The Poetic Justice of Queer China

Dancing in China’s Digital Space

For years, Anglophone coverage of the Chinese internet has emphasised the Great Firewall. The focus on censorship and surveillance collapses information production and access into a false binary between the haves and have-nots, the free and unfree. Yet, the authoritarian state cannot extinguish the Chinese people’s creativity and entrepreneurship, and the wall itself can unfold into a dynamic space of contention and self-expression. How have the Chinese people been innovating against political and material constraints? How is technological progress pursued and perceived both inside and outside of China? What kind of future or alternative past do people in China imagine for themselves and the rest of humanity? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with journalist and author Yi-Ling Liu and writer Afra Wang on the creative souls who dance along the edge of possibility in China, and the lure and limitations of techno-modernity.

The Poetic Justice of Queer China

From royal court legends to a 17th-centurydeity, gay people have been part of Chinese life and literature for millennia. Since the 1990s, legal reforms in China and the country’s integration into global capitalism have fostered new avenues for civic action. Queer Chinese activists fought for their rights in the courts, through legislative channels,and by garnering public support. Despite government crackdowns in recent years, the work continues outside the limelight, while art and literature remain a fertileground for queer expression and resistance.  How does the ancient history of queer China inspire life today? What have decades of gay activism accomplished, and what are the limitations? How should one interpret the relations between queer rights and state power, especially in an authoritarian society? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with media studies professor Hongwei Bao and legalscholar Darius Longarino on queer literature and activism in China, and why poetry can reign when court fails.

Being Muslim in China

This month, China’s National People’s Congress held its annual meeting and passed a new law on ‘promoting ethnic unity and progress’. The legislation further codifies the suppression of non-Han languages and customs in China in the name of national cohesion and civilisational uplift. For years, the Party-State has dictated the correct way to be Chinese and subjected the Uyghurs and other Muslim populations in Xinjiang to mass internment, high-tech surveillance, and forced assimilation. Yet, for centuries, Muslims have been an integral part of the country we call China today. Islamic and Confucian cultures learned from and enriched each other. What does it mean to be Muslim in China, historically and in the present? What has led to the current repression in Xinjiang, and how might one survive and struggle against state violence and authoritarian control in the year 2026? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with historian Rian Thum and anthropologist Darren Byler on the past and present of the Uyghur homeland, and how identities can survive in community and through the written word.

Hong Kong in Protest, Redux

In 2019, more than a million people poured onto the streets of Hong Kong, with many returning week after week. The song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ soon emerged as the movement’s unofficial anthem. What began as a protest against an ill-advised extradition bill quickly became, for many, the city’s last stand against Beijing’s tightening grip. Six years on, those courageous scenes of struggle feel like a distant memory. New legislations have effectively outlawed dissent. ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ is banned. Pro-democracy activists and legislators have been jailed or forced into exile. Was the movement a failure? How should we measure success in a struggle that was, in many ways, quixotic? And how might we situate the 2019 protests within Hong Kong’s unique history of colonisation and capitalist development? In this episode, Yangyang speaks with sociologist Ching Kwan Lee and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom about the significance of the struggle, its transnational legacy, and the lessons it carries for this moment of global democratic backsliding.

Labour and (De)Industrialisation in East Asia

Over the past few years, industrial policy and manufacturing capacity, especially in the high-tech sector, have been at the centre of great power rivalry between the United States and China. The White House has been pressuring companies from its East Asian allies, including the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, to invest in the United States and open new factories, while American firms like Apple have been accused of helping China build up its industrial capacity. Amid all the techno-nationalistic rhetoric, the people whose lives and livelihoods are directly impacted by these policies are scarcely mentioned; the countries are spoken of like geopolitical abstractions, the companies like balance sheets. Why did Western capital and companies move to East Asia to set up manufacturing facilities? Who are the people whose labour propelled the industrial rise in China and Taiwan? What are the social costs in these states’ pursuit of technological might, and how do ordinary people navigate their power and powerlessness? For Episode 5 of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with anthropologist Anru Lee and sociologist Ya-Wen Lei to discuss gender, labour, industrialisation, and deindustrialisation in China and Taiwan.