Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231180070b
Jeroen de Kloet
relaxation in repression correlated with improved information gathering. Perceived enemies of the state declined by as many as nine times, with informants reduced on average to one-third of the 1955 contingent (p. 93). But as the final chapter points out, the system of the information state can never guarantee perpetual single-party rule, even with the application of the most advanced tools of artificial intelligence. Here is where the example of the Eastern European transition beginning in 1989 may be relevant to China’s future. Thinking with the long term in mind, might Tiananmen of the same year have been a harbinger? The question (p. 445) refers to the above-mentioned CCP ‘survival formula’. The communist parties of Bulgaria, USSR/Russia, GDR/Germany, and so on ‘survived’ the largely peaceful democratization (after undergoing reform) to become participants in new parliamentary systems. The author’s conclusion implies the possibility, in a future post-Xi Jinping government, of improved voluntary transmission of information tied to broader responsiveness. As remote as this scenario might seem today, the possible emergence of a stable reform-oriented regime cannot be categorically excluded based on the historical evidence presented in this study.
{"title":"Book Review: Sexuality and the Rise of China: The Post-1990s Gay Generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China by Travis S. K. Kong","authors":"Jeroen de Kloet","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231180070b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231180070b","url":null,"abstract":"relaxation in repression correlated with improved information gathering. Perceived enemies of the state declined by as many as nine times, with informants reduced on average to one-third of the 1955 contingent (p. 93). But as the final chapter points out, the system of the information state can never guarantee perpetual single-party rule, even with the application of the most advanced tools of artificial intelligence. Here is where the example of the Eastern European transition beginning in 1989 may be relevant to China’s future. Thinking with the long term in mind, might Tiananmen of the same year have been a harbinger? The question (p. 445) refers to the above-mentioned CCP ‘survival formula’. The communist parties of Bulgaria, USSR/Russia, GDR/Germany, and so on ‘survived’ the largely peaceful democratization (after undergoing reform) to become participants in new parliamentary systems. The author’s conclusion implies the possibility, in a future post-Xi Jinping government, of improved voluntary transmission of information tied to broader responsiveness. As remote as this scenario might seem today, the possible emergence of a stable reform-oriented regime cannot be categorically excluded based on the historical evidence presented in this study.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"302 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46640970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231180070a
Norbert Francis
Weihuan Zhou believe that ‘the best way to tackle China’s state capitalism is through WTO litigation based on existing rules discussed in this chapter’ (p. 11). However, some WTO members prefer new rules on SOEs and intend to develop them in international trade and investment agreements. These new rules are fully examined in Chapter 6 and can be divided into two categories: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and post-CPTPP Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). While the CPTPP is generally praised as a ‘twenty-first century high-standard trade agreement’, this book holds the contrary view. The narrower scope of the covered entities, the extended exemptions and exceptions, and the limited contribution made by the CPTPP to the existing rules ‘on commercial considerations, nondiscrimination, and subsidies’ in the China’s WTO Accession Protocol, all demonstrate the limited progress of the CPTPP. It is regrettable that all the post-CPTPP FTAs have failed to advance international regulation of SOEs in significant ways (p. 153). Chapter 7 focuses on how to address issues related to China’s state capitalism. The chapter offers two options. One is to bring cases against China based on the existing WTO rules. Chapter 7 puts forward concrete and practical suggestions ranging from ‘the types of cases that should be brought’ to ‘how the evidentiary burden could be met’ (p. 12). The other option is trade negotiations. In light of the failure of bilateral negotiations such as the US–China Phase One Deal, multilateral negotiations have greater potential (p. 183). Further, this chapter suggests the principles of engagement to boost fruitful negotiations, namely the principles of non-discrimination, reciprocity, and China’s own priorities (pp. 179–80). Chapter 8 concludes with a to-do list for major players in the WTO: utilize existing rules in the WTO framework, restore the proper functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system, and engage China in reform discussions (p. 189). Through solid analyses, this book serves as a valuable source to understand the challenges faced by the WTO system as a result of China’s state capitalism. This book is recommended to researchers, lawyers, policymakers, and negotiators who are looking to tackle these challenges. On 23 April 2023, senior Chinese government official Zhang Hongpei announced, ‘We believe that China is capable of fulfilling its obligations under the CPTPP’ (Zhang Hongpei, China has willingness, capability to join CPTPP: Senior trade official, Global Times, 23 April 2023, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/ 202304/1289617.shtml, accessed 29 April 2023). The process of China’s application to join the CPTPP is a good case to test the utility of this book.
{"title":"Book Review: Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China by Martin K. Dimitrov","authors":"Norbert Francis","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231180070a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231180070a","url":null,"abstract":"Weihuan Zhou believe that ‘the best way to tackle China’s state capitalism is through WTO litigation based on existing rules discussed in this chapter’ (p. 11). However, some WTO members prefer new rules on SOEs and intend to develop them in international trade and investment agreements. These new rules are fully examined in Chapter 6 and can be divided into two categories: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and post-CPTPP Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). While the CPTPP is generally praised as a ‘twenty-first century high-standard trade agreement’, this book holds the contrary view. The narrower scope of the covered entities, the extended exemptions and exceptions, and the limited contribution made by the CPTPP to the existing rules ‘on commercial considerations, nondiscrimination, and subsidies’ in the China’s WTO Accession Protocol, all demonstrate the limited progress of the CPTPP. It is regrettable that all the post-CPTPP FTAs have failed to advance international regulation of SOEs in significant ways (p. 153). Chapter 7 focuses on how to address issues related to China’s state capitalism. The chapter offers two options. One is to bring cases against China based on the existing WTO rules. Chapter 7 puts forward concrete and practical suggestions ranging from ‘the types of cases that should be brought’ to ‘how the evidentiary burden could be met’ (p. 12). The other option is trade negotiations. In light of the failure of bilateral negotiations such as the US–China Phase One Deal, multilateral negotiations have greater potential (p. 183). Further, this chapter suggests the principles of engagement to boost fruitful negotiations, namely the principles of non-discrimination, reciprocity, and China’s own priorities (pp. 179–80). Chapter 8 concludes with a to-do list for major players in the WTO: utilize existing rules in the WTO framework, restore the proper functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system, and engage China in reform discussions (p. 189). Through solid analyses, this book serves as a valuable source to understand the challenges faced by the WTO system as a result of China’s state capitalism. This book is recommended to researchers, lawyers, policymakers, and negotiators who are looking to tackle these challenges. On 23 April 2023, senior Chinese government official Zhang Hongpei announced, ‘We believe that China is capable of fulfilling its obligations under the CPTPP’ (Zhang Hongpei, China has willingness, capability to join CPTPP: Senior trade official, Global Times, 23 April 2023, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/ 202304/1289617.shtml, accessed 29 April 2023). The process of China’s application to join the CPTPP is a good case to test the utility of this book.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"300 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41746568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231168533
Jie Wu, Hanyu Chen
Previous studies on affective governance (情感治理) emphasize how the state has regulated and manipulated citizens’ emotions and psychology. This article, however, shows a different political landscape in which citizens employ emotional strategies to persuade and bargain with the government. Drawing on intensive fieldwork conducted in China from 2019 to 2020, we find that citizens deploy targeted emotional strategies to advance specific interests such as building reciprocal relations with the government, arousing political elites’ empathy, or addressing their most urgent needs. We argue that the government’s deliberate use of affective governance has, on the one hand, unexpectedly revealed and reinforced the conflict between the positive emotions that the state has attempted to exhibit and citizens’ daily experiences and, on the other hand, increased positive feelings towards the government’s efficacy in addressing citizens’ grievances. Taking rare disease patient groups as an example, this article maps and compares three main emotional strategies adopted by civil society in China, namely gratefulness, sadfishing, and dissent. By deciphering these emotional strategies, this article helps us understand the emotional synergy between state and society and sheds new light on the governance of China.
{"title":"Citizens’ strategic responses to affective governance in China","authors":"Jie Wu, Hanyu Chen","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231168533","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231168533","url":null,"abstract":"Previous studies on affective governance (情感治理) emphasize how the state has regulated and manipulated citizens’ emotions and psychology. This article, however, shows a different political landscape in which citizens employ emotional strategies to persuade and bargain with the government. Drawing on intensive fieldwork conducted in China from 2019 to 2020, we find that citizens deploy targeted emotional strategies to advance specific interests such as building reciprocal relations with the government, arousing political elites’ empathy, or addressing their most urgent needs. We argue that the government’s deliberate use of affective governance has, on the one hand, unexpectedly revealed and reinforced the conflict between the positive emotions that the state has attempted to exhibit and citizens’ daily experiences and, on the other hand, increased positive feelings towards the government’s efficacy in addressing citizens’ grievances. Taking rare disease patient groups as an example, this article maps and compares three main emotional strategies adopted by civil society in China, namely gratefulness, sadfishing, and dissent. By deciphering these emotional strategies, this article helps us understand the emotional synergy between state and society and sheds new light on the governance of China.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"229 - 250"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41779784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231167046
Rui Hou
How does privatization impact authoritarian governance on the frontline? This article examines the impact of outsourcing on the labour process involved in the operation of mayors’ hotlines. The mayor’s hotline system is a channel set up by Chinese municipal governments to address residents’ suggestions, appeals, inquiries, and complaints. While the expansion of mayors’ hotlines falls under the government in China, the operation of call centres has been outsourced to professional tele-corporations; thus, it is for-profit companies and their employees that represent the state in communications with the public. By examining both the practical and relational components of call operators’ labour process, this article looks at how an institution of responsive authoritarianism has been contracted out in China. It argues that the outsourcing creates a dual-pressure structure that shapes the frontline governance of this institution. The engagement of privatization in authoritarian domination leads to a conflict between market rationality and the inherited tradition of state intervention.
{"title":"Outsourcing authoritarian governance: The privatization of mayors’ hotlines in China","authors":"Rui Hou","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231167046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231167046","url":null,"abstract":"How does privatization impact authoritarian governance on the frontline? This article examines the impact of outsourcing on the labour process involved in the operation of mayors’ hotlines. The mayor’s hotline system is a channel set up by Chinese municipal governments to address residents’ suggestions, appeals, inquiries, and complaints. While the expansion of mayors’ hotlines falls under the government in China, the operation of call centres has been outsourced to professional tele-corporations; thus, it is for-profit companies and their employees that represent the state in communications with the public. By examining both the practical and relational components of call operators’ labour process, this article looks at how an institution of responsive authoritarianism has been contracted out in China. It argues that the outsourcing creates a dual-pressure structure that shapes the frontline governance of this institution. The engagement of privatization in authoritarian domination leads to a conflict between market rationality and the inherited tradition of state intervention.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"207 - 228"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41699199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-02DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231166238
Li Qu
Since its debut on China Central Television (CCTV), Shejian shang de Zhongguo (舌尖上的中国, known as ‘A Bite of China’, hereinafter Shejian) has met with great fanfare, home and abroad, and become a celebrated geographical brand name of Chinese culinary culture. Shejian marks a distinctive attribute of China’s contemporary food media, which deploys glamourized food images, from ordinary staple food to lavish celebratory meals, to reify social prosperity and personal happiness. This article aims to demonstrate how despite its state-sponsored production and distribution, Shejian is more than an ideological artefact. The cultural phenomenon has thrived at the intersection of China’s media convergence and participatory culture. On the one side, Shejian’s unprecedented success and influence should be attributed to CCTV’s convergence strategies against the backdrop of media reforms. On the other, audience participation and re-creation on the Internet have invigorated the formation and spread of the Shejian phenomenon while problematizing the official interpretation and ideological construction of the documentary. Shejian’s savvy viewers and cynical imitators poach the florid documentary script to write their versions of reality, albeit disguised with profanity and laughter. How the widespread egao practices play with the establishment culture and how such online expressions are tolerated by the authorities shed new light on China’s Internet culture and censorship.
{"title":"Food media in China’s convergence culture: A Bite of China and digital poaching","authors":"Li Qu","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231166238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231166238","url":null,"abstract":"Since its debut on China Central Television (CCTV), Shejian shang de Zhongguo (舌尖上的中国, known as ‘A Bite of China’, hereinafter Shejian) has met with great fanfare, home and abroad, and become a celebrated geographical brand name of Chinese culinary culture. Shejian marks a distinctive attribute of China’s contemporary food media, which deploys glamourized food images, from ordinary staple food to lavish celebratory meals, to reify social prosperity and personal happiness. This article aims to demonstrate how despite its state-sponsored production and distribution, Shejian is more than an ideological artefact. The cultural phenomenon has thrived at the intersection of China’s media convergence and participatory culture. On the one side, Shejian’s unprecedented success and influence should be attributed to CCTV’s convergence strategies against the backdrop of media reforms. On the other, audience participation and re-creation on the Internet have invigorated the formation and spread of the Shejian phenomenon while problematizing the official interpretation and ideological construction of the documentary. Shejian’s savvy viewers and cynical imitators poach the florid documentary script to write their versions of reality, albeit disguised with profanity and laughter. How the widespread egao practices play with the establishment culture and how such online expressions are tolerated by the authorities shed new light on China’s Internet culture and censorship.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"321 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41427887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X221081328
Jane Zheng
Using urban sculpture planning in Shanghai as a case study, this article aims to understand the process of planning cultural projects in China and to evaluate the applicability of the growth machine model to the social dynamics underlying cultural development in Chinese cities. Based on interviews with sculpture planning officers in 10 districts and the municipality, as well as 56 companies that have been involved in sculpture projects in Shanghai, this article argues that the growth machine model is of limited applicability to urban sculpture planning in Shanghai. Instead, a public-sector-centred tripartite model is more applicable for the following reasons. First, most cooperative relationships in key cultural development projects engage state-patronized public corporations instead of the private sector. Here the government plays a dominant role. Second, public–private partnership is rare and loosely formed. The broadly defined concept of shared cultural capital that includes personal artistic tastes, altruistic motivations, and brand building concerns engenders public–private cooperation. Third, the local state adopts a laissez-faire approach to most of the private-sector-invested cultural projects that the government considers to be less crucial to its vision for Shanghai’s art landscape.
{"title":"Rethinking the growth machine logic in cultural development: Urban sculpture planning in Shanghai","authors":"Jane Zheng","doi":"10.1177/0920203X221081328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221081328","url":null,"abstract":"Using urban sculpture planning in Shanghai as a case study, this article aims to understand the process of planning cultural projects in China and to evaluate the applicability of the growth machine model to the social dynamics underlying cultural development in Chinese cities. Based on interviews with sculpture planning officers in 10 districts and the municipality, as well as 56 companies that have been involved in sculpture projects in Shanghai, this article argues that the growth machine model is of limited applicability to urban sculpture planning in Shanghai. Instead, a public-sector-centred tripartite model is more applicable for the following reasons. First, most cooperative relationships in key cultural development projects engage state-patronized public corporations instead of the private sector. Here the government plays a dominant role. Second, public–private partnership is rare and loosely formed. The broadly defined concept of shared cultural capital that includes personal artistic tastes, altruistic motivations, and brand building concerns engenders public–private cooperation. Third, the local state adopts a laissez-faire approach to most of the private-sector-invested cultural projects that the government considers to be less crucial to its vision for Shanghai’s art landscape.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"24 - 50"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43692117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-24DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231156977a
Nizhoni Dawn Becenti
{"title":"Book Review: Cultural Pragmatism for US-China Relations: Breaking the Gridlock and Co-creating Our Future by Charles Chao Rong Phua","authors":"Nizhoni Dawn Becenti","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231156977a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231156977a","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"146 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48444243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-24DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231156977e
David Craig
views cannot fully address this issue. The interview data given in the book only address how the audience make sense of the televised gendered representation. This is mostly evident in the audience’s views on All Is Well (都挺好, dir. Jian Chuanhe, 2019, pp. 160–5) and The Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略, dir. Hui Kaidong and Wen Deguang, 2018, pp. 170–8) – the interview statements add little to our prior knowledge of how the public actually develop ‘technology of the self’ via seeing gendered representation on television. Furthermore, the interview quotes are also quite similar to the comments one finds on Chinese social media. Finally, although the book provides an excellent genealogical analysis of the emergence of masculine traits embodied by bossy CEO (Chapter 4) and little fresh meat (Chapter 6), it does not invest the same academic vigour in introducing the gendered traits of foreigners (Chapter 5) or the supreme heroines (Chapter 7). Notwithstanding these weaknesses, this book overall is a thoughtful, intriguing, and important analysis of Chinese television. We highly recommend it to students, scholars, and the public interested in critical media studies.
{"title":"Book Review: TikTok: Creativity and Culture in Short Video by D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye","authors":"David Craig","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231156977e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231156977e","url":null,"abstract":"views cannot fully address this issue. The interview data given in the book only address how the audience make sense of the televised gendered representation. This is mostly evident in the audience’s views on All Is Well (都挺好, dir. Jian Chuanhe, 2019, pp. 160–5) and The Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略, dir. Hui Kaidong and Wen Deguang, 2018, pp. 170–8) – the interview statements add little to our prior knowledge of how the public actually develop ‘technology of the self’ via seeing gendered representation on television. Furthermore, the interview quotes are also quite similar to the comments one finds on Chinese social media. Finally, although the book provides an excellent genealogical analysis of the emergence of masculine traits embodied by bossy CEO (Chapter 4) and little fresh meat (Chapter 6), it does not invest the same academic vigour in introducing the gendered traits of foreigners (Chapter 5) or the supreme heroines (Chapter 7). Notwithstanding these weaknesses, this book overall is a thoughtful, intriguing, and important analysis of Chinese television. We highly recommend it to students, scholars, and the public interested in critical media studies.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"152 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41614670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-24DOI: 10.1177/0920203X231156977c
Eva P. W. Hung
use state censorship as a selling point on the Western market, and the global entertainment industry capitalizes on the Tiananmen censorship. Chen, however, eschews this crude interpretation and correctly points out that this political-economic critique is reductionist and may play into the hands of the Chinese government. Instead, he deeply reads the narrative structures and cinematic details of the two films and presents a convincing interpretation. The stories in the two films demonstrate a ‘post-revolution-romance’ line of narrative. The state’s crackdown on the movement not only crushed the revolutionary fervour, which was represented in the main characters’ encounters with the Tiananmen movement, but also destroyed the collective bonds and cultural beliefs of this generation. Money and sex cannot save this generation from this doom. In Summer Palace, for example, the prevalent sex scenes in the post-Tiananmen part of the story should not be read as a commercialized use of the ‘sex-and-politics’ trope but as a way to demonstrate the disconnection between the personal and the political and, probably more tragically, devastation of the personal, which was represented in depression, confusion, and suicide. Chapter 4, however, presents a difficult case for admiring readers like me, who would be hard-pressed to figure out how Jia Pingwa’s Ruined City and Hu Fayun’s online novel about SARS are about the memory of the Tiananmen incident. Moreover, some overstatements in the introduction chapter do not dovetail with the subtle analysis in the substantive chapters. For example, ‘Yet my book precisely defies this expectation [cultural products about Tiananmen are marginal and politically sensitive] because censorship entails the mainstream, systemic, constituent, and publicly expressed.’ (p. 13) A careful reader of the book would question the extent to which the very few books and films about Tiananmen are ‘mainstream’ and ‘publicly expressed’. The book discusses only a handful of such cultural products, including two propaganda pieces made by the state, which are also no longer circulated. Only one of them, Ruined City, which, ironically, is not about the Tiananmen incident, was actually a mainstream bestseller. Other than Ruined City, most Chinese citizens in China – particularly those outside intellectual circles – have probably never watched or read any of the books and films. In other words, the book’s emphasis on the productive aspect of censorship should be put in perspective, given that the scale of such generative memory production is rather minimal compared to the overall marginalization of the memory of Tiananmen. Overall, Made in Censorship is an insightful correction of the simplistic view of the Tiananmen memory. It is also one of the rare academic books that is also enjoyable to read. I recommend it to scholars as well as general readers.
{"title":"Book Review: Rethinking Authority in China’s Border Regime: Regulating the Irregular by Franziska Plümmer","authors":"Eva P. W. Hung","doi":"10.1177/0920203X231156977c","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X231156977c","url":null,"abstract":"use state censorship as a selling point on the Western market, and the global entertainment industry capitalizes on the Tiananmen censorship. Chen, however, eschews this crude interpretation and correctly points out that this political-economic critique is reductionist and may play into the hands of the Chinese government. Instead, he deeply reads the narrative structures and cinematic details of the two films and presents a convincing interpretation. The stories in the two films demonstrate a ‘post-revolution-romance’ line of narrative. The state’s crackdown on the movement not only crushed the revolutionary fervour, which was represented in the main characters’ encounters with the Tiananmen movement, but also destroyed the collective bonds and cultural beliefs of this generation. Money and sex cannot save this generation from this doom. In Summer Palace, for example, the prevalent sex scenes in the post-Tiananmen part of the story should not be read as a commercialized use of the ‘sex-and-politics’ trope but as a way to demonstrate the disconnection between the personal and the political and, probably more tragically, devastation of the personal, which was represented in depression, confusion, and suicide. Chapter 4, however, presents a difficult case for admiring readers like me, who would be hard-pressed to figure out how Jia Pingwa’s Ruined City and Hu Fayun’s online novel about SARS are about the memory of the Tiananmen incident. Moreover, some overstatements in the introduction chapter do not dovetail with the subtle analysis in the substantive chapters. For example, ‘Yet my book precisely defies this expectation [cultural products about Tiananmen are marginal and politically sensitive] because censorship entails the mainstream, systemic, constituent, and publicly expressed.’ (p. 13) A careful reader of the book would question the extent to which the very few books and films about Tiananmen are ‘mainstream’ and ‘publicly expressed’. The book discusses only a handful of such cultural products, including two propaganda pieces made by the state, which are also no longer circulated. Only one of them, Ruined City, which, ironically, is not about the Tiananmen incident, was actually a mainstream bestseller. Other than Ruined City, most Chinese citizens in China – particularly those outside intellectual circles – have probably never watched or read any of the books and films. In other words, the book’s emphasis on the productive aspect of censorship should be put in perspective, given that the scale of such generative memory production is rather minimal compared to the overall marginalization of the memory of Tiananmen. Overall, Made in Censorship is an insightful correction of the simplistic view of the Tiananmen memory. It is also one of the rare academic books that is also enjoyable to read. I recommend it to scholars as well as general readers.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"37 1","pages":"148 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45414107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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