Futures of Learning

Due to the nature of China’s Internet development and because only recently have technologies like webcams, inexpensive video recorders, and software editing become widely available, new media production in China is a relatively new trend. For this reason, much of the information on user practices comes from the popular media, in particular Chinese blogs, video-sharing sites, and Internet forums where such media projects are circulated. When these either generate controversy or become a widespread phenomenon, as is sometimes the case, it is also possible to find news and commentaries in official media outlets, both Chinese and foreign.

The most common form of new media production in China is e’gao, a combination of the words “evil” and “to make fun of” that now signifies a multimedia expression that pokes fun at an original work (Jiao, 2007). The term has its roots in Japanese kuso, a subculture associated with both gaming and satire. In China, e’gao is closely linked to tech-savvy, digital youth and has become hugely popular: a search with the word in Chinese Google brings up over 12,000,000 hits. Over the past few years e’gao has become an umbrella term used to cover an array of practices including photo-shopping images, creating lip synching videos or parodies of famous films, and imitating celebrities in a humorous way. While some view e’gao as having no agenda or logic, others see in these types of productions small forms of protest against the cultural and political establishment, as a few examples below will illustrate.

Photo-shopping images and circulating them on the Internet is most closely associated with “Little Fatty” (Xiao Pang), a Shanghai teenager (real name Qian Zhijun) whose photo was snapped by someone during a training at a gas station and then uploaded to the Internet in 2003. His round face with his slightly hesitant sideways glance somehow captured the imagination of a slew of photo-shoppers, and his image was soon replacing the visage of everyone from the Mona Lisa to Jackie Chan to Johnny Depp, as in the image above (in English, see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-new-cultural-revolution-how-little-fatty-made-it-big-424469.html; in Chinese with images, see (http://www.gs.xinhuanet.com/jiaodianwt/2004-05/20/content_2160773.htm). Explanations for why Little Fatty’s face generated such a craze abound, but perhaps most interesting is how the phenomenon demonstrates a newfound means of creative expression and satire in China. It also reveals new channels for stardom and success: apparently as a result of his Internet fame Little Fatty garnered a movie deal with New Line Cinema, to star – most appropriately – in a film based on a popular online novel (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-07/03/content_908628.htm). 

Perhaps the most famous e’gao video production is Hu Ge’s “The Bloody Case Caused by a Steamed Bun,” (Yige Mantou Yinfa de Xue’an). The 20-minute film, widely available on YouTube and Chinese video-sharing sites such as Tudou, is a parody of Chen Kaige’s 2005 The Promise, one of the most expensive films ever made in China at 350 million yuan (US $4.2 million), and one that was largely panned by critics and the public alike. In contrast, Hu’s video cost virtually nothing and soon became a viral sensation. As noted by the Shanghai Daily (an official English publication) in an article titled, “Director Gets his Nose Properly Rubbed in it,” Hu’s film was not “just a victory of grassroots wisdom over a film guru’s mediocrity. It’s the hallmark of a new era in China, when small potatoes are free to satire public figures in a way that’s short of actual malice…. it has won the hearts of tens of millions of netizens, who share its author’s joy in undoing that pompous film” (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art_print/242736.htm). The short film gained even more notoriety when Chen Kaige decided to sue Hu Ge for copyright violation. When online forums exploded with commentary and support for Hu, the case was eventually dropped.

In the wake of Hu’s success, several other grassroots artists have gone viral, most notably the Backdorm Boys (Houshe Nansheng), two art students from Guangzhou whose lip-synching and face-making catapulted them first into fame as viral stars and now as celebrities with a multi-year contract. As Meng (forthcoming) states, e’gao is a significant form of cultural expression in China because as a decentralized form of communication, it challenges both “the established mechanisms of media production and distribution as well as the officially sanctioned norms of media content in China.” She further notes that its carnivalesque and iconoclastic attitude towards “mainstream” and “officialdom” are a means for ordinary Chinese to express criticism and dissatisfaction in a media environment that is heavily censored. Well aware of this side of the e’gao phenomenon, the Chinese government has taken steps to control its dissemination. For example, in 2007 the government declared that all music that was changed from its original form first had to be submitted for approval before being uploaded. In 2008, new regulations limited the broadcasting of videos to websites of state-controlled companies. How rigorously enforced these laws are is not entirely clear.

While most e’gao videos are only indirectly political, images containing visual mashups with political meanings have also become a trend. One example, shown below, is the “river crab wearing three watches,” which appeared in 2007 in the Chinese blogosphere. Because the current Chinese government has enacted a variety of policies and made numerous public announcements regarding the need to build a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), when blog or Internet forum posts containing “sensitive” material are deleted by censors or when a website is blocked, it is common for the one censored to say he or she has been “harmonized.” As MacKinnon (2007) notes, the river crab meme emerged as a play on the Chinese words for “harmony” and “river crab,” both homophones that use different Chinese characters. Because the word for harmony or harmonious is so frequently used sarcastically online, it is often censored, and thus those who are discussing censorship use the characters for river crab. Because a well-known political blogger, Wang Xiaofeng, writes under the name Dai sange biao, or “wear three watches,” itself a play on the government policy of the “three represents,” eventually someone photo-shopped a crab wearing three watches:

Regardless of whether it has a political content and despite its popularity, e’gao, like many practices in the realm of Chinese cyberspace, has not necessarily been wholeheartedly embraced by the general public. Its irreverent humor and “nothing’s sacred” attitude have generated concerns that it degrades the common culture. As with online gaming, youth have been viewed as especially vulnerable to its corrupting influence. In addition, issues regarding copyright and intellectual property have also raised, as with the Hu Ge case. Nonetheless, the e’gao phenomenon shows no signs of abating and it and the range of production practices associated with it are likely to continue as a vehicle for creative expression and counter-hegemonic voices.

References

Jiao, W. (2007, January 22). E’gao: Popular art criticism or just plain evil?” China Daily.

MacKinnon, R. (2007, September 12). “Eating ‘river crab’ at the harmonious forum. Retrieved November 22, 2008, from http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/09/eating-river-cr.html.

Meng, B. (forthcoming). Regulating egao: Futile efforts of recentralization. In X. Zhang and Y. Zheng (eds.), China’s information and communications technology revolution: Social changes and state responses. New York: Routledge.

As mentioned in my introductory blog post on new media practices in China, the diffusion of the Internet in China has been extremely rapid, with the nation now having the largest number of Internet users on the planet, many of them with broadband access. According to CNNIC, as of June 2008 the top ten Internet activities in China were: listening to or downloading music, reading news, instant messaging, watching videos, using a search engine, emailing, gaming, using a blog or personal space, participating in a BBS or forum, and shopping (http://www.cinnic.com). Though Chinese use the Internet to read news, according to Guo (2007), much of this news is “infotainment” (e.g., about celebrities) and thus, as mentioned earlier, Chinese cyberspace is mainly perceived as an entertainment medium. Because of the rapid growth of the Internet in China and the particular socio-cultural-political context in which it has emerged, much has been written on the topic in both Chinese and English. A focus that seems to be more prevalent in the Chinese literature is gender differences in Internet usage (Bu, 2002; Yang, Wang, Chen & Wang, 2004; Zhou, 2005). In what follows I will not attempt an exhaustive overview of the Chinese Internet but instead will highlight practices that are especially interesting within the Chinese context. These include the use of blogs, BBS (online forums), and, increasingly, social networking sites. All of these virtual spaces provide an arena where ordinary citizens are able not only to enjoy themselves, but also to express opinions (particularly those that might not be sanctioned in real life), vent frustrations, engage in fantasy, and mobilize for collective action (within limits).

The first blog went online in China in 2002, and since then the number of bloggers has increased dramatically every year.  In 2006, there were 33 million blog spaces in China and in 2007 this number had risen to 40 million. By June 2008 the figure had increased to 107 million, with more than 42 percent of those online in China stating that they had their own blog (http://www.cinnic.com). According to CNNIC’s latest report, by the end of 2008 China had 162 million bloggers (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/1/13/92458.pdf). Popular blog hosting sites in China include Sina.com, Sohu.com, Bokee, Blogbus, and MSN Spaces. Of course, not all of China’s millions of blogs are active, nor are they political. Like their western counterparts, most are personal narratives written by young people, usually college students, about their daily lives (MacKinnon, 2008a). Still, one analysis of global blog-posting over a 24-hour period found the activity of Chinese netizens on MSN Spaces to be three times that of any other country (Hurst, cited in MacKinnon, 2008b). 

Though the Chinese blogosphere has become an important source of information outside official (state) media channels for many of China’s netizens, the most popular blogs in China are those written by celebrities, including movie stars, authors, athletes, and successful entrepreneurs (Nie & Li, 2006). During one point in 2006, the blog of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei even displaced Boing Boing as the number one visited blog in the world, according to Technorati. As elsewhere, celebrities in China capture the public’s attention because of their larger than life personas and the fantasies projected by their lifestyles. What first catapulted blogging into popular consciousness in China, however, was the sex diary of Mu Zimei (real name Li Li), a young woman in Guangzhou (in southern China) who stirred up controversy in 2003 when she began blogging about her active sex life (often quite explicitly), her multiple sex partners (some of whom she publicly named), and her rejection of conventional notions of romantic love. For example, she told one western reporter, “I do not oppose love, but I oppose loyalty. If love has to be based on loyalty, I will not choose love” (Yardley, 2003). As James Farrer (2007) notes, the “Mu Zimei phenomenon” brought the issue of sexual politics into the Internet age in China. After a notorious post about a one-night stand with a Chinese rock star, Mu Zimei’s blog became the number one blog in China for a time, gained substantial attention from numerous media outlets, and invoked admiration as well as scorn from journalists and netizens alike who wrote articles and posted comments in online forums. Although her blog was eventually shut down, she was fired from her job, and her book was banned, she continues to make headlines through, for example, uploading podcasts of her sexual encounters. She has also gained the admiration of many young Chinese women and has inspired numerous imitators, the most famous being Furong Jiejie (Sister Hibiscus) and Liumang Yan (Hooligan Yan). Archived versions of her blog are available online (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wenxue.com/T3/?q=blog/353), and she even has her own entry in Wikipedia’s English version (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzi_Mei).

Of course, China does have its share of bloggers who focus on social or political issues rather than pleasure and entertainment. The degree of freedom they have to address sensitive political topics (anything from corruption to individual rights) seems to ebb and flow with the political winds of Beijing. While many noticed a somewhat relaxed atmosphere in the period leading up to and during the Olympics, the current crackdown on websites deemed vulgar or pornographic seems motivated as much by a desire to limit social and political commentary as it does to clean up “harmful” sexual content. This seems particularly true in the wake of Charter 08 – a document posted on the Internet in December of last year calling for greater democratic and legal reforms, and thus far carrying over 8,000 signatures (for a link to a translation and articles about Charter 08 see http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/12/china-detains-prominent-dissident-ahead-of-human-rights-day/). This situation has led to a long-term debate about the potential of the Chinese Internet (the blogosphere as well as online forums, discussed below) to serve as a public sphere in China (Damm & Thomas, 2006; Esarey & Xiao, 2008Giese, 2006).

Although blogs are a relatively new addition to China’s Internet environment, online forums and “bulletin board systems” (or BBS) have been popular in China since the late 90s, and they continue to be a virtual space where people feel comparatively free to post news and opinions. This is largely due to the fact that their “free-for-all structure” allows for more anonymity even though many are more closely regulated now than they were in the past (MacKinnon, 2008b). Another reason is that there seem to be as many online forums as there are available topics. Online forums have given rise to various forms of mobilization related to everything from environmental protests to exposing government lies about tainted products. They have also been the arena for what many regard as distasteful forms of “Chinese cyber nationalism” (Xu, 2007). For example, China’s “angry youth” (fenqing) have used BBS and online forums to voice outrage, some of it quite violent, at what are perceived as affronts to China’s national sovereignty or dignity, as evidenced in the anti-Japan protests of 2005 (Liu, 2006) and most recently during the controversies surrounding the March 2008 uprising in Tibet and the 2008 Olympic Torch relay.

These sites have also become the location for a peculiar form of cyber vigilantism known as the “human flesh search engine” (ren rou sou suo), basically an Internet mob that tracks down real individuals for alleged crimes, posts their private information online, and heaps verbal abuse upon them (Liu, 2008). The most notorious case involved a woman, who, after posting the details of her husband’s extra-marital affair online, jumped from a window to her death. After her “death-blog” spread online, netizens took it upon themselves to find the “cheating husband,” (named Wang Fei) provide his personal information for all to see, and then harass him in real life. Other targets have been a woman who smashed a kitten’s head with her high-heeled pumps and a Chinese student at Duke University who had tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese protestors during the Olympic Torch relay. Many attribute this form of mob behavior to Mao-era customs of “people’s war” and “struggle” or to a “herd mentality” (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=964203448cbf700c9640912bf9012e05). A recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily online found that 80 percent of those polled agreed that human flesh search engines should be regulated in some manner (http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/ 2008-06/30/content_8462156.htm). Most recently, Wang Fei (the harassed husband) won a law suit against the web site that posted his deceased wife’s blog (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/18/content_10525436.htm).

The practice of the human flesh search engine originated through an entertainment website called mop.com in 2001 with a game where participants were supposed to gather trivia about films, songs, and books and post clues on the website’s “human flesh search engine” area in order to win “mop money.” Mop.com is now a sort of Chinese MySpace and it represents the growing popularity of social networking sites in China. Because most of these sites are relatively new, like many of the practices discussed in this section, there is very little academic research on Chinese SNS. However, although online forums and blogging continue to be extremely popular (for example, the Fourth Chinese Bloggers Conference was held in Guangzhou from November 15-16, 2008), social networking has begun taking off in China. This has caused some such as blogger Maitian to suggest that blogging has run its course in China, particularly since QQ (an online chat platform) and social networking sites are more interactive (http://maitian.blog.techweb.com.cn/archives/233). China now has its own version of Facebook, called Xiaonei (see the image above), with 30 million users, and 51.com, another social networking site, has 100 million (Yu, Zhang, & Li, 2008). As these gain popularity and as more SNS emerge, they are becoming fertile ground for research on digital youth in China.

A final Internet practice worth mentioning involves the techniques that more politically-minded, savvy netizens use to get around Internet censorship. Not surprisingly, a whole body of western-based scholarship and media accounts are concerned with examining the government’s protracted efforts at controlling the Internet and censoring information through methods that are both technological (the “Great Firewall”) and human (“little sister is watching you”) (French, 2003; Zhang, 2006; Zittrain & Edelman, 2003). Despite the actual reality of censorship in China, the majority of Internet users do not seem to be as concerned about this. However, users who do want to express views the government might frown upon (or worse) have invented extremely creative methods to get their messages out, as the graphic below demonstrates.

References
Bu, W. (2002). Shehui xingbie shijiaozhong de chuanbo xinjishu yu nuxing (New communication technology and women in the gender light). Funu Yanjiu Luncong (Collection of Women’s Studies), 45(2), 37-42.

China Ministry of Information Industry, 2007 National Communications Industry Development Statistical Report (in Chinese).

Damm, J., & Thomas, S. (2006). Chinese cyberspaces: Technological changes and political effects. London: Routledge.

Esarey, A., & Xiao, Q. (2008). Political expression in the Chinese blogosphere. Asian Survey, 48(5), 752-772.

Farrer, J. (2007). China’s women sex bloggers and dialogic sexual politics on the Chinese Internet. China Aktuell: A Journal of Contemporary China, 36(4), 10-44.

French, H. (2006, May 9). “As Chinese students go online, Little Sister is watching.” New York Times. Retrieved May 10, 2006, from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09internet.html

Giese, K. (2006, January). Challenging party hegemony: Identity work in China’s emerging virreal places. Hamburg: German Overseas Institute.

Goldkorn, J. (2005). Chinese online celebrities: From doggy style to hibiscus hag. Retrieved February 3, 2006, from http://www.danwei.org/media_and_advertising/chinese_online_celebrities_fro.php.

Guo, L. (November 2007). Surveying Internet Usage and its Impact in Seven Chinese Cities (The CASS China Internet Project Survey Report 2007): Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Liu, A. X. (2008, November 2). Human flesh search engines? Niu! [Electronic Version]. The Guardian from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/chinathemedia-blogging.

Liu, S.-D. (2006). China’s popular nationalism on the Internet. Report on the 2005 anti-Japan network struggles. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 7(1), 144-155.

MacKinnon, R. (2008a). Blogs and China correspondence: Lessons about global information Flows. Chinese Journal of Communication, 1(2), 242-257.

MacKinnon, R. (2008b). Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China. Public Choice, 134(1), 31-46.

Meng, W. (2004). Wangluo hudong (Internet Interaction). Beijing: Economy and Management Publishing House.

Nie, M., & Li, J. (2006). Mingren boke de chuanbo tezheng fenxi (The communication characteristics of celebrity blogs). The Social Science Journal of South Central University 12(6), 746-751.

Xu, W. (2007). Chinese cyber nationalism: Evolution, characteristics, and implications. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Yang, Y., Wang, G., Chen, W., & Wang, J. (2004). Xingbie rentong yu jiangou de xinli kongjian (The psychological space of gender identity and structure). In X. Meng (Ed.), Zhuanxing shehuizhong de zhongguo funu (Chinese women in a changing society). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House.

Yardley, J. (2003). Internet sex Column thrills, and inflames, China. New York Times.

Yu, H., Zhang, Z., & Li, L. Brand experience on SNS: Personal + experiential + interactive = Enhanced emotive connection between brands and youth.” http//: chinayouthology.com/blog

Zhang, L. (2006). Behind the ‘Great Firewall’.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 12(3). 271-91.

Zhou, Y. (2005). Nuxing yu hulianwang yanjiu xianzhuang huigu (A review of studies of the female sex and the Internet). Funu Yanjiu Luncong (Collection of Women’s Studies), 64(2), 71-76.

Zittrain, J., and Edelman, B. (2003). Empirical analysis of Internet filtering in China. Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School.

Gaming in China has become a huge phenomenon in recent years, both in terms of China’s own domestic gaming industry and the number of Chinese gamers. As Cao and Downing (2008) explain, digital gaming in China began in the 1980s with video arcades and home game consoles. Since that time China’s online gaming industry has progressively developed – particularly in the last few years – into a multibillion-dollar business. While PC-based games are still played, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs or MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft and domestic titles including NetEase’s Fantasy Westward Journey (which is loosely based on the Journey to the West and the legend of the Monkey King, see image above) are extremely popular, especially among youth. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), in June 2008 online games were the seventh most used Internet application, with around 58 percent of Internet users, or 147 million people, reporting that they had played some type of online game (although this represented a 1 percent decrease from December 2007). Of these, 53 percent, or 78 million, played role-playing games for an average of 11.9 hours per week. According to CNNIC’s most recent report, by the end of 2008, 187 million people were playing online games, accounting for approximately 63 percent of those online. Such growth was attributed to the enriched content and format of gaming products as well as various social networking sites adding gaming elements to their offerings (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/1/13/92458.pdf). In 2008, online game revenue was over 18 billion yuan (around $2.7 billion), reflecting a growth rate of nearly 77 percent (Wang, 2009).

With the popularity of online games in China has come a focus in both popular and government discourse on the negative effects of gaming. For example, in Guo’s (2007) study of the Internet usage in seven cities in China, 55.5 percent of users and 49.5 percent on non-users of the Internet agreed that online gaming should be managed or controlled. The Chinese government has been a major proponent of controlling online gaming because of what it perceives as a direct connection between game playing and Internet addiction, and because of its desire to promote a “civilized” or “healthy Internet culture.” The state-run media runs fairly regular stories on the perils of Internet addiction – exhaustion, failure in school, and even death – and to deal with the issue the government has taken a number of measures. These have included everything from setting up boot camps to cure Internet-addicted youth, to electronically limiting to three hours a day the number of hours a minor can play an online game (through a program called an “anti-indulgence system,” http://www.china.org.cn/english/entertainment/217375.htm), to forbidding the opening of new Internet cafes throughout most of 2007. However, the government does not want to ban gaming altogether, especially in light of what a huge revenue source it is. For this reason, it exhorts gaming companies to exercise “self discipline” and to make games that are “healthy.” In line with such exhortations, in early 2008 the Ministry of Culture released its “Third Round of Suggestions for Appropriate Network Game Products for Minors,” which endorsed 10 games (all Chinese made) that were ostensibly “healthy and beneficial” for “brain development” and educating through entertainment (http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/20008-02/08/content_7581520.htm). In general these games also align with the government’s view that games should promote traditional Chinese culture and values, and in fact games that draw upon Chinese history, legends, and martial arts are indeed popular. Chan (2006) notes that discourses of Asianness within games produced not only in China but also Korea function as a “common reference point for in-game narratives, characters and imagery” and invoke a form of authenticity while also allowing for hybridity.

Reflecting the tension between the perceived benefits and drawbacks of online gameplay, the academic literature on gaming in China seems to take two general tracks. In one body of research, especially studies that adopt a social-psychological perspective, online gaming is often associated with Internet addiction. For example, Huang et al. (2007) have developed a “Chinese Internet Addiction Inventory” to assess the correlation between long hours online (usually gaming) and “conflicts, mood modification, and dependence.” Similarly, Wu and Li (2005) compared “normal” university students to those that have failed in their coursework and found online game playing to be a factor in the latter’s poor academic performance.

In contrast to fears about gaming and Internet addiction, other research has noted that discourses about the harmful effects of the Internet seem to be a stand-in for more general anxieties associated with the rapid changes going on in Chinese society, which have led to what many regard as a breakdown in traditional values and created a vast generation gap between Chinese youth and their parents. For example, in their analysis of Internet-addiction and video-game related suicide discourses in China, Golub and Lingley (2008) argue that a “medicalization of social relationships” and the rise of “new forms of self-fashioning enabled by new media that are not socially sanctioned” have emerged as constitutive of more general changes in the nation’s moral order (p. 60). While acknowledging that some online games and users’ gaming habits might be problematic, some educators in China have also reacted strongly to what they perceive as discourses that serve to stigmatize and victimize adolescent Internet users (Chen, 2007).

Still another body of research on gaming seeks to find the positive benefits and the informal learning that takes place through game playing. Echoing work done in other cultural contexts, Liu (2006) argues that multiplayer online role-playing games teach Chinese college students about cooperation, teamwork, and the ability to deal with real-world issues. In a similar vein, Lindtner et al. (2008) stress the collaborative learning that takes place among World of Warcraft players in Internet cafes in China and argue that cultural values as well as socio-economic considerations combine to construct a hybrid cultural ecology of online gaming in China. Wu, Fore, Wang, and Ho (2007) looked specifically at in-game marriage among Chinese players in MMORPGs and concluded that such role-playing allows players to deconstruct gender binaries, question the significance of marriage in the real world, and develop intimate friendships. They thus emphasize the potentially transformative role of online gaming.

Perhaps most clearly revealing the intersections of culture, economics, and moral discourses circulating around gaming in China is the phenomenon of “gold farmers” – primarily young males of rural origin who are paid paltry wages to play online games, especially World of Warcraft, 12 hours a day in what can justifiably be called gaming sweatshops. Rather than reaping the rewards of their gameplay, the gold farmers (also dubbed “peons for hire”) instead turn over whatever game coinage they accumulate to their employer, who then relies on a middleman to sell the virtual loot to a distant customer, usually western, who does not have the time and/or inclination to advance in the game by their own efforts and skill (Dibbell, 2007). Though such practices exist in other countries, China is believed to have the largest number and most extensive network of gold farmers. On the Chinese Internet advertisements for such work can easily be found (e.g., http://bbs.jhnews.com.cn/redirect.php?tid=472192&goto=lastpost), as can reports on the hardship faced this by this class of gamers, who are often treated like “indentured servants” by their bosses and as disappointments by their parents (http://news.iresearch.cn/0200/20080324/78191.shtml). Like their counterparts laboring in factories, restaurants, and data input companies, their long hours and meager pay are still considered by most to be a better option than actual farming in the countryside.

In various realms the gold farming phenomenon has generated debates about everything from gaming ethics to labor in the virtual, global economy, and it has even inspired a documentary (http://chinesegoldfarmers.com/; for an interview with the filmmaker and clips of the film, see http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/05/homo-ludens-ludens-desire.php). Outside of China, especially in countries such as the U.S., the Chinese gold farmers have been the target of much hostility because they are perceived as violating the spirit, if on not the rules, of the game. Many have argued that gamers who legitimately compete in World of Warcraft are justified in their anger at the gold farmers. However, others have noted troubling discourses in the game realm in which frustration with the gold farmers (and similarly with Chinese adena farmers in Lineage II) becomes justification for hostility toward China and Chinese people more generally (Steinkuehler, 2006; Yee, 2006). It appears that as gameplay competition becomes divided along racial and ethnic lines, the resentment generated in the game becomes mapped upon and aligned with deeper anxieties and suspicion of China as a “threat” and as a country that doesn’t “play fair” (e.g. intellectual property, copyright).

Finally, just as the practice of gold farming raises issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality, like many new media practices in China, online gaming has also been a space for overt expressions of nationalism. As mentioned above, strains of nationalism run through government discourses related to both the promotion of China’s domestic gaming industry as well as game content. Some Chinese gamers as well have used cyberspace to voice overtly nationalistic sentiments and to mobilize against perceived threats to their (virtual) national sovereignty. The most famous incident occurred in 2006 within Fantasy Westward Journey when a virtual mob of thousands gathered to protest a Jianyi city (a fictional city) government office that was alleged to have an image remarkably similar to a Japanese “rising sun” flag on its wall. The protestors scrawled anti-Japanese insults into the virtual space and demanded the image be removed. This incident was apparently linked to a player of the game who had had his name and guild (both anti-Japanese) revoked. The story was first covered by the Beijing Evening News (Beijing Wangbao)
(http://epaper.bjd.com.cn/wb/20060707/200607/t20060707_45533.htm) and then by major Chinese news sites such as Sina and Xinhua (http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-07/07/content_4806343.htm). Of course it also spread rapidly across the Chinese blogosphere (http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060709_1.htm). Writing about the event, Henry Jenkins notes that it reflects the gamers’ internalization of government policies that seek to promote Chinese national culture and pride within games, yet most likely in a way never anticipated (http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/08/national_politics_within_virtu_1.html). It certainly reveals the Internet as a virtual public sphere, an issue that will be picked up in my next blog post.

References

Cao, Y., & Downing, J. D. H. (2008). The Realities of Virtual Play: Video Games and their Industries in China. Media, Culture & Society, 30(4), 515-529.

Chan, D. (2006). Negotiating intra-Asian games networks: On cultural proximity, East Asian game design, and Chinese farmers. Fibreculture, 8. Retrieved March, 3, 2007, from http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue8/issue8_chan.html

Chen, W. (2007, August 19). Chenmi de weiji neng fou zhuanhua wei shangshang dongli? (Can a sinking crisis be transformed into an upward force?). China Youth Daily. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://zqb.cyol.com/content/2007-08/19/content_1864591.htm

Dibbell, J. (2007, June 17). The life of a Chinese gold farmer. New York Times. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Golub, A., & Lingley, K. (2008). ‘Just like the Qing empire:’ Internet addiction, MMOGs, and moral crisis in contemporary China. Games and Culture, 3(1), 59-75.

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