Volume 76, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Digital Society in China; Edited by Jessica Imbach and Justyna Jaguścik

On 10 March 2020, The Whistle-Giver 發哨子的人, an online report published by a Chinese state-run magazine, was deleted from WeChat and Weibo. Prior to its deletion, the report was translated, reposted, and widely circulated by Chinese netizens on Chinese social media. This ordinary (to the Western eye, at least) content sharing on social media was carried out in defiance of state censorship. The information contained in the report, which would have been erased were it not for the voluntary transmission of the message, is now part of the collective memory. This research article investigates the functions of unreadable signs in the transformation and diffusion of the original report as a tool of resistance to censorship. These signs ostensibly consist of scrambled codes as well as texts with concrete meanings. This article attempts to elucidate the interrelation between these unreadable signs, their mechanisms of action, and the particulars of this incident. These signs are the means by which the reposts circumvented censorship as they recorded, shaped, and revived memories of this incident. From the perspectives of linguistics, iconology, and rhetoric, the author argues that these signs resisted censorship by repackaging Dr Ai Fen’s individual memories, as contained in the original report. This collection of abstract images then came to constitute a collective memory. Ultimately this kind of activism means that not only the event itself, but also the whole process of transformation will eventually become inaccessible and will be of little help in future. This article aims to resolve the paradox that seems to arise when unreadable signs are intentionally used as a form of activism to resist censorship. Through this analysis, the author aims to provide greater insight into how the link between censorship and forgetting is severed. Finally, this article will demonstrate that translating and relaying, as a form of resistance and online activism, also carry an inherent risk of forgetting.

Is the convergence of new technologies and an authoritarian state bound to create an all-encompassing surveillance system? Is this happening in China with the Social Credit System ( shehui xinyong tixi , abb. SCS)? Grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article aims to describe the nature of the project by focusing on its inception and retracing how the initial visions materialized into the system that is now in place. It will do so by seeking to identify the sociotechnical imaginaries rooted in the SCS with the premise that these imaginaries, in particular the ones proposed by authoritative actors, shape the development trajectory of the SCS. Next, it asks whether the dominant sociotechnical imaginaries are control and power legitimation. By touching upon the role of officials, academics, private companies, and citizens in negotiating what is practicable and what is desirable, this article argues that the SCS does not follow a determined trajectory toward technologically enabled dictatorship. It is the result of a process that Sheila Jasanoff has described as co-production, as the various actors embed their values into the project by imagining, engineering, using or even rejecting elements of the SCS. This article finds that before even knowing all the possibilities offered by new technologies, a certain future was envisioned and shared. Rather than the need for control and surveillance, actors emphasized the importance of trustworthiness, the advancement of a post-industrial society, quality of life, and a sense of community. In a certain way, technology was expected to offer a solution to most, if not all social problems. The room left for experimentation supports the argument that sociotechnical imaginaries have the potential to impact the development trajectory of the SCS project. The article concludes that, after more than 20 years since its inception, the SCS is still a policy under construction, whose interpretation and use is yet to be stabilized.

In early November 2018, the Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana (D&G), founded by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, posted a campaign video Eating with Chopsticks ( qi kuai chifan 起筷吃饭) on Instagram, Twitter, and Chinese Weibo (微博) for its forthcoming Great Shanghai Show. This video spurred anger in China. Netizens boycotted the brand nationwide. The Show in Shanghai was forced to cancel, the brands’ stores in China were surrounded by protesters, and the brands’ products were pulled down from the virtual shelves of major Chinese e-commerce platforms. This paper analyzes the meaning and influence of the video Eating with Chopsticks and a series of campaigns and fashion shows that the brand promoted from 2015 to 2019 on Twitter, Instagram, and Weibo. It experiments an interdisciplinary approach to the issues of gender, cultural, and racial discriminations, using literature from gender studies, cultural studies, media studies, consumer studies, and marketing studies.

China is in the midst of a “psy-boom” as the use of psychological services and interest in psychology and psychologically informed personal development tools are seeing a meteoric rise. One of the key drivers of this trend has been the innovative use of social media tools like WeChat by psychological service providers to both attract consumers and deliver products. This paper argues that online psychological service provision via WeChat constitutes a very literal “technology of the self” in the way that the content published explicitly tells consumers that a better, healthier and happier self is within reach. For a fee these companies help provide people with psychological toolkits that they use to shape their understanding of the ways they can heal themselves and others.

Social media are becoming increasingly popular in China. This trend is also observable in the art world. Besides specialised websites promoting art and artists, there are also many new ways of sharing information about artists, exhibitions, publications and the art world. Almost all Chinese artists use the WeChat application as a means of communication. There are also other social media outlets, such as Weibo and TikTok. This paper focuses on the use of WeChat by Chinese artists. Apart from its primary functionality, WeChat has become a vital medium for sharing information about recent exhibitions, articles or just to share artwork. WeChat allows artists to distribute and provide a space for new creative content. Artists and galleries can post photographs, links to articles, interviews and video promotions of exhibitions. The 798 Art Zone is an example of quite advanced promotion ranging from information about artists and exhibitions to even the sale of artworks. To illustrate the wide range of content on WeChat, this paper will look at visual artists such as Gu Wenda, Zhang Yu and the art critic Xia Kejun, and compare them with the public accounts of galleries and 798 Art zone (Beijing), the most famous art district in China.

This paper addresses the relation between the Chinese modal verb yīnggāi on one hand and tense and aspect on the other by providing illustrations of syntactial relations in Chinese sentences. It provides a detailed analysis of the different readings of yīnggāi in combination with various aspect particles and different time levels. It explains when the modal has a deontic, epistemic or ambiguous interpretation.