China's Current Authoritarianism From a Cultural Perspective: Instrumentalising Heritage for Nation-Building

Abstract

After the 1978 reform, China's authoritarian political system has become less monolithic. However, during the Xi era, scholars' consensus points to a prominent authoritarian turn through various strategies. A noticeable one is promoting traditional Chinese culture for nation-building. In this research, I examine the role of cultural heritage in China's current authoritarian turn. Using a heritage regeneration project in the city of Anyang as a case study, I look into the central and local states' rationale for regenerating heritage, the local state's approaches to promoting traditional Chinese culture through the project and the local citizens' responses to the political propaganda. I argue that the central state has instrumentalised heritage for ideological control, particularly targeting the wider society, thus drawing heavily on traditional Chinese culture that is more attractive to the public and seems more benign. Though the local state of Anyang has deliberately integrated the trendy cultural confidence discourse into the regeneration project, the local citizens' responses are highly split, suggesting citizens' heterogeneous reception of the state's message and subtle negotiation with and resistance to the political propaganda, which makes the effects of the ideological control difficult to assess. Situating China's authoritarian turn into the cultural geographic arena and at the grassroots level, this commentary seeks to provide a new lens beyond politics-related disciplines that largely concern the Communist Party and the government themselves at the central level and macro scale to evaluate the ongoing governance changes in China.