A matter of time: The texture of China’s digital green public culture

On the 30th anniversary of China’s internet, this article is written in response to students’ concerns about the tangibility of public spheres in authoritarian contexts. Using texture as a conceptual linchpin, I propose to shift focus from spatiality to temporality of China’s digital green public cultures to foreground the lived experiences of ordinary people in a time of precarity. I start with empirical observations on recent contributions to Chinese online green public culture: kepu (科普 popularizing science) vloggers, coal miners as content creators, and local communities’ actions and everyday conversations. I then elaborate on texture as materiality over time in dialogues with previous studies. The article hopes to provoke more studies on the complex of publics/public spheres other than their spatial forms.