Member’s Publication: Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao, eds.

3rd Aug 2026

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality, edited by Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao, 2026 by Routledge.

Routledge, 2026

We are excited to share the news that the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality now available in paperback and e-book. The Handbook offers a rich survey of topics concerning historical, modern and contemporary Chinese genders and sexualities. It is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date books on the topic. More information about the book: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Chinese-Gender–Sexuality/Zhao-Bao/p/book/9781032227337

We hope that you find the Handbook useful for your research and teaching. Please also kindly consider ordering the books for your library.

Thank you and all the best,

Hongwei Bao and Jamie J. Zhao

This Handbook offers a rich survey of topics concerning historical, modern and contemporary Chinese genders and sexualities. Exploring gender and sexuality as key dimensions of China’s modernisation and globalisation, this Handbook effectively situates Chinese gender and sexuality in transnational and transcultural contexts. It also spotlights nonnormative practices and emancipatory potentials within mainstream, heterosexual-dominated and patriarchally structured settings. It serves as a definitive study, research and resource guide for emerging gender and sexuality issues in the Chinese-speaking world. This Handbook covers interdisciplinary methodologies, perspectives and topics, including:

• History
• Literature
• Art
• Fashion
• Migration
• Translation
• Sex and desire
• Film and television
• Digital media
• Star and fan cultures
• Fantasies and lives of women and LGBTQ+ groups
• Social movements
• Transnational feminist and queer politics

Paying acute attention to nonnormative genders and sexualities and emphasising the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity and class, this Handbook offers an essential, field-defining text to Chinese gender and sexuality studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: New Directions in Chinese Gender and Sexuality Studies
Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao


Part 1: Theorising Gender and Sexual Histories

  1. He-Yin Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
    Rebecca E. Karl
  2. Nudity and Modernity—New Forms of Gendered Voyeurism in the Art of Dan Duyu
    Louise Edwards
  3. Gendered Language in Modern Chinese History
    Coraline Jortay
  4. Patriarchal Problems between Revolution and Reform
    Harriet Evans
    Part 2: Transnational Migration and Transcultural Mobility
  5. National Allegory and Media Performativity: Chinese Masculinity in the Context of K-Pop and American Rambo
    Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang
  6. Gender, Sexuality and Educational Mobility: Chinese Women Students in Australia
    Fran Martin
  7. Gender and Sexuality in the Anglophone White Snake Worlds
    Liang Luo
  8. Prostitution and Human Trafficking
    Tiantian Zheng
  9. Enacting Transnational Masculinity Regimes in the Migrant Context: Chinese Migrants in Japan
    Jamie Coates
    Part 3: Queer/ing China
  10. When Queer Theory Speaks Chinese: Translating Queer in China
    Hongwei Bao
  11. Claustrophobic Sexuality: Mapping Gay Male Urban Subjects and Postmodernity in the Films of Cui Zi’en
    Alvin K. Wong
  12. Theorising Queer Cinemas
    Victor Fan
  13. Speaking the ‘L’ Elsewhere: Queering Women on TV in a Global China
    Jamie J. Zhao
  14. Opening the Door to a New World’: Danmei and the Gender Revolution in China
    Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu
    Part 4: Shifting Discourses Surrounding Womanhood
  15. Funü: The Onion Peeling Stories
    Xin Huang
  16. Chinese Women-in-Suits
    Talel Bar and Haiqing Yu
  17. Rethinking nüxing yishu in the PRC: The Shifting Discourses around Art by Women from the 1990s to Today
    Monica Merlin
  18. Beyond Cyborg Prostitutes: Fantasies of Womanhood, Translated Chinese SF, and Soft Power
    Angie Chau
    Part 5: Gendered Governance and Contestation in Emerging Cultures and Spaces
  19. Women as Dancing Wanghong on Douyin: Affective Affordances and Gender Performativity
    Han Fu, Anthony Fung and Jindong Leo-Liu
  20. Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity in Postsocialist China: Grassroots Male Images in Cyberspace
    Song Geng and Ran Xi
  21. Sublimated Machismo: Patriarchy, Hegemonic Masculinity and Popular Nationalism in China’s Hip-hop Culture
    Sheng Zou
  22. From Women’s Space to Gendering the Public Sphere: Ai Xiaoming’s Practice of Everyday Life and Activism
    Jinyan Zeng and Xibai Xu