Incommensurability Between “Filial Daughter” and “All-Capable Princess”: Discursive Legitimation in Chinese Media Coverage of Quan Hongchan and Gu Eileen

Abstract

This study investigated how Chinese media employed discursive legitimation strategies to incorporate the atypical identities of Quan Hongchan and Gu Eileen into the party-state’s cultural and emotional governance. A critical discourse analysis revealed that multifaceted tensions were (re)produced in media constructions of these two remarkable sporting heroines. By portraying Quan as an exemplar of “socialist filial daughter,” Chinese media hoped to mobilize underclass youth to make strong commitment to nation building. These discursive efforts nevertheless made Quan’s self-empowerment cruelly optimistic insofar as the intersection of her bodily vulnerability, excessive social expectations, and state patriarchal paternalism was concerned. In contrast, Chinese media portrayed Gu as a “neoliberal all-capable princess with Chinese characteristics” to alleviate social discontent regarding the upper class’s unlimited transnational mobility and capital accumulation. Anti-Occidentalist discourses were intertwined with Western-imported self-entrepreneurship in Gu’s case, reflecting the party-state’s anxiety and desire to nurture cosmopolitan subjects. The parallel inclusion of Quan’s and Gu’s ostensibly incommensurable upbringings into the “sporting superpower” narratives, in turn, demonstrated the significance of discursive legitimation for Chinese media to construct “ideologically correct” sporting hero(in)es in the global neoliberal era.