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This paper examines the emergence of the role of "moral doctors" who volunteer in what are called "moral clinics" in Huzhou city. In these moral clinics, the characteristics, experiences, and attributes of older women, in particular, are highly valued and viewed as being essential to the role of the moral doctor. These moral doctors act as moral exemplars and conflict mediators in their local communities. Their moral capital and professionalism, combined with their gender, age, familial and neighborhood attributes, contribute to the accumulation of an affective feminized labor which employs the techniques of care, reason, and moral fortitude to govern the self and others. We unpack these ethical virtues exemplified by moral doctors and nurses in order to show how a female‐centric "ethic of care" can become a set of techniques in governing others. In this paper, we elaborate on the role that these moral doctors perform to support the aims of the moral clinics in terms of fostering pro‐social behavior and moral obligation in local communities. We argue that the performance of this type of "moral work" is both a mechanism of discipline and a process of self‐actualization. We contribute to the current literature on "therapeutic governance" in China by showing how the non‐expert medicalization of social ills by moral doctors is incorporated into the reproduction of social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the live-streaming industry boasts 587 million users worth 961 billion yuan in 2020 [Yimei Zixun (2021, 16 March). 2020–2021 Zhongguo zaixian zhibo hangye niandu yanjiu baogao. ]. With so many live-streamers clamoring for fame and fortune, the sheer competition catalyzes the rise of 'live-streaming guilds' (zhibo gonghui) that help members elevate themselves in the performance charts of the various live-streaming apps. In this article, we conducted ethnographic research in one such guild that contracted its business from the live-streaming platform Zhubei. By conceptualizing these guilds as collectives of manipulating 'algorithmic experts' [Bishop, S. (2020). Algorithmic experts: Selling algorithmic lore on YouTube. Social Media + Society, 6(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119897323], we argue that they optimize their live-streamers' performance according to algorithmic parameters that the platforms themselves reveal. However, guilds manipulate audience affects more, going so far as to use heterosexual male workers to masquerade as female live-streamers to entice straight male audience members to tip generously. As such, we challenge the still-prevalent epistemological assumption that live-streamers work alone, and the received wisdom that platform algorithms are unknown and unknowable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late capitalism, the whole of society metamorphoses into an articulation of production and social relations turn into the relations of production (Tronti 2013 [1962]), leading to increasingly diffuse distinctions between leisure and work. China's immense e-sports industry supports related platforms such as Bixin, where users can hire online peiwans (play companions). These peiwans chat with players during gameplay, praising them for their victories, and (especially for male peiwans) demonstrate better gameplay techniques. As a form of 'cruel optimism' (Berlant 2011), however, such companionship promises fun and seemingly easy money, but it remains untenable in the long run because it takes a heavy toll on the peiwans' physical and mental well-being. Bixin lightens this burden by informing peiwans of how it ranks their online fame. This revelation suggests that algorithms can be known and knowable if the company aspires to a short-term boost in revenues, but peiwans ultimately highlight the uncertainties that continue to plague China's e-sports industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China continues to neoliberalize in the new millennium, the Internet and other social media also enable new subjects of affective labor to emerge. Since 2014, young men increasingly hawk their services as xuni lianren (virtual lovers) on popular Chinese websites. These men explicitly state that while they neither sell sex nor meet their clients in person, they behave otherwise as actual boyfriends would: over chatting apps, they talk to clients for leisure, and provide relief from frustrations accumulated from family, school, and work. Using fieldwork data gathered from male virtual lovers, we argue that that their sale of immaterial affective labor substantiates [Virno, P. (2004). A grammar of the multitude: For an analysis of contemporary forms of life. New York: Semiotext(e)] idea of the social factory by demonstrating that social relations are indeed transforming (albeit incompletely) into relations of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]