Fen Qings(Angry Youth) in Contemporary China

Abstract The massive worldwide protests initiated by China's angry youths (Fen Qings) over biased reports on the Tibet issue in the West in 2008 and perceived unfriendly actions toward China's Beijing Olympic Games shocked the world. Although scholars and the media have shown great interest in China's Fen Qing phenomenon, there is no serious scholarly research. Based on interviews, investigative field trips, and an exhaustive web search, this paper explores the Fen Qing phenomenon. Through an analysis of three cases, namely, the anti-CNN Web, the Han Han phenomenon, and the ‘69 Holy War’, it distinguishes three types of Fen Qings: nationalistic, China-critical, and resentment-venting. These Fen Qings vary in the people who constitute them, the causes of their anger, and their targets. The paper places the Fen Qing phenomenon in the broader context of China's socio-economic transformation and its relations with other countries. Notes *Dr Lijun Yang teaches at the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. She is also a Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute. Her research interests include China's Cultural Revolution, social movements, women's political participation, and nationalism in China and Japan. She has published widely in different languages, including Japanese, Chinese, and English. Her articles have appeared in refereed journals such as The China Quarterly, The Review of History (Japan), Asian Studies (Japan), and Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences. Her book Social Structure and the Cultural Revolution in China: Citizenship and Collective Violence (in Japanese, Ochanomizu Shobo, 2003) received the Ohira Memorial Foundation Award, 2005, as one of the four best books on humanities and social sciences in the Asian Pacific in the year. Besides her academic research, she has also contributed to newspapers from time to time. Dr Yongnian Zheng is Professor and Director of the East Asian Institute in the same university. He researches on China's domestic transformation and its external impact. His latest book is The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation. The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an early draft. Thanks also go to Ms Weng Cuifen for her research assistance. Lijun Yang can be reached by email at eaiyl@nus. edu. sg, and Yongnian Zheng at eaizyn@nus. edu. sg 1. For related information and videos, see ‘Review of April Youth in 2010’, AC Web, available at: http: //bbs. anti-cnn. com/thread-157046-1-1. html (accessed 20 August 2010). 2. Y. Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) ; P. H. Gries, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004) ; S. 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We began to research on China's angry youth when the first author participated in a joint study between the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Contemporary China Studies of Wasada University, Japan on Chinese youth's perceptions on history among high school and university students in five cities (Dalian, Beijing, Xi'an, Nanjing, and Guangzhou) in 2007. The study consisted of survey, face-to-face interviews and group discussions. In addition to that study, both authors have conducted dozens of interviews in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Ningbo. In the summer of 2010, after our exhaustive web search, we conducted several group discussions which involved Internet protest organizers, website managers and young web protests. During these group discussions, we focused on different orientations and perceptions of young Chinese netizens. We are grateful to them for sharing their web experience with us. 6. 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