Yin, Yue and Unger, Johann Wolfgang (2025) How Chinese Players Respond to Queerness in Video games : Right-Wing Discursive Attacks in Chinese Online Gaming Communities. In: Law, Linguistics and the Far Right : International Perspectives on Verbal Attacks on Vulnerable Groups. Routledge, London. (In Press)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This chapter contributes to the book’s broader investigation of how digitally mediated right-wing discourse undermines pluralistic and democratic values by introducing a Chinese case study. Previous research on right-wing and far-right discourse in video gaming content and communities has largely centred on case studies or surveys conducted in Europe and the United States. The very concept of ‘far-right’ does not necessarily map straightforwardly onto other global contexts. In the study described in this chapter, we draw on the discourse-historical approach, as a complementary approach to the linguistic model, to analyse threads posted on a Chinese online gaming community forum, NGA. We examine how LGBTQ+ people are represented within China’s gaming community in the context of the contemporary gaming culture and industry. We investigate how specific discursive strategies are used to spread discriminatory ideologies in this context and compare these with far-right ideologies in Global North gaming contexts. The analysis reveals that queerness is frequently framed as an intrusion into a “pure land” of gaming imagined for heterosexual male enjoyment, while “Western” diversity initiatives are depicted as ideological “poison” contaminating the industry. By contrast, Japanese games are tolerated as a kind of “placebo”, since their queerish tropes remain aetheticised, sexualised and detached from pollical rights claims. Users also invoke metaphors of state and parental authority as guardians responsible for policing gaming culture and protecting it from ideological “infiltration”. These dynamics reveal how digital discourse around gaming participates in wider processes of democratic erosion, and thus this chapter broadens the book’s comparative scope by highlighting how the logics of exclusion in far-right discourses are adapted and localized within China’s online gaming communities.