Andrew Malcolm Law’s intervention article, ‘Historical imaginaries, historic urban branding, and the local state in China: rejuvenation discourse, manufactured heritage and simulacrascapes’, presents an interdisciplinary discussion on the construction, in terms of imaginaries and branding, of Chinese historic cities through an investigation of the development and interpretation of the discourse of Chinese national rejuvenation. This article closely examines heritage in Xi’an, China, although the findings and implications may also be relevant to other historic cities/towns in China, which would invite additional studies on both the discourse and practices related to heritage cities in China and across the world.
The most obvious contribution of this article is that Law applies a critical discourse analysis of the origin, development and implications of the discourse of rejuvenation through the lens of historical imaginaries and branding. Critical discourse analysis is a basic analytical method adopted in the emerging field of critical heritage studies worldwide over the past 20 years or more (Smith 2006; Winter and Waterton 2013). In the seminal work by Laurajane Smith (2006), the concept of ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (AHD) was proposed to reveal and critique the existence of a powerful discourse held by international professional organisations regarding the recognition, authentication, protection, interpretation, and commodification of heritage. AHD has therefore become a popular theoretical frame in critical studies on the making of heritage in various social aspects.
In the present article, ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ can be understood as an AHD that has been manipulating the policies, practices and assessments of heritage enterprises in China since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017. Law elaborates on the origin and development of the discourse of rejuvenation, which evolved from an idea of the literati to a nationwide political agenda and then to a political discourse with great influence on heritage policy-making (Svensson and Maags 2018). In this way, rejuvenation can be understood as an AHD. Nevertheless, the idea of AHD, as well as the influences of the discourse of rejuvenation on heritage policies/politics in China, have not been discussed.
Additional research is needed on AHD in China, as some investigations there indicate that that the country’s AHD is diversified and stratified from the national to the local level (Su 2020). This means that the implementation of the discourse of rejuvenation can also be accommodated and therefore localised in China. More research is needed to determine how the national discourse on rejuvenation has been understood and implemented in local heritage discourses and practices. Within critical heritage studies, practice is another key concept to look at, as practice and discourse are interrelated. Therefore, a comprehensive under