Chinese Ideology Research Articles

Critical Analysis of the Environment in Korean Language Textbooks: Choseonjok’s Korean Textbooks

This research looks into how Korean language textbooks have been produced for ethnic Koreans in China. Using critical discourse analysis, the project investigated what ideologies are employed and for whose interests texts are presented in textbooks. The research analysed 18 Korean language textbooks published for primary and middle school students. The findings show that Korean language textbooks portray environmental problems as global concerns rather than specificallyChina’s concern. Earth is depicted as having serious environmental problems. The people and countries of the entire world are depicted asthe perpetrators of the pollution. The textbooks suggest enhancing the shared responsibility to care for earth, making slogans for environmental protection, and designating 5 June as World Environment Day. The environmental problems in China are conspicuously conveyed with information gaps and misinformation. For example, in “The Mysterious Lop Nur,” the writers focused on the economic value of salt produced at the dried up lake. Their support of newly developed areas in Lop Nur also ignores the fact that nuclear testings conducted in Lop Nur have engendered tragic consequences for many local families, including deaths and radiation poisoning. In “Disaster of Frogs’ Village,” the writers even point to children, merchants, and farmers as the culprits of environmental pollution in China rather than factories or multinational companies. None of the textbook stories criticise the Chinese government for seeking economic development at the cost of the environment, and neither do they portray the polluted cities of China. Overall, the textbooks promote Chinese government ideologies, and the interests of owners of national and/or multinational companies and their collaborators rather than everyday Chinese citizens and students.

Communicating Civilization Through Rituals: Mount Tai Pilgrimages in Song China, 960-1279

This paper examines the imperialfeng封 andshan禪 ritual at Mount Tai in 1008 and its connection with popular pilgrimages among the Mount Tai cult. It aims to demonstrate how ritual can be used as a tool of the imperial state in communicating its political and cultural agenda.Placing the imperial pilgrimage within its historical context at the turn of the eleventh century, it can be understood as an effort to secure mass identification with the state and its authority. More importantly, it could be used to establish ownership of Chinese civilization by the Song dynasty (960-1279) in its competition with the Khitan, who had long adopted Chinese institutions and ideology. Various strategies were deployed by the throne to communicate the imperial symbolism of the mountain. The mountain, therefore, had become valuable symbolic capital. Through the composition of temple inscriptions, the literati were able to redefine the popular ritual practices of the Mount Tai cult and brought them into a hegemonic discourse on the mountain. This facilitated the construction of an imperial cultural identity accessible to all social groups and allowed an abstract concept of Chinese culture to be communicated through the fabric of society.

Two Models of Traditionalism in China at the Beginning of the XX Century: Kang Yu-Wei and Cheung Bin-ling

The urgency of a studied problem consists in need of research of traditionalist roots for modern Chinese ideology. At its sources two radical thinkers of the beginning of the XX century - Caen Yu-vey and Cheung Bin-ling are put. The article is devoted to comparative comparison of models of the traditionalism offered by radical Chinese thinkers of China both of whom passed the way from political reformism to conservatism. The leading method to research of this problem is the comparative method applied in a wide historical context of so-called “transitive period”. In the article it is shown that at the beginning of the XX century there was a radical erosion of a traditional picture of the world which demanded some kind of radical reorganization of a universe in public consciousness. Both Kahn Yu-wei and Cheung Bin-ling were based on humanitarian potential of the Chinese civilization, but offered absolutely different ways of realization of the ideal. The materials of the article can be useful to political scientists, sociologists and the historians who are taking up the problems of evolution of public consciousness and formation of public consciousness.

Parenting Practices and Child Behaviour Problems in Hong Kong: Knowledge of Effective Parenting Strategies, Parenting Stress, and Child-Rearing Ideologies

The present study examined the effects of knowledge of effective parenting strategies, parenting stress and Chinese child-rearing ideologies, on parenting practices and child behaviour problems among Hong Kong Chinese parents. Parents of children aged between 2 and 10 years were recruited through a selection of kindergartens and primary schools across Hong Kong. A total of 106 Hong Kong Chinese parents (76 % mothers and 24 % fathers) participated in the study by completing an online questionnaire. Parents ranged in age from 25 to 53 years (M = 37.25; SD = 5.65). Key outcome measures examined in the present study include parental nurturance, dysfunctional parenting and child behaviour problems. Findings revealed that parenting stress was the strongest predictor of parental nurturance, dysfunctional parenting and child behaviour problems. Chinese child-rearing ideologies did not predict any parental behaviour or child behaviour. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Transnational Identities, Multiculturalism or Assimilation? China's ‘refugee-returnees’ and generational transitions

AbstractThis article investigates the tensions that emerge when transnational identities are juxtaposed against claims of multiculturalism and de facto assimilation processes. The article focuses on the resettlement of co-ethnics who arrived in China through forced migration between 1949 and 1979 and the generational transitions of their descendants. The Chinese state resettled these forced migrants from Southeast Asia on state-owned farms known as the ‘overseas Chinese farms’ and gave them preferential treatment as ‘returnees’ rather than ‘refugees’. They retained transnational cultural identities which set them apart from the China-born Chinese and suffered further stigmatization during the Cultural Revolution. This article highlights the limitations of using ethnicity as a lens for understanding how ‘difference’ is negotiated in China. In contemporary times the (multi)cultural identities of the refugee-returnees are promoted for the purposes of tourism to help reinvent the farms for economic sustainability. Yet the identity transitions experienced by the children and grandchildren of the refugee-returnees suggest that they are assimilating a national identity that subsumes their overseas Chinese cultures, serving to normalize a Chinese identity associated with the locally born Chinese instead. The article argues that the objectification of overseas Chinese heritage and assimilation ideology work together to selectively highlight China's historical connections to its co-ethnics abroad while simultaneously projecting a new national narrative of contemporary Chinese identity that is distinct from the overseas Chinese. This article on Chinese forced migration and resettlement provides useful insights concerning the negotiation of transnational identity with respect to multiculturalism and assimilation, and further suggests new directions for overseas Chinese studies today.

Era-based Conversion of Aesthetic Taste of Chinese Emphasis on Goodness

An inheritance handed down from age to age is embodied in the process of the development of goodness, a Chinese aesthetic ideology, which belongs to Chinese classical aesthetic category, seemingly, a sense of historical evolution lingers in our minds. Each era has its own aesthetics, as it were, the era itself endows new significance to the aesthetics. Along with the rapid social development, foreign cultures and ideological trend are flooded into China, consequently, Chinese tradition esthetics is subjected to the forceful impact and changed with it. In that case, the inheritance and development of Chinese traditional aesthetic thought seems quite important.

TV Formatting of the Chinese Ugly Betty

Using ethnographic observation, this study explores the television (TV) formatting of Ugly Wudi, the Chinese version of Ugly Betty. The article explicates how Chinese producers followed the “bible” of format production, differentiated ideological points of contestation, and modified narratives contradictory to Chinese ideology in the localization process. Ugly Betty’s localization reflects the political, cultural, and commercial imperatives in China. The producers recreated a televised drama with its own unique Chinese modernity, which invited a large spectatorship within the boundary of the current politico-social landscape. It also initiated an innovative marketing model that could maximize profits through format localization. As a new industry development strategy, TV formatting brings western values into China and is changing the landscape of Chinese TV.

Research on Modern Urban Environmental Construction from Inspiration of the Chinese Ancient Ecological

Every country seeks the model of city development for the humans future. The consensus is building ecological-sustainable development city. To our country, we can retrospect those theories in ancient country construction. Chinese ancient ecological ideology contains abundant environmental philosophical views and cultural resources. The paper introduces the standpoint of humans amalgamation with nature from the perspectives of Chinese ancient ecological ideology, points out the derivations in the process of modern urban construction in our country, then offers suggestions for re-interpreting modern values of ancient ecological ideology, in order to provides beneficial inspiration for building modern ecological-sustainable cities.

Culture & History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity by Arif Dirlik

Reviewed by: Culture & History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity by Arif Dirlik Viren Murthy Dirlik, Arif. Culture & History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011. 356 pp. $52.00 (cloth). Those who have been following changes in China from the 1970s to the present cannot help but be confused by the ideological contradictions, the strange commingling of new forms of thought and culture with various imaginations of the old or traditional. The cover of Arif Dirlik's Culture and History in Post-Revolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity expresses this temporal disjuncture embodied in contemporary Chinese ideology, with a photograph that juxtaposes stone statues of Confucius and Mao, seating the two side by side as if in conversation. This juxtaposition adumbrates a key theme in Dirlik's book, namely how modern China has been dealing with the past and how the more traditional past (represented here by Confucius), which the iconoclastic May Fourth Movement attempted to get rid of, has now returned in full force and threatens to retire Mao and the memories of revolution to the museum or even the dustbin of history. But the problem of this book and Dirlik's cover is more complex. On the book, Confucius and Mao inhabit the same space, but both are reified in stone and then represented photographically. We see here how the dual temporalities of Confucius and Mao appear in the same space through multiple mediations. Dirlik's book uncovers the global mediations that give rise to the cultural contradictions that pervade contemporary Chinese cultural and intellectual life. More specifically, Dirlik suggests that behind the appearance of conflicts between cultures, such as Confucian and Maoist-revolutionary culture, lie deeper structural dynamics related to global capitalism. Indeed the subtitle of his book, "the perspective of global modernity," indicates that this book will go beneath the surface appearances of the rise of Chinese culture and the ideological conflicts between Maoism and Confucianism and attempt to grasp such phenomena in relation to larger trajectories and dynamics, which are not restricted to China. The book consists of a preface and eight chapters. The first chapter, the introduction on "Modernity, Globality, History: Methodological Reflections," along with the next chapter, "Our Ways of Knowing," and last chapter, "Further Reflections on Global Modernity," each tackle the issue of how to understand modernity in relation to global capitalism, a problem that any serious study of China must confront. The rest of the essays could be understood as case studies that exemplify Dirlik's methodological points. The topics covered include Chinese Marxism and social history, contemporary Confucianism, the issue of Chinese culture, sociology and anthropology in twentieth-century China, and problem of national learning. The chapter on national learning (guoxue) is especially relevant, given that the book is based on the "Liang Qichao Memorial Lectures," which Dirlik delivered at the Academy of National Learning at Tsinghua University in November, 2010. I am going to focus on Dirlik's theoretical contribution because the question of how to think about Chinese modernity in a global context runs through the various individual chapters. Dirlik poses the key theme of the book by invoking Liang Qichao. He writes: "My invocation of Liang Qichao's call for a 'new history' a century ago is intentional, as I think that there are significant parallels between the conceptual challenges presented by our contemporary situation, and the globalizing world faced by Liang Qichao and his contemporaries" (p. 4). By comparing China during the late Qing and in the contemporary world, Dirlik highlights two versions of globalization. During the late Qing, Liang Qichao attempted to develop a "new history" to move away from the dynastic system and embrace the national form. However, today, calls for "new history" aim to rescue cultures from the nation-form (p. 4). In the contemporary world, people can no longer agree on what it means to be modern. In this context, societies such as China, which used to be part of the Third World, "make their claims on what it is to be modern" (p. 5). With the last sentence, we see that Dirlik works on two levels, historical existence...

The Chinese Ideology: Reconciling the Politics with the Economics of Contemporary Reform

Political scientists and economists fundamentally disagree in their assessment of ideology in contemporary Chinese reform. Whereas the former emphasize its functional value legitimizing the overall course of reform, the latter warn of indoctrination and negative welfare effects. We argue that ideology is pervasive in China’s political economy of reform—past, present, and future. Moreover, a common assessment is both necessary and feasible. The presented case studies (loyalty signaling, message control, policy learning, and anti-corruption) underline the highly ambiguous role of ideology oscillating between alignment and adaptation. In the end, ideology can unite or divide Chinese society as well as increase or diminish economic efficiency.

The Influence of Political Ideology on the Outbound Tourism in China

Outbound tourism in China began to flourish in the late 1990s, albeit in a very modest manner. Since 1949, the role played by the Chinese socialist ideology in tourism development has not been fully understood. However, on the heels of ideological change resulting from economic reform and formulation of the open policy, Chinese outbound tourism has transitioned from being a nonpriority industry before the turn of the century into one that continues to generate supportive development. This study, which adopts the chronological framework approach, aims to examine how political ideology is intertwined with Chinese outbound tourism development. Ideology appears to assume a significant role in shaping outbound tourism development, though its weighting may not finally determine such development in China. The relationship between political ideology and outbound tourism development becomes less obvious when the latter moves further to a more open and relaxed condition, with external and internal factors playing a more significant role.

Socioeconomic value of religion and the impacts of ideological change in China

Ideology is a primary factor that influences socioeconomic development and social stability, particularly in rapidly changing developing countries such as China. To understand the socioeconomic value of ideology during China's recent history, and the impacts of ideological change, I evaluated the potential links with socioeconomic development by presenting a historical perspective on the changing Chinese ideology. Since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, China has followed a bumpy road created by the contradiction between official government atheism, the lack of an ideology with a strong ethical grounding, and the desire of many people to believe in a higher power (i.e., a divinity). This contradiction may have increased social transaction costs, decreased social stability and economic efficiency, and damaged environmental conservation. Although China has experienced an extraordinary economic boom in the past three decades, the socioeconomic system may be more fragile than is commonly believed because it has been undermined by this ideological confusion. To promote sustainable socioeconomic development, China's government, scientists, and citizens should seek a new ideology that accommodates the desire for more religious freedom by promoting prosocial institutional reform.

Commenting on Western Open Courses by Chinese Learners

This article examines web comments written by Chinese learners on online open courses that are originally produced by leading universities in the United States and United Kingdom and are later introduced to China with Chinese translation. It applies the thematic discourse analysis strategy to classify the comments into themes to explore the patterns of studying behaviors of the Chinese learners. The analysis reveals that open access as the concept and practice of educational resources sharing is overwhelmingly supported. With regard to open course content, the Chinese are more interested in course materials that echo their daily experience than in courses that merely deliver knowledge and skills. A debate on the social effect of foreign open courses on Chinese ideology is discussed.

Thoughts on Innovation in Mainstream Ideology Research

主流意识形态与中国哲学社会科学创新体系具有紧密的联系, 创新主流意识形态 研究方式, 既是当代中国一个重要的理论与现实命题, 亦是中国哲学社会科学创新体 系的前提。创新中国主流意识形态研究方式, 有三个重要的维度: 一是从文明格局的 高度创新主流意识形态研究方式, 把握主流意识形态的历史连续性与文化特性, 反对 历史虚无主义和历史复古主义; 二是以包容并蓄的方式拓展、丰富主流意识形态研究 的视角与内容, 在研究创新中优化主导地位, 克服居高临下的意识形态傲慢和无力失 语的意识形态虚弱症状; 三是秉承开放学习的心态对国外主流意识形态进行比较研 究, 在借鉴交流中维护我国的主流意识形态安全, 克服封闭自语和盲目崇外的意识形 态研究套路, 创造无愧于时代的意识形态新文化。 关键词: 主流意识形态 哲学社会科学创新 意识形态安全 Mainstream ideology is closely related with the innovation system of Chinese philosophy and social sciences. Innovation in mainstream ideology research is of theoretical and practical significance to contemporary China, and constitutes a precondition for the establishment of an innovation system of Chinese philosophy and social sciences. Innovation in mainstream ideology research involves three important aspects. First, we should innovate mainstream ideology research in terms of the pattern of civilizations, that is, to grasp the historical continuity and cultural identity of mainstream ideology and oppose historical nihilism and revivalism. Second, we should adopt an inclusive approach to mainstream ideology research to bring in different perspectives and enrich the content of research, and to optimize its guiding role and overcome both ideological arrogance and ideological aphasia. And third, we must be open-minded in carrying out a comparative analysis of mainstream ideologies of other countries. In exchanges with and learning from other countries, we should protect the safety of mainstream Chinese ideology and avoid both self-contained isolationism and a blind worship of foreign things. In this way, we can develop a new ideological culture that is worthy of our times.

The Cultural Politics of Introducing Popular Music into China's Music Education

Since embarking on its course of economic reform and opening up to the world in the late 1970s, China has moved from a planned economy to a socialist-market economy; the resulting social and cultural changes have been many, and are reflected in the country's school music curriculum. This paper first introduces the historical background of popular music in the community and in school music in China in the 20th century. Second, it explores the reformation of music education that has, from the turn of the millennium, included popular music in school music education. This is followed by a discussion of the integration of popular music into the school curriculum in terms of how music education and cultural politics are shaped by the social and political relationships between (1) contemporary cultural and social values and traditional Chinese ideologies; (2) collectivism and individualism; and (3) nationalism and globalism. It is argued that, despite the introduction of popular music and the emphasis put on it in some areas of school music education, the Chinese state still uses traditional Chinese culture and values to enhance its legitimacy and consolidate its authority.

Performance, Spectacle, and Visual Poetry in the Sixtieth Anniversary National Day Parade in the People's Republic of China

AbstractThe sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 2009 was marked with a massive parade in the heart of Beijing viewed on hundreds of millions of television screens across the nation. English‐language media coverage focused primarily on what it saw as the event's explicit message: the Communist Party's celebration of the nation's military might and continued economic growth, and its origins in a coherent and uniquely Chinese ideology. Such coverage largely reflected international fears of China and thus misread the parade's import and impact on its domestic audience. I argue that the National Day events are better understood as a form of visual poetry that relied on performance to emotionally conflate party, nation, and state. Both the speeches of party leaders and the scripted remarks of state media commentators relied on language and ideas that the Chinese public has heard numerous times. The visual elements of the parade, in contrast, were unprecedented in both scale and spectacle. Hundreds of thousands took part in displays of collective harmony, unified patriotic sentiment, and ethnic unity. The distinctive style and rhythm of the parade depicted a vision of nationhood without the ethnic fractures, labour unrest, and massive inequalities that constitute the greatest threat to the power of the party‐state as it embarks on its seventh decade of continuous rule.

The Past as a Strategic Branding Resource: A Case Study of Jay Chou, a Successful Chinese Music Artist

We explore a Chinese-styled aesthetic representational branding process, illuminating potential insights into interconnections between art, branding, and consumption in conjunction with processes of aesthetic representation. Interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs reveal concern around Chinese brands’ internationalization, particularly concerning retail strategy. Chinese export brands lack privileged positions in competition with prominent global brands. This paper sheds light on Chinese resources to address these needs by presenting the case of Jay Chou, a prominent Chinese music artist. As Eckhardt and Bengtsson (2007) suggest in the Chinese case it may be productive to engage the past as a strategic brand-signifying practice in a contemporary marketing regime. We investigate permutations of Chinese culture and ideology by linking consumer research and the production and consumption of images with Chinese traditions and artistic conventions of aural and visual perceptions. Thus, cultural issues around Chinese historical and traditional arts are brought into contemporary consumer research.

“We are more Chinese than you”

Falun Gong is a grassroots movement in China that combines an exercise regimen with meditation and moral tenets. However, this group stirs much controversy in China. The Chinese government accuses Falun Gong of resembling a cult, whereas it is claiming itself as a spiritual movement. Since 1999, many practitioners have left China and continued their practices in overseas Chinese diasporas. This paper will examine the construction of Falun Gong identity and its ideological implications through the critical examination of three news articles selected from the Epoch Times, a newspaper affiliated with Falun Gong movement. The paper intends to find out how this group identifies itself in its struggle for legitimacy, and in its resistance against the official Chinese state ideology. Critical Discourse Analysis is employed and the analysis demonstrates that by portraying itself as a more authentic representative of Chinese culture. Being part of the US-China ideological confrontation and competition, Falun Gong successfully distinguishes itself from the CCP, both in the construction of identity and in its resistance and challenge to the official ideology of the Party and State.

The Modern Chinese Family

Most social science theory and the currently powerful Chinese ideology of modernizationism assume that, with modern development, family-based peasant farm production will disappear, to be replaced by individuated industrial workers and the three-generation family by the nuclear family. The actual record of China’s economic history, however, shows the powerful persistence of the small family farm, as well as of the three-generation family down to this day, even as China’s GDP becomes the second largest in the world. China’s legal system, similarly, encompasses a vast informal sphere, in which familial principles operate more than individualist ones. And, in between the informal-familial and the formal-individualist, there is an enormous intermediate sphere in which the two tendencies are engaged in a continual tug of war. The economic behavior of the Chinese family unit reveals great contrasts with what is assumed by conventional economics. It has a different attitude toward labor from that of both the individual worker and the capitalist firm. It also has a different structural composition, and a different attitude toward investment, children’s education, and marriage. Proper attention to how Chinese modernity differs socially, economically, and legally from the modern West points to the need for a different kind of social science; it also lends social–economic substance to claims for a modern Chinese culture different from the modern West’s.

The Change of Chinese Universities and Communist Regime Political Ideology

The Change of Chinese Universities and Communist Regime Political Ideology