Xueba Couples
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7474626 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shidai Zhang (0009-0009-6494-2180, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 358-380 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00219118-12257613 |
| OpenAlex | W7127110201 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
In recent years, China's party-state has propagated a multitude of love stories online featuring college-student couples with both exceptional academic performance and political credentials as so-called xueba couples. Based on qualitative text analysis and complementary fieldwork, this article argues that such an official storytelling of “meritocratic romance” constitutes a soft paternalistic propaganda campaign aimed at university-educated Chinese youths, now often caught between “lying-flatism” and an “intimacy crisis” amid rapid economic and sociodemographic changes. It shows that the party-state's “thought and political works” directed at young people have been extended over life politics, while signifying the continuing relevance of Confucian cultural and Maoist revolutionary legacies in model-making tactics for propaganda and social management, albeit under President Xi Jinping's new slogan of “positive energy” and through new digital intermediaries nurtured by media convergence reforms. While an active online viewership market exists for meritocratic romance, an analysis of audience responses indicates that the persuasive power of official xueba couple narratives has been compromised by elitism and state paternalism intrinsic to the model-making formula
Elitism · Meritocracy · Middlebrow · Narrative · Paternalism · Politics · Popularity · Power (physics · Slogan · China's Global Influence and Migration · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy
The Celebration of Heroes
The Exemplary Society
Governing Educational Desire
The Making of an Intellectual Hero
Sustaining and Contesting Revolutionary Legacies in Media and Ideology
The Emulation of Heroes
PositiveEnergy Douyin
Popularizing party journalism in China in the age of social media
Mao's Invisible Hand
The Birth of the Propaganda State
Fandom Culture as a Catalyst for Propaganda
Sang subculture in post-reform China
Chinese Youth and the Communist Party of China
Authoritarian Participatory Persuasion 2.0
Cyber China
What Makes a Covid Hero in China? - A Glimpse of Heroism in Xi Jinping’s New Era
Lie Flat”– Chinese youth subculture in the context of the pandemic and national rejuvenation
Apathy is not Enough
When dating shows encounter state censors
Changes in the Determinants of Marriage Entry in Post-Reform Urban China
How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct Their Public Image
Capturing Clicks
Propaganda as Signaling
How Soft Propaganda Persuades
Keep the Party Assured and the Youth [Not] Satisfied
Labor Heroines of Yan'an
WeChat as infrastructure
Female Virtue and the State in China
The 'losers' of China's Internet
Official microblogging and social management by local governments in China
Meritocracy as Authoritarian Co-Optation
Contemporary Chinese Youth and the State
Serve the Traffic
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |