EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Media Studies 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 216 Li Yuming 李宇明 has recently written the introduction of the 2015 issue of the Language Situation in China, entitled “New media and linguistics”. It is remarkable that he has devoted a section on the prob- lems which affect society in the era of new media (also addressed as “net-media”, wangluo meiti 网络媒 体 ). Among them, Li Yuming has comprehended the problem of the relationship between new media and standard language: the former must not be felt as threatening the pureness of the language, as large groups of people have evoked in the latest years, but certainly a source of not standardized linguistic phenomena, which may compromise the harmony of the life of language. To sum up, newmedia, in Li Yuming’s opinion, have created some contradictions which the State is due to settle. The 2015 issue of Language Situation is not at all the first to deal with the problematic relationship between media and standard language: in fact, since its first issue in 2006, Language Situation has always given report about China’s language policy towards not-standardized linguistic items (such as foreignisms, but also dialects, borrowings, the language of Internet and even neologisms), which in the latest years have flourished in contemporary Chinese media. The present contribution aims at spotting the main features of the issues of Language Situation; in particular, the tendencies of China’s linguistic policy and the language-related problems China has been facing in the last 10 years, as reported in the Language Situation reports will be highlighted. This overview will show, on the one hand, that China has been constantly striving to impose a standard language, as a vehicle for a standard culture and a standard self-image, to (new) media. On the other hand, she has permanently coped with parts of language which by nature would eschew standardization. As a result, China has been trying to hold a position in between those w Strafella Giorgio (University of St. Gallen) Zhou Xiaoping: A Blogger for China’s Renaissance? Key words: Zhou Xiaoping, blogging, Xi Jinping, Internet, celebrity In October 2014 Xi Jinping, while chairing the Forum on Literature and Art Work, praised attending bloggers Zhou Xiaoping 周小平 (b. 1981) and Hua Qianfang for “spreading positive energy” with their online essays. This paper analyses Zhou Xiaoping’s blogging, focussing on some of his most read and shared essays on national and international issues. The paper puts Zhou’s writing in relation to the content of Xi Jinping’s speech at the Forum and to current CCP cultural policies in general. It discusses Zhou’s rise from minor Internet personality to national celebrity following the General Secretary’s endorsement. The paper compares Zhou’s writing style, positions and status to those of China’s best-known blogger, Han Han. Despite differences in their political stances and the fact that Han Han’s celebrity status derives more from commercial success than official endorsement, our paper points to similarities in their writing styles and online personae. In particular, both bloggers aim at persuasiveness and credibility by posing as spokespeople of China’s “man in the street”, as opposed to the authoritative, but impersonal and “wooden” language of the officialdom. The official endorsement of Zhou’s work echoes a practice of the Mao and Deng eras, when Party leaders identified the writings of certain little-known or anonymous authors with the “correct” position on a given political issues to express their stance indirectly, or to claim popular support during a factional struggle. At the same time, it exemplifies how the Party-State propaganda apparatus has embraced certain forms and contents from Internet culture, including online celebrity. Svensson Marina (Lund University) The China Scholar in the Social Media Age Key words: Social Media, Research Methods, Ethics, Informants, Public Debates The Internet, apart from being a fascinating field of study, has also opened up new possibilities for China scholars to get news, gather data, connect with informants, and in general stay updated on rapidly changing developments in Chinese society. Social media have added yet another dimension as it enables the researcher to catch up with events and public debates as they unfold, and also get valuable insights into issues, developments, and views among scholars, opinion leaders of different kinds, as well as informants.