Kelly Huintention. High-quality subtitled versions of programs are made available in online forums as
free downloads.
To understand the rise of Chinese subtitle groups, it is necessary to consider the histori-
cal position of video piracy, changes in the consumption of various digital technologies, and
Chinese transnationalism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, a technological format popularly known
as VCD (Video CD) gradually became the most widely used format among Chinese commu-
nities around the world. VCD was invented by Sony in 1993, before the launch of DVDs. The
format was eventually abandoned in the West, but it was widely adopted in Asia (Hu 2004).
Light, cheap, and easily copied, VCDs quickly became the technology used for pirating movies
and TV programs of all kinds. Between the mid-1990s and 2004, VCDs were one of the main
ways Chinese communities accessed foreign audio-visual programs. In particular, the penetra-
tion into Asia of Japanese TV dramas in the 1990s, part of the Japanese Wave of popular culture,
was mediated through the market for Chinese-made pirated VCDs.
“Chinese transnationalism” describes “the potential of wild and dangerously innovative pow-
ers associated with Chinese diasporic mobility,” as incorporated into “the logic of flexible cap-
italism itself ” (Ong and Nonini 1997, 20). From the mid-1990s to 2004, the pirate economy
was highly dependent on an underground network of ethnic Chinese and their flexible business
strategies, such as Internet shopping, mobile vendors in night markets and street corners, and
shops in Chinatowns in Western countries. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia were the three
main producers of pirated VCDs with Chinese subtitles, and their products had global distribu-
tion (Hu 2005). Later, as VCDs became an outdated technology, China emerged as a dominant
source of pirated DVDs.
Since the mid-1990s, and especially after 2000, mainland China has caught up with the latest
digital technologies, and the Internet has opened up connections between mainland Chinese
and the global entertainment market. The combination of the Internet and the yearning of
young Chinese for non-local products nurtured the birth of online subtitle groups. In the
1990s, highly productive Chinese subtitle groups with the ambitious aim of providing this free
service to online viewers began to surpass the pirated VCD businesses in Taiwan, Hong Kong,
and Malaysia. As viewing modes and technological consumption patterns changed with the
evolution of the Internet, pirated VCDs and DVDs began to be seen as “heavy,” too expensive
and time-consuming to produce. In comparison, free Internet downloads and online viewing
give online audiences instant and autonomous access from their homes, obviating the need
to venture outdoors or accumulate tangible objects. In 2006, an article in the New York Times
reporting inside information about groups working on the Chinese subtitles of American TV
dramas such as Prison Break and Sex and the City attracted global attention and created concern
within the U.S. government (French 2006). The report did not highlight the sensitivity of cop-
yright issues in the United States or offer a solution to the “problem” of unauthorized subtitle
production. Instead, it focused on the way in which the emergence of subtitle groups, in relation
to online fandom, should be understood in the context of Chinese young people’s thirst for
the authenticity of foreign popular culture, a space free from state censorship. With the sudden
boom in the online video industry since 2005, many subtitle groups began making use of video
websites with unauthorized content to enhance the visibility of their work, though still without
receiving any monetary reward. At that time, both subtitle groups and video websites were in the
same unregulated situation. However, in 2008, as part of its efforts to regulate the Internet, the
Chinese government started requiring online video websites to acquire licenses issued by the State
Administration of Radio, Film, and Television. In 2009, websites offering download links with-
out legal licenses, including some large BitTorrent forums, were shut down or downsized. In
recent years, the major video websites have purified their image and been given the imprimatur