Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China

Description

On China's biggest social media platform, Weibo, feminists are staying one step ahead of the censors. Weibo Feminism is the first book to explore in-depth the connections and forms of resistance that feminist activists in China are making in online spaces despite increasing crackdowns on free speech and public expression. Aviva Wei Xue and Kate Rose explore the many forms of contemporary feminism in China, from activist campaigns against sexual harassment and domestic violence, through to Weibo Reading groups of feminist texts and subversive online novels published on the platform. The book includes an in-depth case study of feminist support networks for overwhelmingly female frontline medical staff that have sprung up on social media in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Weibo Feminism goes on to asks what lessons are being learned in contemporary China for the cause of social justice for women around the world.

Aviva Xue is a feminist researcher, writer and teacher in China. Kate Rose is Lecturer in Sociology at Northern Arizona University, USA and formerly Professor of Literature at China University of Mining and Technology. Her previous publications include China Beyond the Binary: Race, Gender, and the Use of Story (2019).

Weibo Feminism shares Chinese feminists' creative and effective strategies for exercising power with dignity. It exemplifies global feminism's transcendence of geopolitics, nationalism, and neoliberalism. It is essential reading for all who care about the rights and humanity of women everywhere. * Robin Visser, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * The liberation struggle currently underway among the globe's largest population of women remains unknown in the English-speaking feminist world. The 'Weibo' feminism that has spread in China since the time of #MeToo is an unprecedented development in the history of East Asia and the world. This book brings its history, politics, real-world activities, online art and rhetoric, and culture, as well as details of its repression, to English-speaking readers. It conveys the radical spirit of Weibo Feminism in the movement's rejection of marriage, surrogacy, and the male literary world, as well as its heroic actions during the Corona pandemic, funny internet memes, and resistance to both Chinese Confucian patriarchy and Western liberalism. The Megalia feminism of South Korea described in a number of books complements this important account of uprising in contemporary China, and both literatures alert the world to East Asia's central place in feminism today. Authors Aviva Xue and Kate Rose document Weibo Feminism from the inside, and describe its theoretical principles, political tactics, and aims for the liberation of Chinese women with vivid clarity and in astounding detail. * Caroline Norma, RMIT University, author of The Japanese Comfort Women (Bloomsbury, 2015) * At a time of China's rise to global superpower, what do we know about Chinese women's aspirations, hopes and dreams? Weibo Feminism begins to fill this gap. In thousands of Blogs on Weibo, feminists promote an autonomous Chinese vision of the world by drawing on the past (history, language and forgotten women) as much as the present (literature, violence against women, prostitution, pornography and surrogacy). This brilliant book by Kate Rose and Aviva Wei Xue should be mandatory reading for people in the West as it opens our eyes to the strong, authentic and resilient voices of Chinese feminists who have much to teach us. * Dr Renate Klein, feminist health activist *