Paper short abstract:

Many countries are experiencing a rise of nationalism in their political landscapes, including China. Using “shipping” practices and internal conflict as examples, this paper investigates how gender relation is embedded and reframed in the current Chinese online popular nationalist discourses.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years many countries from west to east have been experiencing a conspicuous rise of nationalism in their political landscapes. As a key factor, social media offer multiple possibilities for these movements to forge and circulate their messages through new communication channels and sub/pop-cultural elements. Among these movements, a new generation of Chinese cyber-nationalism wave, whose activists are labeled as “little Pink” or “fandom girls”, has gained much attention since 2015. Usually, they are described as a group of aggressive social media users. They are recognized for their strong female-led fandom characteristics and emotional discourse of irony/ridiculing, seduction, and romance.

In this context, I proposed the following questions: How is gender relation embedded in the current Chinese online popular nationalist discourses? How do the young female Chinese online nationalists reframe this gender relation? In the process of a multi-sited online ethnography, I investigated the conflict between female Chinese online nationalists and other male netizens during the “boycott NBA campaign”, as well as their daily “shipping” practices related to the Chinese national leaders and diplomats. Based on the current mixed-method data analysis results, I argue that the young female Chinese online nationalists strategically appropriated the ideological hegemony of Chinese nationalism to resist male netizen’s gender stereotyping against them. Despite its diverse and queer aspects, these online Nationalists´ “shipping” imagery about Chinese national leaders and diplomats is still limited in a heteronormative frame.