The Chinese Dream and Chinese Masculinity in Transnational Chinese Media Spaces

• In Event: Border Crossing Sexualities in East Asia

Abstract

Farrer’s paper examines the extent to which nationalist narratives such as the “Chinese Dream” and the “Rise of China” have a sexual as well as economic and political interpretations. Empirically the paper traces how transnational Chinese media representations of Chinese men’s and women’s transnational and cross-border romantic and sexual activities have changed during a decade in which Chinese men are now seen as global players and elites rather than predominantly as a transnational working class.
Examining this story of a masculine Chinese “rise” in terms of public narratives as well as private stories, Farrer shows how a dominant and more sexualized Chinese masculinity is being redefined both in transnational media spaces and in cosmopolitan social spaces in China’s global cities. In this sphere, a transnational “global China” becomes the sexualized space in which men prove their sexual capital, combining the ethnonational narrative of China’s rise with a sexualization of China’s mediated public culture.

Author

• James Farrer, Sophia University