Screening China's Soft Power


Book Description

Promoting China's cultural soft power by disseminating modern Chinese values is one of the policies of President Xi Jinping. Although, it is usually understood as a top-down initiative, implemented willingly or unwillingly by writers, filmmakers, artists, and so on, and often manifesting itself in clumsy and awkward ways, for example, the concept of "the Chinese dream," intended to rival and perhaps appeal more strongly than "the American dream," modern Chinese values are in fact put forward in many ways by many different cultural actors. Through analyses of film festivals, CCTV, Confucius Institutes, auteurs, blockbusters, reality TV, and online digital cultures, this book exposes the limitations of China's officially promoted soft power in both conception and practice, and proposes a pluralistic approach to understanding Chinese soft power in local, regional, and transnational contexts. As such, the book demonstrates the limitations of existing theories of soft power, and argues that the US-derived concept of soft power can benefit from being examined from a China perspective.




Learning from SARS


Book Description

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.




Cinema Off Screen


Book Description

At a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating that film exhibition can produce meaning in itself apart from the films being shown. Cinema Off Screen advances the idea that cinema takes place off screen as much as on screen by exploring film exhibition in China from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Drawing on original archival research, interviews, and audience recollections, Cinema Off Screen decenters the filmic text and offers a study of institutional operations and lived experiences. Chenshu Zhou details how the screening space, media technology, and the human body mediate encounters with cinema in ways that have not been fully recognized, opening new conceptual avenues for rethinking the ever-changing institution of cinema.




Screening China


Book Description

Yingjin Zhang guides the reader through the development of Chinese film criticism, pointing out that Western critics have studied a comparatively small number of films from a much larger body of work, often with a unidirectional Eurocentric bias. The result has been that the few have influenced the many, perpetuating a cycle of production of films from China that bow to the Western notion of "Chineseness." As a corrective, the author introduces readers to a much larger canon of film and proposes a multidirectional model of film studies, one that allows for a Western reading of Chinese film yet also recognizes Chinese cinema's own voice. Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese Literature and Film, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies at University of California, San Diego.




An Amorous History of the Silver Screen


Book Description

Illustrating the cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change, this book reveals the intricacies of the cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, drama, and literature.




Screening Post-1989 China


Book Description

This unique book investigates the tug-of-war between the free market economy and authoritative state regulation in Chinese culture after 1989. Contextualizing close textual readings of cinematic and television texts, both officially sanctioned and independently made, Wing Shan Ho illuminates the complex process in which cultural producers and consumers negotiate with both the state and the market in articulating new forms of subjectivity. Ho examines the types of Chinese subjects that the state applauds and aggrandizes in contrast to those that it condemns and attempts to eliminate. Her focus on the socialist spirit exposes inherent contradictions in the current Chinese project of nation-building. This comparative study shines a harsh light on these cultural products and on much more: the confluence between commerce and politics and popular culture, the interaction between state and individuals in popular culture, and the complexity of governmentality in an era of globalization.




Screening Communities


Book Description

Postwar Hong Kong cinema played an active role in building the colony’s community in the 1950s and 1960s. To Jing Jing Chang, the screening of movies in postwar Hong Kong was a process of showing the filmmakers’ visions for Hong Kong society and simultaneously an attempt to conceal their anxieties and mask their political agenda. It was a time when the city was a site of intense ideological struggles among the colonial government, Chinese Nationalists, and Communist sympathizers. The medium of film was recognized as a powerful tool for public persuasion and various camps competed to win over the hearts and minds of the audience. Screening Communities thus situates the history of postwar Hong Kong cinema at the intersection of Cold War politics, Chinese culture, and local society. Focusing on the genres of official documentary film, leftist family melodrama (lunlipian), and youth film, this study examines the triangulated relationship of colonial interventions in Hong Kong film culture, the rise of left-leaning Cantonese directors as new cultural elites, and the positioning of audiences as contributors to the colony’s journey toward industrial modernity. Filmmakers are shown having to constantly negotiate changing sociopolitical conditions: the Hong Kong government presenting itself as a collaborative ruling body, moral and didactic messages being adapted for commercial releases, and women becoming recognized as a driving force behind Hong Kong’s postwar industrial success. In putting forward a historical narrative that privileges the poetics and politics of shaping a local community through a continuous screening process, Screening Communities offers a new interpretation of the development of Hong Kong cinema—one that breaks away from the usual accounts of the “rise and fall” of the industry. “Despite the voluminous literature on Hong Kong cinema, Screening Communities doesn’t just fill in gaps; it positively seals up a number of fissures. Chang shows us a cinema on the ground, refuting the standard image of an apolitical, fantasized world of martial arts and musicals. When Hong Kong’s identity seems ever more precarious, this is a bracing reminder of how film was deeply implicated in Hong Kong identity-formation in the Cold War era.” —David Desser, University of Illinois “Screening Communities offers an exciting analysis of the role of cinemas in shaping Hong Kong and diasporic identities during the Cold War. Chang brings left-wing Cantonese filmmakers and the colonial state back into the story, and in the process broadens our understanding of the place of Hong Kong in the cultural and social history of the Cold War. This is an important contribution to the scholarship.” —Jeremy E. Taylor, University of Nottingham




Endemic Disease in China


Book Description

The book focuses on the iodine deficiency, endemic fluorosis, endemic arsenic poisoning, Kashin-Beck disease and Keshan disease which are five kinds of national key endemic diseases, a total of six chapters, comprehensively systematically introduces the information of five kinds of endemic diseases, including the epidemic characteristics, clinical manifestation, diagnosis standards, and the current control situation, preventive strategy, working experience, and successful control cases, etc. Endemic disease is confined to certain areas, of which there are dozens in Chinese inland, in which there are eight types been listed in the national key control endemic diseases. Endemic diseases are serious in China, and have wide distribution, weight illness and a large threatened population. China has made great achievements on the endemic diseases prevention and control, and also has accumulated rich experiences of the prevention and treatment, summed up some complete and effective preventive strategy, which based on the characteristics of endemic diseases epidemic and prevention work. Dr. Dianjun Sun is the Director of Center for Endemic Disease Control,Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin, China. He is also a professor of Harbin Medical University, China.




Cultural Heritage Politics in China


Book Description

​This volume explores China’s cultural heritage ideology and policies from three interrelated perspectives: the State and World Heritage tourism; cultural heritage tourism at undesignated sites, and the cultural politics of museums and collections. Something of a cultural heritage designation craze is happening in China. This is new within even the last five to ten years. Officials at many levels now see heritage preservation as a means for commoditizing their regions. They are devoting new resources and attention to national and international heritage designations. Thus, addressing cultural heritage politics in a nation dedicated to designation is an important project, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing economy. This volume is also important because it addresses a very wide range of cultural heritage, providing an excellent sample of case studies: historic vernacular urban environments, ethnic tourism, scenic tourism, pilgrimage as tourism, tourism and economic development, museums, border heritage, underwater remains, and the actual governance and management of the sites. This volume is an outstanding introduction to cultural heritage issues in China while contributing to Chinese studies for those with greater knowledge of the area.




Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary Chinese social and cultural issues in the twenty-first century. Bringing together experts in their respective fields, this cutting-edge survey of the significant phenomena and directions in China today covers a range of issues including the following: State, privatisation and civil society Family and education Urban and rural life Gender, and sexuality and reproduction Popular culture and the media Religion and ethnicity Forming an accessible and fascinating insight into Chinese culture and society, this handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, area studies, history, politics and cultural and media studies.