In 2021, a top-down rectification movement called ‘Clean Up’ impinged on Chinese idol fandom culture. This movement triggered discussions about the transforming governance strategy over fandom and broader Chinese Internet users. This article explores the complexity and shift of governance on Chinese idol fans by examining the digital fandom fundraising platform Taoba. Drawing from the walkthrough analysis of xiufen (fans of idol competition shows), we investigate three key stakeholders: platform, state, and xiufen fandom, to reflect on wider Internet governance issues in China. We argue that Chinese idol fans like xiufen are subject to a governance structure where power relations between different players are highly complex and entangled. The state-corporate-society co-opting mode of governance has evolved toward what we termed ‘coercive co-opting’, in which digital platforms and users conform with the imaginaries and ideologies of the state, while the authorities still intervene in an intimidating and suppressive manner.

This article draws on the concept of “transportal home” to examine the intersection of mobile media, mobility, and place-making among homeless food delivery workers in the Shanghai lockdown. Shanghai's lockdown lasted from February 28 to May 31, 2022, and was one of the strictest in China, resulting in thousands of food delivery riders being locked out of their homes, treated as potential carriers of the virus, and forced to sleep on the streets until the lockdown was lifted. The article uses qualitative research methods to explore the COVID-related homelessness of food delivery riders during the lockdown, focusing on their media practices and highlighting their experiences and agency in using mobile media to negotiate their lives amid the (im)mobile mobility they faced. It argues that mobile phones, as a transportal home, can offer a technological imaginary of home out of “homelessness”; however, they also serve as a reminder of the constraints of such an imaginary, as these (temporarily) homeless food delivery riders continue to be subject to platform exploitation and pandemic surveillance.