Pub Date : 2021-10-29DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211049634
Xiao Han, G. Kuipers
This article examines a humorous meme that emerged on Chinese TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Using #workfromhomewithchildcare, Chinese working mothers shared humorous clips of their experience of working from home with their children who were also at home during the pandemic lockdown. By analysing the themes, protagonists, and humour techniques of a sample of 85 videos, we ask why the mood of these clips is so strongly marked by humour, and what this tells us about contemporary Chinese society, particularly about the position of women and mothers. We show that these memetic clips consist of three distinct genres of mothers working from home: (1) ‘balancing mothers’ who balance between work and childcare, (2) ‘pedagogic mothers’ who give childcare tips, and (3) ‘commercially oriented’ mothers who offer tutorials by means of product placement and advertisement. While these memes express what Mary Douglas called ‘a joke in the social structure’ without offering either relief or critique, they do create an online joking culture that offers temporary relief as well as awareness that others are in the same position. Our analysis tempers enthusiastic claims about both the critical potential of humour and the new ‘liberating’ affordances offered by digital platforms to produce liberating female spaces.
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Pub Date : 2021-08-04DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211034692
F. Schneider
This article explores how competing actors established, spread, and challenged visual representations of the Chinese nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It asks: how do official gatekeepers of meaning in China imbue their visual construction of a crisis-hit nation with pathos?; and what happens when their critics utilize the resulting repertoire of visual cues for their own ends? To answer these questions, the article first examines the visual libraries of nationalism and national crisis from which Chinese propaganda drew during the COVID-19 outbreak. It then analyses the struggles that ensued over such representations, specifically the use of national flags and the sentiments they elicit. The analysis traces representations of the flag of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from an initial satirical portrayal in a Danish broadsheet to the angry Chinese backlashes that followed on social media, and it shows how the tensions over such portrayals became part of a meme war over the sovereignty of Hong Kong. The analysis shows how representations of the nation can become a matter of existential anxieties during a time of crisis, especially in highly networked communication environments where authoritative official actors and their supporters are no longer in control of the symbols they established as part of their ‘emotional governance’.
{"title":"COVID-19 nationalism and the visual construction of sovereignty during China’s coronavirus crisis","authors":"F. Schneider","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211034692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211034692","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how competing actors established, spread, and challenged visual representations of the Chinese nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It asks: how do official gatekeepers of meaning in China imbue their visual construction of a crisis-hit nation with pathos?; and what happens when their critics utilize the resulting repertoire of visual cues for their own ends? To answer these questions, the article first examines the visual libraries of nationalism and national crisis from which Chinese propaganda drew during the COVID-19 outbreak. It then analyses the struggles that ensued over such representations, specifically the use of national flags and the sentiments they elicit. The analysis traces representations of the flag of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from an initial satirical portrayal in a Danish broadsheet to the angry Chinese backlashes that followed on social media, and it shows how the tensions over such portrayals became part of a meme war over the sovereignty of Hong Kong. The analysis shows how representations of the nation can become a matter of existential anxieties during a time of crisis, especially in highly networked communication environments where authoritative official actors and their supporters are no longer in control of the symbols they established as part of their ‘emotional governance’.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"301 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211034692","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47592604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211032370
Willy Sier
This article employs the concept of care as a lens through which to examine the anti-COVID-19 measures taken in post-lockdown Wuhan. Based on photographs that depict the Chinese response to COVID-19 at the epicentre of the virus outbreak, the article analyses the visibility of anti-virus measures as a form of government communication inscribed textually and symbolically onto the urban landscape. The state demonstrates its care and capability by implementing highly visible high-tech measures to contain the virus. Bringing care into the literature on crisis management in China sheds light on the Chinese state’s reaction to COVID-19 in eliciting nationalist sentiments and positive feelings of cooperation while stigmatizing critical voices as uncooperative and unpatriotic. It shows that care is central not only to the functioning of liberal democracies: the Chinese state also relies on narratives about care to showcase the superiority of its political system and to distinguish between desirable and unwanted forms of citizens’ political engagement after the COVID-19 outbreak.
{"title":"The politics of care during COVID-19: The visibility of anti-virus measures in Wuhan","authors":"Willy Sier","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211032370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211032370","url":null,"abstract":"This article employs the concept of care as a lens through which to examine the anti-COVID-19 measures taken in post-lockdown Wuhan. Based on photographs that depict the Chinese response to COVID-19 at the epicentre of the virus outbreak, the article analyses the visibility of anti-virus measures as a form of government communication inscribed textually and symbolically onto the urban landscape. The state demonstrates its care and capability by implementing highly visible high-tech measures to contain the virus. Bringing care into the literature on crisis management in China sheds light on the Chinese state’s reaction to COVID-19 in eliciting nationalist sentiments and positive feelings of cooperation while stigmatizing critical voices as uncooperative and unpatriotic. It shows that care is central not only to the functioning of liberal democracies: the Chinese state also relies on narratives about care to showcase the superiority of its political system and to distinguish between desirable and unwanted forms of citizens’ political engagement after the COVID-19 outbreak.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"274 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211032370","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48408322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-21DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211030869
Ralph A. Litzinger, Yanping Ni
This article examines the making and circulation of vlogs on the Chinese platform Douyin during the Wuhan lockdown. We specifically draw attention to vlogs made in mobile cabin hospitals. Constructed between February and March in 2020, cabin hospitals were part of the state’s isolation and quarantine efforts, and these hospitals created spaces of confinement within a city under lockdown. The vlogs that we refer to are often bursting with energy, optimism, and play, and seem to be expressive of new modalities of care and social relationality. But they are also appropriated by the Chinese state, who used them as examples of ‘positive energy’ (正能量), and to promote the collective commitment to contain the virus. Focusing on the videos, blogs, and narrative storytelling of Li Jing, we show how the state appropriated her work to further its attempt to control the meaning of life and death during the ‘people’s war’ on the coronavirus. These and other state appropriations must also be understood within the context of the state’s involvement in platforms such as Douyin and the ‘platformization’ of everyday life both before and during the Wuhan lockdown.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211019702a
Pui Chi Lai
and ultimately, as Evans stresses throughout the book, their attempts to live an ethical life within the constraints of a complex life in dilapidated and overcrowded hutongs with little privacy and impenetrable networks of tensions, intrigues, and conflicts (p. 60). Evans, positioned as researcher, traverses between a friend, listener, and someone who, unintendedly and unavoidably, brings social capital, and offers a break from the hard and monotonous lives of her interlocutors – her awkwardness when dealing with the unspoken manoeuvres of reciprocity are particularly relatable to any ethnographic researcher. The book begins with an introduction, in which the author lays out the spatial and historical background of Dashalar, situating the area within the recent history of Beijing’s attempts to transform it from an overcrowded slum area to a protected cultural area in the 1980s, and a ‘designer project’ in 2011. Following the introduction are six chapters, each of which features the story of a family living in (or just moved out of) Dashalar. The book ends with an ‘interlude’ by the author through which she provides an academic reading of the events. Major themes in all of these stories, except for the story of Jia Yong in Chapter 7, are memories of pain, adversity, and frustration, as well as the driving forces of filial piety, care for the family, and ethical living. In Chapter 2, we find old Mrs Gao, whose vivid stories of eating radish peel and foraging wild plants during the famine in the 1960s reveal her sense of self: a resilient survivor of hardship. Chapter 3 features Zhao Yong and his constant struggle to overcome the harm inflicted on him and his family by the Red Guards. The colourful Hua Meiling in Chapter 4 shows the struggle of a badly treated woman in her attempts to be recognized as a virtuous woman – despite all the ‘bad things’ she has done, she is an intrinsically ‘good person’. The unspeakable suffering of migrant workers Li and Zhang in Chapter 5 is perhaps the most shocking of all. The chapter lays bare a deep-rooted contempt for rural migrants as well as a corrupt and violent system of governance in the urban areas of Beijing. This tale of relentless bullying, abuse, and discrimination endured by the couple, their resilience and their love for their children is as touching as it is painful to read. Chapter 6 is about a couple whose financial situation is slightly better than the others because of disability benefits and a talent for calligraphy which they produce and sell – both of which have an immediate positive impact on their relationships and standard of living. The final chapter ends with the story of Jia Yong who, through his entrepreneurial and positive character, manages to acquire recognition and relative wealth. This book is instrumental in reminding us of the real, yet often unseen dangers and suffering that come with precarity exacerbated by governmental neglect, and it is a valuable read for anyone interested
{"title":"Book review: China Bound: John Swire & Sons and Its World, 1816–1980","authors":"Pui Chi Lai","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211019702a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211019702a","url":null,"abstract":"and ultimately, as Evans stresses throughout the book, their attempts to live an ethical life within the constraints of a complex life in dilapidated and overcrowded hutongs with little privacy and impenetrable networks of tensions, intrigues, and conflicts (p. 60). Evans, positioned as researcher, traverses between a friend, listener, and someone who, unintendedly and unavoidably, brings social capital, and offers a break from the hard and monotonous lives of her interlocutors – her awkwardness when dealing with the unspoken manoeuvres of reciprocity are particularly relatable to any ethnographic researcher. The book begins with an introduction, in which the author lays out the spatial and historical background of Dashalar, situating the area within the recent history of Beijing’s attempts to transform it from an overcrowded slum area to a protected cultural area in the 1980s, and a ‘designer project’ in 2011. Following the introduction are six chapters, each of which features the story of a family living in (or just moved out of) Dashalar. The book ends with an ‘interlude’ by the author through which she provides an academic reading of the events. Major themes in all of these stories, except for the story of Jia Yong in Chapter 7, are memories of pain, adversity, and frustration, as well as the driving forces of filial piety, care for the family, and ethical living. In Chapter 2, we find old Mrs Gao, whose vivid stories of eating radish peel and foraging wild plants during the famine in the 1960s reveal her sense of self: a resilient survivor of hardship. Chapter 3 features Zhao Yong and his constant struggle to overcome the harm inflicted on him and his family by the Red Guards. The colourful Hua Meiling in Chapter 4 shows the struggle of a badly treated woman in her attempts to be recognized as a virtuous woman – despite all the ‘bad things’ she has done, she is an intrinsically ‘good person’. The unspeakable suffering of migrant workers Li and Zhang in Chapter 5 is perhaps the most shocking of all. The chapter lays bare a deep-rooted contempt for rural migrants as well as a corrupt and violent system of governance in the urban areas of Beijing. This tale of relentless bullying, abuse, and discrimination endured by the couple, their resilience and their love for their children is as touching as it is painful to read. Chapter 6 is about a couple whose financial situation is slightly better than the others because of disability benefits and a talent for calligraphy which they produce and sell – both of which have an immediate positive impact on their relationships and standard of living. The final chapter ends with the story of Jia Yong who, through his entrepreneurial and positive character, manages to acquire recognition and relative wealth. This book is instrumental in reminding us of the real, yet often unseen dangers and suffering that come with precarity exacerbated by governmental neglect, and it is a valuable read for anyone interested ","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"240 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211019702a","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47922436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211019702h
Constantin Holzer
better-planned and integrated approach to pursuing environmental sustainability and equality. While criticizing the failure of the socialist economy and advocating for market efficiency, Zhu respects the role of state regulation and of city planning in the protection of the public interest. What remains to be clarified is not only land rights but also the role of planning: how can coordinated development be achieved, but not at the expense of bottom–up, spontaneous development that more grass-roots actors might take part in and benefit from? While Zhu advocates clear delineations of land rights, whether market efficiency can bring about better planning remains to be seen. The growth machine theory focuses on the political process of urban development. With or without clearly defined private land ownership, land development is never carried out in a political vacuum. Other political and social mechanisms have to be taken into account in order to protect the aim of environmental sustainability. Perhaps even more important to the question of sustainability is how the very notion of the city as a growth machine can be challenged.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203x211019702
L. Vermeeren
Harriet Evans’s Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital’s Center presents an exceptional insight into the precarious lives of what Evans calls the ‘subalterns of history’ through sketches of residents in the Dashalar neighbourhood located in central Beijing. With oral histories on subaltern experiences, the author attempts to question a dominant historical narrative in the People’s Republic of China, and urban areas of Beijing in particular. Urban poverty, Evans argues, has been a constant throughout the complex history of Dashalar. Her argument runs counter to the dominant narrative that during the Mao era urban poverty was largely absent, because state accommodation, education, and health benefits for all resulted in an equal society. According to this narrative, urban poverty is a consequence of marketization which led to socio-economic differentiation. Oral histories on subaltern experiences such as what Evans has documented in her book reveal that this dominant view of history is too simplistic, and that oral histories are indeed necessary to complicate, challenge, and add difference to egalitarian assumptions. Subaltern experiences might be unlike history writ large, but are never, as Evans argues, immune to its normalizing effects. Evans thus approaches subalternity not as completely outside and unaffected by the system of dominance, but rather as a discernible trace within the functioning of power (p. 6). This book draws on years of fieldwork during which the author befriended and talked at length with the people of Dashalar, who ended up as protagonists in this book. Complemented by archival evidence which substantiates their narratives, the book is a trove of rich ethnographic material combined with a talent for compelling storytelling, or rather, for bringing to life the stories of the Dashalar residents about their own lives. The urban poor, as Evans argues, make no claims to a privileged victimhood, nor do they search out formal recognition of their suffering (p. 98). The stories they tell about themselves, however, reveal the need for the hardship and pain which they endured to be seen and recognized. It shows their sense of self, their perseverance and resilience, 1019702 CIN0010.1177/0920203X211019702China InformationBook reviews research-article2021
哈里特·埃文斯（Harriet Evans）的《来自下方的北京：首都中心边缘生活的故事》（Beijing from Below：Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital’s Center。通过对下层经历的口述历史，作者试图质疑中华人民共和国，尤其是北京城市地区的主导历史叙事。埃文斯认为，在达沙拉拉复杂的历史中，城市贫困一直存在。她的论点与主流观点背道而驰，即在毛时代，城市贫困在很大程度上是不存在的，因为国家为所有人提供的住宿、教育和医疗福利导致了一个平等的社会。根据这种说法，城市贫困是市场化导致社会经济分化的结果。关于下层经历的口述历史，如埃文斯在书中所记录的，揭示了这种占主导地位的历史观过于简单化，口述历史确实是使平等主义假设复杂化、挑战和增加差异所必需的。亚交替的经历可能与历史不同，但正如埃文斯所说，它永远不会免受其正常化影响。因此，埃文斯并不完全置身于统治体系之外，也不受统治体系的影响，而是将其视为权力运作中的一个明显痕迹（第6页）。这本书借鉴了作者多年的田野调查，在此期间，作者与达沙拉拉的人们交上了朋友，并进行了长时间的交谈，达沙拉拉最终成为了这本书的主角。这本书以证实他们叙述的档案证据为补充，是一个丰富的民族志材料宝库，结合了引人入胜的故事讲述天赋，或者更确切地说，将达沙拉居民关于自己生活的故事栩栩如生。正如埃文斯所说，城市穷人没有声称自己是特权受害者，也没有寻求对自己苦难的正式承认（第98页）。然而，他们讲述的关于自己的故事揭示了他们所经历的苦难和痛苦需要被看到和认可。它展示了他们的自我意识、毅力和韧性，1019702 CIN00010.1177/0920203X211019702中国信息书评研究文章2021
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Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211019702d
Irene Nørlund
overlooked the fact that access money can delay economic growth, especially when political elites and public officials seek huge economic rents while consumers and private companies have to bear the high price of real estate and uncertainties and risks related to the security of projects. In other words, corruption is not a good thing regardless of the types of corruption, even though access money can exist alongside rapid economic growth in transitional China. The suggestion in Chapter 6 is that the ongoing anti-corruption campaign tends to disincentivize public officials to advance China’s economic development because the profit-sharing model carries risks in the current political environment (p. 174). An alternative explanation could be that economic upgrading from labour-intensive manufacturing to technology-driven industries causes a slowing down of the Chinese economy. This is an excellent and well-written book suited for a diverse audience in the field of China studies. Despite a plethora of scholarly works on China’s vast corruption and rising growth, the book succeeds in taking a fresh approach to examine this co-evolutionary relationship with convincing evidence. It also makes an innovative contribution to the study of China’s corruption and the political economy of the transitional state from a comparative perspective.
{"title":"Book review: Chinese Migrant Workers and Employer Domination: Comparisons with Hong Kong and Vietnam","authors":"Irene Nørlund","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211019702d","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211019702d","url":null,"abstract":"overlooked the fact that access money can delay economic growth, especially when political elites and public officials seek huge economic rents while consumers and private companies have to bear the high price of real estate and uncertainties and risks related to the security of projects. In other words, corruption is not a good thing regardless of the types of corruption, even though access money can exist alongside rapid economic growth in transitional China. The suggestion in Chapter 6 is that the ongoing anti-corruption campaign tends to disincentivize public officials to advance China’s economic development because the profit-sharing model carries risks in the current political environment (p. 174). An alternative explanation could be that economic upgrading from labour-intensive manufacturing to technology-driven industries causes a slowing down of the Chinese economy. This is an excellent and well-written book suited for a diverse audience in the field of China studies. Despite a plethora of scholarly works on China’s vast corruption and rising growth, the book succeeds in taking a fresh approach to examine this co-evolutionary relationship with convincing evidence. It also makes an innovative contribution to the study of China’s corruption and the political economy of the transitional state from a comparative perspective.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"245 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211019702d","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43719141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211019702b
S. Handke
between the different power holders in the world. Anyone familiar with brands such as Taikoo and Cathay Pacific may also find this book an interesting read, because of insights and revelations about the rise and development of these and other Swire brands and companies, their business connections and growth, all of which contribute to a better understanding of their position in the international market. This book is recommended reading for anyone interested in the corporate history of John Swire & Sons and those looking for deeper insights into the historical relations and complex dynamics between Britain and Asia. It will throw light on the challenges confronting the current relationship between the power holders.
{"title":"Book review: China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse","authors":"S. Handke","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211019702b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211019702b","url":null,"abstract":"between the different power holders in the world. Anyone familiar with brands such as Taikoo and Cathay Pacific may also find this book an interesting read, because of insights and revelations about the rise and development of these and other Swire brands and companies, their business connections and growth, all of which contribute to a better understanding of their position in the international market. This book is recommended reading for anyone interested in the corporate history of John Swire & Sons and those looking for deeper insights into the historical relations and complex dynamics between Britain and Asia. It will throw light on the challenges confronting the current relationship between the power holders.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"242 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211019702b","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46887442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211019702f
D. Plekhanov
pertinent academic thinking in the area, especially that by non-Western writers. In particular, Liao’s nuanced reading of the role of network capitalism, the blurring of producer and consumer categories, and the potential of the commons within shanzhai culture and practice is to be celebrated. Whilst many aspects of the empirical work undertaken may be of interest to undergraduate students in the fields of cultural studies, sociology, or marketing, the main audience for this book is likely to be a postgraduate one. Shanzhai and the socioeconomic issues surrounding it are a very specific case study that requires more than a passing knowledge of China. Although Liao brings into play aspects of Chinese history, such as Mao’s ‘iron rice bowl’ and Deng’s ‘leaping into the sea’ in a very accessible way, it is easy to underestimate the body of historical and cultural knowledge that this book draws upon. Although knowledge is not assumed, a grasp on the key moments in contemporary Chinese history would certainly aid a deeper understanding of the content. So, whilst it is written in a very accessible and engaging way, Liao’s book is more likely to be relevant to a postgraduate audience. This by no means detracts from its numerous merits.
{"title":"Book review: Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People’s Republic of China","authors":"D. Plekhanov","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211019702f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211019702f","url":null,"abstract":"pertinent academic thinking in the area, especially that by non-Western writers. In particular, Liao’s nuanced reading of the role of network capitalism, the blurring of producer and consumer categories, and the potential of the commons within shanzhai culture and practice is to be celebrated. Whilst many aspects of the empirical work undertaken may be of interest to undergraduate students in the fields of cultural studies, sociology, or marketing, the main audience for this book is likely to be a postgraduate one. Shanzhai and the socioeconomic issues surrounding it are a very specific case study that requires more than a passing knowledge of China. Although Liao brings into play aspects of Chinese history, such as Mao’s ‘iron rice bowl’ and Deng’s ‘leaping into the sea’ in a very accessible way, it is easy to underestimate the body of historical and cultural knowledge that this book draws upon. Although knowledge is not assumed, a grasp on the key moments in contemporary Chinese history would certainly aid a deeper understanding of the content. So, whilst it is written in a very accessible and engaging way, Liao’s book is more likely to be relevant to a postgraduate audience. This by no means detracts from its numerous merits.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"248 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0920203X211019702f","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46119749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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