Precarious Worlds in China’s Creative Industries:‘Underground’ drag, clubbing and indie in Shanghai

Mick Vierbergen

Date: July 1, 2025

Time: 6 pm-7:30 pm 

Venue: Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University

Format: in person only

No registration required

Taking a neoliberal approach to cultural creativity, creative industries policies around the world have created new precarious conditions for creative projects since the turn of the century. In China, this neoliberal ideology is blended with strong state control through censorship and soft power. Small venues and event organisers that produce global ‘edgy’ culture and portray themselves as ‘underground’ find themselves in an ambivalent position. Live music, club nights, and drag performances contribute to Shanghai’s global city image but face financial and political uncertainties. Taking a political economy perspective, this talk explores how ‘underground’ venues and event organisations navigate precarious conditions in Shanghai’s creative industries. Building on ethnographic data and policy documents, it explores the various forms of precarity of venues as a business in the creative industries context. A case study of indie livehouse Yuyintang and a drag event organisation argues that precarity is unequally experienced and requires various responses.  

Mick Vierbergen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing of the Hong Kong Baptist University, supported by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme. He is currently a visiting scholar at ICC Sophia University Tokyo and has previously served as a visiting scholar at King’s College London. His research interests in new media, music, gender, and Chinese popular culture culminate in his PhD project, ‘Cosmopolitan Undergrounds: Worlding and world-making in Shanghai music and performance scenes’. Focussing on political economy, platformisation, and globalisation, his thesis examines the postcolonial dynamics of cosmopolitanism in Shanghai indie, clubbing, and drag scenes. Mick holds a Research Master’s in Cultural Analysis and a Bachelor’s in Musicology at the University of Amsterdam.

This talk is organized by James Farrer (Professor of Sociology, Sophia University).