WeChat, Diaspora, and a New Chinese Transnationalism

Wanning Sun (University of Technology, Sydney) explores the use and impact of Chinese-language digital and social media on the formation of a new transnational identity and subject position for members of the Chinese diaspora.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center on Digital Culture and Society at Annenberg and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at Penn.

About the Talk

The demographics of the Chinese diaspora has changed significantly due to the arrival of first-generation Mandarin-speaking migrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the last few decades. This process has coincided with a changing geopolitical landscape featuring tension and rivalry between the US and China. Like TikTok, the Chinese social media platform WeChat raises concerns for regulators in the US and its allies including Australia. But for new Chinese immigrants in the US and its allied nations, WeChat has also been a crucial way for its diasporic users to navigate the often uncomfortable position of being caught between the nation in which they now reside, and their country of origin: China. This presentation explores the use and impact of Chinese-language digital and social media on the formation of a new transnational identity and subject position for members of the Chinese diaspora.

About the Speaker

Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural anthropology at the University of Technology, Sydney. She serves as the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute, and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China. She is the author of Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media and Cultural Practices (2014), and Love Troubles: Inequality in China and Its Intimate Consequences (2023). Her recent research focuses on the digital Chinese diaspora and transnationalism, against the background of escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the West. She is co-author of WeChat and the Chinese Diaspora (2022), and Digital Transnationalism: Chinese-language Media in Australia (2023).