When digital feminisms collide with nationalism: Theorizing “pink feminism” on Chinese social media

Abstract

This article examines how Chinese digital feminists synergize with cyber nationalism to fight the patriarchy and strive to legitimize feminist discourse in Chinese digital realms, where online feminists face strict state censorship and nationalistic backlash. We situate pink feminism as a form of Internet-based nonconfrontational feminist activism revolving around nationalism, in which “pink” connotes young female nationalists, and analyze its precarity within an authoritarian state and neoliberal platform economy. We argue that while pink feminism contributes to the plurality of Chinese feminisms by legitimatizing feminist expression within nationalist frameworks and reinterpreting Chinese nationalism from a feminist perspective, it may inevitably reinforce the existing power structures that feminists seek to dismantle. We suggest that Chinese digital feminists should strategically and consciously engage with pink feminism without ceding feminist autonomy and reflexivity. This study enriches our understanding of the entanglement between feminism and nationalism in non-Western contexts.