How an American influencer exposed China’s ‘crotch nationalism’

(Edited and refined by Josephine Hong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

“Wang Shui Niu”, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American man standing 1.93 metre tall, fluent in Chinese and calls himself a master’s student at Fudan University, went from being a leading overseas blogger to what public opinion has branded a predatory romance scammer overnight. The episode has also unexpectedly exposed another fault line in China’s nationalism.

From campus darling to online pariah

The foreign influencer, who rose to fame in China on the back of an image as a gentle high-achiever who loves China, has recently been accused of leading a chaotic private life. Several Chinese women have collectively alleged that he approached women under the pretext of Chinese-language tutoring and home visits, only to cut off contact and block them after getting several pregnant through unprotected sex. The women also alleged that they had paid for their dates.

Related hashtags, including “American scumbag Wang Shui Niu” and “Online rumours say Wang Shui Niu has AIDS”, quickly topped Weibo’s trending lists.

The allegations have not been confirmed in any official statement, and Wang has not made any public response. However, his account has been made private and his follower count has plunged from more than 160,000 to around 10,000.

Fudan University sought to distance itself from him through a Weibo post by Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese state media Global Times. It said Wang Shui Niu only attended a language-training programme at the university for several months, was not a Fudan postgraduate, and had completed the programme and left the university.

In his videos, Wang presented himself as a disciplined high-achiever who woke at 5 am every day to work out and served as host for Fudan University graduation events. His sunny, affable manner won him a large following.

More importantly, he could converse fluently in Chinese with Chinese netizens, while deliberately presented himself as pro-China through his persistence in learning Chinese, practising calligraphy and reading The Analects (《论语》) on campus.

As recently as May this year, Wang appeared at a top creators gala in Shanghai as a new-generation overseas influencer. Introducing himself as an “expert in English names”, he said he had given English names to more than 50,000 Chinese netizens.

At the event, he slowly and deliberately said, “I want to settle in China. I want to build my career in China.” The remarks earned him endorsement from Chinese media and the trust of more Chinese netizens.

It was precisely these credentials that made it easier for him to receive positive responses from large numbers of women by offering to come up with English names for them for free. Many female netizens voluntarily shared photos of themselves and interacted with him, in scenes described as resembling a “concubine selection”.

Double standards of nationalism

Before the allegations emerged, Wang Shui Niu was undoubtedly considered highly attractive in the dating and marriage market, given his looks, language skills, association with a prestigious university and professed love for Chinese culture. It was not difficult to understand why he was popular with Chinese women.

Dalian Polytechnic University said in a statement that the female student had “engaged in improper relations with a foreigner, undermining national dignity and the university’s reputation”, and expelled her. The case sparked a major controversy and reignited discussion of “crotch nationalism”.

“Crotch nationalism” is a Chinese internet term used satirically to describe the tendency to politicise women’s bodies and their choices in relationships and marriage through the lens of nationalism. It was widely discussed during the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.

At the time, Chinese netizens discussed “taking in Ukrainian beauties” and “marrying Ukrainian women”. Some even linked the fall in Ukraine’s male population caused by the war to China’s gender imbalance, proposing the “import” of foreign women to address Chinese men’s marriage difficulties.

More than a decade ago, Chinese society had already developed a secular framework for explaining cross-border relationships and marriages: supply and demand in the marriage market, gender-ratio imbalances and differences in economic circumstances.

In the past, Chinese media reports on “Vietnamese brides” often linked the marriage difficulties faced by Chinese men with Vietnamese women’s desire to improve their lives, portraying such unions as a form of mutual resource exchange.

Yet public discourse shifts markedly when it comes to cross-border relationships involving Chinese women rather than men. Foreign women can be viewed as relationship and marriage resources for Chinese men, but relationships between Chinese women and foreign men may be elevated into issues of “foreign filters”, “worshipping foreigners” or even national dignity.

Judged by the public

More ironically, in today’s traffic-driven economy and platform-based media landscape, Chinese netizens’ nationalism has also become a powerful tool for some foreign influencers seeking followers and social capital in China.

Over the past few years, there has been no shortage of foreign influencers like Wang Shui Niu who became popular by cultivating an “I love China” persona. Their praise and identification with China largely reflect their recognition that netizens enjoy the nationalist sentiment of seeing “foreigners praising China”.

As China’s national strength has continued to grow, whether foreigners enjoy preferential treatment over Chinese citizens has become a highly sensitive issue in China’s public discourse in recent years. When such concerns extend to gender relations, they are even more prone to distortion. Nationalism can give foreign influencers a shortcut to online success, while at the same time being invoked to subject Chinese women’s personal choices to public judgement in the name of the nation and national dignity.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “复旦留学生“王水牛”撕开的裂口”.

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