Can China be populist? Grassroot populist narratives in the Chinese cyberspace

ABSTRACT

The current debate on populism is mostly Euro-American centric. Less attention is paid to how the rise of populist ideas echo and reverberate in other regions of the world. This paper examines how the core concepts to populism, namely ‘the people’, ‘the elite’ and ‘the other’, is constructed and contested in China. I show how the netizens contextualise the rise of populist right in America in relation to China, and how they construct a narrative of ‘must learn lessons’ for China out of the American experience, with identifiable populist elements. I argue that although non-establishment populist leaders or parties are unlikely to emerge under the one Party rule, the grassroot political narratives in China harbour significant latent populist tendencies, and the potential for populist rupture is real.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• Chinese populism
• populist narratives
• cyber opinion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Ying Miao is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include populism and identity politics, social stratification, and comparative development between China and the West. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary China and Asian Studies Review, and her monograph, Being Middle Class in China, was published by Routledge in 2017.

Notes

1 Original English phrase used by the author.