The Overbearing CEO: Cinderella Fantasy and Chinese-style Neoliberal Femininity

Abstract

In today’s China, “overbearing CEOs” (badao zongcai) is a recurring motif in online romantic stories and TV (and web) dramas series adapted from them. These stories follow a certain stereotyped formula, depicting the love between a wealthy and domineering young man, a member of the business elite or a success in another social arena, and a girl of humble background with modest accomplishments. Although there are variations of the story pattern in terms of setting and characterization, the essential constituents never change – a Cinderella-type fantasy that normalizes the male protagonists who patronize and the female protagonists who organize their behaviors to ultimately deserve that patronage. Thus, some dramas featuring strong and ambitious women, popularly known as “supreme heroine” (da nü zhu), also show discernable influence of the hypergamic fantasy. This article situates the “overbearing CEO” motif in a wider context of gender subjectivity and class in postsocialist China and, through the lens of dramas with this distinct narrative pattern, explores the roles played by television in cultural governance and neoliberal subject-making. By close readings of TV dramas such as My Boss and Me (Shanshan laile), The First Half of My Life (Wo de qian bansheng), and The Story of Yanxi Palace (Yanxi gonglue) and drawing on data collected from online commentaries and focus group discussions with TV viewers, the article delves into the ongoing negotiations surrounding gender politics and subjectivity in television’s reproduction of social power relations. It argues that gender hierarchy and ideals are closely associated with the “positive energy” moral values, which effectively serve a new mode of governance in China. As a result, the socialist discourse on gender equality and women’s liberation has to coexist and negotiate with the interests, desires, and aspirations of a market that pragmatically promotes neoliberal self-governing subjects and stories promoting women’s agency as part and parcel of postsocialist modernity paradoxically end up reinforcing the patriarchal gender order.