Discovering nationalistic sentiment in the Chinese fandom of Japanese and Korean popular culture

Abstract

In the reform era, the function of Chinese media and culture industry has changed from propaganda tools to that of serving both purposes of facilitating ideological control and boosting economic growth. While the party-state continues to carefully regulate the importation of foreign products in China, the rapid expansion of cultural market and commercialization of the media provides various opportunities for the foreign products to be introduced to China through informal or semi-informal channels.

This dissertation, then, takes the imported Japanese and Korean popular cultural products and their corresponding fandoms/anti-fandoms as cases to study the negotiation among the ideology of party-state, the discourse of the fans and the discourse of the media. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how Chinese fans of Japanese and Korean popular culture have formed their own nationalistic discourse since the 1990s.

During the formation of both fandoms, the state tried to control fan organizations and fan activities through shaping policy at the organization level. For Japanese popular culture, the state treated it as a subversive culture. On the contrary, the state tried to boost Korean cultural products for ideological and diplomatic purposes. With state support, transnational capital could enter the Chinese market. Rapid commercialization eliminated the diversity of Hallyu fandom cultures. The differences in the formation and structure of two fandoms make the fan labor of Hallyu fans be subjected to severe exploitation, while the fan labor of Japanese popular culture fans contributes much to the production of subversive discourse and practice which deviated from state’s control.

Creative fan labor plays an important role in the formation of the fandom, reception of the popular culture, construction of discourse, and mobilization of fan activism. Because of the highly commercialized fandom, the Hallyu fans mainly utilize their fan labor to facilitate the commercial promotion and avoid historical or political discussions, which makes the Hallyu fans be less vocal when they encounter radical anti-fans in the online public sphere. Fans of Japanese popular culture have been diligent in constructing diverse but unique historical narratives and nationalistic discourses. Historical narratives are very important in developing nationalism and controlling sentiments on current diplomatic disputes between China, Japan and Korea. Thus historical narratives created by fans or anti-fans may challenge, resonate or radicalize the party-state’s patriotic indoctrination and ideology in different ways.

Both fans of Japanese popular culture and Korean popular culture exhibit perception on hierarchy of East Asian cultures which asserts the superiority of Chinese culture. But the fans in offline life exhibit strong individualism, while in the online public sphere, the boundary between politics and culture, and individuals and groups is blurred in online discourse—a discourse that has strong nationalistic sentiments.

In my dissertation, I will be analyzing the production of nationalistic discourse by fans through fan labor and reception of cultural contents.