ABSTRACT
In June 2014 when the Japanese government finally passed legislation outlawing the “simple possession” of child pornography, there was widespread criticism in the Western press that so-called “virtual child pornography” – that is, fictitious images and stories such as those found in manga or animation – had not been included (see McLelland, and Galbraith, this volume). Although this incident was not widely reported on in China, it sparked some lively discussion among Chinese ACG (anime, comics and game) fans who associated the Japanese legislation with the then ongoing campaign against online pornography in China. Most Chinese fans perceived the exclusion of fictitious images in anime, manga and computer graphics from the legislation as a victory for the ACG fandom and hoped that one day the Chinese government too would also tolerate erotic fantasy involving two-dimensional characters. This chapter looks at the media panic about danmei, a genre of erotic writing imported from Japan and popular with young Chinese women, and the various responses of online danmei fan communities to government surveillance and censorship.
