Precarious Creativity: Production of Digital Video in China

Alongside the development of a creative economy, a growing body of research has examined the resonances of creative production with the concept of precarity. However, the production of creative video-one of the most popular online activities and creative industries in China-is still not adequately studied in academia, especially its precarious status in the Neoliberal era. This article proposes to study creative video production, especially the professionalisation of amateur video production, in China's neoliberal context from the perspective of the contested convergence of creativity and precarity. Utilising ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study shows how exhausting production activities and unrealised dreams of workers have become essential to creative production in China. The study concludes that precarious creativity is very much internal to China's strategic project of developing creative industries to serve the new neoliberal governing rationality.