refer to, like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, can be classified as ‘social novels’, which supplement historical materials to serve in the chain of evidence.

Water Margin was written in the early Ming dynasty, with modifications and new versions appearing later in the dynasty. The theme song of the 1998 TV series Water Margin sings about ‘a friendship of life and death forged over a bowl of wine’. To offer one’s life in exchange for a bowl of wine or a meal indeed reflects the material scarcity of a famine-stricken society. This was also the social norm of Huaibei society. During an uprising at the end of the Yuan dynasty [1279–1368], a wealthy family only had to slaughter a few cattle and prepare a few jars of wine to incite a mob to murder the county magistrate.

Q7：Some have criticised you for showing too much personal emotion in your book. In the epilogue, you talked about your experiences growing up and studying in Huaibei in stark poverty, as well as the challenges of doing field research in your hometown. Is it right to assume that you brought your personal experience into this book and, to some extent, you wanted to tackle prejudices against the Huabei region and its people?

I do not think there is any historian who writes without any personal bias. Even choosing what to study and which materials to use is based on personal likes and dislikes. Scholars who claim to be purely objective are lying.

I studied at Soochow University in the 1990s. Back then I could barely afford proper clothing. For three-quarters of the year I would wear the same outfit: a khaki military jacket, a pair of track pants, and sneakers with holes in the toes. Poverty was one reason why I was drawn to this subject. Most of my classmates came from the relativity prosperous Yangtze delta region, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I dared not attend the social dances that were popular at that time, or invite anyone to the movies. My classmates looked down on me, and I gradually discovered from my readings that people from Huaibei had been discriminated against for their poverty by those from the neighbouring Yangtze delta region since the Ming dynasty. However, if you look back further in history, things were different.

The more I read about the Huaibei region, the more perplexed I became: before the Northern Song dynasty, not only was my home region way more developed than the Yangtze delta region, it also produced many noteworthy figures, including the Han general Xiao He 萧何 [257–193 BC] and the Three Kingdoms military strategist Zhou Yu 周瑜 [175–210]. How come a thousand years later, by the time of Emperor Qianlong’s southern tour, he described Huaibei as ‘barren mountains and poor rivers, vulgar men and shrewish women’?^[4] Why have there been so many misunderstandings and prejudices against the Huaibei region? I began doing fieldwork in the region because I wanted to find an explanation for this historical change. I was dissatisfied with what existing history books, models and theories had to say about the Huaibei region.

My background is in history, and I have not received any formal training in anthropology or sociology. So I did not have a carefully formulated plan for field research. I just wandered around looking for answers to the questions that had piled up from my readings. At that time, I was living entirely off my scholarship. To save money, in winter, I lived in a public bathhouse because it was warm, and in summer, I stayed in any cheap guesthouse as long as it came with an electric fan. I was living among street performers and vendors.

The most unforgettable experience was when I went to Feng County for research. As soon as I entered a village, villagers began to follow me, cursing me from behind. I turned around to see what was happening, and I was immediately surrounded by people who started hitting me. More people joined in the beating, all shouting and cursing. It seemed like half the village had come running over. When I told this story to the director of the Xuzhou Salt Industry Bureau, who had also grown up around there, he shrugged and said that was nothing. Their division director had been stabbed by a mob before.

Because I grew up in the Huaibei region and conducted fieldwork there, my research focus and perspectives cannot be the same as those who write about the region while sipping coffee in their studies. For me, it is necessary through research and writing to reconstruct the ecology of the Huaibei society with which I am familiar. I hope my book can serve as a different point of reference and offer readers a new way of thinking.

Notes

[1] Joel Wing-Lun, ‘What have we learned from “the woman in chains”?’, China Story, 9 May 2022, online at: https://www.thechinastory.org/what-have-we-learned-from-the-woman-in-chains/

[2] ‘Interview with Ma Junya’ 马俊亚谈被牺牲的“局部”, Shanghai Book Review, 28 January 2024, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_26167117

[3] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852, online at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm.

[4] When the Qianlong emperor visited Xuzhou, he reportedly uttered the phrase ‘poor mountains and rivers, untamed men and women’ 穷山恶水，泼妇刁民. Although lacking any historical record, the saying became popular when describing the Huaibei region.

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