Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how digital space in China discipline women victims while enabling feminist counter-appropriation. It introduces “digital witch hunts” to analyse state-aligned narratives, and shows how feminists sustain critique and connection through coded digital practices under censorship.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how digital platforms in China have become central sites for the governance of gender, where narratives of female victimhood are simultaneously rendered visible and subjected to discipline. Drawing on emblematic cases involving trafficking, disappearance, and sexual violence, the paper analyses how state-aligned media, platform moderation, and selective censorship redirect attention away from structural violence toward moralised and individualised explanations of women’s suffering. Rather than treating these incidents as isolated events, the paper situates them within broader dynamics of demographic anxiety, pronatalist politics, and the reassertion of normative femininity. It introduces the concept of digital witch hunts to describe coordinated discursive responses that discredit victims, deter feminist critique, and reinforce hierarchical gender norms in online spaces.

At the same time, the paper attends to the ways Chinese feminists navigate these constraints through counter-appropriation strategies, including the strategic use of coded language, ironic reframing, and platform-specific practices that subtly repurpose dominant narratives to sustain feminist visibility and solidarity under conditions of repression. These practices reveal how digital feminism in China operates not only through overt resistance but also through adaptive and relational forms of connection-making. Engaging with decolonial feminist debates, the paper argues against the uncritical application of Global North frameworks and calls for context-sensitive analyses that account for the specific configurations of state power, media politics, and everyday digital practices shaping feminist action in contemporary Asia.