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Abstract

Over the past four decades, celebrity fandom in China has evolved from relatively informal practices of “star chasing” into highly organized, networked, data-driven, and platformized forms of participation. This talk traces this transformation from the beginning of the Reform and Opening era in the late 1970s to the present, examining how changing media technologies, entertainment industries, and modes of governance have reshaped the relationship between celebrities and their fans.

The talk divides this history into four overlapping stages: the pre-Internet era (1978–2004), when market reform and the influx of popular culture from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and elsewhere created new objects and practices of celebrity attachment; the networked era (2005–2013), when reality talent shows, the Korean Wave, and online communities transformed fans from dispersed admirers into active participants in celebrity production; the platformized fan-circle era (2014–2021), when social media, streaming platforms, algorithmic metrics, and the rise of “traffic stars” integrated fan participation into the digital entertainment economy; and the post-Qinglang era (2022–present), which followed the 2021 Qinglang (“Clear and Bright”) campaign against fan-circle culture and has been marked by intensified state regulation, the migration of fan circle practices into sports and other cultural domains, and broader structural changes in China’s entertainment industry.

Across these periods, the talk identifies three interconnected transformations: the commercialization of fans’ affective attachments and participation; the platformization and datafication of fan practices; and the increasing governance of fandom through commercial interests, digital platforms, and state regulation, alongside the development of fan self-governance. Rather than treating celebrity fandom simply as a frivolous entertainment phenomenon, I argue that its history provides a revealing lens through which to understand broader transformations in cultural production and consumption, gender configurations, digital participation, and the organization and governance of affect in contemporary China.

About the speaker

Ling Yang is Associate Professor in the School of Film at Xiamen University, PR China. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, affect, and fandom in contemporary Chinese popular culture. She is the author of Entertaining the Transitional Era: Super Girl Fandom and the Consumption of Popular Culture (2012) and Reconfiguring Literary Studies: An Exploration with Guo Jingming and Danmei (2019), and co-editor of Fan Cultures: A Reader (2009), Celebrity Studies: A Reader (2013), Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (2017), and Chinese Love Stories: The Politics of Intimacy in the Twenty-First Century (2019). She is currently co-editing a volume on Chinese celebrity fandom with Jian Xu.

She has published extensively on fan cultures, Internet cultures, and danmei culture in both English and Chinese. Her English-language work has appeared in journals including Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Celebrity Studies, and The China Quarterly, as well as in edited volumes including A Companion to Reality Television, The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia, and The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality.