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Transnational Consumption of Console Gaming by Chinese Players
Transnational Consumption of Console Gaming by Chinese Players
Main Research Project
July 2024 - Now
Console games are a classic format of video games, now relying both on dedicated hardware and internet connectivity. From The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Nintendo Switch to The Last of Us on Sony’s PlayStation, these games have thrived alongside their consoles, fueling a global wave of enthusiasm. However, in China—a massive gaming market—console gaming has remained relatively underdeveloped. It is largely due to long-standing restrictions imposed on foreign-dominated console platforms, which have significantly hindered the operation of console games within mainland China. In response, many Chinese players have turned to global digital and trade networks, purchasing or activating overseas versions of gaming consoles to access console games from around the world.
I embarked on this project driven by gameplay experiences and curiosity. Through interviews with 24 openly recruited players, extensive observation of gaming communities, as well as the collection of relevant historical and policy materials, the study provides a rich, multilayered analysis. This case not only reveals how negotiations between the state and multinational corporations over markets and culture can retroactively shape the material form of gaming hardware, but also offers insights into how online gaming communities facilitate mobility. Furthermore, it uncovers how cosmopolitan tendencies in global consumption articulate with national identity in varied and sometimes unexpected ways.
This was an independently conducted project during my master's studies (without funding), and part of the research formed the basis of my MA thesis. The project has led to three distinct lines of inquiry, detailed below.
Social Biography of Nintendo Consoles in China
This article traces the social biography of Nintendo consoles in China since 1980s, focusing on their material transformations and the interplay of forces behind them, including the state, corporations, and consumers. It shows how pirated consoles initially boosted Nintendo’s household recognition. At the same time, negative imaginaries of video games and the lack of a domestic industry produced the discourse of “foreign spiritual opium,” prompting strict state ban and the localization of console forms. Yet the rapid evolution of media technologies blurred product categories, creating regulatory tensions. By the 2020s, with China’s gaming industry flourishing and regulation more established, consoles themselves became marginal, serving instead as tools for the state and domestic firms to project global influence. Nintendo’s core consumption now relies on imports while retaining traces of earlier grey-market circulation.
The paper is titled Parallel Imports, Pirated Products, Domestic Agency, and Imported Consoles: The Social Biography of Nintendo Game Consoles in China.
Consumer Cosmopolitanism and National Identity
Within different console game contexts, however, transnational consumptions (dis)articulate with national identity in complex ways. How do Chinese players navigate these contexts and rationalize their consumption practices? Drawing on interviews, observations, and discourse analysis, this article uncovers the resilient and distinctive characteristics of cosmopolitanism in Chinese players’ consumption practices. Then, through comparative case analysis on Animal Crossing and Black Myth, it demonstrates how multiple actors—most notably the state—(de)construct national identity discourses surrounding specific games, while players develop diverse inconsistent discursive strategies to negotiate tensions between cosmopolitan consumption and national identity. Building on these findings, this article proposes a framework termed “elastic cosmopolitanism,” arguing that players’ navigations and rationalizations typically follow three contextual pathways: “disarticulation,” “congruent articulation,” and “incongruent articulation.” Integrating the perspectives of articulation and national identity, this framework underscores the generativity, resilience, and flexibility of consumer cosmopolitanism, which challenges binary and normative assumptions, offering a comprehensive lens for examining subjectivity in contemporary transnational consumption.
It acts as my master’s thesis Elastic cosmopolitanism: How Chinese players navigate national identity through transnational console game consumption, which was presented at the International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum 2025 in Rabat, Morocco.
Mobilities and Boundaries Crossing within Online Communities
This project also inspired my theoretical exploration of mobility. Focusing on Chinese online console gaming communities, the paper draws on political economy, postcolonial anthropology, and media geography to investigate the relationship between mobility and boundaries in online community research. It proposes a theoretical model of online community mobility, identifying four types of boundaries that such communities can cross: nation-state, language, technology, and institution. While online communities demonstrate the capacity to transcend these boundaries, the study argues that the limits of their mobility are rooted in the communities themselves. This is due to the inherent locality embedded in shared knowledge, which inevitably leads to the reproduction of the very boundaries being crossed. The model thus offers a new approach to understanding glocalization in digital approach.
The paper, titled Boundaries Crossing and Reproduction: Mobilities in Chinese Console Gaming Communities, has been accepted at both the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Chicago, USA and the 2025 Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in Singapore.
Curtion Work of E-Commerce Live-streaming
Curtion Work of E-Commerce Live-streaming
Cooperation with Qi Henglin (PhD student at Renmin University)
October 2024 - November 2025
Time-related Work within Platform Cultural Production
This article examines how a major e-commerce livestreaming event is collectively produced by a multi-channel network (MCN) team affiliated to a top influencer. Based on four months of ethnography at MCN Kite, it shows that teamworkers curate a seamless real-time stream through backstage practices of selection, organization, and rehearsal, while managing constant disruptions and competing time demands from the influencer, platform, brands, and consumers. These practices reveal contested temporalities and complex power dynamics. By treating “real-time” not as a technical given but as a form of curatorial labor, the article highlights that real-time serves as a key site of labor object, temporal negotiation, and life experience. It also stresses the continued importance of human work in platform curition (a form of platform cultural production), proving how promises of autonomy and flexibility in the platform economy obscure diminished organizational responsibility.
As the corresponding author, I was responsible for writing the introduction, theoretical review, discussion, and conclusion sections, as well as proofreading and handling the submission process. In addition, I designed the clothing diagrams using AI to balance anonymization with visual clarity. This article Curating the Real-time: Classification Labor in Chinese E-commerce Live-streaming was presented at 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Chicago, USA and a modified version Curating Real-Time: MCN Teamwork in Influencer E-commerce Livestreaming on National Communication Association (NCA) 2025 Annual Convention in Denver, USA.
IP Reverse and Global Cultural Transduction of Pop Mart Blind Box
IP Reverse and Global Cultural Transduction of Pop Mart Blind Box
Representative Course Essay
January 2024 - November 2024
Commercial Mediascape Contra-flow
Blind boxes are cartoon figures sold in sealed packaging that conceals until opened. Originally emerging as derivative products of Japan’s ACGN culture, they relied heavily on Japanese media character franchises. However, in China, companies like Pop Mart have developed a new marketing model in which the blind box drives the creation of intellectual property (IP), marking a global commercial peak. It reveals a shift in the transnational production, circulation, and consumption of popular culture—especially as driven by the evolving media industries in emerging economies like China.
Grounded in the analytical framework of cultural transduction, this study draws on publicly available data, multi-site field observations in Pop Mart stores across several countries/regions, internal informal communications with staff at the Pop Mart headquarters, and interviews with blind box consumers. It aims to unpack the dynamics behind this reversed cultural flow.
By situating mediascapes within the unequal global economy, this article critically examines how developing countries appropriate and remake marketing models originally devised in developed contexts. Economically, this "contra-flow" represents a form of success for emerging economies. However, such flows are often a form of bricolage—a commercial remix that prioritizes market appeal at the expense of local cultural characteristics. The findings challenge optimistic narratives about the "rise of emerging cultural powers," suggesting instead that what we are witnessing is the reproduction of existing commercial mediascapes.
The paper was first presented at IAMCR 2024 in Christchurch, New Zealand, under the title Pop Mart Blind Box Consumed in China: Cultural Transduction under Intertextuality and Glocalization. A revised version, Mediascape Contra-Flow in Popular Culture: A Case Study of Pop Mart Blind Box, was presented at the ISA 2025 in Rabat, Morocco.
To be continued...
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