The Folded City

Chinese Cities - Sciences Po - OGLM 3050 - 59127 - S2 2025/26   
Clément Renaud 
[hi@clementrenaud.com](mailto:hi@clementrenaud.com)

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##  Week 9

# 层

## The Folded City

####  7 Apr 2026

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## Character of the week

# 层
[Purple Culture](https://www.purpleculture.net/dictionary-details/?word=层) / [Hanziyuan](https://hanziyuan.net/) / [CUHK dic](https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=层)

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# The Folded City

## 层

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# Today

Thank you for your work on the _Made in China_ assignment !

**Arc 1 — Digital life and its urban governance (45 min)**

Stack / Great Firewall / WeChat / COVID health code

**Arc 2 — Youth culture in the City (35 min)**

sci-fi / wanghong / punk / hip-hop / electronic music / art

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# Part I: The Chinese Stack

## Writing, code, and sovereignty

---

# You've Landed in Shanghai

.middle.center[

![](/chinese-cities/img/404.webp)

]

- No Google. No Instagram. No WhatsApp. No maps that work.
- VPN (technically illegal but works).
- The condition of (urban) life in China
  ]

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# Writing as Territorial Regulation

### The Chinese state has always been a writing machine

- Standardization of characters under one script, one empire
- The imperial examination system: literacy as access to governance
- Land registers, census, hukou records — writing regulates territory

The platform city is the latest iteration: **code regulates territory**.

.footnote[
Renaud, "The Ascent of Digital Technology in China," Ch.1 in *Realtime: Making Digital China* (EPFL Press, 2020). https://realtimechina.net
]

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# 甲骨文

.footnote[Oracle bone, Couling-Chalfant collection. Late Shang dynasty, ca. 1200 BCE. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.]

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# Bratton's Stack

### _The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty_ (MIT Press, 2016)

.row[
.column[
![](/chinese-cities/img/stack_diagram.webp)
]
.column[
The **City layer** is where digital and physical sovereignty overlap.

```
[ User ] ← behavioral profile
[ Interface ] ← the app, the screen, the camera
[ City ] ← sensors, logistics, enforcement
[ Cloud ] ← data centers, algorithms
[ Address ] ← identification and routing
[ Earth ] ← cables, electricity, minerals

```

]
]

---

# The Chinese Stack

### Gabriele de Seta, _The Chinese Stack_ (2021)

- Gateway
- Sieve
- Dome

---

# Gateway 网关

### The QR code as infrastructure metaphor

Every interaction passes through a **gate**: payment, identity, access.

Bidirectional and controlled — the gateway records the crossing.

]
]

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# Sieve 筛子

### The Great Firewall as selective membrane

The firewall doesn't block — it **filters**.

Selective permeability: some content passes, some doesn't. The logic is not binary but _graduated_.

]
.column[
![](/chinese-cities/img/social-media-china.webp)
]
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# The Great Firewall as Business Model

- The sieve filtered out Google, Facebook, Amazon
- Baidu, WeChat, Alibaba had a **protected domestic market** to grow in
- The dome is the precondition for a parallel internet
- Same functions. Different stack. Identity-linked from birth.
- 📷 Fang Binxing (方滨兴) — architect of the Great Firewall
  ]

---

# Dome 穹顶

### Cybersovereignty as enclosure

Data stays inside. An enclosed but **internally rich** space.

Not isolation — a parallel universe with its own platforms, protocols, and publics.

---

# Part II: WeChat as Infrastructure

## From QQ to urban operating system

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# QQ and the 网吧

### The physical infrastructure of the early Chinese internet

- Tencent launches **QQ** (1999) — instant messaging for China's first internet generation
- 网吧 (wangba): unlicensed, basement-level, smoky, cheap, open all night
- Young people without home computers: games, chat, early web
- The internet cafe as **first digital public space**
  ]

---

# From QQ to WeChat

### Tencent's mobile pivot

- **2011**: WeChat (微信) launches — designed for phones, not desktops
- Voice messages + group chats → instant adoption
- **2013**: Real-name SIM registration law
- Every WeChat account tied to a **verified identity**

> This is the hinge: the internet becomes identity-linked. Makes everything that follows possible.

---

# The Red Packet Moment

### 微信红包 — Chinese New Year's Eve, 2014

- WeChat launches **digital red packets** (红包)
- 10 million red packets sent in the first day
- To send or receive: must link a bank card to WeChat
- WeChat Pay adoption **explodes**

By 2016: WeChat Pay rivals Alipay. Cash begins disappearing from Chinese cities.

> Jack Ma called it a **"Pearl Harbor moment"** for Alipay.

---

# Mini-Programs and Infrastructuralization

### 小程序 — apps within the app (2017)

City services migrate to WeChat:

- Hukou application: upload residence cert + property docs + ID → track status in-app
- Hospital booking, utility bills, residence permit renewal
- vs. what it was: a physical counter, a queue, a gatekeeper, weeks of waiting

> "WeChat owes its success first to platformization, then to the **infrastructuralization** of its platform model, shaped by techno-nationalist media regulations and a cyber-sovereignty agenda."
>
> — Plantin & de Seta, 2019

---

# Who Gets Left Out

- To use WeChat Pay: Chinese bank account + Chinese SIM + smartphone
- **Elderly** (264M over 60): many digitally excluded
- **Migrants**: unstable addresses, data costs
- **Foreigners**: bank account access difficult
- 2020: cashless city locked elderly out of supermarkets. State Council guidance — largely ignored.
  ]

---

# Part III: The Platform City in Crisis

## COVID, the health code, and the locked city

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# Health Code: 7 Days in Hangzhou

- Alibaba + Hangzhou co-develop the first health code in 7 days
- WeChat/Alipay + real-name SIM (2013) = ready-made infrastructure
- Color system: **green** / **yellow** / **red** (GPS, Bluetooth, test results)
- National rollout in 3 weeks — works because WeChat IS already the urban OS
- 📷 Health codes at Beijing Capital Airport, 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  ]

---

# The Locked City

### From Ou Ning, _Memories of Wuhan_ (p.131)

Grid management (社区网格化管理):

- Community divided into grids, one gate for entry/exit
- Temperature checks, food via WeChat neighborhood committee
- Only medical staff and government workers could cross boundaries

Surveillance tech deployed:

- Police wearing facial recognition helmets\*\* searching for fever
- Drones\*\* catching maskless people, broadcasting warnings
- Drones carrying QR codes to toll booths so drivers don't roll down windows

Rural lockdown: villages blocked roads with mud, stones, broadswords (大刀), red-tasseled spears.

---

# Lockdown

### Shanghai, March–June 2022

- 25 million people locked in compounds for 2 months
- Official supply chain fails at the last 100 meters

What survived:

- WeChat neighborhood groups (微信群)
- Group-buying leaders (团长) — usually retired women
- Pinduoduo bulk orders aggregated across buildings

> The platform that looked like a convenience feature turned out to be the emergency infrastructure

.footnote[
→ [Rest of World: Shanghai Lockdown WeChat Groups](https://restofworld.org/2022/shanghai-lockdown-wechat-group-buying/)
]

---

# Health Policy Collapse

### Three moments that ended Covid lockdown

**Zhengzhou, June 2022**: bank depositors' health codes turned red to prevent them reaching a protest site. First documented political weaponization. National scandal.

**Urumqi, November 24, 2022**: 24 dead in apartment fire. Lockdown barriers alleged to have slowed evacuation.

**December 7, 2022**: protests spread nationally via WeChat. Zero-COVID ends. Fastest major policy reversal in recent Chinese history.

February 2023: health codes dismantled. **The data infrastructure remains.**

---

# Part IV: Youth culture in City

## Sinofuturism and Urban Space

---

# Sinofuturism

### An emergeing urban aesthetic

> "Sinofuturism is often described as a kind of Afrofuturism for the Chinese diaspora — re-staging colonial encounters through technological futures." (Lek, 2016)

.footnote[
Lawrence Lek (林俊廷). [Sinofuturism (1839–2046 AD)](https://lawrencelek.com/works/sinofuturism), 2016. Video, 66 min. Venice Biennale (2017), Serpentine (2019).
]

Not "China's version of the future." A different relationship to time, technology, and modernity — produced in dormitories, basements, QQ groups, and city gaps.

---

# Chongqing: Accidental Cyberpunk

### When topography produces sinofuturism

Sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers on near-vertical terrain. The city has no flat ground.

- stacked, overlapping, vertical urbanism
- fog, humidity, and river light (permanent atmospheric haze)

.footnote[
CNN Travel, ["Is Chongqing the world's most cyberpunk city?"](https://edition.cnn.com/travel/chongqing-china-tourism-cyberpunk-city-intl-hnk)
]

---

# Sci-fi - Folding Beijing

Three spaces shape Beijing, folding on a 48-hour cycle:

- First Space (5M): 24 hrs — elites
- Second Space (25M): 16 hrs — middle class
- Third Space (50M): 8 hrs — night shifts, workers

> The robots could replace every waste worker tomorrow. The city chose not to. The 8-hour sleep cycle is policy — not engineering. It is politically easier to disappear 50 million people into sleep than to let them be unemployed and awake.

.footnote[Lao Dao, a worker in Third Space, is paid to smuggle a love letter across city boundaries in exchange for his adopted daughter's tuition. He sneaks through the city's divisions, delivers the letter, learns the city's sleep cycle is a political choice to manage surplus labor—not a technical need—and returns home to a quietly unchanged life as the city folds again.]

---

# SciFi - Liu Cixin, City of Silence (2005)

### What happens when the platform completes its work

A generation after the Great Firewall, internet censorship has advanced until only approved "harmonious words" can be used online. The protagonist discovers an underground network that has developed a shadow language inside the official one.

> The wall didn't need to block everything. It only needed to make people forget there was anything to say.

.footnote[
Liu Cixin (刘慈欣). "The City of Silence" (沉默之城), 2005. In *The Dark Forest* anthology. Trans. Eric Abrahamsen. Also in *Invisible Planets* (Tor, 2016), ed. Ken Liu.
]

---

# Scifi - Chen Qiufan — _Waste Tide_

### Silicon Isle: the PRD as body horror

Fictionalized **Guiyu**, Guangdong. The island is spatially divided — locals vs. migrant workers (废民, "waste people") — enforced by clan networks and corporate interests.

> The platform city exports its old infrastructure to the margins. The margins process it with their bodies.

Chen Qiufan (陈楸帆) calls his generation **"the torn generation"**: post-Tiananmen, pre-platform, too young for revolutionary memory, too old to be digital natives. Sci-fi as the only realism available.

.footnote[
Chen Qiufan. *Waste Tide*. Trans. Ken Liu. Tor, 2019. — Essay: "The Torn Generation: Chinese Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis," *LARB China Channel*, 2015.
]

---

# Media - 二次元 — The 2D World

### ACG culture and China's parallel digital universe

- **ACG** (Anime, Comics, Games) enters China through piracy: dakou DVDs, ripped fansubs on peer-to-peer networks
- **Bilibili** (2009): starts as a Hatsune Miku fansite, becomes China's leading youth video platform — 300M+ monthly users under 35
- **二次元** (erci yuan, "2D world"): the imaginary space of anime, light novels, games — a genuine alternative reality

The 2D world - escapism as a form of **urban production**:

- Fan fiction, doujinshi, cosplay, AMVs — youth labor generating a parallel cultural economy
- Bilibili's interface, fandom communities, and annual New Year galas (拜年纪) as social space
- "Bilibili is my spiritual hometown" — common self-description among Chinese youth

---

# Media - 弹幕 — The Bullet Screen

### Danmu and the speed politics of collective presence

- 弹幕 (danmu, "barrage"): real-time comments scrolling across the video
- Phrases: 前排 ("front row" — watching live), 老番茄 ("ancient episode"), 催泪 (tear-inducing)
- Viewers separated by years feel simultaneous

> "Danmu creates an imaginary collective of simultaneous urban viewers out of an otherwise isolated and solitary act of watching."
>
> — Dino Ge Zhang, _Realtime: Making Digital China_ (EPFL Press, 2020)

From political scandal livestreams to anime re-watches, danmu rewrites the public sphere as a scrolling, ephemeral crowd.

.footnote[
Dino Ge Zhang. "Speed Politics of Danmu," Ch. 9 in Renaud et al., *Realtime: Making Digital China* (EPFL Press, 2020). https://realtimechina.net
]

---

# Art - Cao Fei - RMB Citty

- **_Whose Utopia_ (2006) - (second life) [Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB0qJC2sp_0)**
- **_RMB CITY_** (2009) - [archive](https://sites.rhizome.org/anthology/rmbcity.html)
  / [watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhfATPZA0g)

### PRD light bulb factory. Workers perform their fantasy selves.

- A ballerina twirls in the aisles
- A guitarist shreds between machines
- A woman dances alone

Then they put on gloves and go back to work.

Cao Fei spent months in the factory. The workers choreographed their own sequences.

---

# Music - The Dakou Generation (打口)

### Waste CDs that built an underground

- 1990s: Western record labels ship unsold CDs to Guangdong as **plastic waste** — cases cut, barcodes defaced
- Street vendors in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an sell them at informal markets
- For a generation without access to international music, dakou is **the only channel**

### What the waste produced:

- Chinese underground rock, punk, electronic music — all built on pirated material flows
- **Wudaokou** (Beijing): dakou market + Scream Club = punk epicenter
- The 打口一代 (dakou generation) — musicians and fans formed through illegal circulation

> The infrastructure of Chinese underground culture was not digital. It was **garbage**.

.footnote[
Ref: de Kloet, "Popular Music and Youth in Urban China: The Dakou Generation" (*China Quarterly*, 2005)
]

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# Women Jia (我们家)

## "Our House" — Donghu, Wuhan

- Created by **Mai Dian** (guitarist, Si Dou Le / 400 Blows)
- Autonomous youth center: info shop, stage, courtyard campfire, free beds
- Near **VOX** live house and **Wuhan Prison** punk bar (Wu Wei, SMZB)
- From Nathanael Amar, "Runaway" (江湖大逃亡), _(Un)Locked: Memories of Wuhan_
  ]

---

# Donghu Defense Movement (2010)

- OCT planned to lease **211 hectares** of nationally protected East Lake — amusement park, luxury apartments
- Punk community (Mai Dian, Wu Wei) joined the resistance
- Urban space built through music becomes urban space **defended through activism**
- → [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEaDfJ4Li-A) — [website](http://donghu2010.org)
- Ref: Amar, _Scream for Life_ (PUR, 2022) — IASPM book award 2023
  ]

---

# Chengdu Hip-Hop: CDC

### 成都说唱会馆

- Founded ~2008. Freestyle battle circuit, WeChat groups, street cyphers
- Sichuan dialect's tones = trap cadence
- Beef with Chongqing's GO$H crew
- **Higher Brothers** - "Made in China" (2017)- [watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rILKm-DC06A)

### Then the state arrives:

- **2017**: _The Rap of China_ (中国有嘻哈) — 2.68 bn views on iQiyi
- **2018**: government bans tattoos, hip-hop, "sub-culture" from TV
- Huge rap tide, very popular today

---

# Clubbing - Shelter / OIL

### The Shelter, Shanghai (2007–2016)

- WWII bomb shelter at 5 Yongfu Lu
- Kode9, Shackleton, Madlib played the basement
- Spawned **[SVBKVLT](https://djmag.com/longreads/radical-noise-shanghais-underground)** label, a generation of producers
- Dec 2016: license not renewed
- Scene migrates to ALL Club + **Shanghai Community Radio** (SHCR)

artist: [33EMYBW](https://pam-magazine.com/33emybw/)
]

### OIL Club, Shenzhen (2017–)

- Founded by Yangyang, Futian district
- Kode9 opening night. Boiler Room. Resident Advisor Club of the Week.
- **Still open.**

- [article w pics](https://www.keyimagazine.com/2024/09/20/oil-club-shenzhen/)
- [ig](https://www.instagram.com/oilshenzhen/)
  ]

---

# 杀马特 (Shamate)

### Sinofuturism from the factory floor

- Early 2010s: migrant youth from Sichuan, Hunan, Henan — alone in PRD factory dormitories
- Extreme hairstyles, neon colors, visual rebellion: borrowed from Japanese visual-kei via pirated magazines
- **QQ groups**: hundreds of shamate profiles connecting across factory districts — Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen
- A DIY aesthetic economy: shamate photography studios, ¥20 a session
- Mocked as "tasteless" (低俗) by urban middle class. Banned by factory management.
- **Li Yifan, _Shamate, I Love You_ (杀马特我爱你, 2019)**: the community speaks for itself

]

---

# 粉丝经济 — The fan economy

### "Cultural technology" (Lee Soo-man / SM Entertainment)

Fan clubs at scale in the city:

- renting the city's surface (billboard in BJ or SH city center)
- some airports have permanent fan reception infrastructure ( "pick-up squads" (接机团), etc)
- virtual gifts (虚拟礼物) livestreams

**The Xiao Zhan (肖战) incident, 2020**:

- Fans of actor Xiao Zhan mass-reported AO3 (Archive of Our Own) for satirical fanfiction
- AO3 blocked in China. Backlash explodes — cyber-attacks again Xiao Zhan fan clubs

---

# 网红 Urbanism

- **打卡** (check-in) culture on Xiaohongshu / Douyin
- Wukang Road (Shanghai): 40,000 visitors/day. An elderly resident's pink bow drew 1,000+ tourists — she had to take it down.
- Buildings designed for photogenicit: gentrification through algorithm-driven
- The platform produces the city

---

# Group Work (15 min)

### Work on your final projects

- Refine your presentation structure
- Discuss with your group members
- Ask questions if needed