Reimagining China

Wendy Su is Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Cultural Studies at the University of California Riverside. She is author of China's Encounter with Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and Film Industry, 1994-2013 and editor (with Dal Yong Jin) of Asia-Pacific Film Coproduction: Theory, Industry and Aesthetics.

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Paternalistic Nationalism and Chinese Youth Culture 2. "Lie Flat" and Youth Resistance in the Context of the Pandemic and National Rejuvenation 3. Youth Idealism and the Rural Reconstruction Movement 4. Chinese Fan Culture Between the Market and the State 5. Chinese Youth's Evolving Global Visions and the Quest for Asian Modernity Conclusion: Searching for a Collective Identity Bibliography Index

"Reimagining China is a timely, insightful, fascinating, comprehensive study of the mental, spiritual, and sociological state of youth in contemporary China and especially since the Covid pandemic. Wendy Su perceptively outlines and analyzes the choices and dilemmas facing youth as they are caught in the conflicting currents of nationalism, globalization, socialism, capitalism, market forces, party ideology, active participation in social change, passivity, and pessimism about the present and future. She describes the attempt of Chinese youth to search for a suitable national and regional identity amidst the competing allures of Western values, Asian traditions, and indigenous roots . . . skillfully navigat[ing] various strands of social phenomena and academic discourses to pinpoint the uniqueness of the Chinese condition at hand."-Sheldon Lu, author of Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture: Envisioning the Nation "Reimagining China will be an important contribution to cultural studies since it addresses leading theoretical arguments in this field and applies them to the Chinese case. Since it is grounded in European youth studies and the British cultural studies tradition, for example the work of Raymond Williams, it should be widely applicable for cultural, communication and youth studies."-Stanley Rosen, coeditor of Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China's Campaign for Hearts and Minds