Editor and chapters talk: 'Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media', 2nd Edition
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Main Building
- Room
- KLT
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, Dr Hsin-I Sydney Yueh, and Dr Jens Damm to discuss the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media.
Session 1: Rethinking Chinese Media in a Digital Decade (Dr Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley)
The talk is an editor’s reflections on the publication of the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2025) and uses it as a lens to reassess the transformation of media across the Chinese-speaking world over the past decade. Since the first edition appeared in 2015, the media landscapes of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao have been reshaped by rapid digitalisation, platformisation and intensifying political contestation.
Rather than treating these territories as isolated cases, the volume highlights shared structural challenges – such as misinformation, declining media trust, regulatory expansion and the growing influence of digital platforms – while recognising the distinctive political and cultural contexts that shape media practices in each location.
Here I shall foreground Taiwan as a particularly valuable analytical starting point for rethinking Chinese media studies, demonstrating how Taiwan’s experiences with digital governance, civic participation and cultural representation illuminate broader regional dynamics. I’ll also examine the consolidation of digital authoritarian governance in the PRC and the changing media environments of Hong Kong and Macao. Taken together, I argue that the digital transformation of the past decade has fundamentally reshaped how scholars conceptualise media, power and communication across the Chinese cultural region.
Session 2: #MilkTeaAlliance as Minor Solidarity: How A Taiwan-Centred Perspective Engages and Challenges the Global South Theoretical Framework (Dr Hsin-I Sydney Yueh)
The #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, sparked by clashes between Chinese and Thai netizens, with participation from Taiwan and Hong Kong, has gained significant visibility on social media. This chapter uses this case study to explore ongoing debate in communication studies about decolonising knowledge production.
While critical theories from the Global South challenge Eurocentric and imperialist perspectives, they often overlook two issues. First, the term ‘Global South’ is frequently used as a mere geographic indicator without deeper theoretical engagement. Second, ambiguity surrounds China's role in the Global South. By examining the Milk Tea Alliance through a Taiwan-centred lens, this study complicates the concept of ‘Chinese media’ and advocates replacing ‘South–South solidarity’ with ‘minor solidarity’ for more precise analysis.
Session 3: Contested and Negotiated Discourses: Media Framing of LGBTQ Issues in Taiwan (Dr Jens Damm)
Taiwanese media framing of LGBTQ issues from the early 1980s to 2024 is best understood as a struggle over political legitimacy rather than a simple story of liberal 'progress'. This chapter argues that two contested discourse regimes – 1980s AIDS-centered coverage and 2016 to 2024 marriage-equality debates – reveal how democratisation and media pluralisation both expanded voice and reconfigured stigma. In the 1980s, newly liberalising newspapers and sensational weeklies amplified medicalised 'expert; authority, fusing homophobia with AIDS phobia and casting homosexuality as pathology, risk, and social disorder.
By contrast, the marriage-equality cycle unfolded across mainstream outlets and digital platforms as rival coalitions fought to define the issue: opponents naturalised heterosexual marriage via procreation and child-protection narratives, while advocates mobilised constitutional equality, human rights, and romantic love frames. The chapter contends that journalists, activists, lobbyists, and politicians acted as gatekeepers of discursive resources, and that legal change in 2019 emerged from this mediated contest – not despite it.
Image credit: Jeffrey Chai via Unsplash
About the speakers
Dr Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley is Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London. She is founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (2018 to present) and publishes widely in English and Chinese on cinema, media, and democratisation in Taiwan. Her recent co-edited book is Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2nd ed., 2025). She also co-edits book series with Anthem Press and Brill on Asian media, cinema, and screen studies.
Hsin-I Sydney Yueh is Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Online Education and Internships in Communication at the University of Missouri. Her book Identity Politics and Popular Culture in Taiwan won the 2018 NCA Outstanding Book Award. She co-edited Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms and contributed to the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2nd ed.). Her research focuses on intercultural communication education, persuasion, and Taiwan studies.
Jens Damm is Associate Fellow at the ERCCT, University of Tübingen, and was 2025 Visiting Chair of Taiwan Studies at Leiden University. He previously led a project on China’s cultural diplomacy in Prague. His research spans media, gender and sexuality, and Taiwan–China public discourse, building on early work on homosexuality in Taiwan. More recently, he examines geopolitics linking Germany, the EU, Taiwan, and China. He co-edited Unpacking “De-risking” China (2026).
