In the context of digital technology-driven global cultural flows, the permeation of Korean idol culture into China's youth "stratified cultural phenomena" has emerged as a focal concern. This study adopts a transnational cultural flow theoretical lens, integrating both in-depth interviews and digital ethnographic methods, to systematically interrogate the penetrative mechanisms through which Korean idol culture infiltrates Chinese youth subcultures. Specifically, it examines the triangulated forces of industrial standardization, algorithmic platform architectures, and affective labor dynamics. The analysis reveals that the K-pop entertainment industry constructs hegemonic cultural frameworks via algorithmic collusion and standardized industrial exports, enabling the internalization of foreign cultural influences through data-driven participatory labor among Chinese youth. While fan communities exhibit localized resistive practices through symbolic hybridization, technological appropriation, and ethical renegotiation, these innovative articulations remain circumscribed by the original cultural schema, manifesting a distinctive "dependent resistance" modality. This paradox underscores the dialectical tension between globalizing cultural forces and local identity formations, producing fragmented value systems and contested subjectivities among youth. To address these complexities, this study advocates for cultural governance frameworks that recognize the fluidity of youth cultural practices, calibrate regulatory mechanisms with openness to hybridity, and cultivate institutional inclusivity. Such strategies may enable the activation of endogenous cultural productivity while fostering resilient spaces for the negotiation of youth subjectivity in an era of digitized cultural globalization.
Xuesong Shang (2025) studied this question.