REVIEW article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Culture and Communication
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating the Hypermedia Landscape: Political, Cultural, and Social TransformationsView all 6 articles
Hanfu traditional clothing in China: A systematic literature review on major themes Hanfu: A Systematic Literature Review Integrating Cultural Tourism, Digital Technology, and National Identity
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan University of Science and Engineering, Hunan, China
- 2University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
- 3Hunan University of Science and Engineering, Yongzhou, China
- 4Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Hanfu is one of the dominant traditional clothing cultures in China. The current state of Hanfu research remains unclear. However, current scholarly understanding of the Hanfu movement remains fragmented. Through a systematic literature review, this the current study addresses this gap extends the previous literature by examining the dimensions of Hanfu clothing culture and maps the interconnections among the thematic areas. The review uses Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases to identify studies. Following the PRISMA guidelines, 34 studies were selected after rigorous screening. Results indicate that nearly 68% of the included studies were published recently (2023 and 2024), suggesting that Hanfu has gained substantial academic momentum after receiving limited attention in earlier years. The analysis of the themes reveals five key dimensions that include (1) tourism and culture, (2) design and digital technology, (3) national identity, (4) purchase, and (5) social media. The first two themes collectively account for 70% of the studies, underscoring their central role in contemporary Hanfu research. The results suggest that Hanfu is emerging as a cultural symbol and an object for technology-supported design and is used for identity expression. The mapping of the current state of knowledge provides implications for culturally related policy and heritage protection. Hanfu played a fundamental role in the expansion of cultural tourism.
Keywords: culture, Digital technology, Hanfu, National identity, Social-media, Systematic review, tourism, Traditional clothing
Received: 29 Dec 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 He, Cai, Derso and Abate. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Meseret C. Abate
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.