Global Flows, National Borders: The Cultural Life of Global China

What does China look like when you approach it not through politics or economics, but through culture — its films, its literature, its youth, its digital life?

In this episode of Mapping Global China Conversations, we're joined by Professor Jeesoon Hong, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Culture and Critical Global Studies at Sogang University (Seoul), for a wide-ranging conversation on Chinese culture, media, and China's shifting place in the world.

Together we explore Global China through a cultural lens by asking how literature, cinema, digital platforms, youth culture, and cross-border exchange shape China's global presence, and what these reveal that conventional geopolitical debates tend to miss.

 

Topics discussed include:

• What does Global China mean from a cultural studies perspective?

• Why China should be understood through both global flows and national boundaries

• Chinese youth culture, digital platforms, and the rise of platform capitalism

• The relationship between Chinese media, censorship, and cultural production

• Independent cinema vs. blockbuster films in China

• Why Chinese independent films often travel internationally more successfully than domestic blockbusters

• Melodrama as a defining feature of East Asian popular culture

• Republican-era China and the historical circulation of ideas, consumer culture, and literature

• Soft power, the Korean Wave (Hallyu), and comparisons between China and South Korea

• The relationship between state policies, cultural industries, and global influence

• Critical Global Studies and new research agendas, including gender, disability studies, and the Global South

• Why young Chinese women may represent one of the most important emerging subjects for understanding China’s future.

 

This conversation offers a nuanced perspective on how culture, media, and everyday life intersect with China’s global transformations, highlighting perspectives that often remain outside conventional geopolitical discussions.