Article published In:
Journal of Argumentation in ContextVol. 13:1 (2024) ► pp.49–73
The convergence of public sphere and state advocacy
A case study of the Qing Lang movement in China’s entertainment industry
In 2021, China’s entertainment industry experienced a series of unusual argumentative controversies followed by the creation of the Qing Lang movement initiated by the Chinese government that called for tackling irregularities in the industry. With strong support from the Chinese public, the Qing Lang movement presents an intriguing case to examine a new model of social argument representing both the public and state interest in resolving social problems in the Chinese version of the public sphere. The paper identifies key characteristics defining a reciprocal model of social activism in state-sponsored actions in China exemplified by the Qing Lang movement. The paper also argues for the value of a culture-specific approach to understanding public sphere and social activism and clarifies the function of argument in Chinese society.
Keywords: Chinese entertainment industry, Chinese public sphere, public argument, Qing Lang, reciprocal model, social movement advocacy
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Three connected factors of movement advocacy in a state-sponsored public sphere
- 2.1A perceived problem as a cause of public argument in the Chinese public sphere
- 2.2Dual actors of the state and the public in the Chinese sociocultural traditions
- 2.3Reciprocity between the dual actors in social advocacy
- 3.Irregularities in China’s entertainment industry
- 4.Public argument calling for rectification of entertainment irregularities
- 5.Governmental response to the public call for reform of the entertainment industry
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References (84)
Abidin, Crystal
2020 Mapping internet celebrity on TikTok: Exploring attention economies and visibility labours. Cultural Science 12, no. 1: 77–103. 
Asen, Robert
2005 Pluralism, disagreement, and the status of argument in the public sphere. Informal Logic 25, no. 2.
Asen, Robert, and Daniel C. Brouwer
2001 Introduction: Reconfigurations of the public sphere. Counterpublics and the State, 1–32.
Average annual income of employees working for urban non-private units in China in 2019, by region
Statistica. Accessed October 23, 2021. [URL]
Backhouse, Andrew
Benney, Jonathan, and Peter Marolt
2015 Introduction: modes of activism and engagement in the Chinese public sphere. Asian Studies Review 39, no. 1: 88–99.
Bradshaw, Peter
2016 Forbes hollywood rich list: Who are fan bingbing and deepika padukone? The Guardian, August 24, 2021. LexisNexis Academic.
Brunner, Elizabeth
2017 Wild public networks and affective movements in China: environmental activism, social media, and protest in maoming. Journal of Communication 67, no. 5: 665–77.
Cameron, William Bruce
1966 Modern Social Movements; a Sociological Outline. Studies in Sociology, SS28. New York: Random House.
Chen, Jie
2010 Transnational environmental movement: Impacts on the green civil society in China. The Journal of Contemporary China 19, no. 65: 503–23.
Chen, Kuan-Hsing
2003 Civil society and min-jian: On political society and popular democracy. Cultural Studies 17, no. 6: 877–896.
Chen, Ni
2003 From propaganda to public relations: Evolutionary change in the Chinese government. Asian Journal of Communication 13, no. 2: 96–121.
Chen, Qinying, and Tom Jacobson
2022 A Process Model of the Public Sphere: A Case of Municipal Policy Debates on Sina Weibo. Policy & Internet 14, no 2: 485–502.
Cheng, Bor-Shiuan, Li-Fang Chou, Tsung-Yu Wu, Min-Ping Huang, and Jiing-Lih Farh
2004 Paternalistic leadership and subordinate responses: Establishing a leadership model in Chinese organizations. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 7, no. 1: 89–117.
Cheng, Yang, Jingwen Liang, and Louis Leung
2015 Social network service use on mobile devices: An examination of gratifications, civic attitudes and civic engagement in China. New Media & Society 17, no. 7: 1096–116.
China’s idol economy: How the Chinese fan culture is shaping entertainment and marketing
China to rectify irregularities in entertainment industry
China ups rectification of “fan circle” culture that distorts minors’ values
Cui, Xingyu
Delicath, John W., and Kevin Michael DeLuca
2003 Image events, the public sphere, and argumentative practice: The case of radical environmental groups.” Argumentation 17, no. 3: 315–333.
DeLisle, Jacques, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang
2016 The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Deng, Iris
2021 Fake traffic app developer sentenced to five years in prison, fined US$15,000 yuan amid China’s crackdown on inflated social media engagement. South China Morning Post, March 11 2021 [URL]
Drake, Philip, and Andy Miah
2010 The cultural politics of celebrity. Cultural politics 6, no. 1: 49–64.
Fisher, Walter R.
1984 Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communications Monographs 51, no. 1: 1–22.
Frater, Patrick
2021 China wants “sissy idols” and “effeminate men” scrubbed from entertainment industry. Variety, September 3 2021 [URL]
Goodnight, G. Thomas
2012 The personal, technical, and public spheres of argument: A speculative inquiry into the art of public deliberation. Argumentation and Advocacy: Special Issue: Spheres of Argument: 30 Years of Goodnight’s Influence. Guest Editor: Robert C. Rowland 48, no. 4: 198–210.
Goodnight, G. Thomas, and David B. Hingstman
1997 Review essay: Studies in the public sphere. Quarterly Journal of Speech 83, no. 3: 351–370.
Griffin, Leland M.
1952 The rhetoric of historical movements. Quarterly Journal of Speech 38, no. 2: 184–188.
1969 A dramatistic theory of the rhetoric of movements. Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke: 456–478.
Gross, Alan G.
2005 Presence as argument in the public sphere. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 2: 5–21.
Habermas, Jürgen
1989 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Han, Pi-Chi
2013 Confucian leadership and the rising Chinese economy: Implications for developing global leadership. Chinese Economy 46, no. 2: 107–127.
Hernández, Javier C.
2021 Chinese pianist s held on prostitution suspicion, state media says. NewYork Times, October 21 2021 [URL]
Ho, Peter, and Louis Edmonds
2008 China’s embedded activism. Opportunities and Constraints for a Social Movement. New York and London: Routledge.
Kirkpatrick, Andy
1995 Chinese rhetoric: Methods of argument. Multilingua 14, no. 3: 271–296.
Kuo, Lily
2018 China aps film star pay, citing “money worship” and fake contracts. The Guardian, June 28 2018 [URL]
Law against food waste comes into enforce
Li, Xiaomeng
2020 How powerful is the female gaze? The implication of sing Male celebrities for promoting female cosmetics in China. Global Media and China 5, no. 1: 5568.
Liang, Yilu, and Wanqi Shen
2016 Fan economy in the Chinese media and entertainment industry: How feedback from super fans can propel creative industries’ revenue. Global Media and China 1, no. 4: 331–349.
Liu, James H., Mei-Chih Li, and Xiaodong Yue
2010 Chinese Social Identity and Intergroup Relations: The Influence of Benevolent Authority. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Psychology, 579–597.
Lu, Xueyi
ed. 2012 Social Structure of Contemporary China. Vol. 311. World scientific.
Luo, Meihan
McSpadden, Kevin
. August 27 2021 Chinese government fines surrogacy controversy actress zheng shuang US$46.1 million for tax evasion. South China Morning Post. [URL]
Noy, Chaim
2017 Moral discourse and argumentation in the public sphere: Museums and their visitors. Discourse, Context & Media 161: 39–47.
Patrick, Low Kim Cheng, and Ang Sik Liong
2012 Leaders who are, the Confucian perspective. International Journal of Business and Social Research (IJBSR) 2, no. 3.
Puppo, Federico, Silvia Corradi, and Lorenzo Zoppellari
2022 Rhetoric and argumentation in the pandemic legislation: The Italian case.” In The pandemic of argumentation, pp. 165186. Springer, Cham.
Qi, Xiaoying
2017 Social movements in China: Augmenting mainstream theory with guanxi. Sociology 51, no. 1: 111–126.
Rodino-Colocino, Michelle
2018.Me too, # MeToo: Countering cruelty with empathy. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1: 96–100.
Rowland, Robert C.
2003 Madison, miller, and the public sphere: A classically liberal approach to public deliberation. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Argumentation, Amsterdam, 927–932.
2006 Campaign argument and the liberal public sphere: A case study of the process of developing essages in a congressional campaign. Argumentation and Advocacy
42
, no. 4: 206–215.
Sander-Staudt, Maureen
2015 Caring reciprocity as a relational and political ideal in Confucianism and care ethics. Care Ethics and Political Theory: 187–207.
Scallen, Eileen A.
1995 American legal argumentation: The law and literature/rhetoric movement. Argumentation 9, no. 5: 705–717.
Shan, Zhou, and Lu Tang
2020 Social media and the public sphere in China: A case study of political discussion on weibo after the wenzhou high-speed rail derailment accident. In Media Controversy: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice, pp. 497–512. IGI Global.
Shao, Peiren, and Yun Wang
2017 How does social media change Chinese political culture? The formation of fragmentized public sphere. Telematics and Informatics 34, no. 3: 694–704.
Simons, Herbert W.
1970 Requirements, problems, and strategies: A theory of persuasion for social movements. Quarterly Journal of Speech 56, no. 1: 1–11.
1991 On the rhetoric of social movements, historical movements, and “top down” movements: A commentary. Communication Studies
42
, no. 1: 94–101.
Social media accounts of surrogacy scandal actress zheng shuang disappear
Sparks, Hannah
2021 Kris wu, one of k-pop’s biggest stars, accused of sexual abuse. New York Post, July 19 2021 [URL]
Steinhardt, H. Christoph
2015 From blind spot to media spotlight: Propaganda policy, media activism and the emergence of protest events in the Chinese public sphere. Asian Studies Review 39, no. 1: 119–137.
Stewart, Charles J.
1999 Championing the rights of others and challenging evil: The ego function in the rhetoric of other-directed social movements. Southern Journal of Communication 64, no. 2: 91–105.
Stewart, Melissa
2021 Xiao zhan sparks massive shopping spree after becoming ambassador. Cna Luxury, October 25 2021 [URL]
Tang, Didi
Thomala, Lai Lin
2020 Distribution of online celebrities’ fans in China in 2018, by age group. Statistica, September 14 2020 [URL]
Telxelra, Lauren
Thomala, Lai Lin
2021 Number of monthly active wechat users from 2nd Quarter 2011 to 2nd Quarter 2021. Statistica, August 25 2021 [URL]
Tu, Wei-Ming
1998 Confucius and Confucianism. Confucianism and the family, 3–36.
Wakeman Jr, Frederic
1993 The civil society and public sphere debate: Western reflections on Chinese political culture. Modern China 19, no. 2: 108–138.
Wang, Peng and Wang Sibei
2021 Wo guo wang min gui mo chao shi yi [China has over one billion internet users] Gov.cn, August 27 2021 [URL]
Warner, Michael
2021 Publics and Counterpublics. Princeton University Press.
Weibo reports third quarter 2020 unaudited financial results
What does it mean for the entertainment industry to “earthquake” many times a month?
Wu, Jiannan, Mengmeng Xu, and Pan Zhang
2018 The impacts of governmental performance assessment policy and citizen participation on improving environmental performance across Chinese provinces. Journal of Cleaner Production 1841: 227–238.
Wu yifan zhen zheng de ma fan lai le, shen jian ba shi duo ge dai yan, wei yue jin huo gao da si yi
[Kris Wu’s real trouble comes as he endorsed 80 brands and may face over 61 million dollars default penalties.] Tencent. July 18 2021 [URL]
Xi, Jinping
2017 Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. In delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, vol. 181.
Xi, Yipeng, and Aaron Ng
2020 Space as the ideological state apparatus (ISA): the invisible fetter on social movements in China. Media, Culture & Society. 0163443720977302.
Xue, Peng
2021 Shen du guan zhu liu liang ming xing “fan pian” le [In-depth focus: liu liang star is now history] Ccdi.gov.cn, August 28 2021 [URL]
Zarefsky, David
1977 President Johnson’s war on poverty: The rhetoric of three “Establishment” movements. Communications Monographs 44, no. 4: 352–373.
2014 Rhetorical Perspectives on Argumentation: Selected Essays by David Zarefsky. Vol. 241. Springer Science & Business Media.
Zhang, Han
Zhang, Kaiping, and Tianguang Meng
2018 Political elites in deliberative democracy: Beliefs and behaviors of Chinese officials. Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4: 643–662.
Zhang, Qi, and James L. Chan
2013 New development: Fiscal transparency in China – government policy and the role of social media. Public Money & Management 33, no. 1: 71–75.
Zhang, Yiyan, and Lei Guo
2021 “A battlefield for public opinion struggle”: How does news consumption from different sources on social media influence government satisfaction in China? Information, Communication & Society 24, no. 4: 594–610.
Zhao, Chenchen
Zheng zhi fan quan luan xiang, guo jia chu shou le, zhong dian da ji zhe wu lei xing wei
[Chinese government rectifies the irregularities of fandom culture with a focus on five behaviors] China Daily. June 21 2021 [URL]