Post-Mao China Research Articles

Symphonic music and cultural statecraft: the rise of symphonic statecraft in the post-Mao China

ABSTRACT Despite extensive studies on China’s soft power assets and strategies, the role of symphonic music within its cultural statecraft remains underexplored. This paper introduces the notion of ‘symphonic statecraft’ to examine the targeted and context-specific nature of China’s cultural efforts, focusing on how China adapts this globally recognized art form for its nation-building project. Using mixed methods, the study analyses awards from national composition contests between 1978 and 2012 and the programming choices of the China National Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2023 to reveal an environment shaped by selective state sponsorship that allows for artistic autonomy. The findings demonstrate a nuanced interplay between global influences and local interpretations, illustrating how China crafts narratives that interweave its enduring civilizational essence with contemporary aspirations. This evolving strategy absorbs increasingly diverse themes and moves beyond surface-level propaganda while maintaining strategic boundaries, reflecting the process of selective openness in China’s symphonic identity formation.

Author, Artist, Actress: China's New Women Cultural Entrepreneurs

Cutting across the boundaries of media, literature, visual arts, and cultural studies, this study examines the resurgence of cultural entrepreneurship in post-Mao China, focusing on how the new media have contributed to the rise of women cultural entrepreneurs as a new social phenomenon. It investigates the rise of China's women “cultural entrepreneurs” and their roles as tastemakers and cultural trendsetters, using three case studies from China's creative industries: author Anni Baobei, artist Cao Fei, and actress Xu Jinglei. The Chinese women cultural entrepreneurs are examined against the backdrop of the Reform-era history and growing importance of China's creative industries. Analysis explores how these entrepreneurs use the new media for content dissemination while spinning transmedia narratives about themselves. By examining female self-fashioning and the creation of the cultural entrepreneur as a new type of celebrity in China, the article aims to shed new light on the cultural and social negotiations in China's mediasphere.

Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China by Brian J. Nichols (review)

Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China by Brian J. Nichols (review)

Unfulfilled Future Perfect? Comics as a Site of Liberty in Post-Mao China

ABSTRACT This study examines the changing ideological landscape of post-Mao China through the prism of the science fiction work, The Three Courts, published in the late 1970s. This work and its comic adaptations are not landmark works of literary history and popular culture but rather a utopian fable addressing the profound issues of the reform. We demonstrate how the comic version received a temporary ideological license to support the popular liberty movement, which reflects the cooperation of officials and civil society in the face of the socialist faith crisis and how such collaboration broke down in 1979. By analyzing the two revisions made to this work, we argue that the comic can be seen as a site of liberty that contains radical political content, but its visual output has not been censored. Thus, before the new myth of post-socialism took shape, this text reveals the unfulfilled expectations of democratized reforms by pro-democratic knowledge elites and cultural bureaucrats standing among the ruins of Mao-era China.

WELFARE AND RURAL WELL-BEING IN POST MAO CHINA (1978-88): A DEBATE

During the first decade of reform (1978-88) there was an impressive economic growth, change in the output growth pattern, shift in the structure of employment, and rise in the income and consumption level of the peasants. The number of those in absolute poverty declined significantly, though rural income inequality, both regionally and intra regionally, even at the village level increased significantly. In this context the question arises: did the growth of income and output per head due to economic reforms accompany a similarly improved performance with regard to non -income indicators of well -being? Based on available literature on rural reforms in post Mao China, this paper examines the debate on the above question. This question assumes importance because China in the pre-reform period had brought remarkable improvements in living conditions including the expansion of life expectancy, reduction infant mortality and illiteracy even with the slow and low growth in per capita income. From the Nolan and Sen it emerges that while policy and institutional changes meant for raising economic growth as well as per capita income were remarkably successful, the same instruments, however, undermined the public provisioning of social goods and services and affected the length and quality of' life of peasants in poorer households for whom market medicated access to health services were proving increasingly difficult. But while the pre-reform Maoist period, had strong egalitarian distributive mechanism in place, the welfare standards and quality of services were too low.

‘A smoked salmon salad and a glass of Bordeaux.’ Cultivating social distinction and negotiating femininity through the consumption of Western food in post-reform China

ABSTRACT Consumption of Western food and wine has been on the rise in the Chinese middle-class since Deng Xiao Ping’s 1980s reforms and is particularly prevalent among the young urban generation who grew up in post-Maoist China. Ethnographic observations at events organized by the Food & Beverage Unit of French Consulate in Shanghai and 10 semi-structured interviews with Chinese young female professionals belonging to the French business circles and French gastronomy professionals were undertaken. Food photographs on the social media WeChat were also examined in a cyber-ethnography. Drawing on Farrer’s concept of culinary Occidentalism and on the role of food in post-socialist states, this paper explores how temporary migrations as international students and culinary tourism in France shape a cosmopolitan capital which young Chinese female professionals use to help their peers domesticate the complex world of Western gastronomy in Shanghai. I argue that through their appreciation of French gastronomy, they perform social distinction and negotiate a post-socialist, transnationally connected urban femininity. Their search for refined, healthy and “authentic” Western and French food and wine consumption, frequently displayed on social media, is embedded in a complex realm of glamorized representations of Western modernity and French romanticism.

Transitional Frictions: Intimate Ties, Grassroots Bureaucracy, and Family Reunion in Post-Mao China, 1975–1985

During the Cultural Revolution, millions of youths, workers, intellectuals, and cadres were separated from their families and mobilized to work in distant places according to the needs of the state. For these families, the transition to the post-Mao era was experienced not as an epochal change but as a family reunion often delayed by specific institutional constraints. The constant friction between families’ strategies to reunite and the bureaucratic logic specific to local contexts led to a sense of victimhood and a turn to domestic life and hope in children as the new sacred in life. By examining the processes of family reunion told in three sets of family letters, this article explores “transitional frictions,” defined as the conflicts and tensions arising from different speeds of institutional change during a rapid transition, as a ubiquitous phenomenon in the post-Mao transition.

The Crafting of the Dengist Rural Development Strategy in Post- Mao China: 1978-88

From the late 1970s for almost a decade post-Mao China witnessed momentous rural reforms. The focus on rural development emerged as it was no longer tenable to raise agricultural production with efficient costs and obtain a higher proportion of it for urban industrial supplies without attending to the peasants' interests and aspirations for a better standard of living. Any further muddling through the situation could have been politically costly for the party state. Post 1978, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership a new rural development strategy was therefore devised, which was markedly different from the earlier Maoist strategy. This paper explores the course of the rural reforms since the Third Plenum that witnessed swift de-collectivization once reforms in the commune system were initiated and examines the party-state’s response to reforms induced emergent problems, to finally argue that under Deng’s leadership, the new framework of rural development that was instituted was informed by a logic of privatization, within the socialist economy that Mao had built. Contemporary China’s economic rise can be traced to these reforms.

Contagion and Communication: Immunity, Information, and Reflexive Futurity in Ye Yonglie’s Outbreak Narratives

ABSTRACT: This paper reads Ye Yonglie’s two stories about China’s encounter with future pandemics—“Performance is Not Postponed” (1979) and “Disease of Love” (1986)—as critical comments on post-Mao China’s reform and a vital sign of Chinese science fiction’s transformation in its understanding of the future. The paper first analyzes the representation of index patients and logistical infrastructures to reveal the tension between contagion and communication in Ye’s pandemic stories. While contagion triggers speculation about the nation’s biological and ideological immunity, it nonetheless foregrounds communication as necessary for China’s desired modernization. The paper then examines communication as the central theme of China’s reform by reading Ye’s two stories as narratives of information flow and control. Comparing them with Ye’s Little Smarty Travels to the Future (1978), the paper discusses how Ye’s pandemic stories disrupt and interrogate a utopian vision of communication that underlies post-Mao China’s political and technological reorientation. The paper finally associates the critical awareness of modernization in Ye’s outbreak narratives with a shifting understanding of the ontological condition of the future. Despite not being entirely freed from the Maoist-styled future as a destination of voluntarist and triumphalist progress, Ye’s outbreak narratives begin to conceive of the future as an uncertain and imposing horizon where crises generated by past development break out and demand our response.

Folk soft power in nation-state building: the political use of folk culture in post-Mao China

ABSTRACT Folk culture was typically associated with rural superstitions and feudal norms. It was appropriated by the state and intellectuals to modernize the nation and mobilize the masses to unshackle China from the grip of the imperialist invasion in Republican China, and was later revolutionized to help construct socialist China. However, after being condemned as the Four Olds, folk culture experienced a nationwide revival in post-Mao China. This article explores the official use of folk culture in realizing domestic political goals in post-Mao China, a strategy that I call ‘folk soft power.’ Through a case study of the largest folk art fair in contemporary rural China, I examine how the fair received official endorsements as a social basis for building a socialist spiritual civilization and a harmonious society in the reform era. It was also heritagized as a national intangible cultural heritage (ICH) to create a shared cultural identity in the new millennium. I argue that the Chinese authorities deploy folk soft power to reproduce a people-oriented state and a Chinese nation rooted in folk culture. Folk soft power deliberately makes light of state presence to consolidate regime legitimacy and reorient the meaning of Chineseness.

Farewell to revolution: the ‘Chinese School of IR’ and the depoliticisation of IR theory in post-Mao China

Farewell to revolution: the ‘Chinese School of IR’ and the depoliticisation of IR theory in post-Mao China

Analyzing the “Entanglement” of the Soviet and Chinese Models of Alternative Modernity in J. Arnason’s Historical Sociology

This article examines approaches towards analyzing the “entanglement” of modern societies in sociological and historical literature. Differences between G. Therborn’s and J. Arnason’s approaches are highlighted and Arnason’s perspective on “alternative” communist modernity is discussed. The interaction of the USSR and China represents an example of entanglement of alternative modernities. As Arnason demonstrates, in the 1920’s the Soviet model of state-building was seen by various political forces in China as a case of successful imperial restoration. In addition, he highlights the role of ties to China in Soviet politics. Chinese communists adapted Soviet patterns of totalitarian control before even coming to power. After 1949 there was a further adaptation and radicalization of the Soviet model in China. At the same time the rivalry between the USSR and China was largely a product of their imperial legacies. According to Arnason, in post-Maoist China a combination of patterns of capitalist development, elements of Marxist-Leninist political practices and ideology, as well as a selective revival of Confucian legacies all went beyond the Soviet model. Arnason characterizes how Chinese leadership was influenced by the example of economic development of other East Asian countries and examines the rivalry between the USA and China in the global geopolitical context.

Patronage and authoritarian co-optation of the military: Theory with evidence from post-Mao China

How do dictators cultivate support among military leaders to mitigate their “guardianship dilemma”? A prominent thesis suggests autocrats in regimes with a dominant political party seek to prolong their rule by lavishing with career rewards underlings in their patronage networks built over a track record of trust and loyalty. This can be daunting for post-founding-generation dictators with little military experience and lacking prior interaction with their generals, an increasingly common challenge in party autocracies. Proposing a simple framework to think about the challenges of co-opting the military leaders for autocrats with different career background, I argue that party autocrats with no military career credentials can build new allegiance by bestowing job-related patronage on the military leaders appointed by themselves at the expense of legacy generals inherited from their predecessors. Analyzing yearly career outcomes of leaders of the regional commands of the People’s Liberation Army in post-Mao China, I find strong empirical support for the main argument. Compared with personal appointees, legacy generals were 63 percent less likely to be promoted under autocrats without military experience, but their odds of promotion did not seem to differ under autocrats boasting military career background. This study contributes to research on authoritarian efforts to tame internal threats, clientelism, party dictatorships, leader traits, and China’s civil-military ties.

Antibiotic Culture: A History of Antibiotic Use in the Second Half of the 20th and Early 21st Century in the People’s Republic of China

Antimicrobial resistance is now widely regarded as a global public health threat. A growing number of studies suggest that antibiotic resistance is higher in China than in most western countries. Despite the current official regulation prohibiting pharmacies from the unrestricted selling of antibiotics, there is little sign of declining consumer demand. China now ranks as the second largest consumer of antibiotics in the world, after India. Drawing on published historical data, unpublished archival documents, and recently collected oral interviews, this paper provides a historical overview of antibiotic use and abuse in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from the second half of the 20th century to the present. It demonstrates how the political demand for health improvement, along with the state-sponsored popularization of allopathic medicine, on the one hand, and the lack of access to adequate medical care for the majority of the population, as well as the existing culture of self-medication, on the other hand, are working in tandem to create antibiotic dependency in China. In addition, the privatization and marketization of biomedicine and health care in post-Mao China have helped to build a new and ever-thriving network of production, distribution, and marketing of antibiotics, which has often proven difficult for the authorities to monitor. At the same time, increased purchasing power and easier accessibility created by this new network of production, distribution, and marketing have further contributed to the prevalence of antibiotic overuse in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Patronage and Authoritarian Co-optation of the Military: Theory with Evidence from Post-Mao China

Patronage and Authoritarian Co-optation of the Military: Theory with Evidence from Post-Mao China

U.S. Geopolitical Strategies and China’s Challenge

Geopolitical studies that emerged in the twentieth century have mushroomed into a momentous scholarly industry. Culturally-framed nationalism is driven geopolitically by a type of internalized nativist outlook which surveils the illintentions of foreign adversaries. Nationalism’s climax came with its enshrinement in the Paris Treaties (1919-20) ending World War I. By 1917, the first totalitarian system arose in Russia, a novel form of government that sought total domination of all aspects of life. The Cold War after 1948 pitted two opposite forms of government: U.S. constitutional republic vs. totalitarian one-party Soviet Union, pursuing an active foreign policy implementing a global geopolitical strategy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the U.S. appeared as the singular superpower. Yet, a revived post-Mao China offered a challenge to U.S. global role. This essay explores recent developments in that competition, demonstrating that the geopolitics of both sides exhibit not only suspicion of the other’s intentions but also a misunderstanding of the respective political cultures which complicates any peaceful resolution.

Reconstruction of Ethnicity and Production of Pu’er Tea in Post-Mao China: a Case Study of Bulang Ethnic Group in Mangjing Village, Yunnan Province

ABSTRACT In post-Mao China, the Bulang ethnic group in Yunnan province use Pu’er tea cultivation as a primary way of reconstructing their ethnic identities and cultural traditions. In this paper, I argue that in the process of ethnicization, material culture is a critical factor in addition to myth, history, religions, and cultures, rooted in a historical process of forming ethnic identities, based on a six-month participant observation in Mangjing Village with local tea farmers. I further argue that the Bulang people’s reconstruction of ethnicity can be seen as an incorporation between the majority (state power) and the minority (ethnic people in frontiers) and is constituted by both external and internal factors. I also highlight that Pu’er tea functions as a particularly meaningful material agency when looking at how the Bulang people in Mangjing proactively respond to state power manipulation, mobilize social relations, and engage with a larger commercial market in the modern world.

Remaking the Church Catholic in Post-Maoist China

Abstract After the political reforms that followed the death of Mao Zedong, Chinese Catholics were gradually allowed to reestablish their churches and resume public gatherings. Yet this opened serious challenges. After decades of persecution and isolation, which reshaped the ways Chinese Catholics worshipped and perceived themselves, they needed to redefine Chinese Catholicism. Is performing specific rituals in both Latin and a local dialect, at home and in secret, enough to be Catholic? Who holds the religious authority to effectively administer the sacraments? To what extent is a formal relationship with the Pope necessary to remain Catholic? This article explores how Chinese Catholics have searched for support from outside their family circles and the People’s Republic of China to answer their questions. This paper argues that in a rapidly changing politico-economic context marked by strict administrative control, Chinese Catholics have reestablished contacts with Global Catholicism through networking with missionary societies. More specifically, I look at collaborations which Chinese Catholics have established with the Paris Foreign Missions (MEP) to reassess the missiology of Chinese Catholicism. Discussing the evolving nature of these relationships after 1978, I show that the reconstruction of Catholicism in China has been a multilateral enterprise in which local Catholics have had to navigate political adversity, socio-cultural changes, and the Post-Vatican II reformation of worldwide Catholicism. In so doing, Chinese Catholics gradually moved outside of the intimacy of kinship groups and pre-defined rituals to engage actively with modernizing Chinese society and transforming world Catholicism.

Projecting the ‘Modern’: The reconstruction of urban cinemas in post-Mao China, 1987–1989

In the midst of China’s market reform during the 1980s, urban cinemas were at the center of the changing cultural landscape, revealing how quickly a distinct urban space could consume, digest, and recycle various consumerist attractions adapted from the West. Following the China Film Corporation’s call for a nation-wide reconstruction of urban movie theaters in 1987, moviegoing as a historically and socially defined activity became deeply rooted in, and further complicated by, urban consumers’ modern experience of public life. By 1991, nearly 2000 movie theaters across China had been renovated and commercialized, contributing significantly to the remapping of China’s urban geography. Through examining newspapers, magazines and floorplans published in the late 1980s, this article proposes a reconsideration of post-Mao urban culture in relation to this unprecedented change in the spatial refashioning of urban cinemas. I argue that the reconstructed movie theater illustrates the complex connections between state policy and mass consumption in the wake of China’s turn to marketization.

Chinese Media Delegations to Europe and the Reconstruction of Media Discourse on Europe in Post-Mao China (1978–1992)

The years between 1978 and 1992 saw China enter a turbulent period of socio-economic recovery and foreign policy recalibration after the death of Mao Zedong. A string of organised expeditions to Europe by Chinese journalists produced a collection of first-hand, in-depth reportage, which vividly exemplified the reconstruction of Chinese media discourse on the outside world. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this article explores how the delegations formulated their discourses on Europe and argues that these discourses revealed a series of ideological and practical paradoxes that would continue to dominate China’s perception of and strategies towards Europe far beyond 1992.