Peng Liyuan’s humanitarianism: morality, politics and eyeing the present and past

Abstract

Celebrity in China is booming, yet the patterns, meanings and monitoring of Chinese celebrity and cause adoption both share and differ from western forms, history and phenomenon. Using a case study of Peng Liyuan, China’s most recent first lady, folk singer and military entertainer, this article addresses some of the key moral and political functions that Peng is helping both reinforce and remake. I show how history and China’s current modernisation narratives shape understandings of and possibilities for celebrities in public and political life.

Keywords:

• China
• regional celebrity
• Peng Liyuan
• public health celebrity
• first lady

Notes

1. See: www.theyaomingfoundation.org

2. Mao led the CCP to victory following a bitter civil war and assumed leadership of the CCP in 1949, until Deng Xiaoping took over and began economic reforms in the late 1970s.

3. Dream and revival are two of the political terms that Xi Jinping introduced in his address to the nation (Xi 2013).

4. Thank you to my colleague, Emilio Dirlikov, for providing information on the processes behind her WHO ambassadorial appointments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johanna Hood

Johanna Hood is an assistant professor at Roskilde University’s Institute for Society and Globalization, Denmark. Johanna’s research focuses on the role of Chinese celebrities in politics and public health; the commodification and shortages of blood and its donation in China; and the impact of local conceptions about race and ethnicity on Chinese media and public understandings of illness. Johanna is the author of HIV/AIDS, Health and the Media in China (Routledge, 2011) and a variety of journal articles and chapters in edited volumes on celebrity, inequality, sexuality and HIV/AIDS.