Candy was different from the girls Robert knew. She didn’t care about vampires or makeup, but she knew about the Faces of Death VHS tapes you couldn’t find in the library or at Blockbuster. She was a vegetarian and loved looking at the potted plants at Home Depot, dreaming of the day she would have a yard.| n+1
Jin Xing 金星 (literally, ‘golden star’, or ‘Venus’ in English) is a household name in mainland China. Since undergoing gender-affirmation surgery in 1994, she has established herself as a dancer, television personality, businesswoman, and, most prominently, transgender icon. From 2015 to 2017, The Jin Xing Show (金星秀) on Dragon Television (东方卫视) made her China’s first […] The post Only Two Genders? On Jin Xing’s Reaffirmation of Gender Binarism and Heteronormativ...| Made in China Journal
(Translated and introduced by Yahia MA) I first experienced Cui Zi’en’s work in mainland China in the early 2000s, when I was an undergraduate at a university in the country’s northwest and was becoming increasingly aware of my own sexuality. At that time, Cui was creating his queer-themed films and fiction, including Pseudo-Science Fiction Stories […]| Made in China Journal
One summer a few years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to attend an LGBTQ+ youth camp in a city in southern China, where I made many friends. After each day of classes, we hung out in the sweaty heat, chatting and laughing, discussing politics and society, and going to underground […] The post Queering the University: Student Activism and Heterotopia appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
In Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society (Stanford University Press, 2024), John Alekna explores how the rise of radio and the circulation of news transformed China’s political and social landscape. He shows how new technologies of communication created a Chinese ‘newsscape’ that linked distant regions, shaped how people understood […] The post Seeking News, Making China: A Conversation with John Alekna appeared first on Made in China J...| Made in China Journal
In 2009, a woman named Lou Jing, born to a Chinese mother and an African American father, went on a TV show in China and declared herself a proud and patriotic Chinese person (Leung 2015). Her remarks ignited a firestorm online as people debated whether a mixed-race person could be considered truly, properly Chinese. Supporters […] The post Flowing without Roots: The Identity Crisis of Foreigners’ Descendants in Mainland China appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
Three years after announcing their intent to construct a mega-dam along the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River as part of the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, Chinese officials gave their approval to proceed with the project on 25 December 2024. This was followed by a ground-breaking ceremony led by Premier Li Qiang on 19 July 2025. While key […]| Made in China Journal
My weapon is better My weapon is organic It is an organ, a pulse, a history| n+1
In 1947, the acclaimed Chinese writer and linguist Lin Yutang stunned the world with an invention: the first Chinese-language typewriter with a keyboard. Lin poured years of effort and his life’s savings into the design, which he named MingKwai, ‘clear and fast’. Despite its celebrity and Lin’s high hopes, the MingKwai never went into production, […] The post Episode 3 | Typing Chinese appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
In January 2025, I was chatting online with a few friends about the ongoing controversy surrounding the construction of a factory for Chinese carmaker BYD in Brazil, which had just come under scrutiny after the country’s Public Labour Prosecution Office accused it of ‘slavery’, following an investigation into the working conditions of Chinese labourers at […] The post In Praise of Hardship, or the Labour-Schooling Poetics of Chinese Youth appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
‘I am a pig’—these are the words that interrupt Chu Yuxun as she peacefully writes her first impressions of the new school. Looking up, she sees a male student in a basketball jersey stammering the humiliating sentence before bolting away. Three more male students follow in quick succession. Fed up with these peculiar encounters, Yuxun […]| Made in China Journal
The first round is often perversely the most fun. The heaviness of expectations and the levity of possibility warp spacetime, making every win feel both satisfying and insufficient, like candy, and every loss feel both nauseating and not quite dread-inducing, also like candy.| n+1
Imagine this scenario: you ordered takeout during lunch rush hour, but the delivery bros were overbooked, so a drone dropped from the sky to deliver your meal; on your commute, while ground traffic was jammed, flying cars allowed you to take an ‘air taxi’ to work … These scenes seemingly out of science fiction movies […]| Made in China Journal
19 July 2025, Nyingchi, Tibet. Against a bold red backdrop with snow-capped mountains looming in the distance, China’s Premier Li Qiang—flanked on both sides by four senior officials and leaders of major state-owned enterprises—formally announced the ground breaking on the Lower Yarlung Tsangpo Hydropower Project (LYT project). Below the stage, rows of officials and engineers […]| Made in China Journal
What was I trying to figure out? Beginnings, I think—what a beginning is, what one must do in order to start.| n+1
This essay tells stories of gender and sexually nonconforming rural-to-urban migrant workers in two urban villages in Southern China. Based on an ethnography of their community-making through ‘cruising’—a pratice of seeking non-heterosexual sexual encounters in semi-public spaces—I argue that ‘queer life’ in China is divided by a spatialised structure of class. While LGBTQ+ individuals who are urban middle-class residents have gained visibility in tier one and tier two cities, mig...| Made in China Journal
You can tell men’s cycling isn’t a serious sport because the “Big Six” athletes come from four small nations—Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Slovenia—with a combined population of 38 million.| n+1
My students didn’t volunteer much about the intervening six weeks, except that they had been grateful for all the reading. Time in prison is always slow, counting down, and for the prisoners, the strike was primarily experienced as an excruciating further slowdown.| n+1
I think of the people I met on canvasses. The older Polish woman in Greenpoint who took a thick stack of Zohran flyers to give out to all her friends. The hijabi Indian American mother and daughter who drove in from Long Island to knock doors for Zohran so that, the mother said, life could be as affordable for others as it was when she was growing up in the Bronx. A mobility-impaired man in Bay Ridge who said he rarely got visitors and invited me into his apartment, where he talked about his ...| n+1
The Trump Administration’s reliance on ICE underscores a transformation toward a domestic politics of domination that mirrors its lawlessness abroad. Just as Trump felt no obligation toward any kind of established diplomatic processes before invading Iran, he has positioned himself entirely against the courts, attacking the bedrock concepts of judicial review and due process as interfering with the project of mass deportation.| n+1
This essay presents a case study of the widely known—and at times controversial—artist Ge Yulu and his interventionist practice. Through an account of Ge’s life and career, including his early years as a grassroots migrant artist navigating precarity in Beijing, the essay explores how radical artistic gestures are gradually tempered, and often reshaped into more palatable forms that conform to institutional aesthetics. At the same time, it shows how a persistent critical impulse—despi...| Made in China Journal
THE WORLD The first world was suffering, suffering. The second world was liberation. Liberation! But why, said the first world, does it look so much like suffering? Like suffering only once, the second world said—like suffering plus change.| n+1
Co-living residents highlight the present, exploration, and fluidity as central to their ‘experience orientation’, viewing these traits as essential to the uniqueness of their life. Interactions within co-living spaces tend to emphasise the present. Upon leaving, the roommate relationship typically concludes, with any further developments being largely serendipitous and not a primary focus during the […]| Made in China Journal
It began as an innocuous inquiry on Facebook. Nelson Felix, a resident of New York State, posted in the group ‘What’s My Typewriter Worth?’ about a curious find he made while clearing out the basement of his wife’s grandfather. He shared a few photos. The keys on the typewriter are all in Chinese, Felix noted, […]| Made in China Journal
In late March 2022, Shanghai imposed its strictest lockdowns since the Covid-19 outbreak two years earlier. Amid China’s stringent zero-Covid policy and crackdown on personal freedoms, internet searches for ‘conditions for immigrating to Canada’ surged, drawing the attention of authorities. To circumvent censorship on emigration-related searches, Chinese netizens adopted the code word run (润), whose […]| Made in China Journal
After Mahmoud was abducted by plainclothes ICE agents from the lobby of his Columbia-owned apartment building on Saturday, March 8, returning from an iftar with his eight-month pregnant wife, for about twenty-four hours where he was untraceable. Noor, his wife, had gone to Elizabeth, New Jersey, the closest detention facility to Manhattan, and was told he was no longer there. Eventually news trickled in that he had been whisked away to faraway Jena, Louisiana, to the infamous LaSalle detentio...| n+1
An industrial policy renaissance, trade controls, and geopolitical challenges are further complicating the permanent features of the current global (dis)order that is already facing a polycrisis: economic stagnation, climate crisis, and interstate war. The era of neoliberal globalisation—often seen as being synonymous with the Washington Consensus—that has long been a central feature of the international […]| Made in China Journal
The homies call it mobbin’. Mom shuttles us to and from Walmart, Taco Bell, Circle K, Blockbuster, the mall, while Sisqó—who previously lived in an abandoned car—rides shotgun in our silver minivan and slaps 2Pac and Biggie and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony songs for us to rap to and mariachi songs for us to yelp to.| n+1
Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966–97 (Manchester University Press, 2023) examines state–society relations in one of the United Kingdom’s last strategically important colonial dependencies, Hong Kong. Using underexploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in […]| Made in China Journal
This essay re-examines the Great Translation Movement (GTM) as an activist-journalistic initiative that challenges the authority of the Chinese Party-State by exposing its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Highlighting a problematic aspect of the GTM, it calls into question its oversimplified portrayal of the Chinese people, as it perpetuates national character discourse by attributing societal issues to perceived inherent traits of the populace rather than holding the regime to acc...| Made in China Journal
The Prince Claus Fund is a Netherlands-based independent organisation dedicated to the advancement of culture and development, particularly in places where culture is under pressure. Every two years, it gives out six Impact Awards to outstanding cultural practitioners and artists worldwide. One of the 2024 laureates was Chinese poet and fiction writer Mu Cao (墓草), […]| Made in China Journal
This essay presents a historical analysis of the evolving relationship between Chinese news media and the feminist movement over the past three decades. It investigates how Chinese feminists have strategically utilised media platforms to advance their causes and examines the influence of media system transformations on the paradigms of feminist activism. The article argues that young women, empowered and inspired by feminist activism, have emerged as a critical force in sustaining the resilie...| Made in China Journal
In recent years, thanks to the popularity of digital platforms, an increasing number of female-led disabled persons’ organisations (DPOs) focusing on disability inclusion has emerged in mainland China. This growth marks a welcome change from the traditional male dominance of such organisations. While multiple definitions of DPOs exist, in this essay, we view DPOs as […]| Made in China Journal
Decenas de millones de trabajadores quieren un sindicato. La encuesta nacional más reciente, de 2017, concluyó que casi la mitad de todos los trabajadores no sindicalizados en Estados Unidos se afiliarían a uno si pudieran.| n+1
Amid Europe’s decoupling and de-risking strategies, escalating tensions with the United States, and competition with India for leadership in the Global South, China has intensified its efforts to strengthen relations with the developing world, particularly with Africa. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China’s ambitions in Africa are not only to become a dominant financial power, but […]| Made in China Journal
This essay maps the evolving landscape of quality journalism in China, exploring where reliable information thrives under increasing restrictions. Analysing the roles of state-owned institutional media alongside diverse, independent voices—including professional content creators, citizen journalists, and those working transnationally—it demonstrates how these actors operate both within and beyond established media structures. The essay also discusses the challenges posed by platform domin...| Made in China Journal
In authoritarian systems, the media is often seen as a tool of propaganda, designed to suppress dissent and reinforce state control. While this perception captures a significant aspect of such regimes, it oversimplifies the dynamic ways in which the media functions in these contexts. In China, local television news, particularly the genre known as minsheng […]| Made in China Journal
You can almost hear the chattering class’s chattering teeth as they balance the need to generate clicks with their sanctimonious shock at the public’s hatred for Brian Thompson, the company he ran, and the industry he represents. Mangione (allegedly) took a straight shot at capital, and now popular ire is being directed at CEOs rather than Congress, the free market rather than the immiserating state. This won’t do.| n+1
About 20 minutes into our conversation, Jiao paused as though gathering her thoughts. ‘Actually, the timing of this interview is coincidental,’ she said, ‘I’m planning to resign this week and blog full-time.’ She quickly added: ‘But this is my choice. Compared with my current job, I have more freedom as a mum blogger on Xiaohongshu.’ […]| Made in China Journal
Today, the war on terror is widely accepted as a military and geopolitical failure. But it is still not fully understood as a massive intellectual and moral fiasco: an attempt by the Western media as well as the political class to forge reality itself, which failed catastrophically, but not without embedding cruelty and mendacity deep and enduringly in public life. And partly because this disaster was unacknowledged—editors and writers pushing false narratives, and cheerleading large-scale ...| n+1
Just as China emerged as a revolutionary trope in interwar Black internationalist imaginaries, Shanghai-based journals started to introduce African American writing to Chinese readers. This essay traces early translations of Black literature in Republican-era China and unpacks the parallactic visions as the Harlem Renaissance travelled across the Pacific. Literary Blackness built on and expanded the […]| Made in China Journal
On 14 June 2024, the verdict in the case of Chinese feminist activist and independent journalist Huang Xueqin and labour activist Wang Jianbing (hereinafter referred to as the ‘XueBing case’) was finally announced. Both had been accused of ‘inciting subversion of state power’. After nearly 1,000 days of arbitrary detention, Huang was sentenced to five […]| Made in China Journal
Under Xi Jinping, China’s policies towards minorities have taken an aggressively assimilationist turn. But even before the Xi era, for many of the ethnic minorities of China’s borderlands, the early twenty-first century was a time of social upheaval that generated profound anxieties about culture loss. The ‘Open Up the West’ (西部大开发) development campaign, launched in […]| Made in China Journal
In the summer of 2023, the British Museum hosted a major exhibition titled ‘China’s Hidden Century’ (British Museum 2023). This ambitious display aimed to present the political, economic, and social transformations of China under the late Qing Dynasty in the nineteenth century. On a microlevel, it aspired to show the creativity, diversity, and resilience of […]| Made in China Journal
The debate’s enforced vacuity made little room for sustained discussions of policy—much less for the relationship between policy and daily life. Biden tried where he could, but he didn’t mention his transformative NLRB or FTC appointments, and he was in no position to force a conversation about the child care tax credit or reshoring manufacturing jobs on anything like his own terms, whatever those might have been.| n+1
I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom. —bell hooks (2014: 12) All kinds of contraband items were smuggled into the Alabama prisons where I worked as an educator and administrative assistant from June 2022 to January 2024 through […]| Made in China Journal
As the ascendant far right attempts to assert its hegemony, it has identified universities and academics as important obstacles to its success. In this, the enemies of academic freedom and scholarly inquiry are correct. But it is not enough only to defend the institution from the intensifying siege: our divisions are magnified in defensive struggles, and the terms of debate, such as they are, are set by those who’d burn the libraries down if they could. It is only by going on the attack, an...| n+1
The story begins with water. ‘How do we make sure that that spigot remains open and free?’ an audience member asked during a panel discussion on scientific collaboration between the United States and China. He pointed out that the ‘very, very best students’ recruited from around the world are the ‘secret sauce’ that makes the […]| Made in China Journal
It is now crystal clear to me that we must pivot our strategy and get on offense. We need to articulate and fight for what we want the university to be, and we need to create targeted campaigns to achieve it.| n+1
The movement in Atlanta is not exceptional for either its militancy or its broad-based community organizing. It is exceptional for fusing these elements in the midst of a relatively depoliticized period of “restoration,” and for doing so in a durable way.| n+1
At a time when the United States is backing Israel’s wanton destruction of the besieged Gaza Strip, in what some scholars have called a “textbook case of genocide,” principled dissent is of paramount importance.| n+1
All social media both feeds and feeds on narcissism, but Twitter’s capacity to mirror the world and its users’ neuroses in discrete verbal and visual units, at least in certain corners of the site, elevates self-regard to a formal principle. We compulsively iterate ourselves as memes, set pieces, and DIY allegorical photos, as if hoping we’ll eventually perfect the reflection.| n+1
