| Abstract: |
The last few years have seen the emergence of a right-wing populist discourse
on Chinese social media that combines the claims, vocabulary, and style of
right-wing populisms in Europe and North America with previous forms of
nationalism and racism in Chinese cyberspace. In other words, it provokes a
similar hostility towards immigrants, Muslims, feminism, the so-called
‘liberal elites’, and progressive values in general. This article examines
how, in debating global political events such as the European refugee crisis
and the American presidential election, well-educated and well-informed
Chinese internet users appropriate the rhetoric of ‘Western-style’ rightwing
populism to paradoxically criticise Western hegemony and discursively
construct China’s ethno-racial and political identities. Through qualitative
analysis of 1,038 postings retrieved from a popular social media website, this
research shows that by criticising Western ‘liberal elites’, the discourse
constructs China’s ethno-racial identity against the ‘inferior’ non-Western
other, exemplified by non-white immigrants and Muslims, with racial
nationalism on one hand; and formulates China’s political identity against the
‘declining’ Western other with realist authoritarianism on the other. We
conclude by conceptualising the discourse as embodying the logics of
anti-Western Eurocentrism and anti-hegemonic hegemonies. This article 1)
provides critical insights into the changing ways in which self/other
relations are imagined in Chinese popular geopolitical discourse; 2) sheds
light on the global circulation of extremist discourses facilitated by the
internet; and 3) contributes to the ongoing debate on populism and the
‘crisis’ of the liberal world order. |