Social Media Geopolitics: The 'Unofficial Geopolitics' of Chinese Vloggers in Pakistan
Authors
Davide Giacomo Zoppolato & Karen Culcasi
Keywords
Social media geopolitics
Douyin
China-Pakistan relations
unofficial geopolitics
vloggers
CPEC
On September 21, 2021, a Chinese man in his early 30s who was residing in
Pakistan for work posted a video on Douyin - a China-exclusive video-
sharing app owned by the same company behind the international social
media app TikTok - of his interactions with a Pakistani family. In this
nearly 10 minute-long video, he befriends a Pakistani man and then pro-
ceeds to showcase the extreme poverty and uncleanliness of his new
friend’s home and family. Recognizing the challenges this Pakistani family
faces, the vlogger decides to buy them groceries. This rudimentary video
was extremely popular on Douyin. As of May 2023, it had 267,000 likes
26,000 comments, and was reshared 15,000 times. His post was far from
unique though. Indeed, Chinese nationals in Pakistan have produced thou-
sands of videos of their seemingly random interactions with Pakistani
locals. In most of these videos, the Chinese vloggers are friendly and
maintain a positive attitude towards helping the poor and struggling
Pakistanis, but they are concomitantly degrading and paternalistic towards
the Pakistanis they meet. In doing so, the vloggers recycle official Chinese
geopolitical discourses about China’s ability to develop Pakistan and
improve the lives of Pakistanis, but they do so in their own personalised
way that is patently unofficial.
In this paper, we examine Douyin videos posted by Chinese nationals who
are residing temporarily in Pakistan as a case study of one way that geopolitical
production occurs within social media. Social media research is growing
within critical geopolitics, yet it is still a burgeoning area with incredible
opportunities to develop new theories, concepts, and methods to analyse the
massive array of geopolitics being produced and disseminated online.
Considering social media’s extensive reach and impact, that its many plat-
forms are replete with geopolitical discourses and practices, and that billions of
people across the globe now actively engage with geopolitics on social media,
there is a need to more fully engage in social media as a newish site of
geopolitical production. In the remainder of this paper, we first expand
upon our point that social media is a site of geopolitical knowledge produc-
tion, which we simply refer to as ‘social media geopolitics’. In that section, we
highlight how social media has shifted traditional power relations and blurred
the once seemingly clear elite/non-elite binary of geopolitical actors. We also
discuss the difficulty in applying the common divisions of sites of geopolitical
knowledge production that have dominated critical geopolitics for decades –
those being the formal, practical, popular, and everyday – to social media
geopolitics. Next, we briefly elaborate on the concept of ‘unofficial geopolitics’.
Then we transition to review some existing research methods for social media
geopolitics; and explain our data collection and analysis methods, which, we
hope, might be useful tools for other scholars to examine social media. We
then provide essential context of the geopolitical relationship between China
and Pakistan, highlighting the Chinese Pakistan Economic Cooperation
(CPEC), which is a massive development project in Pakistan that is financed
by China as part of the controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In this
same section, we summarise the three official Chinese geopolitical discourses –
‘Long Live the Chinese Pakistani Friendship‘, ‘Positive Energy’, and ‘National
Rejuvenation’ - that frame the geopolitical relations of China towards Pakistan
and are recycled by the Chinese vloggers in ways that are paternalistic,
degrading, and imperialist. Next, we provide a detailed examination of ten
Douyin videos posted by Chinese nationals in Pakistan, highlighting how these
three official Chinese discourses are recreated ‘unofficially’ through their
curated posts of their interactions with Pakistani locals. We conclude that
there is incredible potential for critical geopolitics to engage more deeply and
expansively with social media as a site of geopolitical production.
It is well-known that social media has a massive reach and impact. Indeed,
63.9% of the global population uses social media, with users spending an
average of 2 hours and 30 minutes per day on such platforms (Meltwater,
and We Are Social 2025 ). Each day, 95 million photos are posted on
Instagram, 500 million tweets are tweeted, and 1 billion videos are watched
on TikTok (Kemp 2022 ). Both the time spent on social media and the amount
of content produced daily are staggeringly increasing, especially among young
generations who rely on them as their main means of communication, enter-
tainment, and for news and information (Serrano et al. 2020 ; Weeks Brian,
Ardèvol-Abreu, and Gil de Zúñiga 2017 ; Westerman, Spence, and Van Der
Heide 2014 ). Geopolitical issues, content, and discourses are everywhere in
social media, sometimes quite blatantly through propaganda or resistance
movements and other times more subtly through banal statements, acts, or
imagery.
We believe that it is crucial for critical geopolitics to more readily include
analyses of social media in our work not only because of social media’s
immense reach and for it being replete with geopolitics, but also because social
media has shifted the traditional power relations of the production of geopo-
litical knowledge from being largely in the hands of the ‘elites’ of statecraft,
academia, and mass media to now including the ‘non-elite’ or general popu-
lace. Moreover, social media has blurred the once seemingly clear binary of
elite/non-elite, and is evidenced in that countless people who are outside of
traditional elite circles have gained fame, wealth, and launched careers as
‘influencers’ on social media (Warren 2019 ). Some scholars have referred to
this shift in power relations as creating a ‘new public sphere’ that is (poten-
tially) democratising and revolutionary (Druzin and Li 2015 ; Effing, Van
Hilleersberg, and Huibers 2011 ; Fuchs 2014 ; Kay, Zhao, and Sui 2015 ;
Loader and Mercea 2012 ). Within critical geopolitics specifically, several
geographers have recognised the significance of social media in shifting
power relations (Purcell et al. 2010 ; Pickering 2017 ). Pinkerton and Benwell
( 2014 ) assert that social media has given people the ‘expression of geopolitical
agency’ (19). In Henry’s ( 2021 ) study of travel blogs as a form of geopolitics
(817–18), he stresses that online blogging forces us to rethink how online
media has shifted the control of geopolitical authorship, which are no longer
just within the purview of the state and other elites. Similarly, Harris ( 2020 ), in
his study of what he labels ‘Facebook geopolitics’, finds that ‘the line between
writer and audience of geopolitical text has been blurred in the various social
media formats, as individual users are invited to comment, like, share, and
publish their own content’(4). And Dittmer and Bos ( 2019 ) recognise ‘how the
creative practices of everyday people can produce – and circulate – geopolitical
discourses and images through social media... ’, and this has the ‘potential’ to
lead to ‘(geo)political action’ (179). While there is often a celebratory tone in
recognising the blurring of traditional power relations and the increased
agency of the general populace, it is crucial to recognise that the elites of
statecraft, academia, and mass media, as well as Global North and neo-
imperial powers, continue to exert incredible influence within social media
(Aouragh and Chakravartty 2016 ). Thus, there are great opportunities to
engage in new research and discussions about the shifting power relations
that are occurring with social media broadly, as well as more focused work into
how the general populace produces geopolitics in relation to the more tradi-
tional elite.
Research on social media from within critical geopolitics has been evolving
for more than a decade now. Much of which has drawn upon a combination of
‘popular’ and ‘everyday’ geopolitics for its frameworks, concepts, methods,
and analyses (Castillo 2021 ; Dittmer and Bos 2019 ; Pickering 2017 , 90;
Pinkerton and Benwell 2014 ; Suslov 2014 ). Again, ‘popular’ and ‘everyday’
geopolitics are two of the four common sites of geopolitical knowledge
production (the other being ‘formal’ and ‘practical’) that have been central
to critical geopolitical studies over the past two decades.^1
‘Popular geopolitics’ typically focuses on the ways that geopolitical dis-
courses are enmeshed in popular culture through studies of texts, symbols,
and images. Traditionally, it has examined the ways that state or other
dominant geopolitical discourses are varyingly recycled, altered, or challenged
within professionally produced, ‘elite’ mass media, like newspapers and maga-
zines, movies, and comic books (Culcasi 2006 ; Dittmer 2005 ; Falah, Flint, and
Mamadouh 2006 ; Kumar and Raghuvanshi 2022 ; McFarlane and Hay 2003 ;
Rech 2014 ; Sharp 1993 ).^2 Applied to social media, popular geopolitical ana-
lyses have shown how dominant discourses stemming from state powers are
circulated, contested, and experienced on social media. For example, Suslov
( 2014 ) showed that Russian state powers tried to garner support for its
invasion of Crimea, and examined the complex public debates that ensued
online. Similarly, Zhang ( 2022 ) examined how the Chinese state media and
private accounts used social media during COVID to bolster Chinese national
identity and a sense of its superiority over Western, liberal regimes.
‘Everyday geopolitics’ incorporates concepts and research methods
stemming from feminist geopolitics, cultural studies, and non-
representational theory to examine how macro-scaled geopolitics inter-
sects with people’s everyday life, experiences, perceptions, practices, and
emotions (Culcasi 2016 ; Dittmer and Bos 2019 ; Dittmer and Dodds 2008 ;
Duncombe 2019 ; Eraliev and Urinboyev 2024 ; Highfield 2017 ; Megoran
2006 ; Öcal 2022 ; Painter and Jeffrey 2009 ; Smith 2020 ). Everyday
geopolitics typically focuses on people and communities that are not part
of the ‘elite’ circles of academia, statecraft, or mass media; and employs
ethnographic methods like interviews that allow for depth in understand-
ing people’s experiences. With its focus on ‘everyday people’, a term that
greatly overlaps with what we refer to as the ‘general populace’, an
everyday geopolitical approach to social media geopolitics creates incred-
ible opportunities to study the ways that billions of people across the
globe engage with geopolitical issues and discourses. For example, Warren
( 2019 ) applied an everyday geopolitics lens to render original insights into
how macro-level geopolitical discourses on Islam and gender are being
contested by Muslim women in Britain through their use of online plat-
forms; and Williams et al. ( 2022 ) show how Hindu nationalist politics are
entangled in the daily lives and intimate spaces of the home through
different platforms of digital life.
As fruitful as popular and everyday geopolitical approaches are (as well as
formal and practical) for examining social media, they do not necessarily
provide the framework needed to examine the ways that geopolitics are being
created, disseminated, and contested within the extensive web of social media.
Indeed, we struggle to define our research on the geopolitics of Chinese
vloggers’ posts of their interactions with Pakistanis within a combination of
popular and everyday approaches. This is because we are examining the pro-
duction of geopolitical discourses from people who are part of the general
populace, but their posts do not exemplify the everydayness of their lives.
Instead, their posts are curated and edited from staged interactions so that
they are interesting and can garner audience attention and popularity. Because
their posts are highly curated and stylised, we find it challenging to make any
credible assumptions about their everyday experiences or emotions.^3 With our
focus on vloggers’ posts, we are greatly examining texts, symbols, and images as
discursive representations, and therefore our work seems akin to popular
geopolitics. However, our project does not fit well within popular geopolitical
framings either because we are examining the texts and images of people outside
of the circles who have traditionally controlled popular culture and geopolitics.
The formal, practical, popular, and everyday divisions of critical geopolitics are
helpful pedagogical tools and entry points for understanding the sites of geo-
political production, but we find them to be so interconnected that it is
challenging to prioritise one approach over another. We believe that social
media exemplifies, if not fuels, such overlaps, as it is a site where media elite,
state and academic actors, and the general populace all help to create geopo-
litics, while blurring the traditional elite/non-elite binary. Applying one of these
divisions might be entirely suitable for some focused studies on social media,
but we find that the popular and everyday (formal and practical too) are so
entangled that we frame social media geopolitics as its own, newish site of
geopolitical production.
To the burgeoning field of social media geopolitics, our case study contributes
to examinations on the ways that the general populace, perhaps as influencers,
participate in the production and dissemination of geopolitical discourses
through an analysis of the texts, images, and symbols in social media posts.
We examine the posts by Chinese vloggers in Pakistan of their typically
friendly and casual interactions with Pakistani locals. The posts seem to be
primarily for entertainment, to draw viewers’ attention, and perhaps to gain
fame or profit, but the posts are also replete with their own reworkings of
official state discourses of the Chinese Communist Party. Pinkerton and
Benwell ( 2014 ) use the terms ‘unofficial diplomacy’ and ‘citizen statecraft’ to
refer to the ways that social media posts ‘imitate and/or mimic’ official
diplomatic discourses and practices in their study of the Falkland Islands
(14). In engaging with state discourses, social media users often normalise
and popularise official geopolitics making state narratives ubiquitous and
accessible to an audience of million.
We use the term ‘unofficial geopolitics’ to refer to a type of geopolitical
production in which the general populace – outside statecraft or elite circles –
recycle official state geopolitical discourses through their personal style and
content. In our case, Chinese vloggers are not parroting state discourses, but
add paternalistic, degrading, and imperialist sentiments to the established state
discourses.
We opted to focus on Douyin due to its extensive reach, with over 743 million
monthly users; and because of its high user engagement, averaging more than
two hours per day (ByteDance 2023 ). This makes Douyin the most used video-
sharing social media in China. Douyin is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based
internet company who specialises in Artificial Intelligence and machine learn-
ing. Launched in 2016, Douyin is an enclosed digital space for Chinese
nationals and foreign residents in China. One year after Douyin was released,
and following ByteDance’s acquisition of the U.S. app Musical.ly, the hugely
popular (and critiqued) international version named TikTok was released.
In examining social media geopolitics, we found two broad methodological
approaches in the literature. The first is a quantitative-oriented approach that
employs text mining and other automated content analysis techniques to
extract insights, geospatial information, and patterns from large sets of social
media data. For example, Moreno-Mercado and Calatrava-García ( 2023 ) used
text mining techniques to examine the geopolitics of the Israeli Defence Forces
on Twitter. Similarly, Sufi ( 2023 ) employs quantitative content analysis to
examine the Russia – Ukraine conflict on Twitter. The second approach draws
on qualitative research methods, adopts a more critical angle, and commonly
espouses discourse analysis (Kinsley 2013 ). For example, Henry ( 2021 ) uses
a ‘static-word netnography’ to examine the texts of travel bloggers in forming
geopolitics (818). Similarly, Pinkerton and Benwell ( 2014 ) employ discourse
analysis on advertisements posted online and the discussions they generate
about Falkland Island geopolitics. Other researchers have combined the ana-
lysis of text with visual images produced on social media such as maps, flags,
and cartoons (Castillo 2021 ; Harris 2020 ; Suslov 2014 ). And, as noted above,
there are also in depth studies of everyday experiences with social media.
In our research we employed qualitative methods of discourse analysis to
examine spoken words, songs, images, text, symbols, and the actions and
engagements of the people in the videos. While our methods required some
experimentation, we eventually developed a four step process that allowed us
to sample from a large amount of data on social media, to identify general
trends in the posts, and then to examine geopolitical discourses in detail. As we
explain next, these four steps are: geopolitical contextualisation, preliminary
research and familiarisation, data collection, and analysis.
Contextualisation
We began our project by contextualising the China-Pakistan geopolitical
relationship through an in-depth literature review of the historical develop-
ment of their geopolitical relations. Contextualisation was crucial in ground-
ing our analysis of videos, so that we were familiar with key themes and
discourses that have shaped China-Pakistan geopolitics.
Preliminary Research/Familiarisation
Second, we familiarised ourselves with Douyin’s platform, including reviewing
literature on this platform and conducting multiple viewing sessions to
explore its functionality, features, interface, and video selection. Then we
conducted numerous experimental searches and analyses of Douyin posts
about the China-Pakistan geopolitical relationship.
Data Collection
Following the preliminary research, we conducted a more informed and
narrower search on the China-Pakistan geopolitical relationship, which
resulted in the data that is the basis of this paper. Social media platforms,
including Douyin, allow users to search content of interest with keywords.
Based on a platform’s functioning, search keywords return the most viewed
and popular content, partly because social media curates video selection to a
specific user through algorithm recommendations (Gillespie 2018 ). To reduce
platform curation, we did not use personal account logins and ensured
a neutral location to prevent algorithmic content suggestions and targeting
based on metrics like user engagement and geolocation. We conducted our
search using a VPN with the location set in Beijing and without logging into
Douyin. After ensuring that our location and the login would not impact the
data retrieval, we queried Douyin with the keyword phrase ‘life in Pakistan’.^4
We chose this search term so that we would retrieve videos posted by Chinese
nationals about their time in Pakistan. We found Douyin, as other video-based
platforms, particularly useful for gathering videos posted by the general
Chinese populace because its algorithm allows novice vloggers the same
opportunity to be visible to viewers as established or celebrity vloggers (M.
Zhang and Liu 2021 ).
Our search, which we conducted in July 2023, yielded 216 Douyin videos.
All 216 of these posts were reviewed multiple times by the first author, who is
fluent in Chinese. We then narrowed our sample to exclude videos that were
not uploaded by the original vlogger (meaning they were not reposts); and to
exclude posts in which the vlogger did not specifically state they were residing
in Pakistan. We also removed posts in which the vlogger made any mention or
reference to them being a representative of the Chinese government. In cases
where there were multiple videos from the same vlogger, we selected only one
of that individual vlogger’s posts, so as not to overrepresent one particular
person. In those instances, we chose the post with the highest number of likes.
Lastly, we excluded video posts that included little to no content related to
China-Pakistan relations, like daily beauty routines or posts about food and
meals. From the 216 original returns, there were 10 videos that met these
above criteria.
Data Analysis
Following our data collection, the first author transcribed and translated the
ten posts into English, noting specificities and rhetorical uses found in the
Chinese language. Once the transcripts were prepared, we jointly coded them.
We coded the textual transcriptions, the video descriptions, added text and
visuals, and hashtags. We then connected emerging themes and patterns
across the videos and related them to the three geopolitical discourses we
identified in our contextualisation step as the most relevant in framing China-
Pakistan geopolitical relations.
Pakistan and China established formal diplomatic relations in 1951, two years
after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In doing so, Pakistan
became one of the first non-communist countries to recognise the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) as the legitimate government of China. Then, in
1963, geopolitical relations between the two states focused on attempting to
rectify the territorial dispute in the Kashmir region. Their cooperation then
broadened to encompass scientific, cultural, military, and commercial matters
(Abb 2023 ; Boni 2019 ; Karrar 2022 ; Small 2015 ). Pakistan also played a crucial
role in facilitating US President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 by acting as
a mediator and diplomatic conduit between the US and China.
In April 2013, the China-Pakistan relationship grew immensely through
their ‘similar development path’ when premier Li Keqiang visited Pakistan and
signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation for the Long-
term Plan on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pakistan’s previous
prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, said at the launch of CPEC in 2013 that the two
countries’ relationship is ‘.. .higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the
deepest sea in the world, and sweeter than honey’ (The Telegraph 2013).
Crucially for China, the CPEC is the ‘flagship project’ of their global BRI
(Abb, Boni, and Karrar 2024 ). Then, in 2015, China formally granted Pakistan
the special status of ‘all weather strategic cooperative partners’ (Li and Ye
2019 ). Pakistan is the only state in the world to have this status with China.
More recently, in 2024, Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, under-
scored how the partnership with Pakistan is built around mutual support on
core interests, advancing practical cooperation and development, ensuring
common security, and upholding international fairness and justice (Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China 2024 ).
Buttressing the CPEC economic and investment partnership, the CCP has
created and promoted overlapping geopolitical and nationalist discourses that
frame their geopolitical relationship with Pakistan and are recycled in the
Douyin post. These include ‘Long Live the Chinese Pakistani Friendship’,
‘Positive Energy’ and ‘National Rejuvenation’ (Garlick and Qin 2023 ; Hartig
2018 ; Zeng 2020 ).
Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China since 2013, has
frequently used the phrase ‘Long live China Pakistan Friendship’ (Xi 2015 ). On
Douyin, Chinese politicians, media outlets, and citizens regularly use this
phrase to highlight the strong, bilateral partnership between the two countries
and peoples. Within this discourse of ‘friendship’, the term BaTie, which
means ‘iron brothers’, is commonly used to indicate the strength of the
friendship between the two states and its people.
Maintaining and spreading ‘Positive Energy’ is a second official
Chinese discourse that the CCP has promoted and that is evident in
Douyin. ‘Positive Energy’, launched in 2012, refers to Chinese citizens
maintaining positive behaviours, emotions, and attitudes (Chen and
Yicheng Wang 2019 ; Yang and Tang 2018 ). The essence of ‘Positive
Energy’ is that Chinese people should speak and think positively, and
actively work towards the betterment of self, community, and global
society. It is a feeling and attitude that can be propelled within oneself
and onto other people. Being positive, or having ‘Positive Energy’, is
poised as being good for both the individual and society (Chen and
Yicheng Wang 2019 ). Embracing ‘Positive Energy’ means recognising
that there are challenges and difficulties in life but that these can be
overcome.
In the same year that ‘Positive Energy’ became an official CCP discourse, so
too did the party begin to stress the importance of China’s ‘National
Rejuvenation’. The central goal of ‘National Rejuvenation’ is to revive the
Chinese state and its people to the glorious status it once had (Garrick and
Chang Bennett 2018 ; Suryadinata 2017 ). According to Chinese historiography,
China was a powerful world leader for at least 5,000 years. Yet, due to British
imperialist policies and practices in China in the 1870s, as well as occupations
of Chinese territory by Japan in 1800 and 1931, China experienced significant
decline. The goal of ‘National Rejuvenation’ is to remedy this decline and
restore China’s status as a leading global power. ‘National Rejuvenation’
applies to all people and ethnic groups within China’s diverse society, includ-
ing Chinese people living outside China’s borders (see: Dikötter 2015 ; Ge and
Hill 2018 ; Hui 2011 ). Xi Jinping, in a 2012 speech, stated that ‘National
Rejuvenation’ is the ‘greatest dream of the modern Chinese Nation’ (Xi
2012 ). He continued: ‘This dream embodies the long-cherished wish of several
generations of Chinese people, reflects the overall interests of the Chinese
nation and the Chinese people, and is the common expectation of every son
and daughter of the Chinese people’ (Xi 2012 ).
These three official CCP discourses – ‘Long Live the Chinese Pakistani
Friendship’, ‘Positive Energy’, and ‘National Rejuvenation’ - are clearly present
in the Douyin videos we examine in the next section. While these discourses
were developed and promoted by the CCP, Chinese vloggers recycle, normal-
ise, and alter them through their own unique styles, thus engaging with what
we consider to be ‘unofficial geopolitics’.
The 10 videos we examine below, like most videos on Douyin, are edited
prior to posting but are still of amateur quality. Nevertheless, the videos are
impactful; with likes per video reaching 1.582 million, 75,000 comments,
and 17,000 reposts. The 10 videos range in length from 1 minute and 37
seconds to 9 minutes and 54 seconds. The vloggers include 9 different men
and 1 woman. All the encounters in the posts between the Chinese vloggers
and local Pakistanis are orchestrated to some degree, even though the
vlogger often tries to make them appear as unscripted and accidental. All
the interactions are mediated by Pakistani guides who speak Chinese,
English, and Urdu. The camera is either in the hands of the vlogger or
the local guide, and never the Pakistani local. In other words, the Chinese
vloggers are the protagonists and producers of the videos and the Pakistani
locals are their objects of interest.
Friendship
The staging of friendship between the Chinese vloggers and Pakistani citizens
is a central theme in all 10 videos. Pakistanis are typically friendly and
welcoming towards the vloggers – whether on the street, in a market, or in
their home. The Chinese vloggers typically express keen interest in the lives of
the Pakistanis they meet. Often, the vloggers use the phrase ‘Long Live China-
Pakistan Friendship’ as well as the term ‘iron brother’ during their interactions
with Pakistanis. The vloggers commonly speak to the camera to reflect on the
friendly relationships they have with the Pakistanis they’ve met; which often
includes telling the viewer that these personal friendships are akin to the
strong relationship between China and Pakistan.^5 The friendships that are
spotlighted in the posts are, however, uneven and paternalistic. The vloggers
are the subjects of the posts who narrate their experiences, while the Pakistanis
are the objects of vloggers’ gaze and are typically positioned as dirty, impo-
verished, and needing the help of the Chinese vlogger. Indeed, the vloggers
often demonstrate their friendliness towards their new Pakistani friends
through acts of largess, for example, by buying them groceries, a meal,
shoes, or a haircut.
In the video that we noted in the introduction, a Chinese vlogger begins his
post by showcasing several wealthy Pakistani homes in a neighbourhood in
Islamabad that he is visiting. The camera then pans to the street where
a middle-aged Pakistani man, who is wearing a grey salwar kameez (a tradi-
tional Pakistani dress), is walking towards him. The Pakistani stranger is
extending a gesture of kindness and friendship by offering the Chinese vlogger
an orange. The vlogger tells his audience that ‘I was given an orange just
because he saw that I am Chinese’. The vlogger continues that ‘He’s so friendly
to Chinese people... and I must live up to this friendship’. The vlogger, after
asking for the name of the Pakistani man, and then failing to pronounce his
name in Urdu, decides to refer to him using the term Tie Zhu, which is similar
in meaning to that of ‘iron brother’. The vlogger then asks the man he calls Tie
Zhu if he can visit his home. The two new friends walk together to the
Pakistani man’s home (which seems staged but is portrayed as unplanned).
The vlogger is surprised to discover that Tie Zhu and his family live in a tent,
which stands in stark contrast to the wealthy homes he was just showcasing.
The Pakistani’s home and lifestyle is now on stage, including his poor, dirty,
and innocent looking children. The vlogger expresses concern for the well-
being of Tie Zhu’s family, especially the children. Motivated to help this poor
Pakistani family, the vlogger decides to purchase groceries for the family. The
camera then follows the vlogger to a local store where he purchases several
bags of food. One item the vlogger buys for his new friend is a large bag of
oranges (Figure 1 ). In addition to providing some sustenance to the family, the
bag of oranges is symbolic in that the vlogger is giving back exponentially what
he was given by the Pakistani man earlier while on the street. The vlogger
returns to their home to present the family with these groceries. Then, at the
end of the video, the vlogger emphasises the significance of the China-Pakistan
friendship and tells his Douyin followers to support his endeavour to help Tie
Zhu and his family. Lastly, the vlogger say the phrase ‘Long Live the China
Pakistan Friendship’ in Chinese and Tie Zhu repeats it in Urdu.
In another video, a Chinese man in his early 30s is driving around Lahore
when he suddenly notices a symbol of the China-Pakistan friendship painted
on a concrete wall under a bridge. The symbol is of a Chinese and a Pakistani
flag adjacent to one another. To the vlogger’s disappointment, the flag-
painting is visibly dirty. He stops and explains to the camera that the
Chinese flag represents his country and he is disappointed to find it dirty,
with what looks like copious amounts of bird faeces. Determined to clean the
entire symbol, but most importantly and firstly the Chinese flag, the vlogger
finds a ladder, a sponge, and some water. Seemingly unexpectedly, three young
Pakistani men in their early and mid-twenties – dressed in work-clothes –
approach him, inquiring about his nationality and what he is doing. At first,
the vlogger doesn’t pay much attention to them, and they leave; but they soon
return with their own sponges, brushes, and buckets of soapy water. They offer
to help the vlogger clean this symbol of the Chinese and Pakistani relationship.
The vlogger happily agrees to work with these men and as the day progresses,
evidenced by the change from daylight to night, the group of new friends have
completed their work and made the flags anew. The vlogger is delighted with
the Pakistanis’ help, their friendliness towards him, and for respecting China’s
national flag. He invites them to lunch at a nearby McDonald’s, an offer they
accept, and then the group eats together with the vlogger paying the bill. The
video concludes with three of vlogger’s new Pakistani friends standing in a row
and the vlogger awkwardly giving each one of the workers a hug. The vlogger
then reflects on his experience with these Pakistani men and states that, ‘I
came to understand even more what iron brothers mean and what China-
Pakistan friendship is [.. .]’.^6 The vlogger then wishes for the enduring friend-
ship between China and Pakistan and concludes the video by saying, ‘Bless
you, my Batie friends! May our friendship last forever’.
Positive Energy
‘Positive Energy’ is another major theme in the Chinese vloggers’ videos.
Again, ‘Positive Energy’ encourages Chinese nationals to actively contribute
to the betterment of oneself and the world by maintaining a positive, uplifting
attitude and engaging in action that can help propel positivity (Zhang 2022 ).
Vloggers on Douyin have drawn on the idea and enactment of ‘Positive
Energy’ to such a large degree that the platform now features a trending
section promoting content aimed at spreading this discourse (Chen, Kaye,
and Zeng 2021 ). The term ‘Positive Energy’ is explicitly stated in four out of
ten videos in our sample, but it is enacted in all ten of them. Specifically,
vloggers use ‘Positive Energy’ when they assert that the challenging situations
of Pakistani life can be improved. Vloggers often encourage their viewers to
show compassion for the hardships faced by poor Pakistanis. Some vloggers
highlight that education and employment will lead to a better future, some
stress finding joy in simple things in life, and others express admiration for the
strong work ethic of Pakistanis that may lead to their betterment. The vloggers
often comment that their own goodwill towards Pakistanis can propel ‘Positive
Energy’. Several of the vloggers end their posts by highlighting that there is
much joy and warmth in the world, which is something that they just demon-
strated through their videos.
For example, a Chinese man in his late thirties posted a video in which he
begins by recognising the close, friendly connections between China and
Pakistan. He zooms in on a Chinese flag that is flying close to a Pakistani flag
to illustrate his point. He then pans to a village and refers to the villagers as
BaTie (iron brothers). The majority of his post, however, emphasises the
workings of ‘Positive Energy’. He explains that when he wakes up in the
morning, the children in this village are already up, working hard on their
chores and getting ready for school. He is particularly impressed by this
because, as he explains, the weather is very hot and because the villagers do
not have modern conveniences that would make their lives easier. A bit later in
the video, he films a villager with a broken axe. He explains that it broke
because the villagers work so hard. The broken axe symbolises the resilience
and strength of the villagers in the face of adversity. The vlogger also highlights
the simplicity and beauty of life in the village. He records part of a sunset,
pointing out the evening glow on both the east and west sides of the village,
which he refers to as a blessing. He concludes by sharing a clip of his Pakistani
friends dancing, and notes that they have the courage and determination to
overcome difficulties in life. The vlogger encourages his audience to keep
working hard and to work together to change the future. He ends by saying:
‘every day we are working hard to change... brave villagers are not afraid of
difficulties... Come on, change and fight again tomorrow’. He ends by giving
a thumbs-up to nearby Chinese and Pakistani flags flying in a ramshackled
landscape. The text on the screen says ‘don’t be afraid of difficulties’ (Figure 2 ).
In another video, a young male vlogger is sitting at an outdoor restaurant,
enjoying his food. He notices an old Pakistani man who is collecting trash
nearby. The Pakistani man, who is wearing tattered clothes and dirty shoes,
walks towards the food counter, stares at a burger being cooked, and then asks
a man at the counter for a free burger. The owner of the burger stand refuses to
give the old man any food. The Chinese vlogger is upset by the owner’s
reactions to the poor man. He gets up to intervene and explains to the
owner that the old man will be his guest. Then, the vlogger orders a burger
for the man and pays for it. The old man and the vlogger sit together and the
older man begins eating quickly. The vlogger encourages him to slow down
and enjoy the meal, but then realises that he is starving. As he eats, the old man
says, ‘Chinese good people, Chinese good good people’. After the meal, the
Chinese vlogger offers to give the old man a ride home, but the Pakistani man
is worried that he will dirty the car. Yet, the vlogger insists on giving him a ride
and reassures the man that he is not worried about the car. After dropping the
man off at his home, which is in dire condition, the vlogger reflects on the
challenges that people experience globally and stresses that with positive
actions, like the one he just demonstrated, that individuals and society can
be improved. He tells the camera that ‘all people face difficulties at times. And
this old man’s situation resonates with me. I hope to contribute my own efforts
to ensure that those who are struggling are treated equally’.
National Rejuvenation
In tandem with ‘Friendship’ and ‘Positive Energy’, the video posts in our
sample recirculate the idea that China and Chinese people are strong, power-
ful, and prosperous, which stems in part from the Chinese ‘National
Rejuvenation’ discourse. Several vloggers focus on their love of the Chinese
nation, of being patriotic, and of defending their ‘motherland’. In the video
discussed above in the section on ‘Friendship’, in which the vlogger is helped
by Pakistanis in cleaning the painted image of the Chinese and Pakistani flags,
the vlogger is motivated by his national pride and desire to clean the Chinese
flag. While friendship is a powerful theme in that post, so too is ‘National
Rejuvenation’. Indeed, at the end of the video he reflects and tells his audience
that ‘I believe that every compatriot living in a foreign country would neither
want nor allow any dirty things on our national flag’.
There is another video in which the vlogger focuses on the Chinese flag. In
this video, the Chinese vlogger notices that someone is using his country’s flag
as protective covering for a parked motorcycle. He expresses his discomfort
about this to the camera, stating that he does not want his national flag to be
used in this inappropriate manner. The man then asks the camera whether the
motorcycle owner respects China. He looks around for the owner of the
motorcycle and inquires about it at a nearby shop. The vlogger engages in
a heated conversation with a Pakistani man in the shop, explaining that the
cover on the motorcycle is a Chinese flag and that using it in that manner is
disrespectful to China. Unable to find the owner of the motorcycle, he decides
to remove the flag, but out of respect to the motorcycle owner, he purchases
a new cover at a nearby shop. At this shop, there are several covers for him to
choose from, but in a gesture of his wealth, he buys the most expensive one. He
then returns to the motorcycle, removes the Chinese flag, folds it with great
care, and replaces it with the new cover he just bought (Figure 3 ). The
motorcycle owner is still not present, but four Pakistanis dressed in salwar
kameez watch him as he performs this act. The onlookers then approach him
and reach out to touch the flag. The Chinese vlogger refuses their attempt to
touch the Chinese flag, yet accepts their help in covering the motorcycle with
the new cover.
As the vlogger folds the flag, a popular Chinese nationalist song plays, which
includes the lyrics: ‘Five-star red flag, you are my pride. Five-star red flag, I am
proud of you. Cheering for you, I bless you. Your name is more important
than my life’. Then, the vlogger hands some money to a Pakistani man dressed
in a clean salwar kameez. Although the Chinese vlogger in this video is less
friendly than other vloggers, he still ends on a positive note, emphasising the
friendship between Pakistan and China. In fact, he concludes the video by
saying ‘May China Pakistan friendship live forever’.
Through our case study of Douyin, we have demonstrated one particular
way that Chinese nationals in Pakistan are producing ‘social media geo-
politics’. In their posts of seemingly random interactions with Pakistani
locals, they are engaging in what we term ‘unofficial geopolitics’, as they
recycle the official CCP’s discourses of ‘Long Live the China-Pakistan
Friendship’, ‘Positive Energy’, and ‘National Rejuvenation’. While each
vlogger does so in their own stylised ways, all the posts echo these
discourses by focusing on Chinese goodwill and friendship, of under-
standing the hardships faced by Pakistanis and maintaining ‘Positive
Energy’, and of China and the Chinese people being a strong, powerful,
prosperous nation with the ability to help poor Pakistanis to improve
their lives. While the vloggers seem altruistic in their actions, their
friendships are uneven and paternalistic in ways that echo imperialist
approaches to colonial subjects who they portrayed as needing to be
saved – fed and cleaned – by imperialist who have more power and
knowledge (Castillo 2021 ; Fanon 2021 ; Memmi 2003 ). Indeed, even as
the video posts centralise ‘Friendship’ and ‘Positive Energy’, the Chinese
vlogger is positioned as being able to help, as being more advanced, and
as knowing how to solve the Pakistanis’ problems of hunger and unclean-
liness. As such, the vloggers are drawing on and normalising official
Chinese discourses that frame the CPEC and that position China as
a friendly but superior ally that can develop Pakistan and help improve
the lives of Pakistanis. Through their own personalised content, they
recycle a version of the uneven geopolitical relationship between China
and Pakistan, yetthe vloggers’ posts are rife with paternalistic, imperialist,
and degrading actions and sentiments. Our findings, however, do not
represent a definitive relationship between the Chinese general populace
and the CCP. Other studies of Chinese social media geopolitics have
found diversity, debate, and contention between the general populace
and the CCP (Kay, Zhao, and Sui 2015 ; Woon 2011 ; Zhang 2022 ). That
there are varied findings on the relationship between Chinese nationals
and the CCP demonstrates that ‘social media geopolitics’ is complex,
evolving, and merits more research.
Social media are ubiquitous and powerful platforms for the production and
dissemination of geopolitical discourses and engagements. TikTok, Telegram,
Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, YouTube, WeChat, Reddit, and Kuaishou –
most notably – are increasingly becoming people’s primary source of news
and information. Crucially, social media has shifted traditional power rela-
tions, as a person now needs little more than a phone and an internet
connection to engage in geopolitical production. As such, there are great
opportunities for critical geopolitics to develop concepts and tools to examine
this newish form and site of geopolitical production and provide original
insights into shifting geopolitical power relations.
Notes
- Formal geopolitics typically refers to the work and theories of academics and think tanks; and practical is the action or doing of geopolitics, often within the realm of governments
GEOPOLITICS 17
and political leaders. We are not aware of research within critical geopolitics that refers
to social media as formal or practical geopolitics, but instead, like popular geopolitics, see
the interconnections.
- Since the 2010s, popular geopolitics has expanded to address the role and experiences of individuals in the production of popular geopolitics as opposed to just the traditional elite (Dittmer and Gray 2010 ).
- Conducting in depth interviews with a sample of the vloggers about their experiences and emotions is possible and would provide insights into everyday geopolitics, but that is an entirely different project.
- Social media platforms are increasingly restricting access to their data for academic research purposes and Douyin is no exception. Because of this, our query of the plat- form’s posts are determined by the Douyin recommendation algorithm only; as opposed to a return on all posts that include the search terms.
- The Chinese vloggers also never use the term ‘Pakistani’ to refer to individuals. They also avoid the term ‘friend’, using ‘iron brother’ instead to refer to Pakistanis. ‘Friend’ appears only in Video 3 when the vlogger is astonished that a youth is fluent in Chinese, and in Videos 5 and 8, when the vlogger addresses the Chinese audience to ask for advice.
- In the videos, when the vloggers usethe term ‘friendship’ it is always associated with China-Pakistan relations, as opposed to a relationship between individuals.
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