The reason Chinese men are joining the ‘manosphere' - Asia Specific podcast, BBC World Service

Derek. What are we talking about today? Well, we are talking about the manosphere, Mariko, and more specifically, the manosphere in China. And what's interesting is this idea of manosphere, it's usually seen to include online misogyny, especially on social media. But China kind of has its own manosphere, doesn't it? Yeah. I think what's interesting to me is that in the course of my research, I found that while the voices of the men in the manosphere in China sort. of echo the same narrative and rhetoric of the manosphere elsewhere,

I think a lot of the the root of the unhappiness of the men in China, well, part of the manosphere at least, are. they are driven more by economic forces than it is ideological differences. And that's what I found most interesting. So there's a lot to discuss. So let's unpack that, shall we? As always, I'm Mariko in Singapore. and this is Asia Specific from the BBC World Service. Twice a week we bring you Asia Pacific stories unpacked by those who know them best.

Well, Derek Cai, of course, is from our podcast team. Welcome back. Thank you, thank you. And we're joined by two experts today, aren't we? Ling Tang is from the University of Melbourne. Welcome to Asia Specific. Thanks for inviting me. Hello all. We also have Yihuan Zhang, who's a graduate researcher from the University of Macau. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Shall we just start by defining what manosphere is?

Because, you know, I think of especially. in the West, Andrew Tate, you know, anti-feminism movement and so on. But there's kind of more official definition of the term, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. It's hard. It's difficult to not talk about feminism. if you want to talk about the manosphere, I think, um, because the term manosphere is so broad, right? Like you said, I mean, even amongst our people on our own team, we couldn't nail down a proper definition of manosphere. It's a huge spectrum from all the way to the left,

I guess left in a sense of the spectrum, you have fitness influencers teaching men how to be, how to get fit, you know, be, uh, be healthy. And then on the extreme right, which is what we're talking about today, the extreme form of, uh, form of manosphere. It's characterised by, I think, a very intense vitriol against women, very anti-feminist. And, um, what I find most interesting, I think what we talked about, right.

Um, what I find most interesting about this topic is. that in, like you said, Andrew Tate in the US, they're sort of, it overlaps with the alt-right or the extreme right, people on the right, politically speaking. In China, you don't have, there's no like left or right. So I don't know how the manosphere manifests itself in China. and also in the US, um, or rather in the West, you have big figures like Andrew Tate.

You've got like, uh, you know, Andrew Tate-like figures, his brother as well, that people sort of coalesce around on social media and then they, you know, buy into the ideology, the narratives. But in China, from my research, it seems like there isn't sort of like. one or few big popular figures that people can gather around. It's more like satellite influencers. I want to get their take on it. Because I think Yihuan, your research was centred. on the manosphere in China, right? Yes. You're right. Derek.

And you know, your observation. and it's aligned with my observation and my research. Uh, in China, it just looks like a very decentralised. You can see that even the many men identify themselves. as ordinary men, not the manosphere men. Um, but they express ideas, you know, uh, it looks like the manosphere ideas, like the, uh, women and feminism, who are, you know,

the people to be blamed for their victimisation situation and that. the male suffering is caused by the popular feminism. You know, men in China are living, you know, very hard. now at the time, things like that. Another condition that in China, you know, we do not have the, you know, the two-party political culture or more party political culture. It's just ruled by the CCP. So and also for the CCP, the social stability is the most important thing.

So and the movement of Chinese manosphere is also depoliticised. because they cannot express their attacks on the state. or they cannot express, you know, this, the attacks on the system, but the, you know, the most available discourse of Chinese manosphere is all it is. they blaming, uh, the women, blaming the popular feminism and things like that. So the CCP being the Chinese Communist Party, but I was actually wondering whether it's because of the.

the internet being tightly controlled, often censored, that China doesn't have those, you know, Andrew Tate-like figures, um, you know, are they kind of quashed because of the censorship? Well, he's just said that there are. like figures online that are not maybe not to the extent of Andrew Tate, but there are sort of anti-feminism narratives on social media like Weibo. and Xiaohongshu. Uh, am I correct?

Right. I just wish to jump in and say that, um, just the ecology of the platforms in China are highly gendered too. For instance, the two platforms that you mentioned, uh, Weibo and Xiaohongshu, maybe especially at the beginning because of the nature of, for instance, Xiaohongshu started as a platform that's mainly. for like women customers to share, like cosmetics, reviews, and etc. so it, it really has like a rather, let's say, feminised, um, sort of fan base or user base at the beginning.

I guess the big difference about China is because of. its one-child policy, which was in place for, what, 35 years or so? That when parents chose to have boys instead of girls, and now you have way more men in their marriage age. I think I was reading like 22.5 million more men than women. of marriage age group by 2027. And how those men are being frustrated by, you know, not being able to find a partner.

I mean, is that one of the reasons that they start to believe. in those kind of anti-feminism views? And that's one of the factors that, you know, evoke their sentiments, you know, their resentment towards women and feminism. But in China, it is very special that the family norm plays a, you know, core value in shaping their manosphere ideas in China. Uh, because, you know, their frustration are not.

just cannot find a partner or cannot find someone to marry. But um, the problem is the marriage itself. Because from my research, I have discovered a lot. of discourse about their frustrations about the cost of, you know, getting married and form a new family. And, uh, they think the financial cost of such thing is, you know, intolerable and, uh, they find it's a burden that they cannot afford. Is there truth in that? Like how expensive is it?

You know, the, the most free, uh, the most frequent, uh, signifier, you know, uh, you know, the, the, the use is "Cai Li", or bride price in English. And, you know, they, uh, you know, in China, you know, the marriage, uh, uh, traditions like, uh, especially in some provinces like, uh, Jiangxi or like, uh, Henan and I. think and the province like that, the "Cai Li", the bride price may cost.

200,000 RMB. So that's, that's a man having to pay that to the woman. that or the woman's family that he's about to marry. It's not always the man himself. It's about the man's family. So, uh, it's interesting that when this man blame the women, um, they always, you know, evoke the discourse of filial piety. because they think, they will evoke the discourse like the, their parents, you know, worked hard throughout their life.

And, but the marriage itself cost all their, uh, you know, money. So they think the women not exploit the man himself, but also exploit the man's family as a whole. So they just use this kind of family discourse to moralise their blaming. for women and to justify, uh, the victimhood of their own. Um, actually, we need to also look at how one-child policy actually coincided. with the economic reform in China,

right? And then it is not to say that. in the Mao era such a phenomenon doesn't exist. Saying that, or. there are like certain masculine expectations of men. But, however, because of the economic reform, on the one hand, one-child policy creates this. some preference that you mentioned. But on the other hand, research has been demonstrated that there is an unexpected sort. of heavy investment on the daughters, especially urban daughters. So, um, so then, um, these urban daughters, um, sort of grow up.

with heavy investment on their education, but at the point, economic reform also means that in the Mao era, let's say in the 70s, China has one of the highest women's participation rate in labour. And then that's because of the work unit, people's commune, and the fact that the state feminism back then, or socialism feminism back then really sort of alleviated some burdens. of reproductive labour and also mobilised women to hold up half the sky, right?

But however, now that women have a lot more education, but. in the marketised space that make women redundant first in the market space. So it's like, oh, we have a lot of education, but once we go to work, oops, the old patriarchal form is coming back. And now we're expected to be like this feminised, beautiful, like wife. And so that's just not, it's gonna be like a shock for.

many young women growing up under the one-child generation. And so we can see like since the early 2000s, we had this discourse of leftover women, which means that it's your fault, like not to get married. Yeah. Um, you know, I want to talk. about "Cai Li" because we have that in Singapore as well, but it's done more as a symbolic gesture. We give money. The family of the guy would give money to the bride's family. at the gate. They call it gate crashing. Right. Um, or rather we call it gate crashing.

But in China it's sort of like a social contract, right? And social contracts break all the time. It kind of seems like the easiest solution is. to just ignore bride prices. So I guess what I'm saying is, is the demand for bride price coming. from the women's side of the family? Uh, do they make it compulsory? It's an interesting question. And, you know, um, for some conditions, you're right. Especially in some big cities, cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai, Beijing, they just use the bride price for just a ritualised exchange.

Right? It's a ritual of the marriage itself. But especially in the rural areas, many research have shown that for some, uh, you know, the women's family and daughters, the women's family, their parents want to, you know, exchange their daughters for money. Yeah. I just want to add that I think, uh, to add on to what Yihuan said is really the urban and rural divide. Um, so for urban is more about class gatekeeping to make sure.

that the daughter is marrying, um, to a person that's at least our class or if not like better than our class. And it's also like very pragmatic, right? It's a pragmatic way of thinking. Um, but in rural China, it's more, it's also pragmatism, but it's to buy off that reproductive labour. that the woman would be contributing. And that's like more traditional in a way. No, I wanted to pick, I wanted to pick up on what Ling said about, you know,

women holding up half the sky because growing up in Japan, we thought that China, you know, at least in terms. of women's labour participation, it's more equal. But where does the Chinese Communist Party stand on this rise of, I guess, anti-feminism move or trend or whatever you want to call it. that we're especially seeing online? Well, I mean, the official discourse is still. that men and women are equal, right? That's in our constitution since the 50s.

And, um, so, but however, it's just that in practice. how we see the different things sort of like shift throughout time. So China do, especially mainland China, do have a lot. of very advanced feminist practice. And it's also the same with concubinage, right? So for instance, in Hong Kong, it was only abolished in the 70s, whereas the monogamous marriage based on um, sort of free will was already established in the 50s.

And so there are a lot of wonderful things like or progressive. deeds that was being done with the socialist feminist paradigm. Um, but the difference really, and also to connect to what we have discussed. is that this very top down manner was almost a shock, you know, when this happened to not all, but definitely some like. during the period when women need to hold up half the sky, right? So it also explained the repercussions.

So women not only need to hold up half the sky. but they're also expected to become "Iron Lady". And this did not sort of register well with everybody. We should probably say that that was a saying of Mao Zedong. We've been we've been talking. I mean, it's pragmatic. at the time because they needed like women in the workforce, right? To circle back to what you said, the point you brought up about social media, because I know that like around 2020, that was when the party, the Chinese,

the CCP, intensified its crackdown on feminist content on social media. The reason they gave was that they want to crack down on extreme feminist ideas. And they detained some very prominent feminists. Exactly. The famous feminist five. Have they been cracking down on misogynous content the same way. that they have with what they call extreme anti-feminist content? Because my theory is that it's, they're sort of caught in a rock and a hard place. because, um, the narrative that the party has been saying, or using, is.

that feminist movement is an import from the US, and they're here to break social stability. And that's why they, I think, want to clamp down on that. But if they allow the misogynous content to grow to a critical mass, that's not going to be helpful for social stability as well. Derek, you mentioned the censorship of the popular feminism, censorship. of the radical feminism and the, you know,

but they also censored the, you know, so-called misogynistic content, especially when it's directed their discontent to the, you know, social stability, discontent to the current, you know, state ideologies or the current arrangement of the family norms. So when, when some men say that I do not want to take the obligations of, uh, like earn a lot of money, work hard, become, you know, cheap labour.

in many Chinese industries, they will be censored. But if, you know, if you express your discontent towards women. and the women are bad, you know, bad people, the families. teach women to be bad, okay, you can, you can survive. And also the platforms will, you know, amplify this kind. of information that blame women and all women cause the man's burden. Crack down on feminism, as you said in, um, since the 2015, um, which is a crackdown, which is the detaining.

of the feminist five actually goes hand in hand with the sort of like, uh, with the cracking down on civil society, feminism or civil society, NGO-based like sort of activity as a whole. Um, because what also happened that year was the 709 detainment. of human rights lawyers. And then two years after this, this like, um, NGO, overseas NGO law, that basically makes. it extremely difficult to run like a overseas-funded NGO in China.

And that started, um, in relation to feminism. is the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, right? And then people still talk about that conference today. because it actually opens the door to, to not just feminist NGOs, but NGOs in general. So when we talk about this cracking down and also to say, what do we mean by foreign forces here?

It's actually this, that more like, oh, human rights, um, narrative based. on foreign-funded NGO practice is considered to be dangerous. It's not just feminism, but also like human rights, like whatever, in total. That's just to complicate this a little bit. But at the same time, men and women are equal in the Constitution. So my takeaway from this conversation with them is that the, the idea or the root behind a lot of the unhappiness of the men.

in the manosphere in China is driven more by economic forces. than it is ideological differences. And that seems... And if that is the case, then it seems like a much easier, not easy, but like an easier problem to solve. when compared to the West, where it's ideological differences. That's a lot... that divide is a lot harder to bridge. So in China, I don't know, what other, what recourse is there? I mean, healthy debate space like Yihuan mentioned. Or ditch the bride price. Or ditch the bride price, yeah. I mean, to be fair, that is not enshrined in law.

That's just a social contract which can be broken, right? What do you think, Ling? Or let's put it this way. So if both of you are, are, um, Chinese men wanting to get married? Um, because romantic relationship and family is really important. And then now you're working really hard, um, as like a white collar in like a big enterprise. and then you earn around, let's say 15K RMB. Um, but the real estate price is seven million RMB.

So in order to get married, your parents, both of them maybe. including your grandparents, are gonna help you with that. And then, so now that you see online, there are like different debates, would you rather blame or question why is the real estate price seven million? Or would you say, why are women so greedy? Why do they why do I need to buy the house? Why can't we buy it together?

And even when we buy a house, why do I need to put their name first? Or sometimes even just their names? The thing is, if no-one is really talking. about the sort of political economy of everything, then what we have at hand is this gendered, um, sort of like debate. or this gender antagonism that would land basically nowhere. And also it would also mean that there is, of course, more divide between sort of what men think and what women would think.

And so it's sort of creating what, well, what we academics call intersectional feminism, which is the feminism. that also cares about class, also cares about rural-urban divide, also care about all different types of, oppressions, sort of impossible. And then that type of feminism is can truly be. for everybody, but it's not promoted. It was a really insightful, really interesting conversation.

Thank you so much for joining us Yihuan and Ling. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you so much. And thank you, Derek. Thank you, thank you. You've been watching Asia Specific. from the BBC World Service with me, Mariko Oi in Singapore. If you have any questions or thoughts on what we covered in this episode. or any other stories from the region, please leave us a comment below. You can also get in touch with us on email: AsiaSpecific@bbc.co.uk. and click like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. See you next time.