The Rise of China and Gender/Sexual Politics: Commentaries on Wolf Warrior II
"Wolf Warrior II: The Rise of China and Gender/Sexual Politics"
This collection of essays originates from an international workshop called “China in the Global South: The Central Role of Gender and Sexuality,” convened by Lisa Rofel (UC Santa Cruz) and Huang Yingying (Renmin University of China) and held in Beijing from September 15 to 17, 2017. It continued a conversation that began with the first workshop on the same theme, held a year ago in Santa Cruz, that brought together a group of scholars, activists, and NGO workers to reflect on the impact of China’s rise on other countries in the Global South. With the country’s national “going out” policy (中国走出去), China has become the largest South-South cooperation provider, with investment in Latin America, Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe. While China’s interactions with the Global South have been the subject of much attention and study, the issues of gender and sexuality have been largely ignored. The workshop asked experts from China, Africa, Latin America, and the US working on security, migration, environmental, economic, and social issues to collectively think about the role of gender and sexuality in China’s relationships with the Global South Collectively, the workshop brought together experts from China, Africa, Latin America, and the US who work on gender and sexuality, as well as on security, migration, environmental, economic, and social issues, to collectively think about the role of gender and sexuality in China’s relationships with the Global South.
The Beijing workshop followed the release of Wolf Warrior II (战狼II) in July 2017, which generated nearly 900 million US$ and became the top earning Chinese film in history and one of the fifty top-grossing films in the history of world cinema. Written and directed by action star Wu Jing, who also plays the lead role, Wolf Warrior II stimulated a wave of public discussions about China’s engagement with Africa. The fantasies about and representations of Africa in Wolf Warrior II seem both new and familiar, and the popularity of the film provided an occasion for a sustained intellectual analysis of how China reimagines its position in the Global South, and how it does so through a specifically gendered and sexual set of representations and images. As these transformations are not just economic but also cultural, the analysis of the film at this critical juncture feels particularly apt. The workshop participants felt that it was imperative to participate, as well as intervene, in the construction of these narratives about China’s presence in Africa. We decided therefore to begin a film criticism forum, which originated in the audience’s reactions to Cai Yiping’s paper on Wolf Warrior II at the workshop. We would like to thank Yizhou Guo for her assistance with the translations, and Kali Rubaii with logistics. We hope this forum will provide an entry point for more critical reflections on China’s presence in the Global South.
- Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel
English: http://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/liu-rofel/
French: http://www.genreenacti
