Discussion Survival and migration patterns of Chinese online media fandoms

Spoiler: ref

Zheng, Xiqing. 2019. "Survival and Migration Patterns of Chinese Online Media Fandoms." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 30. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1805

An interesting read.

Some highlights:

[1.1] Being a fan signifies two different cultural identities and practices in the current Chinese cultural environment. Voluntarily engaging in the celebrity economy and star system, actively purchasing everything related to the celebrities, and voluntarily supporting and publicizing beloved celebrity and media products are not only tolerated but welcomed by the industry, and sometimes even the government. However, if fans commits their time to writing fan fiction, creating fan art, and editing fan videos—that is, if they engage in secondary creations that do not generate visible revenue for either the industry or the government—such fans will too often be ignored, marginalized, and erased. Here I discuss this second group of fans, the ones whose interest and pleasure lies in producing and consuming fan works that mainly circulate inside the fan community. Although this group of fans in China is not necessarily identical with media fans in the English-speaking world, I nonetheless refer to them as media fans who work inside Chinese online media fandoms.
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[2.4] Lofter, a lightblogging system operated by NetEase, which originally targeted the community of photography fans and artists (including but not limited to fan artists), has gradually developed into the major publishing and sharing platform in Chinese fan fiction writing communities since its establishment in 2011. The rise of Lofter as a platform that permits exchange of fan fiction is the direct result of a major online censorship campaign that targeted pornographic topics in 2014, thus driving fan users to Lofter as they sought a new forum. Two major venues of Chinese fan fiction publication platform forum websites in the previous decade, Baidu Tieba and Jinjiang Literature, both promptly gave into political coercion and moved to shut down fan fiction publication forums without notice in about May 2014—likely also a result of fan fiction's being probably the least lucrative of the online communities that depend on commercial websites. The fan fiction section of Jinjiang Literature was made available again after about six months, but the censored stories were never recovered. Our respondents also reported that many Baidu Tieba forums dedicated to male-male couples were never again available.
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[3.1] In the survey, respondents identified three significant waves of censorship campaigns. The first lasted from 2007 to 2008, the second lasted from 2014 to 2015, and the third started in about 2018 and at the time of writing was still in progress. People's anxiety is most acute when campaigns that target pornographic content and illegal publications result in arrests of online danmei (that is, homosexual and homoerotic writings created and consumed by women) writers; such cases have occurred at least three times.

[3.2] The first censorship campaign, although the least intense, resulted in the closure of various fan fiction forums and websites. This campaign started an online carnival in which netizens actively expressed their discontent through memes that alluded to vulgarity, pornography, and other censored or forbidden words. For instance, the "grass mud horse" meme has become a symbol of popular resistance online; the sounds are similar to the curse "fuck your mother" in Chinese (figure 2). This meme has been discussed both in mass media and in scholarly research (Meng 2011). However, such lighthearted mockery and fun were no longer possible during the next two waves of censorship.

[3.3] The second wave of online censorship campaign was much larger in scale. The internet population in China had increased from 162 million to 648 million from 2007 to 2014, so the population affected by this campaign also significantly increased (China Internet Network Information Center 2014). This 2014 censorship campaign is widely known in Chinese as Jingwang Xingdong (internet cleansing movement). Started in April and ending six months later, this government campaign targeted online pornography. In the government's words, the campaign sought to remove illegal content made and communicated online, including illegal publications, pornographic content, and false media (Central Propaganda Department Service Center 2014).

[3.4] Censorship of pornographic content has always been a much-tolerated type of censorship in China. Danmei are among the easiest targets for moral judgments. Before then, Jinjiang Literature, the largest female-oriented literature website, had hosted an enormous and influential group of danmei writings. Danmei was put side by side with heterosexual romance (yanqing) on the website's front page, although it maintained its own channel. After the Jingwang Xingdong, however, Jinjiang Literature created a euphemism to substitute for the easily targeted term danmei: chun'ai, "pure love." As if to demonstrate their sincerity in siding with pure love, Jinjiang Literature further enforced a strict self-censorship system that forbade any sexual content, presented in a widely circulated principle: "No description of anything below the neck" (Guanchazhe 2014). It also started a reporting system that encourages readers to flag anything on the website that they find transgresses the current rules and policies (figure 3).

[3.5] However, the worst instance of censorship is that of the ongoing third wave. This censorship campaign relies on a large-scale, omnipresent reporting system. Many reports come from informants inside the community, especially antifans of a certain genre of writing, or even antifans of certain slash pairings. Using the power of governmental censorship to persecute people of a different fannish position has been a common practice since 2014, but it has reached new heights in the past year or so.
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[4.2] Chinese media fandoms have never had a website like AO3 that serves solely as an archive for fan fiction creations. In recent years, because of the extremely successful commercialization of nontransformative writings online, most websites dedicated to internet literature attempt to monetize the fiction posted to them. Fannish sites thus become exposed to outside attention that could lead to copyright enforcement, further driving fan fiction outside these sites. In addition, the more commercialized and mainstream the internet literature websites become, the more surveillance from the government they will attract.

[4.3] The government's control and censorship of online writings come in various forms and approaches, but as the respondents to our survey express, the one that affects fan fiction websites the most is the censorship of perceived pornography, which comes in waves of campaigns and movements. Like English-language fan fiction writing communities, Chinese-language ones migrate to places where their cultural products and practices are generally tolerated, but Chinese fans must move content much more often—and in a much more desperate and slapdash fashion. Metaphorically speaking, Chinese online fan communities are tenants. They never own a home; they have to obey whatever rules that the landlord decides on; and they have to move whenever the landlord tells them to. They also have to move to places where their communities are tolerated, even if the houses that the tenants inhabit are less suitable for their living and socializing.

 

Interesting read.
It makes sense that illegal content has to move frequently but they fact that is survives despite the frequent movement is incredible.
For English content we can easily find a way to bypass any censorship or bans so we don’t have the same problem. On the other hand Chinese fans have to be extremely dedicated to follow content around so diligently.

 

No one keeps a fujoshi from lewding whoever she wants. Not even the chinese goverment.

 

As long as there is a will and a way...