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This paper examines literary and cinematic representations of ethnic frontiers in China in the 1980s to illustrate how they serve to express intellectuals' different views of China's sociopolitical condition, especially ultra-leftist history and the burgeoning market economy. Works under examination include Zhang Nuanxin's Sacrificed Youth, Bai Hua's The Remote Country of Women, Tashi Dawa's “A Soul in Bondage,” Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Horse Thief, and Zhang Chengzhi's The Black Steed. These different discourses of ethnic frontiers contest with each other, reflecting intellectuals' disagreement over how to understand China's past, present, and future.

The hongbao is a monetary gift given during Chinese New Year and other occasions. In 2015, WeChat introduced its electronic version in China. This has altered its original and ritualistic meaning, which is linked to a conception of the world characterised by filial piety, benevolence, and social harmony. Here the red packet is seen as a connector linking the generations, and also the individual to the community. The money inserted in the red packet symbolises these relationships, as well as the debt of life that can never be reimbursed. Hence, the amount is symbolic. The time-space compression that allowed for the introduction of the e-hongbao has changed this meaning, and the WeChat app can be analysed as a mediator that links the sender and the receiver. This blurs the meaning of the hongbao, linking it to economic practices and highlighting the individualisation of Chinese society.

This paper is a qualitative analysis of the life experiences of three female believers who were punished for their “sins” and eventually left the Church. It reveals how religious power manifests itself through the condemnation of “sins” such as “demonic possession,” “premarital sex,” and “adultery,” as well as the various kinds of resistance strategies among these “apostates.” I argue that fundamentalist Church doctrines are an essential part of the process of Sinicisation of Christianity, embedded as they are in the disciplinary structures of personal life in China, especially mother-daughter relationships, intimate partnerships, and acquaintance societies, which intensify constraints on individuals. In turn, discussions of moral taboos are themselves deeply involved in Chinese society and culture.

The focus of literary works about Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers is often on their urban experience, in which they are mostly portrayed as a socially disadvantaged group and a deviant presence in urban life. The reader less frequently encounters a complementary rural narrative on migrant workers' experience of their native countryside. This is remarkable, since the countryside holds demonstrable importance for migrant workers, and studying the associated rural narrative is essential for understanding the intricacies and diversity of the migrant worker experience as a whole. By closely reading two literary texts, Liang Hong's nonfictional China in One Village: The Story of One Town and the Changing World (2010), and Sun Huifen's novel Jikuan's Carriage (2007), this paper shows the complex connection between migrant workers and the countryside, adding a key element to our understanding of this much discussed demographic, its literary representations, and of subaltern cultural production in general.

Hong Kong is a storied city of dynamic ethnonational identities, with attention growing around a Hongkonger identity purportedly distinct from a Chinese one. Using mixed methods, this article critically appraises the social construction of the Hongkonger identity by adopting a relational approach to ethnonational identification. Multivariate regressions on identity indices in a 2019 citywide survey and qualitative interviews with youth on ethnonational identification cast light on novel interpretive associations drawn between (1) a Hongkonger civic identity and (2) a pan-Chinese racial identity. Rather than being cast into a binary, these two identifications are interlocked in this article in what I will call ethnonational hinges: symbolic hinges through which individuals switch between the two identities to appease dislocated segments of their social networks (nonfamilial and familial ties) with competing worldviews, abetted by a moral cognitive impulse for conformity inculcated in Chinese networking culture.

Tertiary education in the Chinese mainland has undergone unprecedented expansion since 1999, whereas the most recent expansion in Hong Kong was announced in 2000. Confucian philosophy, prevalent among ethnic Chinese, suggests that education is a fair qualification for selecting elites for high-paid jobs. However, economic structures and popular cultures differ considerably. This article examines the economic returns of a rapid expansion of higher education in two areas, Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, with different economic systems but the same cultural heritage, i.e., the Confucian philosophy and its work culture. The results support the view that the declining quality of university graduates is the prime reason for shrinking earnings premium in both systems. The governments should revisit the policies of higher education development and shift the emphasis from quantity to quality, and quality assurance in particular. There is a global trend to establish a quality assurance framework to oversee higher education, and a similar development is observed in the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong.

The concept of platformisation has been used throughout contemporary Chinese sociology and media studies to explain the process by which emerging local digital platforms facilitate and revolutionise daily life. Scholars have also examined how fans of ACGN (anime, comics, games, and novels) create heterotopias through the development of virtual communities and the departure of online territory from more conventional cultural and heteronormative norms. This article analyses an often-overlooked subject: the mainstreaming, platformisation, and re-conventionalisation of digital platforms and their impact on creative video production and fandom culture. We investigate Bilibili, a video-sharing social media which can be considered as the former home of Chinese ACGN culture, with a particular focus on the current commercial expansion that has seen it deviate from ACGN's cultural themes. Howard Becker's (1982) categorisation of innovative creators (mainstreams, mavericks, misfits) and Jones et al. amphibians are utilised to examine the ways in which the various video creators and former ACGN fans have (or have not) adapted to the platform's commercialisation, mainstreaming, and re-conventionalisation.