Jian Xu

Deakin University · School of Communication and Creative Arts

This article surveys the status quo of AI readiness and governance in Asia and identify Asian approaches of doing AI regulation and governance through policy and document analysis. We note that some Asian countries are moving from 'soft regulation' through strategies and guidelines to 'hard regulation' through rule-setting and laws on AI. We argue...

This essay critically reviews the existing research on wanghong studies in China. It advocates that wanghong studies should go beyond its dominant disciplines in ‘platform studies’ and ‘(digital) labour studies’ to embrace ‘celebrity studies’ and ‘China studies’. It proposes the innovative concept of ‘wanghong thinking’, which refers to the mindset...

This article maps the trajectory of China’s regulation of algorithms via policy review. It divides China’s governing progress into three phases: the ‘post-event policy response and penalty’ phase, the ‘ethics guidelines, guiding opinions and self-discipline pacts’ phase and the ‘legislation and implementation’ phase. The paper argues that the ideol...

This article examines the philanthropy/marketing interface with reference to celebrity philanthropy, focusing on the American YouTube star, MrBeast, and the Chinese government regulation of celebrities and social media influencers. Celebrity nowadays can refer to film and music stars with international broadcast media visibility and to people who c...

The article critically examines 'Telling China's Story Well' (TCSW), a popular propaganda campaign slogan proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Drawing on theories about storytelling and propaganda and using the COVID-19 as a contextualised example, the paper discusses how the slogan was adapted into 'Telling China's Anti-pandemic Story...

In the dialogue, Professor Wanning Sun, an internationally renowned scholar on media and communication in the Chinese diaspora, first introduces her new book co-authored with Professor Haiqing Yu titled Digital Transnationalism: Chinese-language Media in Australia (Brill, 2023). Professor Sun then responds to a few misconceptions that have been dom...

The article examines the experiences of Chinese PhD students doing research in China Studies as well as the experiences of their supervisors who supervise their research in Australian universities. By conducting semi-structured interviews with both PhD students and their supervisors, we aim to understand the expectations, concerns and challenges of...

This article examines the governance of China's entertainment industries using the concept of "indentured celebrities"-famous people who are obliged to serve as ambassadors for Chinese government advertising and public diplomacy. The article introduces the idea of indentured celebrities in relation to Western sociological understandings of major ce...

Using the governance of social eating (chibo) influencers as a case study, this article demonstrates the policies, practices, discourses, and politics of China's state‐centric model of influencer governance. We argue that influencers in China are in a relatively precarious position due to various regulations and restrictions imposed upon them by th...

The chapter examines the governance of the algorithmic distribution of news in China through a case study of Jinri Toutiao, the most popular news aggregation application in China. We argue that the rationales, strategies and politics of the Chinese Communist Party’s governance of algorithmic news are not historically novel, and are greatly influenc...

The special issue, “Chinese Platforms and Entrepreneurial Labour,” examines entrepreneurial labor and its relationship with the platformization of Chinese society and economy. The introduction to the special issue sums up three key issues pertinent to the broad field of platform entrepreneurial labor: class, power, and gender. It also contextualize...

The article outlines key regulatory and governing issues and actions in China's internet and digital media in the first decade under the leadership of Xi Jinping. It argues that both the domestic and global dimensions are equally crucial to understanding China's internet regulation and governance in the Xi era. It further argues that the two interr...

This article studies the governance of 'cyber historical nihilism' in China. By performing document analysis of the regulatory policies and actions against cyber historical nihilism, we found that cyber historical nihilism is mainly governed as harmful 'online content' and a threatening 'ideological trend', and its governance has incorporated agenc...

This chapter explores China's most popular dating app ‘Momo' and its impact on young adult sexuality. It examines three interrelated questions at three different levels: First, at the macro level, in what social situations and institutions were mobile dating apps such as Momo invented in China? Second, at the meso level, if we consider Momo as a co...

What is celebrity, what does celebrity do and why does the study of celebrity matter? This paper answers these questions and illustrates the value that research on celebrity in mainland China can add to the broader field of celebrity studies. It first reviews the key issues in celebrity studies with reference to the dedicated journal Celebrity Stud...

The article examines the vlogging practices of Chinese international students during the COVID-19 pandemic and their positive roles in coping with the double bind. By doing thematic analysis of the content of vlog videos generated by Chinese international students on both Chinese and English audio-visual platforms, we identify three overarching the...

Xu, J., Huang, D., & Zhang, H (2021). ‘Internet philanthropy as China’s ‘digital solution’ to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Policies, practices, politics and critique’, in Yusha’u, M and Servaes, J (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 371-391.

Crisis communication is essential to the political stability and legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but how crises are managed in China is little understood. This paper aims to pursue this question through a case study of China's smog crisis since 2013-a regular recurring crisis that confronts the population and the Chinese government...

This article examines the practices, policies and politics of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) governance of entertainment celebrities from 2005 to 2020. We identify and critically analyse four principle governing approaches with related examples: ‘banning celebrities’, ‘governing through professional associations, laws and notices’, ‘platform...

During the recent outbreak of coronavirus, the concern about proliferation of misleading information, rumours and myths has caused governments across the world to institute various interventionist steps to stem their flow. Each government has had to balance the dichotomy between freedom of expression and people’s right to be safe from the adverse i...

This chapter explores China's most popular dating app ‘Momo' and its impact on young adult sexuality. It examines three interrelated questions at three different levels: First, at the macro level, in what social situations and institutions were mobile dating apps such as Momo invented in China? Second, at the meso level, if we consider Momo as a co...

This chapter discusses the cultural-political origins, characteristics, major platforms and political implications of online weiguan. It argues that online weiguan has not only created an alternative and activist form of political participation for ordinary Chinese to address social injustice, defend human rights and supervise political power, but...

This chapter explores the e'gao phenomenon as a networked digital leisure practice. It argues for a rethinking of the de facto 'democratic ethos' of popular practices, and questions both the 'repressive hypothesis' (with the state as the culprit of media censorship of popular discourse, including e'gao) and the 'empowerment hypothesis' (with the Ch...

Hanmai 喊麥, literally “shouting [at] a microphone,” first came to public attention and scrutiny as a distinct sound gaining both popularity and notoriety in 2015, when livestreaming platforms such as YY (which launched as a voice chat client in 2008) were growing exponentially. Contemporary hanmai is therefore predominantly associated with livestrea...

This chapter traces the trajectory of how the Chinese government frames cybersecurity by examining the evolution of official cybersecurity discourse over the past two decades. To understand this discursive evolution and the social power dynamics that have been shaping the change, the chapter presents content analysis and critical discourse analysis...

The chapter studies China’s representative female wanghong (Internet celebrities) in the last two decades. By examining their ‘gender performativity’ for fame and stardom on different digital media platforms, from BBS, blog, social media site to live-streaming platform, as well as the social-cultural-political implications of their performativity,...

In December 2013, the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Ministry of Education jointly announced a nationwide ‘joint model’ between state propaganda departments and journalism schools in higher education institutions, signalling a new era for China’s journalism education. The ‘joint model’ ca...

Many cities around the world are increasingly embedding technological infrastructure in urban spaces. These infrastructures aim to collect vast amounts of data from citizens with an apparent purpose of improving public services. This article discusses privacy concerns generated by China's nationwide smart city campaign and further investigates why...

This paper examines the nexus of coal–government–society relations in present-day China using a governmentality approach to explore the interactions between policy change, “crisis” management and social action. It outlines the noticeable shift in government rationalities and communication regarding the coal industry in recent years. It then frames...

This book brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address critical perspectives on Chinese language social media, internationalizing the state of social media studies beyond the Anglophone paradigm. The collection focuses on the intersections between Chinese language social media and disability, celebrity, sexuality, interpersonal...

This chapter looks at social media in China through the online activities of the OPO to explore issues of disability and Chinese language social media. This topic is often overlooked in the current disability studies and social media literature, particularly in an English language context. As such, this chapter aims to outline the research availabl...

This paper provides the first detailed study of the links between celebrity-fan communication networks and philanthropy in the People’s Republic of China. It explains how the evolution of the Chinese Internet, and especially the rise of social media, has created new spaces in which fans of entertainment celebrities may be induced to engage with phi...

This book is among the first to use a "media events" framework to examine China's Internet activism and politics, and the first study of the transformation of China's media events through the parameter of online activism. The author identifies the major modes of online activism in China (shanzhai [culture jamming]; citizen journalism; and weiguan [...

This article studies shanzhai media culture, a specific type of shanzhai culture that copycats the most-watched shows of China Central Television (CCTV) with a sense of satire and play. The article discusses why CCTV has become a popular target of shanzhai, how CCTV?s brand shows are shanzhai-ed and what are the political implications of shanzhaing...