ABSTRACT
This chapter examines new male subjectivities, male anxiety and the recuperation of masculinity in contemporary China. Transnational and local movements of ideas, practices, bodies, goods, capital, and so on, provide the context for the transformation of masculinities in China. Much has been written about the crisis of masculinity' in China in the post-Mao era. Anxiety about androgynous masculinity in post-Mao China has emerged in tandem with the perceived rise of women/decline of men' in China. The chapter discusses the Bruce's comments seem to encapsulate the intransigence of certain polarised attitudes towards gender. It reminds that there is no inevitable association between post-millennial models of middle-class masculinity and progressive views on gender and sexuality. The chapter focuses the most striking trends in youth culture in recent years, the popularity of an androgynous' look amongst young men. It explains the Rongle and some others avoided such castigation by adopting more conventionally masculine personas.
