In Pursuit of an Alternative Model? The Modernisation Trap in China’s Official Development Discourse

Abstract

This article contributes to the debates on China’s socio-political transformations by tracing the link between China’s modernization and nationalism, and analysing their mutual interplay. Many recent studies discuss post-Mao China’s development as a unique model challenging earlier development approaches. Instead, the argument pursued here points to the dependence of China’s dominant development thinking on the paradigm of modernization and its symbolic celebration in official discourse and public rituals. By tracing the impact of the modernization paradigm in the influential annual publication China Modernization Report and in the 2009 National Day mass parade, the article shows how and what kind of Chinese nation is produced. I argue that China’s ostensibly unique development model is constrained by the modernization thinking underlying it. Analysis of the discourses on modernity and ‘scientific development’ and the symbolism associated with them reveals a series of dichotomies and oppositions underpinning China’s nation-building. China’s pursuit of modernization relies on the suppression of other possible development paths within China and subsumes Chinese development experiences under those of the generalised West, thereby restricting development alternatives to those allowed within a hierarchical view of the world.