From ‘talent show’ to ‘circusee’: Chinese youth resistant acts and strategies in the Super Girl Voice phenomenon

It is often assumed that resistance is the global practice of youth culture and that every local youth culture has its own, idiosyncratic ‘mode of contestation’. However, contemporary Chinese youth are generally considered less rebellious than their Western counterparts. Investigating the way Chinese youth culture shapes itself, this article examines four questions: Is there such a thing as Chinese youth culture? What is the status quo of Chinese youth? What do they resist? Are their acts of resistance successful? Employing examples of acts of resistance that emerged during the production of the Super Girl Voice contest, a popular Chinese reality show, this article demonstrates the strategic resistance of the nexus of the consumerist media industry and the dominant revolutionary ideology in contemporary China. It is found that acts of resistance in this space demonstrate the desire of Chinese youth to exhibit themselves as talented individuals and achieve higher social status, and that these acts contribute to self-expression in the developing civil society.