Book Review: Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China by Fang Xu

Abstract

central pillar of the state–community interface, attempting – with some success (p. 149) – to provide a space for relatively non-political leisure activity. Another departure from the Russian education model during the first years was in the emphasis on nationalism. In the case of the Chinese elementary schools, the evidence also suggests that adoption of systematic party directives, unlike in publishing, was deferred for a few years. A tentative conclusion to take away from the study is that analysts should pay closer attention to cultural policy, contrary to strong ‘materialist’ approaches that may present the macroeconomic factors as overly determinative. For example, the market reforms of the Deng Xiaoping years, apart from Tiananmen 1989, did correlate with a limited degree of opening. But as the author points out, top–down control over all cultural domains, re-enforced with the inauguration in 2012 of the current regime, leads us to question aspects of the correlation. There is simply little evidence of a parallel democratization accompanying economic liberalization. For a centralist party, governing a oneparty state, first leaning on the Soviet model, and today on its own admittedly unique and highly productive model, based on special national ‘characteristics’, culture is too important. Art and literature are ‘fronts’ (p. 183). Parenthetically, and consistent with the economy–culture mismatch, the recent growing concentration of control within the cultural sphere has been identified as a concern in a number of full democracies. Considering this complicated and controversial question, the book makes an important contribution on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP.