China's Women Sex Bloggers and Dialogic Sexual Politics on the Chinese Internet

Abstract

By the end of 2008 there were 162 million blog spaces in China, with more than 54 percent of those online stating that they had their own blog (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/3/23/153540.pdf). Though western news outlets tend to focus on Chinaís political bloggers, the most popular blogs in China are those written by celebrities, including movie stars, athletes, and entrepreneurs. This chapter offers an extended analysis of the ìMu Zimei phenomenon,î which began in 2003 when a young Chinese woman calling herself Mu Zimei (real name Li Li) began posting her steamy sex diary online. Her blog has been credited with catapulting blogging into Chinaís popular consciousness. The author analyzes her blog as representative of the Internet as a new space for sexual debate by radical and conservative, official and unofficial, and expert and non-expert voices in contemporary China. Farrer discusses Mu Zimeiís sex blog and various reactions to it in order to examine debates over sexual rights, free speech, and womenís agency as well as the slight waning of the authority of ìexpert discourseî among ordinary Chinese citizens. (Cara Wallis)