Reading European football, critiquing China: Chinese urban middle class fans as reflexive audience

ABSTRACT

This essay explores European football’s cross-cultural appeals in China by focusing on Chinese fans’ active readings of this globalized cultural text. Using analytical tools from both sport sociology and transnational reception studies, I understand Chinese urban middle-class supporters as a reflexive audience whose meaning-making of European football is contextualized in their local urban experience. The in-depth interviewing reveals that these fans’ interpretations of their favourite European football teams as symbols of ‘collective cooperation’ and ‘beautiful football’ produce critical reflections on the discourses of ‘competitive individualism’ and ‘utilitarian commercialism’ which are part of the rising ideology during China’s neoliberal reform. Through the comparison among European football, Chinese football, and popular ‘national’ sports in China, the participants further contest the prevalence of these discourses in China’s broader economic and social arrangements over which they are engaged in constant material struggles. I further discuss how the transnational consumption of European football offers the Chinese urban middle-class a symbolic space to project their reflexivity on the reforming process.

KEYWORDS:

• European football
• reflexive fans
• Chinese urban middle class
• transnational media reception
• contextualized meaning-making
• China’s neoliberal reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Yuan Gong, PhD, is a lecturer in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University. Her main interests include digital media, popular culture, and global fandom. She is currently working on a project about the Chinese fans’ transmedia practices with European football in the reforming era.