K-Pop vs. the Communist Party

What’s behind Beijing’s crackdown on celebrity fan culture and online gaming? Ian Johnson on the Communist Party’s new push to enforce traditionalist values.” “K-pop has very active fan clubs. The government has been skeptical of them for a while. Partly it had to do with geopolitical issues around South Korea and various missile-defense systems, but now they’re being targeted because they’re considered not to be manly enough.” Chinese Idols What’s behind Beijing’s crackdown on celebrity fan culture and online gaming? Ian Johnson on the Communist Party’s new push to enforce traditionalist values. Over the past few months, an expanding program of repression by the Chinese government has, [according to The Washington Post]( “spared almost no sector.” In recent weeks, Beijing announced a series of measures intended to shape youth culture in China according to what the state considers healthy and moral, even by banning the publication of lists [ranking celebrities by popularity]( [regulating the “chaos” of celebrity fan clubs]( and prohibiting minors from playing online video games outside of [three specific hours most weeks](. The social-media platform Weibo [suspended 21 K-pop fan accounts]( over what it called “irrational star-chasing behavior.” The government also banned “[sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics]( on television in an effort to enforce traditional gender norms. What’s going on? Ian Johnson is a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. For Johnson, the Chinese government’s actions illustrate the Communist Party’s growing willingness under President Xi Jinping to enforce a narrow view of traditional Chinese culture and micromanage the personal lives of the Chinese people. Johnson sees Xi’s aggressiveness on these issues as a departure from the Communist Party norm in the decades since the Cultural Revolution ended in the late 1970s, which granted citizens a fair amount of autonomy in their private lives so long as they didn’t agitate against the party politically. It now sees pushing for traditionalism as a means of legitimizing itself with the Chinese people, and the fan frenzy around certain entertainers may be threatening that effort by normalizing non-traditional identities, even in subtle ways, in the minds of young people. With online gaming, Johnson acknowledges a legitimate concern about younger people spending too much time on their screens—and the challenge that poses to preserving traditional Chinese culture—but, he says, the government’s restrictions are a “typically heavy-handed” solution that may end up being largely ignored. Though Johnson believes these cultural crackdowns will have an effect, he notes that there’s a long history of Chinese people successfully skirting the government’s policies and disobeying its pronouncements over time: “There’s this cliche in China that the government has its policies and the grassroots has its resistance.” ——— Graham Vyse: What is fan culture like in China today? How would you describe the phenomenon the government is going after? Ian Johnson: There’s a huge interest in popular culture in China, especially in K-pop—Korean pop music groups. That’s led to many fan clubs, so there’s a pretty vibrant scene among young Chinese people. Vyse: Fan culture is obviously a mainstream phenomenon in the U.S. and the West more broadly, from sports rivalries to festivals like Comic-Con to people following celebrities and online “influencers.” How does Chinese fan culture compare to that? Johnson: It tends to be more domestically focused—on stars and personalities who are probably not as well known in the West but quite popular in China. That’s not always the case, as there’s a huge interest in European football and the NBA, but music, for instance, tends to be more focused on Chinese groups. More from Ian Johnson at The Signal: “You can see fan culture having somewhat altered an historically overwhelming heterosexual bias—the macho thing—in mainstream Chinese culture. K-pop groups, for example, tend to be a little more androgynous. Some of the stars tend to have a little more, let’s say, ambiguous sexuality. That can change society for young people and perhaps make certain things seem more acceptable than they might otherwise be in what’s still a fairly traditional society. Pop culture can change things on a subliminal level, but it’s not like there are protest singers challenging the government or anything overt like that, which wouldn’t be tolerated.” “This is an effort by the state to impose a narrow view of traditional Chinese culture. I say “narrow,” because traditional China was actually much more tolerant in some ways. There were many examples of gay men and women who found a way to exist and even thrive in those societies. It wasn’t a utopia in the past, but it wasn’t as intrusive as it can be today.” “If you take everything the Chinese government says at face value, you’ll assume the government is absolutely powerful. But when you’re actually in China, you see the government makes these pronouncements and has a crackdown for six months and then—I don’t want to say everything goes back to the way it was before, but it isn’t quite as black and white as it often seems by just looking at the government announcements. I don’t want to blithely dismiss the current pattern of repression as just propaganda. It’s having an effect and hurting people. But there’s also grassroots resistance, and it’s not at all certain the government will succeed in its efforts. We shouldn’t accept the government’s claim that they’re implementing all of this and people are following it.” ——— Plain Folks How can the U.S. middle class be shrinking if almost everyone thinks they’re middle class? Musa al-Gharbi on why a lack of social and economic awareness helps drive inequality in America. (Originally published 2021 | 05.27) “Joe Biden is running for president to rebuild the middle class—and this time make sure everyone comes along.” So [pledged]( the current president of the United States during his election campaign. To address “middle class” Americans is, in effect, to speak to the largest possible audience, as many both above and below the [middle-income threshold]( understand themselves as belonging to it. Promoting the middle class might be a way of reducing stark divides between rich and poor or even just increasing social stability. But the term itself is so contested, and so subjective, that it can sometimes have the ring of empty political jargon. What is middle class in America today? [Musa al-Gharbi]( is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University and the author of the [forthcoming book]( We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality, and the Rise of a New Elite. Al-Gharbi says that in America, rich and poor alike tend to self-define as middle class because the term suggests that one is a regular, hardworking person. There’s a social danger in this tendency, he thinks, particularly in wealthy people not understanding or acknowledging themselves to be wealthy. When the rich consider themselves as middle class, often focusing on overstated distinctions between them and the super-rich, they reinforce a mindset that they belong to an aspirational rather than a privileged class—and ultimately take less social responsibility for the plight of the disadvantaged. While rich people in predominantly liberal areas often view themselves as proponents of equality, Al-Gharbi says, their priorities tend to be reliably out of touch with the concerns of those who have less than they do. ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new, independent digital publication exploring vital questions in democratic life and the human world—and sustained entirely by readers like you. To support The Signal and for full access: We recently resolved a broken-link issue with our opt-out function. If you’ve received this in error, our apologies—you can immediately unsubscribe below. Thank you. © 2021 The Signal The Signal | 717 N St. NW, Ste. One, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email