Invented Borders: The Tension Between Grassroots Patriotism and State-led Patriotic Campaigns in China

ABSTRACT Patriotic campaigns and mass mobilization draw on existing xenophobic attitudes of the public, reinforcing the ‘us vs. them’ dualism between China and ‘the West’. However, patriotic campaigns are not always top-down, state-led, nor are they always primarily driven by political ideology. Patriotic content appeals to a growing nationalist audience who consumes a mixed feeling of perceived victimization at the hand of foreign aggression and the pride arising from being a Chinese citizen. This paper argues that the profitability of patriotic content circulating on social media exacerbated the tension between market-driven grassroots patriotism and state-led patriotic campaigns. The tension grows out of, and is manifested in, the online popular debate around economically driven, grassroots ‘patriotic’ content that can challenge the state state-led patriotic rhetoric. While the state sometimes strategically co-opts some patriotic contents into its own patriotic narratives, it also delegitimises other undesired ones through labels such as ‘high-level black’ (gaoji hei) or ‘low-level red’ (diji hong). These labels were initially used to differentiate meticulously crafted political satire and parody from incompetent, illogical and vulgar propaganda pieces that unintendedly blemish the state’s patriotic campaigns, but later evolved into an exercise of power to distance the CCP from undesired patriotic content.


Introduction
How has the profit-seeking grassroots patriotism come to challenge the state-sponsored, politically driven patriotic campaigns and how has the state responded to this challenge?Some believe that as China integrated into the international community, there has been a merging of nationalism and geopolitical thinking, leading to growing assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy. 1 Others question the homogeneity of 'Chinese nationalism' as a stateled, top-down manifestation of elite instrumentalism. 2 Despite conventional wisdom, Chinese nationalism is not necessarily 'on the rise', as increasing economic inequality had eroded the loyalty of educated young Chinese. 3The difficulty in observing the trend of Chinese nationalism lies in the fact that there more than one 'brand' of nationalism. 4An increasingly hawkish population may hijack the state's foreign policy agenda and limit the range of foreign policy options. 5We revisit Zhao Suisheng's observation of the increasing convergence of state nationalism and popular nationalism and argue that the state has developed its discursive strategy, using labels such as 'low-level red' and 'high-level black', to dismiss the unwanted 'brand' of popular nationalism that intentionally or unintentionally undermines state narratives.This discursive strategy of nomination reflects the state's anxiety that the top-down, politically driven patriotic campaigns may be diluted by the grassroots and profit driven 'patriotic' business that not only feeds upon but also monetizes the public's nationalist sentiments.We use 'grassroots' and 'popular' distinctively in this paper, as patriotic content considered undesirable by the state is not only produced by popular actors such as members of the general public, but also by local government authorities and state-owned enterprises at the grassroots level.Our key finding is that the discursive strategy is not only used to discern the producers of unwanted patriotic content, but it is a rhetorical device that allows the state to distance itself from such content.
This paper starts with a conceptual framework that sits at the intersection of Chinese nationalism, media, political satire and censorship.The literature review is thus divided into two parts.The first part contextualizes the dynamics of state/grassroots players in the politics of Chinese nationalism and the role of media commodification in intensifying power struggles between the two main sets of players.This is followed by a review of the scholarship of political satire as a form of resistance, which helps contextualise the state's anxiety toward, and fear of, satire.The methodology section explains how we employed the discourse-historical approach (DHA) to analyse power asymmetry between the state and grassroots actors.Section 5 presents the case of 'invented borders', providing a detailed account of the videos in question, and the responses from the platform and the state respectively.Section 6 focuses on the 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' labels that the state used to delegitimise and distance itself from patriotic content that might challenge and undermine the official patriotic narratives.Section 7 discusses the tension between state-led and grassroots patriotic content.While the line between the two is not clear-cut or fixed, the tension becomes apparent as they compete with each other to benefit politically and economically through producing and disseminating patriotic materials.

Chinese Nationalism and Media
Much has been written on the CCP's top-down nationalism through patriotic education campaigns since 1994. 6The 'Century of Humiliation' remains a central theme that is reproduced in official narratives and helps justify the CCP's legitimacy. 7The CCP has promoted official patriotic discourses through institutional tools and resources such as textbooks, museums and commemorative rituals.Political elites 'invented' national symbols, myths and traditions which serve as the glue for social cohesion. 9The CCP has also carefully crafted official historiography to provide the nationalist appeals for political mobilization. 10However, it is increasingly challenging for the CCP to continue to engage the young people through nationalism, as educated Chinese have became disaffected due to rising inequalities and draconian COVID-19 policies. 11Being acutely aware of the 'double-edged sword' effect of nationalism and its potential to cause social instability that may jeopardise the regime, 12 the CCP has to decide the extent to which and the context in which nationalist sentiments are to be co-opted, because nationalism can be potentially used as 'a protective umbrella for domestic dissent'. 13The CCP is often found to be under pressure to respond to popular nationalism which is not necessarily supportive of the party, especially when the government fails to deliver their nationalist promise or does not act tough towards the perceived enemies. 14Popular nationalism can also direct people's anger towards the government for not being able to tackle domestic problems such as social injustice and corruption; paradoxically, it is often accompanied by liberal views that reject the CCP's nationalist rhetoric and call for democracy and freedom. 15he rise of nationalism is also attributed to media commercialization as market-oriented media look for contents which not only can sell commercially but also are politically safe. 16In this sense, nationalism has become such a topic that is 'enforced by the marketplace as well as the censors'. 17ommercial media are adept at appealing to popular nationalist sentiments, turning nationalism into tradable commodities and taking the market rewards. 18However, commercial media should not take the full blame of fanning nationalism as if they could operate independently from the government.In fact, the CCP keeps a tight grip on various media industries such as video games and TV dramas, to reinforce its own nationalist views by guiding and co-opting market forces, and integrating them into its own propaganda apparatus. 19he internet is a marketplace where ordinary users are treated primarily as consumers and different ideas compete for users' attention. 20Commodification is one of the key mechanisms that drive the operation of digital platforms, transforming 'online and offline objects, activities, emotions and ideas into tradable commodities'. 21The media provide the venue for power struggles, allowing both 'the expansion and the commodification of the commons', so that they could exert and counter power. 22In an authoritarian state like China, power struggles between the state and the commons became apparent as they constantly engage in exerting power and countering power.The commons not only challenge the hegemony of capital but also the monopoly of the state-sponsored official narratives.Riding the wave of nationalism, the commons have been seeking to share a piece of the pie from the business of patriotism and use sensationalized headlines, sad fishing, fearmongering and gloating content for clicks, likes, followers and thus profit.Their versions of the nationalist narratives compete with the official ones, which prompts the state to cooperate with commercial digital platforms to push officially endorsed version of nationalist ideology through a combination of digital strategies including censorship, manipulation of algorithmic and editorial systems. 23Commercial platforms have little choice but to conform with the state's instructions in order to maintain their business operations in China's lucrative internet market.

Museum
Two players-Key Opinion Leader (KOL) and multi-channel network (MCN) -involved in the business of nationalism, and their attempts of commodifying nationalist contents can intensify the tension with the politically driven state-sponsored nationalism.Both KOL and MCN are imported concepts which were localized and matured in the social media market in China.KOLs are influential actors who can exert personal influence on the attitude and opinion of other people in a social network. 24Based on Katz and Lazarsfeld's original concept of opinion leader, it entered the Chinese context and gained momentum as a collective term to refer to influencers who function as marketing agencies, constituting a US$8 billion industry. 25MCNs refer to companies working with content creators to perform business and marketing functions via a given platform. 26Content creators join a MCN to utilize the resources it provides to gain wider exposure. 27However, when adapted to the Chinese market, MCN companies have a higher level of control over influencers, including the content they produce. 28

Political Satire and State Responses
The internet has ended 'the information monopoly of the state',29 preventing an authoritarian state from controlling 'the free flow of information'. 30Interactive media technologies provide new means for ordinary people not only to imagine the nation, but also to actively participate in the shaping of nationalist dynamics-in a way that is not necessarily aligned with the official nationalist agenda. 31uch has been written on how the internet serves as the venue for the mobilization of nationalist sentiments and promotion of alternative nationalist discourses that pressured the government to respond. 32he state has developed a comprehensive censorship system that governs 'Internet infrastructure, commercial and social use as well as legal domains', to contain the influence of alternative discourses. 33Through regulations such as the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry (2002), the state puts the pressure on business owners to conduct self-censorship, resulting in their over-compliance to avoid potential penalties from the governmental authorities. 34Private companies are co-opted to maintain the Chinese networked authoritarianism. 35The censorship system has evolved from automated filtering to more sophisticated state-sponsored information campaigns to manipulate public discourse online. 36For instance, government-hired 'commentators', also known as '50 Cent Party' are used by the government in an attempt to manufacture consent by guiding public opinion to its desired direction. 37Accompanying the '50 Cent Party' is the so-called 'voluntary fifty-cent army', referring to those online discussants who claim to be independent from the government but voluntarily defend the regime and promote the state's narratives. 38n response to censorship, netizens have developed various techniques to circumvent automatic filtering or the Great Firewall-this process is called 'wall-climbing'. 39They also adopt satirical tactics to engage with politically sensitive topics. 40In China, where online contents are heavily censored, political satire thrives on censorship and plays a key role in reflecting on powerlessness, expressing discontent, rallying resistance, and inducing catharsis. 41Satire, parody and spoofing (egao) have the potential to evade formal controls. 42'Parodic satire . . .mimics the language or logic of the subject and transplants it to a different context'. 43Satire relies heavily on techniques of mimicry and recontextualization, making it difficult for automated machine to detect undesired content that challenges the official lines.To understand the underlying message encoded in the satire, readers have to be familiar the wider context and 'the original issue that the satire intends to scorn'. 44The qualitative and contingent nature of satire makes it impossible for the state to rely on the conventional keyword detecting programmes to control online content.While the state recruited countless censors, they 'unfortunately are not noted for imaginative ability in distinguishing between the humorous and fantastic and the real'. 45Despite the large number of internet monitors the state has already hired, it lacks the resources and manpower to suppress opposition given the even larger number of netizens. 46hallenging state legitimacy, political satire is risky and costly. 47Ironic and parodic satires lend themselves to online activist campaigns, as their elements become widely 'perceived as symbols of resistance' and then extracted and adopted for activist campaigns. 48Parodic satire, which employs the language of the powerful directly, has the highest chance of surviving censorship. 49Once elements of parodic satire are adopted as symbols of resistance, it becomes difficult for the state to recuperate them.One of such notable examples in which netizens tampered with the official hegemonic discourse include turning the innocent-looking alpaca into a mysterious cultural symbol known as Cao Ni Ma (grass mud horse) which was used by netizens to ridicule the CCP's online censorship. 50Given its ability to discredit official narratives in a highly censored country, political satire can incur up to 5 years of imprisonment in the name of 'picking quarrels and proving troubles'. 51To suppress political satire, the state has hired human censors to filter negative posts and used intimidation, including summoning by the police, detention and even enforced disappearance, to silence influential individuals. 52

Methodology
We adopt a discourse-historical approach (DHA), which examines language as a form of social practice and the social and political contexts in which discursive 'events' are embedded. 53DHA lends itself to the studies of the Chinese official discourse 54 considering its explanatory power in revealing the historical dimension of discourses around topics of xenophobia and nationalism. 55DHA allows us to 'demystify' the hegemony of the official discourse by deciphering the underlying contradiction between the state's desire to forge loyalty among the public and the anxieties about the possibility of its official patriotic narratives being appropriated for parodic satire which undermines legitimacy.As we will discuss later in the paper, the CCP maintains its discursive power on nationalism through the creation and designation of 'low-level red' and 'high-level black'.In other words, the discursive labelling of different nationalist contents as 'red' or 'black' reveals the power asymmetry in the contention of nationalist discourses, whereby the CCP attempts to legitimise the official discourse and delegitimise the grassroots narratives that can potentially be understood as parodic satire that mocks the former.
We collected news reports and commentaries in relation to grassroots patriotic content from around 20 official and commercial outlets in Chinese between June 2021 and November 2022.Official sources include state media platforms such as Qiushi, the leading official theoretical journal run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Party Building magazine, run by the Publicity Department, the Communist Party Member Net, supervised by the Organization Department of the CCP and administrated by China Central Television and China Youth Daily, run by the Communist Youth League of China.The readers of these official media are mostly Party members and government officials who are already relatively 'loyal' to the state, so the content in these outlets is not aimed at forging loyalty, but to consolidate the hegemony of the state in designating 'red' and 'black'.Commercial responses include commentaries published on commercial platforms such as Souhu and Douyin Safety Centre-Douyin's official account that is responsible for tackling and publicizing violations of Douyin regulations by its users.While commercial platforms in China are not directly controlled by the state, they have been co-opted by the state to perform self-censorship.Their responses help understand how platforms mediate between the state and the public.The audience of these outlets are generally less concerned about 'loyalty', so actors such as Douyin's official account seek to help potential grassroots content producers discern unwanted and prescribe 'permissible' patriotic content.
We analyzed the label of 'low-level red' and 'high-level black', examining how they were used as rhetorical devices in a way that reinforces power asymmetry between the state and grassroots actors.We also analyzed the broader socio-political context which has contributed to the growing commercialization and commodification of nationalism.Our analysis reveals that the borderline between the 'black' and 'red' is often vague and confusing.What drives the state to legitimise certain patriotic discourses and disqualify others, is often its anxiety of not being able to discern whether the content producer is too clumsy to produce propaganda materials deemed 'qualified', or meticulously use disturbingly flattering language as parodic satire.

Sino-Japanese Border 'Invented'
In September 2021, some videos with patriotic content went viral on Douyin, a short-video sharing platform popular in China with an estimation of daily active users up to 320 million by 2019. 56Douyin's alignment with the state's political agenda and its role in facilitating the convergence between grassroots and state-led nationalism have been well documented. 57The videos in question were highly similar in content, which raised questions about duplication and plagiarism, and were thus removed by the platform soon after they went viral.
In these videos, a common proud-to-be-Chinese template was replicated by multiple uploaders, with variations only in terms of the alleged locations where the videos were shot.Such videos are usually entitled 'We were not born in a peaceful era, but we were born in a good country'.These videos often share the same narrative, starting with the uploader who tried to record a video near a Chinese land border.Then suspense was created when some people in uniform, appearing to be the border police, came to interrupt the uploader.At the end, it turned out that the border police were merely worried about the uploader's safety, so they stood in a line between the uploader and the border to protect the former.These videos all ended with the same remarks below.
I am so proud to be a Chinese.I think about displaced Syrian refugees and bombarded Afghanistan, and I think about how safe and peaceful our country is.I am beyond proud to have been born in such a country.This is a blessing for every Chinese.
As such similar videos spread on social media, a particular variation invited a cascade of public criticism because the uploader claimed in the video that it was taken near the China-Japan land border, but in fact China and Japan are not connected by land at all.The uploader invented the Sino-Japanese land border to appeal to the fantasies of popular nationalists.There are two possibilities in terms of the uploader's decision to 'invent' the border.Given the quality of these videos, they were likely to be produced by amateurs and the 'invention' of the border may be an unconscious choice.On the other hand, uploaders quite often intentionally make mistakes which seems obvious to ordinary viewers, in order to attract people's attention by inviting them to correct the mistakes.Making the content controversial and sometimes ridiculous is one of the tactics to bring online traffic.At any rate, the reference to such a non-existent place reveals a persistent assumption that China is still threatened by Japan, an assumption that taps into the anti-Japanese sentiments that can be traced to the Second Sino-Japanese War.The invention, conscious or not, encapsulates how shared memories help mobilize nationalist sentiments and shape the group identity of a given community. 58hile it is satirical to invent the Sino-Japanese border just to mimic official narratives, being satirical is unlikely the effect the uploaders were seeking.The proud-to-be-Chinese template echoes a Xinhua article published in April 2017 entitled 'Cherish it!You were not born in a peaceful era, but in a peaceful country' 59 with multiple photos showing how miserable life was in war-torn Syria.This is likely the source that inspired grassroots efforts to produce kitschy replicate of the official narratives to appeal to the nationalist audience.The fact that the uploader either did not know, or did not care about the geographical reality indicates that these videos were not designed to be seriously examined as the politically driven official narratives would have been; rather, they were crudely made and commercially-driven products to be circulated, consumed and forgot quickly.
Based on our observation and analysis, it is likely that an MCN created the proud-to-be-Chinese template for its influencers to adapt.Some would argue that influencers saw the ability of this template to draw online attention which could then be turned into money, and then duplicate the content.This argument is at odds with the fact that all the videos based on this template went viral at roughly the same time.This raises the possibility that an MCN company might be behind multiple accounts and provided the same script for these account holders to act out.These videos drew considerable attention by the time they were removed by the social media platform, when some had already attracted over a hundred thousand likes and over ten thousand positive comments. 60Public attention in the forms of clicks, likes and comments can be monetized by attracting brand partnership opportunities.The fact that these videos were able to get traffic indicates that there is a considerable market to which nationalist content can appeal.
In this case, Douyin did play a role in helping the state manage popular patriotic content by suspending/closing relevant accounts and removing unwanted content, even though its act to remove videos like these was mainly out of the consideration to reduce duplicate content, because duplicate content may undermine the originality of overall content circulating on the platform and thus drive away users' attention.Before the above videos went viral, Douyin had already established mechanisms to periodically remove duplicate content starting from June 2021.In the first stage, Douyin removed 26,718 videos and suspended 206 accounts. 61From 1 to 30 November 2021, Douyin suspended 469 accounts and removed 86,226 videos. 62Douyin treated duplicate 'patriotic' videos the same way as it treated other hyperbolic, fabricated, eye-catching and grandstanding topics which intended to satisfy and stimulate the public appetite for sensationalized contents.In response to the 'mastermind' -the MCN company behind multiple accounts-Douyin also set up a specialized group to improve its ability to detect 'organized violations', which means it would impose harsher penalties on those who seek to mobilise multiple accounts to reproduce content based on the same template. 63To deter users from uploading duplicate content, Douyin also set up a database to help detect duplicate content, and accounts which violate the rule may face the consequence of having all their followers removed. 64he response from official media reflects a different concern.On 28 September, the Communist Youth League of China posted an article entitled 'The "Business of Patriotism" needs to stop' on its WeChat public account, which labelled these videos as 'low-level red' that base their blatant praises on fabrication. 65It stated that it was 'shameful' to turn spontaneous patriotism into a trade and make money of it, and it is an act of 'blasphemy' which uses the banner of 'patriotism' to cash in on people's emotion. 66The use of 'blasphemy' indicates the CCP gives certain patriotic content a nearsacred status which is distained by profit-seeking producers who pay no attention to the effect of their content on the legitimacy of official patriotic narratives.
In October 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China-China's key internet regulator-held a video conference to launch Special Actions to regulate account registration and specify platforms' obligations and responsibilities, which aimed at imposing restrictions on platforms from harvesting online traffic through manipulating the public's emotions. 67In December 2021, a commentary published on China Youth Daily criticized such content of misguiding and promoting a parochial and extreme nationalist view. 68As China Youth Daily is the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League (CYL) of China, its criticism has been considered representing the CCP's attitudes towards the feel-good 'patriotic' content.It remains unclear though to what extent Douyin's act to remove such duplicate 'patriotic' content was directed by the CCP.Nevertheless, the fact that Douyin's removal of these content took place around the same time with CYL's criticism suggests at least a synergy between the Chinese state and Douyin.

'Low-Level Red' and 'High-Level Black'
Two labels are essential in understanding the state's attempts to discern the intention behind various patriotic contents created and circulated by non-officially endorsed players.These labels allow the state to discursively construct some contents as applaudable while delegitimise others.'Low-level red' and 'high-level black' are not phrases that can exist independently from social contexts. 69The symbolic implications of the colour red and black in contemporary Chinese political culture are key to unpacking these rhetorical devices which function as a medium of domination in the social order that is torn between single-party rule and the commercialization of media.The use of them is an exercise of power by the state over unwanted patriotic content.
'Low-level red' (diji hong), also translated as 'vulgar red', refers to the simplification and vulgarization of the 'noble' communist ideology.This phrase is usually used to express disappointment at certain propaganda which is originally intended to praise the Party or the nation but fails because the way it praises the regime is so out-of-touch with reality that such conducts come across as mocking the state's official lines and policies or the very need to praise them.It should be noted that 'propaganda' is not considered pejorative in the Chinese context.Some propose to translate the Chinese term xuanchuan into publicity, but the latter falls short to capture the comprehensiveness of the xuanchuan work in China. 70n the Chinese contemporary political context, 'red' content pertains to communist ideology, often symbolized by the colour red.The famous collection of quotations from Mao Zedong is known as the 'Little Red Book' given its signature bright red covers.The paramilitary force mobilized by Mao during the Cultural Revolution is called 'Red Guards'.Songs that praise communism, revolution, the CCP regime, its leaders and its armies are called 'Red Songs'. 71The inherent, heartfelt loyalty to the communist regime is called 'Red Genes'. 72Pilgrimages to locations of historical and symbolic importance to Party history are called 'Red Tourism'. 73The sons and daughters of the pioneering elites of the CCP is called 'Second-Generation Reds'. 74When the 'low-level red' is used to label media content, it indicates that while the producer may have a genuine intention to praise the Party state by adopting a blatantly patriotic tone and using 'red resources', the quality of the production is too poor and thus it yields unwanted effects.
'High-level black' (gaoji hei), refers to the situation in which the given content seems to be flattering at first glance, but upon close examination, the praise is deliberately made illogical and distasteful to mock and ridicule official ideology. 75A key aspect of the 'black' is that the creator intends to be sarcastic and counter propaganda.In comparison to other forms of resistance, the sarcastic nature of 'higher-level black' content has made it almost impossible for the state to detect it through traditional censorship mechanisms which is based on keyword filtering.Human censors must be employed to understand the satire the creator is trying to convey, but there are occasions when even human censors cannot be certain about the intention of the creator because the satire is so sophisticated and subtle.
The pejorative connotation associated with 'black' in contemporary Chinese politics is reflected in phrases like 'black market' (heishi), 'black curtain' (heimu, dark secret), 'black society' (heishehui, mafia), 'black money' (heiqian, dirty money).It not only refers to clandestine and illegal activities, but also those who refused to align with the communist ideology for example in the time of Cultural Revolution.The state used 'Five Black Categories' to demonise landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad influencers and right-wingers, as opposed to the 'Five Red Categories' who were poorer and more devoted to the communist ideology. 76The CCP's attempt to differentiate between 'red' and 'black' inherits its propensity to categorise people according to their potential to be loyal.
'Red' and 'black' are always used in pairs to indicate a dualistic relationship between the benevolent and the malevolent.Before his downfall, Bo Xilai launched a neo-Maoist 'Sing Red and Strike Black' campaign to revive Mao-era revolutionary songs and crack down on organized crimes and corruption.When referring to patriotic content, 'Red' and 'black' indicate benevolent and malevolent intentions.The former pertains to a well-intended attempt to display loyalty that is undermined by ignorance or a lack of communication skills, whereas the latter pertains to illintended meticulous attack on the CCP through the uses of humour and satire.
Despite the state's attempt to discern political satire from blatant flattering, it is difficult to tell whether the content creators are intentionally seeking to undermine the Party's credibility, or they are simply ignorant and clumsy.Official documents, such as the 'Opinions on Strengthening the Political Construction of the Party' (hereafter the Opinions), 77 provide the conceptual basis to which commentaries and discussions about 'good' and 'bad' patriotism are anchored.
The state seeks to discern 'red' from 'black' because it is important to endorse its loyalists and delegitimise the dissidents.The very efforts to differentiate 'good' from 'bad' patriotism may result in alienating a well-intended support base, which the Party has to rely on to contain political satire.However, the boundary between the two is malleable.Unwilling to acknowledge the existence of satire, state media sometimes portray patriotic content producers as 'inexperienced', 'unskilled', 'unable' and 'parochial' 78 propagandists who are careless at their job, seeking to 'satisfy the leader at the expense of disappointing the people'. 79The denialist approach to satire suggests that for the CCP, incompetence is less of a problem than 'faked loyalty'. 80ometimes the state chooses to denounce 'red' and 'black' altogether, which gives it the power to evaluate the given content according to its effects.The Opinions consider 'low-level red' and 'highlevel black' as equally damaging. 81A 2022 article published by the Propaganda Department of Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee no longer seeks to differentiate between 'red' and 'black', but provides a typology based on the effects of the propaganda materials.This development allows the state to distance itself from poorly crafted propaganda according to the effects of propaganda.Low-quality propaganda is not only produced by KOLs and MCNs which create patriotic materials for attracting and monetizing attention, but also by local authorities and state-own enterprises to display their political loyalty.The tension between the state and grassroots patriotic narratives is thus not only exacerbated by the rise of the business of patriotism per se, but also by the fact that the state's use of 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' gave the vocabulary to the public to evaluate the quality of state propaganda.
The best example of a well-intended propaganda effort that has gone awry is a report posted on the China Railway Nanchang Group detailing how a newly wedded couple-the Group's employees -celebrate their wedding night by hand-copying the Constitution of the Communist Party of China. 82The producer is from a state-owned enterprise, so it was not meant to be satirical.However, the story comes across so absurd, as the act of copying the constitution happened in a situation in which it was not commonly expected to exist.The surrealist rendering of these disturbingly flattering stories arouses a deep discomfort that only makes sense if the story was a dark-humour style criticism of the morbid political environment in which the most private, important moment in one's life is used to sing praise of the Party.An official's commentary of this case is that it makes a propaganda effort that was supposed to be serious and positive looks like 'high-level black'. 83This example demonstrates that the boundary between red and black is vague, which leaves space for interpretation.When such content became a laughingstock, the state disqualified it regardless of its original intention.
Ironically, the state's attempt to denounced poorly crafted propaganda by the local authorities gave the public the vocabulary to mock the state propaganda apparatus.Propagandists at the local level are often under pressure to produce a massive amount of propaganda materials to sing praise of state policies.In October 2022, two years into the pandemic, a children's song entitled 'Doing Nucleic Acid Tests while Reciting Ancient Poems' was jointly produced by the 'Social Service Base in Tianjin Xincun' affiliated to the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Democratic League and the Tianjin Xincun Community Party Committee.Netizens were both amused and disgusted by it, asking whether it counts as 'low-level red' or 'high-level black'. 84It is disturbing to see children's cheerful celebration and glorification of China's multifaceted draconian Covid policy which had incurred painful economic and humanitarian costs, and the contrast between children's innocence and vulnerability and the fact that they become part of the all-encompassing, comprehensive and powerful propaganda apparatus. 85

Tension Between State-Led and Grassroots Patriotic Contents
Despite the state's attempts to delegitimise alleged low-quality patriotic content which backfired and exposed the incompetence of some local governmental propagandists, public discussions around 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' bring MCNs and the state's desire to regulate them further to the forefront.In China, MCN companies not only function as incubators of influencers, but also provide content development services. 86The number of MCN companies surged from less than 200 in 2015 to around 40,000 in 2022, and the industry of MCNs is estimated to be worth RMB ¥ 43.2 billion (US$6 billion). 87Realizing the potential of these companies to influence online public opinion, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued 'the Measures for the Administration of Cyber Performance Brokerage Institutions' on 30 August 2021, which requires MCN companies to help monitor the content produced by their users. 88n line with the 2022 'Clear and Bright' Special Action which was launched by China's internet regulators to clean up content deemed harmful and maintain online information order, Douyin started to publicize IP address of online influencers and the name of MCN company to which they belong. 89This move revealed the traffic-attracting tactic of a given MCN company to manufacture trending topics by assigning different views to its influencers for them to interact with each other and thus manipulate public opinion.For example, the MCN Lan'an Zhiku (蓝岸智库) owns various 'patriotic' KOLs, including Sima Nan, Zhang Jie, and Brother Sway, to ensure its share in the business of patriotism.The absence of a political motivation is evident from how MCN companies operate.To draw as much online attention as possible to the same company, an MCN company would support multiple KOLs to promote different contents that cater to audiences who hold different and sometimes even opposing opinions. 90he requirement for media platform such as WeChat and Weibo to publicize IP address of content publishers unveils that many 'patriotic' influencers-who swore never to leave China and asked their followers to do the same-are in fact based outside China. 91The famous 'anti-US fighter' Sima Nan is reported to have bought a house in the US. 92The fact that they are not even in China makes it particularly ironic considering that they gained their fame by gloating over the failure of Western countries and praising China.Netizens sarcastically call such 'patriotic' influencers living outside China 'offshore patriots'. 93otivated not so much by a certain political stance as online traffic, some KOLs may produce self-contradictory contents.They can be 'left-hand fenhong, right-hand fenqing' 94 -they sometimes act as critics of the state to resonate with 'angry youth' (fenqing), 95 and yet other times they act as nationalists to resonate with 'Little Pink' -jingoistic Chinese nationalists. 96In other words, they cash in on either patriotism and discontents against the CCP according to their potential to bring traffic.
Anti-foreign content not only enables the content producer to monetise online traffic, but also allow the producer to attract capital investment.The most well-known influencer as such is Huang Sheng, a 'patriotic' Big V 97 who, for a time, had 5 million followers. 98Acting as an anti-American patriot, he gained his fame for his sensational 'patriotic' commentaries.The catchphrases he uses -'the US is scared' 'Japan freaks out' -appeal to a nationalist audience who takes pleasure in reading about how weak other nations are.His reputation allowed him to set up a peer-to-peer lending platform Xitouwang, where he persuaded his followers to invest based on conspiracy theories about the Diaoyu Islands dispute and fabricated collapses of the US and Japan.Huang profited tremendously from his followers. 99By the time he was arrested in August 2021, he owed 662 million RMB to 5,635 people. 100Judging from its effects -'self-deceiving', 'distorting' and 'giving ammunition to others' -the official media designated Huang's 'patriotism' as 'typical low-level red and high-level black'. 101This example further demonstrates the state's exercise of power by interpreting content as 'red' or 'black' according to its effects, rather than intentions.
Traffic-driven patriotic content can cause serious troubles for the state.In April 2020, an article titled 'Why Kazakhstan is eager to return to China' went viral on WeChat, detailing how some Kazakh citizens claimed to be the descendants of either the famous Chinese poet Li Bai or the Chinese Han ethnicity and how they longed to return to China.While similar articles were circulating on Chinese social media describing how eager people in neighbouring countries including India, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Vietnam feel to return to China, this particular version about Kazakhstan touched on the nerves of Kazakhs at a time when China was struggling to maintain good relations with countries where post-COVID anti-China sentiments were on the rise.Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador Zhang Xiao to protest against the article. 102The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson's Office had to emphasise that the article was from an individual account and did not represent the position of the Chinese government. 103People's Daily rebuked the 'morbid' profit-driven 'patriotic' articles for promoting a kind of parochial nationalism that jeopardises national interests. 104The stateowned nationalist tabloid, the Global Times, sought to distance official stance from these 'nationalist misleading articles which spread fake information online about China's neighbouring countries and regions'. 105WeChat also responded rapidly by removing 227 similar articles and closing 153 accounts by April 2020. 106lthough popular nationalism found itself contradicting official narratives, it was inspired by official nationalism, and non-state patriotic content producers were motivated by the profitability of patriotism.Therefore, when the state criticized non-state producers, the tension between state-led politically driven patriotism and popular economically driven patriotism was exacerbated, especially because both were profitable.State-endorsed patriotic campaigns are so profitable that the box office of Wolf Warrior II reached $5.68 million on the 31 st day in release, second only to the 2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens. 107The sheer size of its record-breaking box office speaks volumes about the market for Chinese nationalism.The wolf warrior genre became hugely popular among Chinese nationalists.Films like this have a strong state support, evidenced by multiple reviews in People's Daily that praise them.As the state criticized the popular players for profiting from patriotism, some netizens blamed the CCP and the Youth League for having started, or at least facilitated, the commercialization and commodification of patriotism, exemplified by a sarcastic comment 'Only official media are allowed to do this business [of patriotism]?'. 108After the release of another patriotic film, the Battle at Lake Changjin, some netizens criticized Wu Jing who directed and starred in the film, for 'doing the business of patriotism' and 'profiting from patriotism', and pressured him to donate the income from the film to veterans or state building. 109While such hostility might have arisen from a natural mentality of being jealous of the rich, these comments did highlight the tension between the state's desire to manipulate and benefit from legitimacy-inducing nationalism and grassroots' desire to profit from traffic-attracting 'patriotism'.While there is also a convergence between official and popular nationalisms when both the state and commercial actors benefit from this business, the state's patriotic campaigns backfired when people realized not only did it help the state to consolidate the nationalist support base, but it also generated huge revenues, making people pay for being patriotic.
Riding the wave of the commercial success of the Battle at Lake Changjin, which grossed nearly RMB ¥ 5 billion (USD$779.13million) within a week, 110 many Douyin users made videos of themselves or their children eating frozen potatoes, to pay tribute to the volunteers who fought with North Korea and ate frozen potatoes while American soldiers who fought with South Korea enjoyed Christmas turkeys, as shown in the film. 111This seemingly odd practice is in line with CCP's long tradition of 'appreciating the present happiness by recalling past sufferings' (yiku sitian) which was widely carried out during the Cultural Revolution as part of propaganda campaigns.
The line between state-led patriotism and grassroots patriotism is not always clear-cut, and the responses by the state and platforms were not always consistent.The Xinhua Net commended such videos using the hashtag 'girl tasted frozen potato after watching The Battle at Lake Changjin', which encouraged more people to post similar videos. 112This indicates the state's approval of patriotic videos that do not contradict state-led efforts.The state's approval and public attention encouraged more Douyin users to replicate the potato-tasting video, to the extent Douyin had to remove such videos in one of its regular removals of duplicate content. 113Given that the potato eating videos were the only grassroots videos that had gone viral for a time, it is likely that Douyin removed some of them even though the state media did not express objections.This example supports the observations we made throughout this paper.First, the state and the platform are not always on the same page because the former is driven by the need to forge loyalty and the latter is more concerned about duplicate content.Second, the state does not have clear criteria as to which kind of grassroots patriotic content is permissible.The state responds to these videos on an ad-hoc basis, according to the actual effects of the given patriotic content, and uses 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' to delegitimise and distance itself from poorly made patriotic content that might challenge state legitimacy.

Conclusion
This paper is not a manual for differentiating 'low-level red' from 'high-level black'.We argue that the attempt at differentiating them reproduces the CCP's discursive strategy of evaluating the given content based on its loyalty to the state and its actual effects in eliciting positive/negative attitudes towards the state.The rapid development of social media platforms and state-led patriotic campaigns encouraged the grassroots-including citizens, local governments and state-owned enterprises-to take advantage of the highly profitable industry of patriotism that feeds upon the public's nationalist sentiments.The state's use of 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' is an exercise of power to allow the state to distance itself from unwanted patriotic content, regardless of who produced it.
We unpacked the discursive construction of 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' and highlighted how the state used these labels to indicate the intentions of 'patriotic' content producers, delegitimizing, and distancing itself from, 'patriotic' content that turned out to be damaging to the image of the state.A discourse-historical approach reveals the continuity of the CCP to categorise people according to their potential to be loyal.
Analyzing the interplay between the state, local authorities, and grassroots 'patriotic' content producers (KOLs) who are embedded in the booming MCNs industry, we find that non-state actors came to challenge the state's monopoly of nationalist narratives, and more importantly, the interplay gave the vocabulary 'low-level red' and 'high-level black' to the public to mock the failure of the propaganda apparatus of local authorities.In a highly censored regime, the subtle, insinuative, and sophisticated satire provoked the state into overreaction, as existing censorship mechanisms, even including human censors, are ineffective in differentiating satire from bad propaganda.Although we did not focus on the reception of such patriotic content, a glance at viewers' comments to them indicates that the state's use of 'lowlevel red' and 'high-level black' has unwittingly given citizens the language to express their distrust of and antipathy to official propaganda.
This paper contributes to the understanding of Chinese nationalism by providing new empirical evidence on how grassroots, profit-driven patriotism has challenged the state's ability to claim legitimacy through patriotic campaigns and forced it to respond.We showed how Chinese nationalism is shaped by and torn between multiple forces including state agenda, public sentiments and business interests.While the state has sought to regulate grassroots patriotism, it has not always been successful as its own authority has been eroded by poorly crafted propaganda by either local authorities or those who desperately sought to display loyalty.At the time of writing this paper, we have also observed that many foreigners sell products on social media by appealing to Chinese nationalist sentiment and chanting how much they love China, thus further research is needed to investigate their role in shaping the commodification and monetization of nationalism.