Uyghurs on Chinese Social Networking Sites: The Creation and Destruction of Ethnic Youth Culture

The Chinese social networking website Fenbei.com was started in 2003 by a young Chinese software engineer. By 2006 it provided an important online community for tens of thousands of Uyghurs, who developed an online culture and communication genres through which they creatively engaged in a virtual world with thousands of others who shared their interests. By 2010 the site was closed, stranding these Uyghurs and millions of other Chinese citizens without the online site that had become their virtual community and connected them to other users around China and even abroad. This article attempts to uncover a small part of what Fenbei meant for young Uyghur Internet enthusiasts and fills some of the gaps in research on popular Internet use in China.

Author

• Light, Nathan

DOI

•  https://doi.org/10.1163/22142290-00203003

Keyword

• Chinese
• Fenbei
• online censorship
• Great Firewall
• Uyghurs
• Central Asian Affairs Journal

Date created

• 2015

Related url

•  https://brill.com/view/journals/caa/caa-overview.xml

Type of Work

• Article

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Central Asia Program

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/work/bc386j93v

In Collection:

• Central Asian Affairs

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