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"Postmodernism China."
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Postsocialism and cultural politics : China in the last decade of the twentieth century
In Postsocialism and Cultural Politics, Xudong Zhang offers a critical analysis of China's \"long 1990s,\" the tumultuous years between the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The 1990s were marked by Deng Xiaoping's market-oriented reforms, the Taiwan missile crisis, the Asian financial crisis, and the end of British colonial rule of Hong Kong. Considering developments including the state's cultivation of a market economy, the aggressive neoliberalism that accompanied that effort, the rise of a middle class and a consumer culture, and China's entry into the world economy, Zhang argues that Chinese socialism is not over. Rather it survives as postsocialism, which is articulated through the discourses of postmodernism and nationalism and through the co-existence of multiple modes of production and socio-cultural norms. Highlighting China's uniqueness, as well as the implications of its recent experiences for the wider world, Zhang suggests that Chinese postsocialism illuminates previously obscure aspects of the global shift from modernity to postmodernity.
Zhang examines the reactions of intellectuals, authors, and filmmakers to the cultural and political conflicts in China during the 1990s. He offers a nuanced assessment of the changing divisions and allegiances within the intellectual landscape, and he analyzes the postsocialist realism of the era through readings of Mo Yan's fiction and the films of Zhang Yimou. With Postsocialism and Cultural Politics, Zhang applies the same keen insight to China's long 1990s that he brought to bear on the 1980s in Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms.
eBook
A 30-year controversy over the Shanghai East China Electric Power Building: the creation and conservation of late 20th century Chinese architectural heritage
The Shanghai East China Electric Power Building, which was completed in 1988, is widely accepted as one of the first postmodern high-rise buildings in Shanghai. Based on articles published in mass media and professional magazines, interviews with relevant stakeholders and social media debates, this paper focuses on two controversies regarding the building’s peculiar architectural form. The first occurred between 1988 and 1992, when the building’s postmodern appearance aroused heated debates among architectural professionals. The second happened between 2015 and 2018, when the building’s postmodern appearance was planned to be replaced with a slated Art Deco surface during its renovation into a boutique hotel. This paper reveals how a thirst for ‘form innovation’ emerged in the specific social and professional environment shortly after China’s opening-up, and how professional and public awareness of the value of late 20th century architectural heritage was stimulated in the early 21st century in the search for an alternative representation of urban identity other than the widely accepted Art Deco style. This paper emphasises the public meaning of architectural forms in arguing for institutional co-operation in systematic evaluation and conservation legislation for late twentieth century Chinese architectural heritage sites to maintain the historical diversity of the cityscape during urban regeneration.
Journal Article
Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition
The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path; the world was witnessing political and social transformations without precedent. Artists, seeing it all firsthand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took—how artists in the 1980s marked their societies' traumatic transition from decaying socialism to an insecure future—emerges in this remarkable volume. With in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and Mitteleuropa, China, and Cuba—all from scholars and art critics who were players in the tumultuous cultural landscapes they describe—this stunningly illustrated collection captures a singular period in the history of world art, and a critical moment in the cultural and political transition from the last century to our own.
Authors Ales Erjavec, Gao Minglu, Boris Groys, Péter György, Gerardo Mosquera, and Misko Suvakovic observe distinct national differences in artistic responses to the social and political challenges of the time. But their essays also reveal a clear pattern in the ways in which artists registered the exhaustion of the socialist vision and absorbed the influence of art movements such as constructivism, pop art, and conceptual art, as well as the provocations of western pop culture. Indebted to but not derived from capitalist postmodernism, the result was a unique version of postsocialist postmodernism, an artistic/political innovation clearly identified and illustrated for the first time in these pages.
eBook
Videos engaging in conspiracy theories: Promoting or refuting foreign-pseudohistory on the video-sharing website (Bilibili)
Foreign pseudohistory, as one format of conspiracy theories, is an unverified discourse explicitly stating that a culture, civilization, or achievement outside one’s homeland country did not exist, does not have historical continuity, or was plagiarized from this homeland country. The current study analyzed 302 videos about foreign pseudohistory from a popular Chinese video-sharing website (Bilibili) and found 213 videos supporting foreign pseudohistory and 89 videos opposing foreign pseudohistory. Videos opposing foreign pseudohistory attract more viewers and comments than videos supporting foreign pseudohistory, but the latter videos are posted by a smaller group of core creators and also attract considerable numbers of views. The inductive thematic analysis identified three major themes from these videos, including: 1) how foreign civilizations and history were based on fabrication and plagiarism; 2) promoting foreign pseudohistory as a way to fight against Western-centrism; and 3) refuting and mocking foreign pseudohistory and enlightening the public about the real history. The implications of this study were discussed
Journal Article
Shifting elder-care practices in Chinese middle-class families
This paper explores how ideas and practices of elder-care may be changing for the new Chinese middle class. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with the members of different generations of ten middle class families in the Chinese city of Tianjin. It explores how increased resources but also increased pressure are affecting the care of older people and the expectations around elder-care. Thematic analysis of transcripts entered into NVIVO revealed three findings. Firstly, that the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s are often negotiating their care responsibilities between their parents and their grandchildren. Secondly, the only viable elder-care solution for many families is to buy in support from an unregulated market-based home care sector. Thirdly driven by an increasingly postmodern culture, filial piety may be changing from a normative expectation to a set of new practices based on familial reciprocity. The paper concludes by reflecting on the issues that will arise from the proposed raising of the retirement age in China, and the increasing geographic dispersal of generations. Flexible working policies as well as investment in a regulated home care sector are recommended as solutions to be explored.
Journal Article
The Postmodern Paradox: Reconstructing China’s National Identity
This paper confronts an extraordinary contradiction: With an ideology built on historical continuity and collectivism, the world’s most populous authoritarian state now finds itself enmeshed in the contradictions of postmodern identity politics. With its gleeful pulverizing of truth, identity, and coherence, postmodernism has inadvertently infiltrated the narrative-driven fortress of the People’s Republic of China. In its national narrative, however, postmodernism erodes “Chineseness” from within. I explore how this paradox stretches across cultural, political, and diplomatic spheres, complicating China’s global image and muddling its efforts to project ideological coherence on the world stage.
Journal Article
“Income vs. education” revisited – the roles of “family face” and gender in Chinese consumers' luxury consumption
PurposeThe transgenerational influence of inherited family capital on consumers' luxury consumption has been studied recently in the mature luxury market. However, little research explores this topic in the emerging luxury market. In China's Confucian culture, “family face” as part of “family inheritance” has been conceptualized as a factor driving luxury consumption. However, this hypothesis has not been empirically tested. The current research, therefore, seeks to examine the impact of economic and cultural capital on Chinese consumers' luxury consumption within the family inheritance context and the roles that face concern and gender play to reveal the particularities of a specific emerging luxury market.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 324 Chinese consumers was recruited in Shanghai. With the full sample, the author first assessed the effects of economic and educational capital (both personal and family sources) and face concern on luxury consumption using regression analyses. Next, the author conducted the regression analyses again by gender.FindingsUnlike trends in the mature luxury market, Chinese consumers' educational levels do not drive their luxury consumption, and the transgenerational influence of economic and cultural capital functions as a negative factor. Influenced by the patrilineal tradition, higher levels of luxury consumption to compensate for parents' lower income and educational levels and to enhance family face are found only in the male consumer group, but not in the female group.Originality/valueThis research contributes to expanding the current understanding of emerging luxury markets and how the Confucian tradition influences Chinese consumers' luxury consumption through gender role norms.
Journal Article
A Comparative Analysis of US-China Foreign Policy in the Myanmar Crisis through the Lens of Realist Constructivism
This study applies the framework of realist constructivism to analyze the foreign policy responses of China and the United States to the 2021 Myanmar crisis. Our research explores how the rivalry between these two global powers has exacerbated the crisis and hindered efforts toward regional stability. Using qualitative data from diplomatic statements, official documents and media reports, this study identifies key differences in the foreign policy approaches of China and the United States. This comparative analysis demonstrates how realist constructivism offers a comprehensive framework for understanding state behavior in geopolitical crises like the US-China competition in Myanmar-a new Cold War dynamic characterized by strategic divergence and the legitimizing of foreign policy through a shared reliance on identity-driven moral claims, highlighting the co-constitutive interplay of power, norms and identity.
Journal Article
Effects of authentic atmospherics in ethnic restaurants: investigating Chinese restaurants
Purpose - Given the rapid development of ethnic-themed restaurants, this study aims to investigate how authentic atmospherics affects consumer emotions and behavioral intentions in Chinese restaurants in the USA.Design methodology approach - A total of 348 usable responses from full table service restaurants in the USA were obtained via self-administered questionnaires. A proposed model was tested following Anderson and Gerbing's two-step approach: a measurement model and a subsequent structural model.Findings - Using a structural equation modeling technique, this study found that authentic atmospherics significantly influences consumers' positive and negative emotions, and both types of emotions acted as full mediators between authentic atmospherics and behavioral intentions. Subsequent regression analyses revealed that menu presentation, furnishings, and music were significant predictors of positive emotions whereas menu presentation and music significantly influenced negative emotions.Research limitations implications - The data were collected from only full table service restaurants. Therefore, generalizing the results for other segments of the restaurant industry may not be possible.Practical implications - The findings have important implications for selecting and refining crucial elements of authentic atmospherics in order to enhance customers' favorable emotions, avoid unfavorable emotions, and ultimately heighten positive behavioral consequences.Originality value - Different from previous studies on the general aspect of atmospherics, this study exclusively investigates the effect of authentic atmospherics on customer post-dining behavioral intentions in Chinese restaurants, one of the most popular ethnic restaurant segments in the US foodservice market. This study could also provide directions for improving the perceived authenticity of restaurant atmospherics.
Journal Article