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This book surveys the explosive youth culture in twenty-first century China, an active and powerful force catalysing cultural innovations, social changes, and collective efforts, re-inventing a pluralistic and multivalent youth (qingnian) in an age of enormous change, division and uncertainty. Providing a comprehensive analysis of literary, cinematic, musical, televisual, and social media representations about, for and by disparate youth groups, this book seeks to offer a systematic investigation of a trans-medial and multi-locale youth culture. In so doing, it examines contributions from high school dropouts, industrial workers, migrant laborers and'leftover women', as well as best-selling writers and filmmakers, cultural entrepreneurs, queer idols and fans, and young feminist activists. Observing the Chinese youths'deployment of'small'genres, such as light novels and short videos, in addition to digital media, this book ultimately demonstrates the renewal of cultural forms and the transformative power of networked'small'atomized individuals in reinventing a youthful coalition of silenced, belittled, and marginalized groups. A thoroughly interdisciplinary study, Youth Economy, Crisis, and Reinvention in Twenty-First-Century China will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, as well as Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies and Media Studies.

The lives and aspirations of young Chinese (those between 14 and 26 years old) have been transformed in the past five decades. By examining youth cultures around three historical points - 1968, 1988 and 2008 - this book argues that present-day youth culture in China has both international and local roots. Paul Clark describes how the Red Guards and the sent-down youth of the Cultural Revolution era carved out a space for themselves, asserting their distinctive identities, despite tight political controls. By the late 1980s, Chinese-style rock music, sports and other recreations began to influence the identities of Chinese youth, and in the twenty-first century, the Internet offers a new, broader space for expressing youthful fandom and frustrations. From the 1960s to the present, this book shows how youth culture has been reworked to serve the needs of the young Chinese.