As China’s economy struggles in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people have been leaving cities and returning to the countryside. In Southeast Guizhou Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, the CunBA (村BA), or Village Basketball Association, has offered some respite from the economic gloom. Teams compete in front of raucous crowds for prizes such […]| Made in China Journal
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
Radicalness in Suspension: From ‘Ge Yu Lu’ to Ge Yulu| Made in China Journal
City in the Sky: Drones, Shenzhen, and the ‘Low-Altitude Economy’| Made in China Journal
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 […] The post City in the Sky: Drones, Shenzhen, and the ‘Low-Altitude Economy’ appeared first on Made in China Journal.| 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 […] The post Infrastructure and State-Building: China’s Ambitions for the Lower Yarlung Tsangpo Project appe...| Made in China Journal
This essay is written precisely so that it could be dismissed. —Paul Mann (1991: 141) Gary Zhexi Zhang (2021) first coined the term ‘Sinopessimism’ as a speculative counterpart to Afropessimism, imagining a future in which China becomes the object, rather than the subject, of global racialisation. While Zhang’s usage was primarily a thought experiment, […]| Made in China Journal
Troubling the Water| Made in China Journal
This Episode will be published on Wednesday, 30 July. Subscribe to our podcast, and stay tuned! For some in the West, being a journalist in China—especially one at a state media organisation—is seen as little more than parroting party propaganda. This caricature not only disregards the courage and dedication of many Chinese journalists but also […] The post Episode 2 | Being a Journalist in China appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
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
In Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La (University of Washington Press, 2025), Brendan Galipeau takes readers to the Sino-Tibetan border region rebranded as ‘Shangri-La’ by the Chinese Government to promote tourism. Drawing from his ethnographic research in the area, he shows how wine has transformed Tibetan landscapes and livelihoods. With grapes originally introduced to […]| Made in China Journal
For the inaugural episode of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with Jing Wang and Christian Sorace about the legacies of Covid-19, five years after the novel coronavirus upended all of our lives. At another moment of global fear and uncertainty, what lessons can we draw from those early days—and what questions still demand […] The post Episode 1 | Legacies of Covid-19 appeared first on Made in China Journal.| Made in China Journal
‘I have saved up 50,000 yuan, planning to buy a house in Hegang. I will budget 30,000–40,000 yuan for the house itself, and the remaining 10,000 for living supplies.’ This post went viral on the Chinese online forum Baidu Tieba in May 2019, attracting more than 10,000 comments and extensive journalistic coverage (Longtoulaoda 2019). In […]| Made in China Journal
Liuxue (‘Studying Abroad’): A Pathway to Sexual Freedom for China’s Gay Youth?| Made in China Journal
In the past decades, the Uyghurs in China have become known as an oppressed ethnic and religious minority in their homeland, today’s Xinjiang. Islam and Islamophobia are central to that story, but visitors to Xinjiang and students of Uyghur history know that there is another, lesser-known, Buddhist history and culture of the Uyghurs, which remain […]| Made in China Journal
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
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
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
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
This module offers some perspectives on the challenges of doing research in and on China these days, specifically the ways in which various authors have grappled with the ethical and epistemic dimensions of studying China. The module is composed of five clusters. In the first, we present discussions about broad approaches to the study of […]| Made in China Journal
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
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
A new Chinese government textbook for university students, An Introduction to the Community of the Zhonghua Race (中华民族共同体概论), promotes President Xi Jinping's vision for governing the country’s diverse population. This approach shifts away from celebrating cultural differences—what the anthropologist Susan McCarthy once termed ‘communist multiculturalism’—and towards a Han-dominant identity, a form of racial nationalism inspired by sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s con...| Made in China Journal
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
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
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