Kelly Huspace. In comparison, countries that identify themselves as being on the periphery of Asia are
more likely to use Asia as a framework from which to consider various issues (Sun 2001, 25). It
is not my intention to be essentialist and simply equate Chinese subtitle groups with “China.”
However, it may be significant to relate Sun’s research on China with the practices of Chinese
subtitle groups, which are eager to connect with various kinds of foreign popular cultural flows,
and which do so without any particular regard for borders. They turn the presumed roles of
imitative receivers to their advantage, becoming powerful transformers, producers, and distribu-
tors who dominate the circulation of Chinese subtitles throughout Chinese-speaking societies.
Members of Chinese subtitle groups are not merely “marginal others” who engage in fandom
for leisure and escape. Chinese subtitle groups operate as if they were a “powerful center,” apply-
ing flexible accumulation in collecting outstanding cultural labor, switching between the formal
and informal online cultural economies, and mediating the convergence of Internet technolo-
gies and the global flow of popular culture. Most importantly, subtitle groups have come to play
an indispensable role in the daily lives of Chinese-speaking online audiences around the world.
Conclusion: The power of the Internet and netizens
On November 22, 2014, Shooter, a fifteen-year-old online search engine and website offering
links to free downloads of subtitled files, was unexpectedly shut down. On the same day, YYeTs
announced that it had to close temporarily. A photograph that was circulated online indicated
that government authorities confiscated and sealed YYeTs’s servers. This news caused a great
deal of grief among Chinese fans. It has been reported that the closures were related to anti-
piracy pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America (Custer 2014). However, most
critics and netizens suspected that the real source of the closures was China’s State Administra-
tion of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which used piracy as an excuse to achieve
its real aim: preventing the influence of uncensored Western entertainment, which was being
facilitated by the easy accessibility of online Chinese subtitles (Lin 2014). YYeTs later attempted
to relocate its operation to South Korea and Singapore, but those efforts eventually failed. YYeTs
released a formal and mournful online good-bye on December 20, 2014. It stated that “an era
that needs us is gone. There is a better channel displacing us ... Perhaps we’ll keep serving the
copyrighted [program] business with translations, or offer an online discussion community for
everyone” (YYeTs on Weibo 2014).
YYeTs’s parting words partly echo the research findings of this study. First, producing Chinese
subtitles for the official cultural economy has gradually become one of the main options for
Chinese subtitle groups, as discussed earlier. For example, one translator who used to work
at YYeTs has found work with two major video websites, Sohu and Letv, and has become
a member of “the regular army,” the informal name for those creating official Chinese sub-
titles for copyrighted American TV dramas (Li 2014). Also relevant is the Chinese govern-
ment’s behind-the-scenes permanent political control of its people and the Internet, here in
the form of an unpredicted crackdown. Finally, Chinese subtitle groups cannot survive without
self- transformation, and not only because of the Chinese authorities’ surveillance and threats,
but because historical changes in the culture and technology of the Internet requires them to
adjust to new trends in online viewing. They cannot ignore major Chinese video websites who
have “purified” themselves by aligning with the capitalist copyright system and submitting to
Chinese censorship. However, unlike the commercialized video websites, subtitle groups can
never be entirely tamed.
Yang Guobin, a well-known scholar of China’s Internet, responded to the closure of YYeTs
and Shooter by suggesting that online subtitle groups should be praised for “inaugurating a