Seeing labor: A critical socialist feminist analysis of the “call for rest spaces for cleaner ayi (aunties)” activism on Xiaohongshu

This study examines digital visibility as both recognition and regulation in post-socialist China through the “call for rest spaces for cleaner aunties” campaign on Xiaohongshu. Using multimodal discourse analysis, it explores how female cleaners’ labor is represented and contained under platform capitalism and state surveillance. The analysis identifies two regimes of visibility. The first is a form of moralized empathy that remains structurally contained. The second is an intervention that disrupts the boundaries of visibility and marks a shift from sentimental witnessing to structural awareness. While emotional narratives foster solidarity, they often depoliticize critique through platform capital. However, posts invoking a “worker's gaze” disrupt this logic, reframing cleaners as laboring subjects rather than moral symbols. The study extends critical socialist feminism to digital activism, arguing that visibility in China functions less as emancipation than as a regulated condition of being seen, yet within these constraints, new solidarities and modes of recognition quietly emerge.