Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture

Nationalistic Narratives and International Fandom

Lu Chen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315414713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios asiaticoamericanos

How can Japanese popular culture gain numerous fans in China, despite pervasive anti-Japanese sentiment? How is it that there's such a strong anti-Korean sentiment in Chinese online fan communities when the official Sino-Korean relationship is quite stable before 2016? Avid fans in China are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to make gifts to their idols in foreign countries. Tabloid reports on Japanese and Korean celebrities have been known to trigger nationalist protests in China. So, what is the relationship between Chinese fandom of Japanese and Korean popular culture and nationalist sentiment among Chinese youth?

Chen discusses how Chinese fans of Japanese and Korean popular culture have formed their own nationalistic discourse since the 1990s. She argues that, as nationalism is constructed from various entangled ideologies, narratives, myths and collective memories, popular culture simply becomes another resource for the construction of nationalism. Fans thus actively select, interpret and reproduce the content of cultural products to suit their own ends. Unlike existing works, which focus on the content of transnational cultural flows in East Asia, this book focuses on the reception and interpretation of the Chinese audience.

1 Understanding popular culture in China

The term “popular culture” first came into use in the English language in the early-nineteenth century. “Popular” is derived from the Latin to mean “belonging to the people”, which draws distinctions between the views of “the people” and those who would wield power over them. The term held negative connotations at the time of industrialisation because the elites felt their culture was threatened by this working-class popular culture. Before the 1980s, studies on popular culture focused on the potential harm it could have to democratic participation and cultural uniqueness (Clark, 2010, p. 422).

Hall argued that there is an opposition between what belongs to the central domain of the elite and the culture of the people. This opposition constantly structures the domain of culture into the popular and non-popular which is why the persistent tension to dominant culture is essential in defining popular culture (Hall, 2010, p. 220).

Some scholars equate mass culture to popular culture (Macdonald, 2010, p. 31); however, as Franco pointed out, mass culture implies distaste on the part of the user for the product. Mass culture educates people as consumers rather than active participants. Popular culture, on the other hand, refers to what belongs to and comes from the people (Franco, 2010, p. 228). Discussions on the definition of popular culture by British scholars admit that the term is ambiguous (Franco, 2010, p. 235; Clark, 2010, p. 420; Hall, 2010, p. 220). The ambiguity is about the extent to which popular culture is imposed on people by media corporations or state agencies and derived from their own experiences, tastes, habits and so on. The ambiguity allows the extent for which popular culture is an expression of a powerless and subordinate class position as an autonomous and potentially liberating source of opposition against dominant or official culture (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery and Fiske, 1994, p. 232). The definition of popular culture is the products of the media that are of people, for people or well-liked by people in general (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery and Fiske, 1994, p. 231). Storey analysed the six definitions of popular culture and suggested that the definition depend on how it is used, but all definitions share the common understanding that popular culture is a culture that only emerged following industrialisation and urbanisation (Storey, 2006, pp. 1–12). Another topic of British cultural studies is working-class subculture. Working-class youth subculture in the post-war period worked to challenge the taken-for-granted hegemony that made sure of the subordination of the working-class (Hebdige, [1979] 1997). The styles and activities of the subculture are highly ritualised as an imaginary solution to the problems facing the subordinate classes and to highlight the gap existing between the lower and upper classes (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson and Roberts, [1975] 1993). Subcultures must be analysed in terms of their relationship to dominant cultures that are structured by overall dispositions of cultural power in society as a whole (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson and Roberts, [1975] 1993, p. 13). Subcultures are defined as significant and distinctive negotiations located within wider cultures. Subcultures correspond with their particular positions, ambiguities and specific contradictions faced by certain social groups within wider social and historical structures. It is also a term that serves to displace earlier ideas of a unified and separate youth culture that corresponded to all young people (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery and Fiske, 1994, p. 307). In sum, subculture is used to depict the heterogeneous aggregations in the overall culture of society as society is composed of numerous social groups and networks that each pursues a particular lifestyle. These subcultures interact with dominant cultures as well as their “parent culture”, the culture of which subculture is a part (Gottdiener, 2010, p. 115).

In the digital era, technology has increased the contribution of active consumers in producing content from original text. Jenkins studied television fans actively involved in the process of producing content, identities and subcultures from the text and found that the internet enabled audiences to participate in the production of the content (Jenkins, 1992, 2006). This is the beginning of the “prosumer” which implies that the audience is at once a producer and a consumer. The boundaries between producers and consumers, spectators and participants, commercial and home-crafted are becoming blurred. Fandom therefore becomes a participatory culture which transforms the experience of media consumption into the production of new texts and, indeed, a new culture and community (Jenkins, 1992, p. 46).

I will adopt “popular culture” to refer to the Japanese and Korean cultural products, including anime, manga, music, dramas, idols and various fan practices. One pragmatic reason is because, in China, the terms “mass culture”, “subculture” and “participatory culture” are seldom used in daily life. “Popular culture”, however, is frequently used in daily life to refer to Japanese or Korean cultural products and their fan base in generally.

In China, Korean popular culture¹ is simply called Hanliu (abbreviation of Korean popular culture),² which could be literally translated as Korean Wave. In 2001, Korean media reported on the popularity of Korean popular music and Hahan³ youth in China and it followed the Chinese abbreviation to call Korean popular culture a “wave”, thereby arriving at the term Hallyu,⁴ which includes Korean popular music (K-pop), dramas, tourism and so on.⁵ From there, Hallyu became widely used in studies on the global dissemination of Korean popular culture (Cho, 2006, p. 150). In China, Japanese and Korean popular culture is simply called Rihanliu⁶ by some media. However, it should be noted that some fans of Japanese popular culture strongly exclude the fans who love both Japanese and Korean popular culture at the same time. The hardcore fans of Japanese popular culture also avoid relating Japanese popular culture to Korean popular culture.

It is important to recognise that popular culture here means simply culture that is widely favored or well-liked by many people (Storey, 2006, p. 5). Popular culture refers to the beliefs, practices and objects that are widely shared among the population (Mukerji and Schudson, 1991, pp. 3–4). In China, the consumption and accessibility of popular cultural products, especially foreign ones, is still limited to a small portion of the population, which is usually young, affluent and urban dwelling (Yang, 2003). Therefore, a culture that is popular is not necessarily shared by a large portion of the population and could be considered a minority culture. However, because the overall population of China is large, even a small portion of the population is considerable enough in absolute terms to bring about influence at the domestic and global level.

In China, the production, import and circulation of cultural products is strictly controlled by the party-state. Although I adopt the term “popular culture” in my research, it does not mean that Japanese and Korean popular culture has always been accepted in China by the public and state. Rather, it could be deviant, subversive and maintain a semi-underground or underground status during its development.

Studies on foreign popular culture in China by Chinese scholars

It is typical for Chinese scholars who adhere to the Frankfurt School to apply the concepts of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin, 1936), cultural industry (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947) and false consciousness (Gramsci, 1992, 2006) to studies on popular culture effects among Chinese youth in the reform era. The basic theme of these studies is to criticise popular culture as consumerism, which nurtures a “commodity audience” and strengthens Western cultural hegemony (Fang, 1998, Zhang, 2009, Xiao and Deng, 2006,Wang, 2009).

Korean fashion, such as dyeing one’s hair yellow, is also considered a post-colonial mentality among East Asian youth (Tian and Yang, 2003). The Hallyu fandom culture is understood as materialism and escapism spreading in the Chinese youth (Wen, 2008b). As for studies on Japanese anime and manga in China, because the Chinese government began to boost the domestic dongman⁷ industry after 2005, studies have mainly been concentrated on market and consumer statistics. The history and advantage of Japanese anime and manga is introduced as a reference for consumer research. Among these researches, Chen and Song investigated the influence of Japanese anime and manga on the values, morality and attitudes of Chinese fans towards Japan (Chen and Song, 2009). Hui’s (2010) study on the consumption of Japanese dramas by college students in Beijing and Shanghai also discussed how the content of the dramas could influence audience values and attitudes towards Japan. In sum, studies on Japanese cultural product dissemination and consumption in China are more likely to serve policy-making purposes.

As Tao pointed out, among the Western theories introduced to China in the 1980s, concepts such as “mechanical reproduction”, “mass culture” and “false consciousness” quickly became popular among Chinese scholars (Jin, 2004; Tao, 2002). Chinese scholars have quoted these theories to criticise the rise of consumerism and Western cultural products in China during the reform era (Tao, 2002). An obvious problem in critical studies is that they mistakenly apply critical theory, which developed as a resistance against Nazism, to criticise popular culture in contemporary China – a country with an authoritarian regime still exerting ideological control over the culture (Tao, 2002); in this manner, popular culture as resistance against ideological control is neglected and, as a result, when Chinese scholars criticise popular culture as superficially enchanting the masses, the critical theory they apply paradoxically serves to maintain the hegemony of existing socialist ideology to suppress the foreign, especially Western popular culture.

In the past decades, British cultural studies and cultural imperialism have enriched the studies of culture in China. Huang made a careful literature review of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies’s (CCCS) cultural studies on subculture (2003). The studies of CCCS responded to the Frankfurt School in two ways. First, it takes culture as a description of a particular way of life, which means the expression of meanings and values in institutions and ordinary behavior (Williams, 1994, P48). Where the Frankfurt School takes culture as a selection of canonised texts and legitimised practices, the British scholars treat culture as all the ways in which people make sense of their situation and express these understandings (Murdock, 2010, p. 284). Where the Frankfurt School views the working-class as dominated by cultural hegemony of the ruling class, the British studies focus on the style produced by working-class youth as resistance to the class value system. People are not a passive and helpless mass (Fiske, 1994, p. 504).

After 2000, in China, studies on active audiences increased. Studies on the dissemination of American dramas have become the most fruitful area in studies on foreign popular culture in recent years. Discussions focused on the role of fan-sub groups,⁸ the interpretation of content by active fans and fan backgrounds (Han, 2009; Ouyang, 2010; Zhou, 2011; Li, 2010). Deng’s study on the online community of Chinese fans of American dramas discussed how fans actively built their identities and considered watching American dramas disseminated through download and piracy as a resistance to Chinese censorship (Deng, 2009).

Another academic trend in Chinese cultural studies is the discussion of cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism refers to the transmission of certain products, fashions and styles from dominant markets to dependent markets that lead to the creation of particular patterns of demand and consumption that are underpinned by the values of their dominant origin. In this way, local cultures in developing countries become dominated and, in varying degrees, invaded, displaced and challenged by foreign cultures (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery and Fiske, 1994, p. 74). After Said’s works were introduced to China, studies on cultural imperialism increased. Yang’s and Ouyang’s study of American dramas have unveiled the universal values in dramas that attracted elite Chinese fans, who are well-educated and open to the liberalisation. At the same time, however, the inequality of global trade in the cultural market enables Western states to expand their soft power through cultural products disseminated on the internet (Yang, 2011; Ouyang, 2010).

Ultimately, these studies fail to explain two issues. First, they claim that Western nations aim to expand their soft power through cultural products, but the fact is that the Chinese government has suppressed its dissemination effectively and the main route for dissemination is piracy and downloading, which are voluntarily done by fans. In this case, it is not plausible that Western nations intentionally promote their values through using inequality in the global market and trade relationships to sell their dramas. These studies neglect the fact that cultural policy, international politics and diplomatic relationships also have an impact on the market. A global cultural market completely dominated by Western nations that are infinitely expanding does not exist. One of the criticisms of the cultural imperialism model is that it assumes a top-down system that disseminates homogenous Western values to a foreign market. Crane (2002) proposed the “cultural policy strategies” model to counter this model, which emphasises that each nation-state could facilitate or restrict the flow of cultural dissemination through different strategies (p. 17). I adopt this model to analyse the complex cultural strategies in East Asia and I also look at other structural restrictions on cultural flow, including diplomatic relationships.

Second, in these studies, the fans are seen as passive and indoctrinated by Western values. They are an active audience when they use Western universal values to resist socialist ideology and passive audiences that have been indoctrinated by the party-state’s patriotism to criticise Western ideology at the same time. The authors fail to explain this contradiction. For example, Deng (2009) noticed American dramas attracted Chinese fans to criticise the “dark sides” of the government, regime and legal system, which could not be presented in most Chinese dramas, but Chinese fans are especially sensitive to the distorted image of China in American dramas. The dramas criticising Chinese human rights repel fans and tend to be boycotted by fan-sub groups.

Deng (2009) explained that American drama appears as a strong external group that aroused a strong internal group identity of belonging to a nation. Her explanation simplifies the nationalistic discourse of fans. The reception of drama content is not the only source to construct nationalistic sentiments. Patriotic education, propaganda and nationalistic discourse produced by fans, historical narratives, universal values, life experience and so on could also be resources to construct nationalism specifically spread within fandom.

Studies on foreign popular culture in China by overseas scholars

Compared to Chinese scholars, overseas scholars, including those in Hong Kong and Taiwan, are more willing to view popular culture and fandom in China as a potential force for resistance to and negotiation with the ruling ideology (Fung, 2009, p. 286). The desire for advertised foreign brands, lifestyles and popular culture is seen as empowering the Chinese people against coercive ideological control.

Consumerism and foreign popular culture as enlightenment and empowerment

One example is a study done on rising consumerism in China. Youth in the 1980s have been described as “admiring everything foreign” and indulging in “rising consumerism”. The tensions between the image of the ideal socialist youth and actual youth culture reflected an “ideological crisis” among the youth (Moore, 2005). The advertising and marketing of foreign consumer goods is seen as creating a new hunger for a better life that then indirectly influences the demand for democracy in the population (Latham, Thompson and Klein, 2006). The commercial freedom to consume is an empowering experience and enlarges the space for social possibilities (Davis, 2005). These studies on consumerism usually focused on how the act of consuming and marketing could create deviations, such as new identities, social spheres or groups (Wang, 2005) that are an alternative to the coercive and strong ideological control of pre-reform China.

The acceptance of a foreign cultural context is understood as a process of enlightenment for the Chinese in order to resist state propaganda and socialism. These studies have generally focused on cohort groups such as “generation”. For example, the use of the word “cool” from Western culture created the “Ku generation” of “millennial youth” whose individualism changed the collective values of previous generations growing up before the economic liberalisation (Moore, 2005). De Kloet’s (2005) study of the circulation of Dakou CDs⁹ in China understands this consumption by the young, urban generation as making their own space amidst an increasingly commercialised and globalised society. Wang (2005), using the consumption of cellphones and music among the single-child generation, argues that commitment to a given subcultural identity no longer exists in contemporary consumer society as cellphone designs shift from one to another and music tastes are no longer a sustained marker for social and personal identity.

The context of these studies is China’s rapid economic growth and the observed separation of society from state since the 1990s. These studies examine the relatively affluent urban families and youth consumption of Western cultural products in an increasingly pluralistic society. This approach is in sharp contrast with the Chinese studies that work under a Marxist tradition and criticise the hegemony of Western culture. However, both critical and empowerment approaches assume that the Chinese people embrace Western cultural products unconditionally and see the West as a center of unidirectional cultural export. But the situation appears more complex than that and studies on the diffusion of Japanese and Korean popular culture in East Asia could help to point out issues with the current understanding of foreign cultural consumption in China.

Studies on the influence of Japanese and Korean popular culture on Asian regions dominated by ethnic Chinese

Although most foreign studies that discuss the globalisation of Japanese and Korean popular culture do not specify their impact on mainland China, they do present several challenges to studies on the dissemination of foreign popular culture in China. These challenges include the center-periphery flow of culture in globalisation, the role of the state in the soft-power contest, the limits of Western cultural products, and the dissemination of culture through piracy.

First, in the globalisation process, the flow of culture cannot be said to spread unidirectionally from a center to the periphery. Cultural flow does not necessarily follow the logic of international political-economic inequality. Most studies on the popularity of Hallyu in East Asia and Western countries have noticed that this phenomenon has broken the dichotomy of power relations between center and periphery in globalisation theory. Hallyu’s popularity in Japan and Western countries, which are usually considered as the center of the regional and global political-economic systems, signifies multidirectional transnational cultural flows in which the previous peripheries begin to have a presence in the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Understanding popular culture in China
• 2 Cultural policy and cultural market in China
• 3 Methodology and research method
• 4 Japanese and Korean popular culture in China: The dissemination, reception and formation of fandom (before 2011)
• 5 Offline activities: Individual fans, fragmented groups and consumer interests
• 6 Patriotic education and alternative historical narratives
• 7 Gossip and tabloid news: Radicalised online anti-fan activities and self-patriotic education
• 8 Conclusion: Party-state, fandom and nationalism
• References
• Index