Today, the ‘tradwife’ (traditional wife) aesthetic, often embodied by female influencers who celebrate returning to the domestic sphere, has gained popularity across Euro-American societies. Mirroring this phenomenon, a comparable jiaoqi (娇妻, meaning young, beautiful wife) aesthetic has emerged within China’s influencer economy, valorizing women’s withdrawal from public life. In this article, we draw on Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to analyse Douyin videos posted by a female influencer who has brought jiaoqi discourse to the forefront of public attention on the Chinese-language internet. We contend that jiaoqi discourse operates as a nuanced form of therapeutic governance, establishing a discursive apparatus tailored to uphold gender asymmetry in China. Commercially, the discourse enables lifestyle influencers to construct appealing personas that resonate most with heterosexual, middle-class women living in cities. Politically, it dovetails with the party-state’s post-socialist governing doctrines by assisting the depoliticization of gender issues, as well as legitimizing state-sanctioned fertility policies and beyond. Therefore, the proliferation of jiaoqi discourse should be interpreted as both a localized adaptation of a global reactionary trend and a vernacular manifestation of the state–market nexus under party-state rule.

This article analyses Beijing’s evolving Taiwan policy under Xi Jinping through a case study of Chung Ming-hsuan, a queer Taiwanese influencer and LGBTQ+ advocate, whose mainland visits have been recognized by Beijing as fostering cross-Strait harmony. Chung’s transformation from a critic of the People’s Republic of China to a figure promoting cross-Strait engagement provides an illustration of Beijing’s changing approach to Taiwan. Central to this approach is the Chinese concept of ‘heart-soul’ (心灵), which Beijing deploys to foster personal connections across the Taiwan Strait. This allows Beijing to strategically distinguish between what they term ‘“Taiwan independence” diehards’ and critics who remain open to dialogue and engagement. The analysis demonstrates how Beijing strategically leverages influencers such as Chung to project an image of openness and reframe cross-Strait relations as a domestic, emotionally driven matter. This approach prioritizes heartfelt exchanges and personal connections over traditional diplomatic and political negotiations.

This study explores the ways police dogs were mobilized and politicized at a time of political uncertainty and social unrest in British Hong Kong. It reconsiders the oft-neglected presence and shifting roles of non-human agents in the city’s transforming urban silhouette and aims to restore the constructed roles canine police played in British attempts to secure their hold over the colony and to reinstate the involuntary engagement of animals in the increasing politicization of society and culture in the broader post-WWII landscape.

In safeguarding an intangible cultural heritage (ICH), the community is often considered passive and only part of the policy implementation system. While acknowledging the lack of a connection with contemporary audiences in many examples of ICH, such as pingtan (评弹), authenticity-seeking is still a widely accepted goal in safeguarding ICH. But from an authenticity-seeking perspective, attempts to create innovative pingtan are often the target of criticism. This article observes that amid the competing narratives of pursuing authenticity and embracing innovative experimentation, preservation of and innovation in pingtan have developed to disentangle pingtan from a unified conceptualization. Conflicts about preservation and innovation are the enabling forces that allow diverse cultural ideas to be communicated, leading to interactions and experimentation that defy easy definition. Analysis of the contradictions behind an insistence on an authentic form of pingtan suggests that authenticity-seeking is more about cultural anxieties over the changing identity of a city, with pingtan as a tool for such negotiations. This article calls for a more nuanced understanding of community agency in safeguarding ICH. Innovative practices to safeguard ICH may also challenge the concept of community, resulting in fluid, developmental, and mutually sustaining interactions.