Popular Culture among Chinese Youth

In recent years, some aspects of popular culture among Chinese youth and children constantly come into vogue. For example, there are the phenomena of “star fans” (those who are infatuated with and worship movie, TV and singing stars) in mass media, “chat fever” in the virtual world, “the South Korean trend” in foreign culture (admiration of South Korean popular culture), of “catchwords” in social life, and so on. It can be seen here that, with the furtherance of reform and opening-up and the development of a market economy in China, the social culture in different forms exert more and more influence on youth and children; at the same time youth and children are also creating and accumulating their own culture and have, to some degree, been affecting mainstream social culture and popular culture. Popular cultural phenomena, which constantly emerge in recent years, are the apparent and typical representation of this new culture. And this kind of phenomenon has been given close attention by relevant institutions, researchers and various circles of society.