Pseudo-participation, authentic nationalism: understanding Chinese fanquan girls’ personifications of the nation-state

ABSTRACT

What are the dynamics of the participatory online discourse in an authoritarian context? More specifically, what patterns of Chinese state-society interactions can be drawn from the existing nexus of top-down control and bottom-up participation? To explore the questions, this study examines the Chinese nation-state personifications produced by ‘fanquan girls’, nationalistic fans of pop stars, during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Three types of imageries and scenarios emerged, i.e., the nation as a charismatic idol in a discursive struggle, a protective brother on a battlefield, and a victimized mother in a trial. These visualizations construct a discursive kinship that justifies China’s governance over Hong Kong and refutes the intervention from foreign ‘hostile forces’ through visualized national strength, state-society unity, and colonial sufferings. During the process, the state provided the ideological mindset and delimited the political boundaries, the fandom participants turned the state-promoted ideas and sentiments into youth-appealing memes, and both sides appropriated and circulated each other’s creations in joint self-defense against outside reproval and opposition. Therefore, the paper argues that this communicative pattern consolidates the state’s discursive co-optation of the society rather than demolishes the authoritarian rule.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese nationalism
• personification
• Hong Kong protests
• fanquan girls
• internet meme
• propaganda
• multimodal analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants of 24th DiscourseNet Conference in Brussels (2020), the two anonymous reviewers, and editors for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The word ‘Unity’ represents fanquan girls’ collective efforts for defending national interests against anti-state criticism, despite their everyday disputes among celebrity fandoms (Sohu, 2019).

2 The youth organization affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party to cultivate future leaders.

3 On Chinese social media Weibo, hashtags usually include a double #, one at the beginning and one in the end.

4 China Daily, ‘Opposition culpable for condoning violence’, 5 July 2019, HK edition, p. 10.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lutgard Lams

Lutgard Lams is a Professor of Pragmatics, Media Discourse Analysis and Intercultural Communication at the Faculty of Arts of the KU Leuven Campus Brussels, where she heads the interdisciplinary Brussels Center for Chinese Discourse Studies workgroup (BCCDS) and the Brussels Center for Journalism Studies (BCJS). Her research interests include political communication in the Chinese region, framing practices in the Chinese media and in the foreign media narratives about China, the role of language in Cross-Strait relations, ideology in the Taiwanese media and the Taiwanese presidential campaign discourses.

Wendy Weile Zhou

Wendy Weile Zhou is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication at Georgia State University (GSU). Her research focuses on Chinese political discourse, digital journalism, and diaspora media and communication. Her dissertation examines the news values and practices of Chinese transnational journalists. Before joining GSU, she served as the Chinese editor of Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and research assistant at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, where she earned a master’s degree in Journalism.