Beyond a transaction: Cultural belonging and symbolic spending in the digital lives of Chinese K-pop fans

China has been a major market for the Korean Wave (Hallyu), yet diplomatic tensions since the South Korean government's 2016 THAAD deployment have shaped the official distribution of Korean popular cultural content there. With creative fan practices entangled in these tensions online, consumption has since emerged as a visible alternative form of K-pop fan engagement in China. Accordingly, this study examines how Chinese K-pop fans construct and negotiate self- and social identity through consumption. A mixed-methods design combines an online survey of 326 K-pop fans and semi-structured interviews with eight female fans. Survey results indicate purchasing practices—bulk album buying and fan-funded advertising—are significantly associated with both fan self- and social identity, whereas creative practices show weaker associations. Interviews reveal that fans coordinate collective expenditure to sustain their idols' cross-border visibility and express communal belonging, thereby deterritorializing their online participation. The study extends fan research, long focused on participatory culture, to consumption-based engagement and broadens fandom scholarship in non-Western contexts.