🔥 China Trend Watch (Week 21–22 | 2026) Part of Eye on Digital China by Manya Koetse, China Trend Watch is an overview of what’s trending and being discussed on Chinese social media.

In this edition:

• China’s upcoming Taiwan reunification blockbuster
• 8 Quick Scrolls to Know
• The Liushenyu coal mine disaster exposes hidden tunnels, “yin-yang maps,” and systemic safety failures
• A controversial prison film starring a convicted killer is pulled from cinemas
• China announces major hukou reforms
• China’s Top 5 Rising Books
• Why everyone is saying: “I genuinely did feel uncomfortable”

Chinese cinema is “riding the winds of history.”[1] While the biggest films of the 2025 summer movie season focused on the Second Sino-Japanese War, this year, it is China’s military campaign to take Taiwan that is heading to the big screen.

The movie Battle of Penghu (澎湖海战), scheduled to premiere in mainland China on July 25, is a state-backed historical epic centered on the major naval battle that ultimately led to the Qing conquest of Taiwan.

Over the past week, the film held its first full preview screenings, released its theatrical trailer, unveiled a series of posters, and triggered online discussions.

The film’s narrative and promotional slogans make clear that its timing is neither coincidental nor merely historical. The movie is deeply entangled with contemporary cross-strait politics and Beijing’s message that unification with Taiwan is inevitable and “unstoppable.”

The “Battle of Penghu”, also known as the Battle of the Pescadores, took place in 1683, when Qing dynasty admiral Shi Lang (施琅) defeated the forces of the Zheng regime in Taiwan, which was basically the last big Ming loyalist center after Beijing had already fallen in 1644. Shi Lang’s victory at sea led to the Zheng regime’s surrender and the Qing annexation of Taiwan, formalized in 1684 when Taiwan was incorporated as a prefecture of Fujian province.

Over the past decade, China has increasingly fused Hollywood-style commercial filmmaking with state propaganda goals. Although Xi-era patriotic blockbusters had appeared earlier, the 2021 Korean War epic The Battle at Lake Changjin marked a turning point: it showed that a visually spectacular film could become both a massive commercial success and an effective vehicle for state messaging.

Beyond serving as spectacular propaganda and a nationalist boost, The Battle at Lake Changjin also became a platform for promoting a new narrative about China’s role in the Korean War. The film helped breathe new life into these narratives among younger Chinese moviegoers, who bought merchandise, checked in online while watching the film, and even posted photos of themselves eating frozen potatoes — echoing scenes from the movie based on the real experiences of soldiers on the battlefield.

The victory the Chinese soldiers achieved on the battlefield in Korea against the Americans was a reminder of Chinese courage and pride at a time of heightened Sino-American tensions.

Battle at Lake Changjin caused a real social media frenzy surrounding its merchandise and people eating frozen potatoes to share in the hardships felt by those on the battlefield.

Last year, similar dynamics unfolded when Dead to Rights (Nanjing Photo Studio, 南京照相馆) hit theaters, focusing on the Japanese invasion of Nanjing and the atrocities that followed. Together with Unit 731 and Dongji Island (东极岛), it formed part of a broader cinematic re-narration of the Sino-Japanese War (read more here).

The films were accompanied by a wider state media campaign emphasizing how China’s War of Resistance against Japan, as an integral part of World War II, represented China’s major contribution and sacrifice in the global fight against fascism, underscoring the country’s important role in shaping the postwar world order.

Now, this upcoming Taiwan-focused blockbuster seems to follow a similar playbook.

The movie is directed by award-winning Hong Kong filmmaker Cheang Pou-soi (郑保瑞). Wang Xueqi (王学圻), one of China’s most respected veteran actors, stars as Admiral Shi Lang, while the super-popular Jackson Yee (易烊千玺), the TFBOYS pop idol who turned into an acclaimed actor, plays the young Emperor Kangxi. Other major names starring in the movie include Zhao Liying (赵丽颖), one of China’s most renowned female stars, and Geng Le (耿乐), who also starred in Battle at Lake Changjin.

Promo posters for Battle at Penghu.

Besides the cast, the other details surrounding the production of the film are also impressive.

The crew reportedly spent 34 months in preparation, constructing 50 ancient warships, including twelve battleships of nearly 40 meters long, allegedly the largest historical naval replicas ever built in China. Most of them were destroyed during filming. We can expect some spectacular scenes.

Although this summer blockbuster appears to have the right formula for another Battle at Lake Changjin-like success, criticism is surfacing online.

Many netizens argue that the film should never have celebrated Admiral Shi Lang as its hero, and that it would have been more appropriate to focus on Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功, Koxinga) instead, since he is the one who expelled a foreign colonial power, the Dutch VOC, in 1662 and established the first Han Chinese governance on Taiwan. Due to this story of resistance against Western imperialism, many see Zheng Chenggong as the true hero.

💬 As one commenter writes: “Zheng Chenggong [Koxinga] drove out the Dutch colonizers and recovered Taiwan — what does that have to do with Shi Lang? Instead of making a film about Zheng Chenggong, they chose to make one about the traitor Shi Lang.”

Adding to this criticism, others wondered why a movie celebrating the Qing dynasty’s defeat of the Ming loyalist Zheng regime — framed by some netizens as “Manchu forces defeating Han Chinese” — should be treated as part of Chinese history worth celebrating.

Shi Lang’s backstory makes him a contested figure in Chinese history. Originally, he was a general under Koxinga until he switched allegiances and ultimately surrendered to the Qing, leading some critics to label him a traitor (“汉奸”) rather than a hero.

One relevant study by Ronald C. Po [2] into the historical commemoration of Shi Lang argues that Shi Lang’s image has been continuously reconstructed since the Qing dynasty to serve shifting political agendas.

In this case, Shi Lang is framed as the admiral who “unified” Taiwan with China, making him an important historical anchor for the one-China narrative.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about — and the movie’s official tagline is clear about that: “What is isolated must return; what is divided must unite” (“孤悬必归、分疆必合”). Its trailer closes with the slogan “Unifying Taiwan is unstoppable” (“统一台湾，势不可挡”).

Whether Battle of Penghu will become as big a box office hit as Battle at Lake Changjin remains to be seen, but I doubt it, since we know that it’s putting reunification with Taiwan on mainland cinema screens this summer in a way many Chinese find flawed.

One critical reviewer, popular Weibo account @释不归, says:

💬 “The core historiographical flaw of Battle of Penghu does not lie in its ‘choice of the Qing dynasty’s perspective,’ but in its systematic concealment through a ‘unification narrative’ (统一叙事) that forcibly whitewashes a history full of moral grey zones into a binary confrontation between justice and evil.”

For this reason, some say they will boycott the film, while others are celebrating it as a blockbuster promoting unification with Taiwan. Either way, it promises to spark a debate worth watching, and it’s one I’ll certainly be following this summer 👀🍿. I will report back to you after I’ve seen it!

There’s a lot more to catch up on, so keep reading to see which stories dominated online conversations in China over the past two weeks.

Quick Scrolls

• 🌧️ Severe rainstorms and extreme weather triggered flash floods in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District, leaving nine people dead and eleven missing.
• 🏪 The “Father of the Convenience Store,” 7-Eleven founder Toshifumi Suzuki (铃木敏文), is being remembered on Chinese social media following his passing in Tokyo at the age of 93. Netizens praised Suzuki for bringing 24-hour convenience culture to Asia and reshaping global retail.
• 🇷🇸 The first-ever China state visit by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić became a major talking point on social media, where many netizens refer to Vučić as “577” because his Chinese name sounds similar to “5-7-7” (五七七 wǔ qī qī). Vučić said he was aware of the nickname and perfectly happy being “577.”
• 🎬 The Chaoshan-dialect film Letters to Grandma (阿嬷的情书) surpassed 10 billion yuan ($1.38 billion) at the box office within 25 days. With a 9.1 rating on Douban, the underdog production has become one of the biggest surprise hits of 2026, achieving massive success without major stars or blockbuster budgets.
• 🏛️ Wuhan University recently opened its campus to the public without requiring reservations. Although not everyone is happy about visitors roaming the grounds and taking photos, the move has sparked broader discussions about how Chinese university campuses, as important cultural and public spaces, should be made more accessible.
• 🚀 After nearly seven months in orbit, the Shenzhou-21 crew welcomed the incoming Shenzhou-23 astronauts aboard Tiangong. The docking marked the eighth “space meetup” in Chinese spaceflight history and the first time an astronaut from Hong Kong entered the space station.
• 🛵 Olympic swimmer Sun Yang (孙杨) went viral after grabbing his phone during a TV interview to order food delivery. One related Weibo hashtag — “Sun Yang suddenly starts ordering food during interview” (#孙杨采访时突然开始点餐) — received over 61 million views. Some commenters described him as a typical post-90s-generation personality who simply does whatever he feels like.
• ☠️ One of China’s most sensational corporate crime cases has come to an end. Xu Yao (许垚), former CEO of Santi Universe, the company holding the rights to the hugely successful The Three-Body Problem IP, was executed on May 21, two years after being convicted of poisoning gaming tycoon Lin Qi in 2020. Xu used a deadly mix of pufferfish toxin and amatoxin and also poisoned four other colleagues with methylmercury.

 

The Week’s Key Stories

Hidden Back Doors, Yin-Yang Maps: The Liushenyu Coal Mine Disaster

The catastrophic gas explosion at the Liushenyu Coal Mine (留神峪煤矿) in Qinyuan County, Shanxi, has dominated Chinese news discussions over the past week. The explosion, which occurred on the evening of May 22, killed at least 82 people, while 123 others were hospitalized with injuries of varying severity. Two people remain missing.

This is the worst coal mine incident in China since 2009, when an explosion at the Xinxing coal mine (新兴煤矿) in Heilongjiang killed 108 people.

Soon after the incident in Qinyuan, discussions began focusing on safety violations, especially after the reported numbers failed to add up. At the time of the explosion, 247 workers were reportedly underground, yet the company operating the mine, Tongzhou Group, had recorded only 124 names in the entry log, meaning around 123 workers had entered the mine without following required protocols.

During rescue operations, emergency workers soon discovered that the mine’s official maps did not match the actual underground layout. Tongzhou Group had apparently been operating with so-called “yin-yang maps” (阴阳图纸): two versions of the mine plan — one official version shown to inspectors, and another real version used in practice.

In a May 26 Xinhua report, it was revealed that the mine even had camouflage doors (假门) — constructed from steel mesh wire and woven sacking to resemble tunnel rock walls — to conceal unauthorized tunnels from safety inspectors. When inspectors arrived, workers inside would reportedly seal the door and smear it with coal dust to make it indistinguishable from the surrounding tunnel walls.

In this way, the mine could maximize output and produce extra coal outside official quotas without reporting it. But it also meant these hidden areas fell outside formal oversight and safety protocols, which is why they are referred to as “invisible bombs” (隐形炸弹) within the mining system: gas could accumulate due to insufficient ventilation.

The mine had already been listed in 2024 by China’s mine safety regulator as a site with “serious hazards.”

On social media, the disaster has sparked anger over systemic failures surrounding a mine disaster many viewed as preventable, and over management’s apparent disregard for the lives and safety of its contracted workers, who already occupy some of the most dangerous and lowest-status positions in China’s labor market.

In multiple ways, the Liushenyu Coal Mine disaster shows similarities to the recent Liuyang fireworks factory explosion, which also occurred in May.

Although the two disasters took place in very different industries and locations, they reveal a similar pattern: there had been explicit prior warnings in official records that went unaddressed; inspections identified problems but failed to halt production; hidden production conditions/mechanisms were involved; and both disasters killed dozens of vulnerable migrant workers employed through informal labor arrangements.

One comment pretty much rounds up a general sentiment:

💬 “For the sake of enormous profits, they completely disregarded safety and basic human morality, and showed utter contempt for human life, which is an unforgivable crime! The leadership must receive the death penalty!”

Award-Winning Prison Film Starring Convicted Killer Pulled in China

A Chinese film that was supposed to premiere in mainland cinemas on May 30 has backfired and been pulled following days of controversy and intense online discussion.

The movie, titled Mom from Prison (监狱来的妈妈) in Chinese and using the English title Her Heart Beats in Its Cage, was marketed as a domestic violence film “based on a true story,” with the convicted killer in the movie played by the actual person involved — Zhao Xiaohong (赵箫泓).

Zhao was sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing her husband in 2009 during a domestic violence incident in which she stabbed him with a fruit knife.

Director Qin Xiaoyu (秦晓宇) and famous TV host and producer Wang Han (汪涵) then developed a film around Zhao’s story, presenting it as a sympathetic anti-domestic violence narrative about a woman who suffered long-term abuse, finally struck back, accidentally killed her husband, and later tried to repair her relationship with her son while in prison.

Although the film received approval to be screened in China and performed well at various foreign film festivals, including the San Sebastián International Film Festival, everything fell apart when Chinese netizens collectively criticized the gap between the movie’s narrative and the legal realities of the case. How “true” was this story if the killing was never legally ruled as self-defense, and if the judgment explicitly stated that no domestic abuse had been recognized or evidenced in the case?

Beyond that, many pointed out that Zhao was still formally serving restrictions tied to her prison sentence while participating in a commercial film production, raising questions about how a convicted killer could end up starring in a feature film about her own crime.

Moreover, when the project began in 2019, the production team reportedly applied for permission to film inside prisons under the category of a “public-interest correctional education documentary” (公益教育改造纪录片), which many commenters — including those in this Zhihu thread — considered deceptive.

Although domestic violence has received increasing public attention and sympathy in China in recent years, many argued that this particular project crossed an ethical line and used “feminist-coded content” (女权话题) to glamorize the story of a convicted killer.

“If they had simply used another actress and treated the story as artistic adaptation, perhaps things would never have become this serious,” one Zhihu commenter wrote.

Following the overwhelmingly negative public reaction, Zhao Xiaohong’s social media accounts were silenced, while the film bureau announced that screenings had been suspended due to public complaints and an ongoing investigation. Wang Han also apologized for becoming involved in the project without properly researching its background and content, and announced he had cut ties with the film.

This is one movie that definitely won’t be getting a sequel.

Hukou Reform Announced: Public Services Will Now “Follow the Person”

China’s Household Registration System won’t be as important anymore – that’s the message that was reiterated across Chinese social media by state media, becoming top news on Weibo, Toutiao, and Baidu News on May 27 (#户口以后没那么重要了#)

This comes after China’s State Council, for the very first time, has issued a national-level directive to decouple basic public services from household registration (户口, hùkǒu).

The hukou or ‘household registration’ system is China’s registered permanent residence policy that has been in place in China since 1958. A hukou is assigned at birth and basically works like an official place-based ID. China’s hukou system, among others, separates rural and urban citizens and is essential for access to social services, including education and healthcare.

Because the hukou is tied to one’s registered place of origin rather than to an actual place of residence, it creates problems for the estimated 250 million people in China who have moved elsewhere to live and work. When their children’s access to public schools is closed off, many families choose to leave children behind in their native, more rural areas to live with grandparents or other caregivers. These “leftover children” are just one of many broader problems of urban-rural inequality behind the hukou system, particularly regarding access to public benefits and healthcare.

In this new policy, filed on May 18 and presented at a May 26 press conference, social services, basic benefits, and protections will follow the person, not the hukou. That means that as long as a person resides in and is legally employed in a place, has registered a residence permit, and has paid social insurance, they are entitled to equal access to basic public services as local hukou holders.

In the aftermath of the announcement, social media commenters seem cautiously positive yet skeptical, and still have many questions about the practicalities and the extent to which this will actually change things.

One important question revolves around the gaokao (高考) system – China’s national college entrance exam. Traditionally, one’s hukou affects where a child can go to school and where they can take the gaokao. If this were to change, it would essentially change the rules of the playbook that matters most to many students and their families, as it’s the main doorway to university in China, and university access is tied to later life and career chances.

Some people also express anxiety about the knock-on effects on urban property markets and school enrollment: they think cities like Beijing or Shanghai will get even more crowded in the near future. Who knows how many people will rush there to work now for their kids’ sake?

The optimism about the policy does shimmer through most comments, like one person writing:

💬 “It’s important to be realistic: while the policy lowers the barriers, high-quality public resources remain limited. Achieving complete equality will still take time. But at least the overall direction has changed. Treatment is no longer determined by a piece of paper called a hukou. If we work hard and build our lives in a city, we should be able to enjoy the corresponding protections and services there. And that is the most meaningful source of security this policy provides.”

What China’s Reading

Top 5 Rising Books in China This Week

📚1. Work, Consumerism and the New Poor by Zygmunt Bauman | 工作、消费主义和新穷人

Work, Consumerism and the New Poor is rising on China’s popular book and reading charts this week. The 1998 work by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (translated into Chinese in 2021) argues that poverty in consumer society is defined not by joblessness but by the inability to participate in consumption — that the “new poor” are marked not by exclusion from work but by exclusion from the marketplace of goods and identities. A relevant topic for Chinese social media users in 2026, with issues like youth unemployment and middle-class downward mobility popping up in all kinds of discussions nowadays. 🔗 Link to the book in English / in Chinese.

📚2. The Protagonist by Chen Yan | 主角

The Protagonist (主角) is a long novel by Chen Yan (陈彦) that previously won China’s most prestigious literary fiction award, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, and became one of the top titles on WeChat’s reading platform this week. That is no coincidence: the renewed attention follows the release of the CCTV/Tencent Video television adaptation starring Zhang Jiayi (张嘉益) and Liu Haocun (刘浩存). The novel tells the story of female Qinqiang opera performer Yi Qine and follows more than four decades of her life on and off the stage amid major personal, social, and national transformations. 🔗 Link to Chinese edition.

📚 3. The Second Chief by Huang Xiaoyang | 二号首长

The Second Chief (二号首长) is a Chinese political novel by Huang Xiaoyang, which was originally published in 2011 and recently reissued. It follows the protagonist, Tang Xiaozhou, a veteran journalist from Fudan University who is at a low point in his life when he is appointed as the personal secretary to a new provincial party secretary, Zhao Deliang. Although the book offers a (fictional) glimpse into Chinese provincial politics, some social media users say it’s more like a guide to navigating the workplace and life. 🔗 Link to Chinese version.

📚 4. Fortunate That You All Comfort My Life | 幸得诸君慰平生

“Fortunate to Have You All Comfort My Life” is a collection of warm, light, and easy-to-read essays by the author writing under the pen name “Before the Storms in the Old Garden” (故园风雨前). Originally published in 2022, the book belongs to the popular “slow life” literary genre and focuses on small everyday details, family, flowers, friendship, and fleeting encounters that add warmth, meaning, and vividness to ordinary life. 🔗 Link to Chinese version.

📚5. The Klein Bottle by Okajima Futari | 克莱因壶

The Klein Bottle is a 1989 Japanese mystery novel by the duo Okajima Futari (冈岛二人) was ahead of its time in telling the story of a writer who signs up to test an experimental VR game and gradually loses the ability to distinguish virtual experiences from reality, as people around him begin to disappear or deny shared memories. The book’s renewed popularity in China lately is largely driven by social media discussions about the increasingly murky boundaries between simulated and real experiences in the AI era. 🔗 Link to Chinese version.
 

The Word of the Week

“I genuinely did feel uncomfortable” 我想说当确实不舒服

Everyone and their cousin has been talking about Wang Hedi (王鹤棣), aka Dylan Wang, over the past week. The Chinese actor recently appeared in the celebrity reality show Dear Inn (亲爱的客栈), in which celebrities run a guesthouse together. Wang served as the manager, while his former Meteor Garden (流星花园) co-star Shen Yue (沈月) was also part of the cast.

During the final episode, the celebrities handed out playful awards to each other. Wang received the “Best You’re Just Wang Hedi Award” (“最佳你只是个王鹤底奖”), where the “Di” (棣) character from his real name was replaced with the similarly pronounced character 底, meaning “bottom.”

Many viewers felt the “funny” reward wasn’t actually so funny, especially after rumors surfaced that the cast members had a separate group chat without Wang in it. Fans felt he was being purposely excluded and mocked.

As discussions escalated online, Wang responded on Weibo, writing:

“At the time I thought I was just being oversensitive, but after reading everyone’s analysis for a whole day, I want to say that I genuinely did feel uncomfortable back then.”

That response only made the situation blow up. Shen Yue later issued a public apology, explaining that “You’re just Wang Hedi” had been meant as an inside joke among the cast, encouraging Wang to step down from his manager role and relax into being himself again. But by then, the phrase had already taken on a life of its own online.

By now, “I genuinely did feel uncomfortable back then” has become a meme for admitting that something actually bothered you, even if it initially seemed too trivial to mention and only started nagging at you later.

It is now being used in completely unrelated contexts, and “At the time I thought I was just being oversensitive… I want to say that I genuinely did feel uncomfortable back then.”
(“当时以为是我敏感了……我想说当时确实不舒服”) has become a template for expressing all kinds of grievances and annoyances about things that happened in the past.

That’s a wrap, have a great weekend!

Best,

Manya

[1] “天下大s，乘风而来” is the slogan on the themed teaser poster of Battle of Penghu (澎湖海战》

[2] Ronald C. Po, “Hero or Villain? The Evolving Legacy of Shi Lang in China and Taiwan,” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 5 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000737.

By Manya Koetse
(follow on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram)

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🔥 China Trend Watch (week 16/17 | 2026) Part of Eye on Digital China by Manya Koetse, China Trend Watch is an overview of what’s trending and being discussed on Chinese social media.

Dear reader,

Hope you’re having a good week. Time for an update on what’s been trending.

In this newsletter:

👉Victor Hugo’s day has come
👉China’s grassroots football couldn’t get more viral
👉A scrollable new book by Mo Yan
👉The Chinese office meme of the moment

..and more.

Let’s dive in.

What Really Stood Out

The Jiangsu Super League (Su Chao) Fever

[#苏超开幕式] [#何润东项羽造型亮相苏超观后感#]

The Jiangsu Football City League, better known as the Su Chao (苏超: “the Su Super”), has become a major source of trending topics, memes, and news analyses over the past week.

The “Su Super” is a provincial amateur football tournament launched in 2025 that features 13 teams, one representing each of Jiangsu’s 13 prefecture-level cities. Teams consist predominantly of amateur players, from primary school teachers to office employees, but it’s been seriously successful: last year, some games regularly drew crowds of over 30,000, with a record 60,396 fans for a Nanjing–Suzhou match.

This year, the season’s opening on April 11 was sensational, almost like a mini Spring Festival Gala of its own, with 300 robots from tech company Magic Atom (魔法原子) performing a perfectly synchronized routine—unbothered by the heavy rain—and popular pop singer Zhou Shen (周深) delivering a much-discussed live performance where he hit some incredibly high notes.

It’s the entertainment and creative memes that seem to matter more than the sport itself.

⚽ When Changzhou won 3–0 in its opening match against Nantong, in a stadium filled with more than 40,800 people, the running joke was that the city of “Changzhou” (常州) could add more “strokes” to its name. This is all part of a bigger meme that started last year, when netizens would ‘deduct’ a character stroke from Changzhou’s name after every time it lost, with its Chinese name going from 常州 to 巾州 to 丨州, until netizens joked there were no strokes left to remove (0州)—Changzhou performed quite terribly.

The “chang” character kept losing strokes as Changzhou lost in the 2025 Su Chao (edited image by netizens).

But with this year’s unexpected win, Changzhou struck back, and the official city account flipped the joke by temporarily renaming itself 常洲, with the three-water-drop radical added to the zhou 州, symbolizing its three goals scored (#常州暂时改名常洲#).

⚽ More than that, Changzhou city officials announced a one-day citywide holiday on April 12, with free public buses and metro for all residents. It was almost like a New Year’s night: major landmarks also stayed lit throughout the night.

⚽ Another meme sprang from a giant inflatable dinosaur that was set up before the match, part of Changzhou’s dino-city branding (it is home to China Dinosaur Park). It was meant to look cool and majestic, but netizens thought it resembled a shiny, greasy, reddish-brown soy-braised duck (酱板鸭) instead, leading to the “Soy-braised dragon” meme (酱板龙).

The dino that looked more like a soy-braised duck and “soy-braised dragon” merchandise sold on Taobao.

⚽ During the Suqian vs. Nanjing match on April 18, another highlight featured actor He Rundong (何润东), who appeared dressed in full armor and surrounded by guards and horses, revisiting his famous role as the ancient warlord Xiang Yu (项羽)—the historical figure associated with Suqian as his birthplace. He shouted “Xiang Yu has returned!” (“我项羽回来啦”), a moment that became even more significant after Suqian won 2–0.

⚽ What also stands out in the marketing surrounding the Su Chao is how, alongside the official mascots, Jiangsu media, companies, and fans have been producing AI-generated “city personification” figures featured in images and short videos, with storylines about winning, losing, friendship, and rivalry between the 13 cities in a virtual world. Changzhou is a little dino, Nanjing is a little duck, Nantong is a wolf, etc.

The success of the Jiangsu Super League does not appear out of nowhere: for the past few years, China’s grassroots football has seen a wave of success, with local governments and companies using these leagues and matches to boost local cultural identity and community cohesion, while city-vs-city rivalry and banter consistently trends on social media.

Within this bigger picture, the Village Super League (村超, Cun Chao)—a community football tournament held in Rongjiang County in Guizhou—is a frontrunner. What started as a self-organized village event in 2023 became one of the most-watched grassroots sports stories in recent years.

With China’s national football plagued by underperformance, corruption, and other scandals, more voices are suggesting that the future of Chinese soccer might lie in regional and local super leagues.

Regardless of whether that is true, it is undeniable that phenomena like the Su Chao are bringing a lot of online fun, memes, banter, commercial success, and positive community energy. In doing so, they generate more authentic online engagement than any professional league matches currently do.

France Returning Cultural Relics: “Hugo’s Day Has Come”

[#法国将不义之财归还被抢掠的中国#] [#雨果写的文字成真了#]

It is not often that the French National Assembly goes trending in China, but it did after unanimously passing a cultural restitution bill that makes it easier to return looted colonial-era objects.

The new bill allows countries to request the return of objects taken between 1815 and 1972, provided they can show the items were acquired by force or other illegitimate means. It marks a shift from the previous, slower, case-by-case restitution system, where every single return required a separate parliamentary vote.

In Chinese media, the news was highlighted through a quote by French politician Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, who in his speech cited Victor Hugo’s famous 1861 letter about the sacking of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan), in which he expressed hope that a renewed France would one day return the goods it had plundered from China. Patrier-Leitus said: “The day Hugo longed for has finally arrived.”

Screenshot of the tweet by Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, in translation.

For Chinese audiences, the story carries strong emotional resonance. The looting of the Old Summer Palace in 1860 by French and British forces is widely taught at school as part of the so-called “Century of Humiliation,” the period from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s during which China was attacked, weakened, and torn by foreign powers. The four-character slogan “wù wàng guóchǐ” (勿忘国耻), “Never forget national humiliation”, is frequently repeated in Chinese media, museums, schools, documentaries, and popular culture.

Besides state media and nationalist commentary, other discussions also emerged online. Some threads focused on which artifacts could potentially be returned to China, mainly linked to the burning of the Old Summer Palace in 1860 and the 1908 Dunhuang removals (although this remains contested as “looting”: it concerns French scholar Paul Pelliot, who acquired thousands of invaluable ancient manuscripts and artworks from a monk guarding a cave at Dunhuang for very little money, and took them to Paris, where they have remained ever since).

Other comments expressed hope that France would set an example for other countries.

Although the news went big in China, French media coverage itself did not mention China at all and instead focused on Benin, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Mexico, and Algeria.

On the Feed

A Scrollable New Book by Mo Yan

Word of the Week

The Office Li Xiaoran

—That’s a wrap.

See you next edition.

Best,

Manya

Eye on Digital China, by Manya Koetse, is co-published on Substack and What’s on Weibo. Both feature the same new content — so you can read and subscribe wherever you prefer. Substack offers community features, while What’s on Weibo provides full archive access. If you’re already subscribed and want to switch platforms, just get in touch for help. If you no longer wish to receive these newsletters, or are receiving duplicate editions, you can unsubscribe at any time.