Glocalization, Marketization and Politicisation: Femvertising at a Crossroad in China

This chapter investigates an under-researched area of Chinese femvertising via a textual and visual analysis of a selected sample of commercials released between 1995 and 2019. The chapter argues that the ideological mechanics of China’s state feminism and the global Third Wave feminist movement provide endorsement for female empowerment in marketing communication and certain aspects of gender equality in civic life without fundamentally challenging the patriarchal political and cultural system. The global influence of feminist ideas is shown as a negotiation with local political culture in Chinese femvertising practice. Traditional cultural values such as familial harmony, filial piety, self-cultivation, diligence, and perseverance modify the universal application of female empowerment on discursive practices locally. Femvertising practices in China focus on a set of codes surrounding relational female liberation, which shows a compromised effort of individual empowerment mediated by local political and cultural traditions