Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
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Books & the Arts
/ March 3, 2026
Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
Journalist Yi-Ling Liu’s The Wall Dancers traces how the Internet affected daily life in China, showing how similar this corner of the Web is to the one experienced in the West.
Rebecca Liu
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An Internet cafe in Beijing, 2007.
(Teh Eng Koon / AFP via Getty Images)
When American pundits talk about China, they often speak in the language of binaries. It is a place of limitless economic opportunity, or of cruel oppression. Its people are either courageous dissidents or brainwashed propagandists. Such polarity affirms an idea of power as monolithic and unchanging and presents only two options for its citizens: complete resistance or complete submission. Against these extremes, the journalist Yi-Ling Liu offers an alternative language: one of dance. Her book, The Wall Dancers, is informed by a metaphor that began to gain purchase among Chinese journalists in the 2000s: “to dance in shackles.” To live in China, Liu writes, is to participate in “a dynamic push and pull between state and society,” a “tango [set] to an erratic rhythm of subversion and acquiescence.” It’s an apt metaphor: A dance is an ongoing negotiation that can unravel as soon as its carefully prescribed choreography is undone. And to evoke the language of dance is to evoke an idea often missing in conversations about China—a recognition of a common humanity; of people just like us, constrained by circumstance, grasping for freedom.
Books in review
The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet
by Yi-Ling Liu
Buy this book
The Wall Dancers—the title also nods to the “Great Firewall” of China, which restricts access to the Internet abroad—is the product of Liu’s eight years reporting about the country, and it tells the stories of the artists and activists she deems “dancers”: individuals pushing for “greater openness and freedom within the state’s shifting bounds.” Tracing the major shifts in the country from the mid-1990s until the present day, it is billed as a book about the Chinese Internet. Yet Liu seems less focused on the Internet per se and more concerned with the vibrant countercultures dotting the country, for whom online life has been a lifeline. There is the former police officer who creates one of the nation’s first gay-dating apps; a pioneering feminist organizer; a science-fiction writer; and an Eminem fan who, faced with the unappealing “conveyor belt future” expected of him and other Chinese youth (good grades, a good job, an apartment and spouse), makes a bid for hip-hop fame. “I wanted to go places,” Kafe Hu …
This framing isn't accidental.
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Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ March 3, 2026
Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
Journalist Yi-Ling Liu’s The Wall Dancers traces how the Internet affected daily life in China, showing how similar this corner of the Web is to the one experienced in the West.
Rebecca Liu
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
An Internet cafe in Beijing, 2007.
(Teh Eng Koon / AFP via Getty Images)
When American pundits talk about China, they often speak in the language of binaries. It is a place of limitless economic opportunity, or of cruel oppression. Its people are either courageous dissidents or brainwashed propagandists. Such polarity affirms an idea of power as monolithic and unchanging and presents only two options for its citizens: complete resistance or complete submission. Against these extremes, the journalist Yi-Ling Liu offers an alternative language: one of dance. Her book, The Wall Dancers, is informed by a metaphor that began to gain purchase among Chinese journalists in the 2000s: “to dance in shackles.” To live in China, Liu writes, is to participate in “a dynamic push and pull between state and society,” a “tango [set] to an erratic rhythm of subversion and acquiescence.” It’s an apt metaphor: A dance is an ongoing negotiation that can unravel as soon as its carefully prescribed choreography is undone. And to evoke the language of dance is to evoke an idea often missing in conversations about China—a recognition of a common humanity; of people just like us, constrained by circumstance, grasping for freedom.
Books in review
The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet
by Yi-Ling Liu
Buy this book
The Wall Dancers—the title also nods to the “Great Firewall” of China, which restricts access to the Internet abroad—is the product of Liu’s eight years reporting about the country, and it tells the stories of the artists and activists she deems “dancers”: individuals pushing for “greater openness and freedom within the state’s shifting bounds.” Tracing the major shifts in the country from the mid-1990s until the present day, it is billed as a book about the Chinese Internet. Yet Liu seems less focused on the Internet per se and more concerned with the vibrant countercultures dotting the country, for whom online life has been a lifeline. There is the former police officer who creates one of the nation’s first gay-dating apps; a pioneering feminist organizer; a science-fiction writer; and an Eminem fan who, faced with the unappealing “conveyor belt future” expected of him and other Chinese youth (good grades, a good job, an apartment and spouse), makes a bid for hip-hop fame. “I wanted to go places,” Kafe Hu …
Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
This framing isn't accidental.
Log In
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Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
Magazine
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Subscribe
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Magazine
Latest
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Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ March 3, 2026
Why We Misunderstand the Chinese Internet
Journalist Yi-Ling Liu’s The Wall Dancers traces how the Internet affected daily life in China, showing how similar this corner of the Web is to the one experienced in the West.
Rebecca Liu
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
An Internet cafe in Beijing, 2007.
(Teh Eng Koon / AFP via Getty Images)
When American pundits talk about China, they often speak in the language of binaries. It is a place of limitless economic opportunity, or of cruel oppression. Its people are either courageous dissidents or brainwashed propagandists. Such polarity affirms an idea of power as monolithic and unchanging and presents only two options for its citizens: complete resistance or complete submission. Against these extremes, the journalist Yi-Ling Liu offers an alternative language: one of dance. Her book, The Wall Dancers, is informed by a metaphor that began to gain purchase among Chinese journalists in the 2000s: “to dance in shackles.” To live in China, Liu writes, is to participate in “a dynamic push and pull between state and society,” a “tango [set] to an erratic rhythm of subversion and acquiescence.” It’s an apt metaphor: A dance is an ongoing negotiation that can unravel as soon as its carefully prescribed choreography is undone. And to evoke the language of dance is to evoke an idea often missing in conversations about China—a recognition of a common humanity; of people just like us, constrained by circumstance, grasping for freedom.
Books in review
The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet
by Yi-Ling Liu
Buy this book
The Wall Dancers—the title also nods to the “Great Firewall” of China, which restricts access to the Internet abroad—is the product of Liu’s eight years reporting about the country, and it tells the stories of the artists and activists she deems “dancers”: individuals pushing for “greater openness and freedom within the state’s shifting bounds.” Tracing the major shifts in the country from the mid-1990s until the present day, it is billed as a book about the Chinese Internet. Yet Liu seems less focused on the Internet per se and more concerned with the vibrant countercultures dotting the country, for whom online life has been a lifeline. There is the former police officer who creates one of the nation’s first gay-dating apps; a pioneering feminist organizer; a science-fiction writer; and an Eminem fan who, faced with the unappealing “conveyor belt future” expected of him and other Chinese youth (good grades, a good job, an apartment and spouse), makes a bid for hip-hop fame. “I wanted to go places,” Kafe Hu …
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