Regulating Obscenity in Chinese Livestreaming: An Ongoing Mediation between the Private and the Public, the Nation and the Market

Abstract

Livestreaming platforms, including Huya, Douyu, Huajiao, and Inke, have become extremely popular in China in recent years, resulting in the formation of new industries and new professions. Livestreaming also forms a ‘grey area’ for the production and circulation of content that can be deemed pornographic and obscene by the government. The challenges for effective regulations come mainly from livestreaming’s real-time feature and its problematization of the distinction between public and private. Using theoretical lenses, including a Foucauldian approach to neoliberal governmentality, this article examines the Chinese government’s major attempts between 2016 and 2018 to regulate obscenity in livestreaming and consider them in the context of the government’s history of regulating media, the internet, and pornography. Based on an analysis of the evolving regulatory regime, the article also discusses how livestreaming users are left to their own devices as they navigate the ongoing mediation between the government’s economic and ideological motives.