This paper examines Dingqu(丁曲)—a grassroots remix subgenre on China’s video platform Bilibili inspired by Ding Zhen (丁真), a Tibetan youth who went viral in November 2020 and was quickly elevated as a tourism ambassador and a state-friendly symbol of “ethnic harmony.”

Building from this mediated celebrity, Dingqu (means Ding Zhen’s music) creators mimic Ding Zhen’s Mandarin accent, rewrite lyrics with irony, and circulate parodic songs that reframe his fame as an uneasy convergence of propaganda, commercial extraction, and anxieties about social mobility. In this paper, I ask: How does Dingqu resist state-sponsored narratives of ethnic harmony and meritocracy, and what does its participatory production reveal about the possibilities and limits of China’s digital public sphere?

This study utilizes a virtual ethnography of highly circulated Dingqu videos, ranging from the early 2021 breakout remixes that established genre conventions to later, intertextual works that weave together classical literature and online memes. I argue that Dingqu functions as networked, humorous dissent rather than mere entertainment. Through satire, mimicry, and dense intertextual play, remixers appropriate an officially celebrated figure to stage counter-narratives about fairness, ethnicity, and symbolic capital.

The paper connects Habermasian debates on public sphere to platformed participatory culture and highlights puns as a tactical aesthetic that enables critique while navigating censorship and platform governance. Ultimately, Dingqu crystallizes how digital musicking can open contingent spaces of commentary and agency—yet only within shifting boundaries of state and platform control.