Copyright © Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Y. H. Fung 2017
The right of Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Y. H. Fung to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7917-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7918-1(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kloet, Jeroen de, author. | Fung, Anthony Y. H., author.
Title: Youth cultures in China / Jeroen de Kloet, Anthony Y. H. Fung.
Description: Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016016606 (print) | LCCN 2016018350 (ebook) | ISBN 9780745679174 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745679181 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781509512973 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509512980 (Epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Youth–China–Attitudes. | Youth–China–Social conditions–21st century. | Culture–21st century.
Classification: LCC HQ799.C55 K56 2016 (print) | LCC HQ799.C55 (ebook) | DDC 305.230951–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016606
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives PLC
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| 1894–1895 | First Sino-Japanese War |
| 1911 | Fall of the Qing Dynasty |
| 1912 | Republic of China established under Sun Yat-sen |
| 1927 | Split between Nationalists (KMT) and Communists (CCP); civil war begins |
| 1934–1935 | CCP under Mao Zedong evades KMT in Long March |
| December 1937 | Nanjing Massacre |
| 1937–1945 | Second Sino-Japanese War |
| 1945–1949 | Civil war between KMT and CCP resumes |
| October 1949 | KMT retreats to Taiwan; Mao founds People's Republic of China (PRC) |
| 1950–1953 | Korean War |
| 1953–1957 | First Five-Year Plan; PRC adopts Soviet-style economic planning |
| 1954 | First constitution of the PRC and first meeting of the National People's Congress |
| 1956–1957 | Hundred Flowers Movement, a brief period of open political debate |
| 1957 | Anti-Rightist Movement |
| 1958–1960 | Great Leap Forward, an effort to transform China through rapid industrialization and collectivization |
| March 1959 | Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa; Dalai Lama flees to India |
| 1959–1961 | Three Hard Years, widespread famine with tens of millions of deaths |
| 1960 | Sino-Soviet split |
| 1962 | Sino-Indian War |
| October 1964 | First PRC atomic bomb detonation |
| 1966–1976 | Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; Mao reasserts power |
| February 1972 | President Richard Nixon visits China; “Shanghai Communiqué” pledges to normalize US–China relations |
| September 1976 | Death of Mao Zedong |
| October 1976 | Ultra-leftist Gang of Four arrested and sentenced |
| December 1978 | Deng Xiaoping assumes power; launches Four Modernizations and economic reforms |
| 1978 | One child family planning policy introduced |
| 1979 | US and China establish formal diplomatic ties; Deng Xiaoping visits Washington |
| 1979 | PRC invades Vietnam |
| 1982 | Census reports PRC population at more than one billion |
| December 1984 | Margaret Thatcher co-signs Sino-British Joint Declaration agreeing to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 |
| 1989 | Tiananmen Square protests culminate in June 4 military crackdown |
| 1992 | Deng Xiaoping's Southern Inspection Tour re-energizes economic reforms |
| 1993–2002 | Jiang Zemin is President of PRC, continues economic growth agenda |
| 1997 | Transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China |
| 1999 | Transfer of sovereignty of Macau from Portugal to the People's Republic of China |
| November 2001 | WTO accepts China as member |
| 2002–2012 | Hu Jintao, General-Secretary of the CCP (and President of PRC from 2003) |
| 2002–2003 | SARS outbreak concentrated in PRC and Hong Kong |
| 2006 | PRC supplants US as largest CO2 emitter |
| August 2008 | Summer Olympic Games in Beijing |
| 2010 | Shanghai World Exposition |
| 2012 | Xi Jinping appointed General-Secretary of the CCP (and President of PRC from 2013) |
Writing a book together in different parts of the world is a quite bewildering experience. However odd it may sound, the authors first and foremost would like to thank one another for this unique cooperation and joint effort, one that cheerfully strengthened our friendship. Throughout the writing process, we received actual and emotional support from numerous people. We thank the young people who so kindly made time to talk to us, and the fans, artists, musicians, game designers, television producers, and other media producers, who shared their thoughts, opinions and cultural practices with us. They, and the works they produce, make us want to return to China time and again.
It requires more than just two people to write such a book, and we turned to many more friends for ideas and inspiration. For this, we thank Florence Graezer Bideau, Daisy Cheng, Carlos Cheung, Matthew Chew, Gladys Pak Lei Chong, José van Dijck, John Nguyet Erni, Feng Jiangzhou, Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, Jaap Kooijman, Eloe Kingma, Giselinde Kuipers, Stefan Landsberger, Jenny Lau, Song Hwee Lim, Christoph Lindner, Li Hao, Liu Jun, Lo Yin Shan, Sylvie Luk, Kevin May, Esther Peeren, Patricia Pisters, Thomas Poell, Boris Pun, Qin Liwen, Lena Scheen, Leonie Schmidt, Shum Si, Jan Teurlings, Brian Yeung, Frances Yeung, Zeng Guohua, Zhang Wuyi, Zhang Xiaoxiao, Zhi Tingrong, Zhou Xinping and Zuoxiao Zuzhou. Special thanks are given to Yiu Fai Chow for his encouragement and care. We also want to thank our family members for their support while we were occupied with fieldwork in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and Shenzhen. We also want to express our gratitude to Emma Longstaff and Jonathan Skerrett from Polity for their trust, support, and patience. Ian Tuttle was of invaluable help in language editing. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their supportive and critical comments and feedback. We are grateful to Shen Lihui, Zhang Xiaozhou, Wutiaoren, New Pants and Modernsky Entertainment Co. Ltd. for their permission to reprint lyrics. Iris Guan, Penn Ip, Pei Randi, and Irena Villaescusa helped a lot with data collection and archiving. Finally, we thank our students – BA, MA, and PhD – for their constant critical feedback, their questioning, and their curiosity.
This book uses multiple sources of data from different funded research projects, for which we are very grateful. For Anthony Fung, the funding source came from a research grant on gaming industries given by the Research Grant Council of HKSAR (Project no. 4001-SPPR-09) and a research grant about the comics industry from the Research Grant Council of HKSAR (RGC Ref no. CUHK14402914). Anthony Fung is also indebted to the support of his colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Journalism and Communication at Jinan University where he is a Chair Professor, and School of Arts and Communication at Beijing Normal University where he serves as professor under the Global Talents Scheme. For Jeroen de Kloet, funding came from a VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research on the cultural implications of the Beijing Olympics (NWO – Project no. 276-45-001), a Humanities in the European Research Area grant on single women in Delhi and Shanghai (12-HERA-JRP-CE-FP-586 SINGLE) and a consolidator grant from the European Research Council on creative cultures in China (ERC-2013-CoG 616882-ChinaCreative).