Pseudo-participation, authentic nationalism: understanding Chinese fanquan girls’ personifications of the nation-state

ABSTRACT What are the dynamics of the participatory online discourse in an authoritarian context? More specifically, what patterns of Chinese state-society interactions can be drawn from the existing nexus of top-down control and bottom-up participation? To explore the questions, this study examines the Chinese nation-state personifications produced by ‘fanquan girls’, nationalistic fans of pop stars, during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Three types of imageries and scenarios emerged, i.e., the nation as a charismatic idol in a discursive struggle, a protective brother on a battlefield, and a victimized mother in a trial. These visualizations construct a discursive kinship that justifies China’s governance over Hong Kong and refutes the intervention from foreign ‘hostile forces’ through visualized national strength, state-society unity, and colonial sufferings. During the process, the state provided the ideological mindset and delimited the political boundaries, the fandom participants turned the state-promoted ideas and sentiments into youth-appealing memes, and both sides appropriated and circulated each other’s creations in joint self-defense against outside reproval and opposition. Therefore, the paper argues that this communicative pattern consolidates the state’s discursive co-optation of the society rather than demolishes the authoritarian rule.