JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 44.3 (Fall 2014): 467–484. Copyright © 2014 by JNT:Journal of Narrative Theory.

Political Narratology and Consensual Developmentin Post-Mao China

Gabriel F. Y. Tsang

Reading dominant political narratives in China can allow us to understandthe Chinese government’s ideological positions surrounding the eco-nomic-centered policy that has been advocated since the rule of Deng Xi-aoping, the leader of China from 1978 to 1992.1 A full understanding ofthe competing discourses and rhetorical techniques adopted by variousstakeholders, and the dynamic process of communication between thegovernment/dissidents and the public, is essential to address the structureof current political phenomena. Such a critical perspective prevents over-simplified conclusions about the modernizing process of the People’s Re-public of China (PRC), which make China appear to be either imitatingthe West or undermining the purity of “Chineseness.” Taking the docu-mentary series He Shang [River Elegy] as an example, the first section ofthis paper will explain how such reductive conclusions can be reached andhow they may appear as reasonable to the Chinese public. The second andthird sections will focus on the narrative strategies adopted by Chinese de-mocrats and political leaders, respectively. By investigating the politicalintentions of both sides, we can reassess the Eurocentric paradigm, inwhich the values categorized as belonging to the West, such as democracy,are regarded as universally superior, beneficial, and pragmatic. Instead ofillustrating how democrats and political leaders comply with the interna-

tional discipline that Western countries impose, this paper argues that theself-interest of individuals on both sides (exemplified by Chai Ling andHu Jintao) motivates compliance with that discipline regardless of their in-tentions. While democrats employ Western political concepts to increasetheir discursive power, political leaders express agreement with the Westto increase their economic bargaining power. In China, the process ofbuilding popular consensus around Western values is not straightforward,but instead full of internal contradictions, inconsistency, and incoherence.

The Logic of Westernization and Self-Orientalization

The charismatic discursive power of Western ideas in post-socialistcountries after the end of the Cultural Revolution2—fifteen years beforethe dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991—is similar to that of Marxismin capitalist countries during the late nineteenth century. This power con-sists more in the possible outcome of these ideas, their interpretability forpolitical use, and their idealized contrast to the current situation, and lessin their adaptability.

In the case of China after the death of Mao Zedong—the leader of thePRC from 1949 to 1976, who diplomatically enclosed China and practicedsocialism—Deng Xiaoping’s policy favored the “translation and dissemi-nation of foreign literature” (McDougall and Louie 334), and created thedesire in the general populace for Westernization, that is, imitation ofWestern policies, culture, and philosophy. Simultaneously, because ofDeng’s neglect of the economic and legal system, a prerequisite of recon-structing, Chinese intellectuals, who were adversely affected by the Cul-tural Revolution, attempted to construct an image of China as inferior tothe West in order to speed up the Westernizing progress. Their attempts toevaluate China through a Western gaze, which can be described as self-Orientalization,3 came about for two reasons. First, their past experienceunder Mao Zedong’s dictatorship gave them a sense that the still-dominantMarxist/socialist ideology was retrogressive. Second, the term “modern-ization” that Deng Xiaoping used to sum up his capitalistic reform gavethem an impression that the successfully modernized Western countrieswere superior to China. According to Chinese Contemporary LiteratureStudies, between 1978 and 1982, over four hundred essays analyzingWestern modernism were published in China (Yang and Jiang 182). While

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establishing the West as an object to study, scholars began to compare andcontrast China and the West. During this time, the indefinite difference be-tween self and other that Chinese intellectuals gleaned from personal ex-perience and official statements became expressed through fixed binaryoppositions: East-West, socialist-capitalist, developing-developed, mod-ernizing-modernized, uncivilized-civilized, peripheral-central, dictatorial-democratic, suppressed-free, poor-rich, violent-peaceful, foolish-intellec-tual, dirty-clean, etc. In each binary pair, the first terms were used todescribe the inferiority of China, and the second ones to evoke the quali-ties of the West regarded as aspirational for China.

Strengthening these divisions was the 1989 June Fourth Incident inTiananmen Square, in which the central government suppressed the re-form-seeking student movement by mobilizing the People’s LiberationArmy to resolve the explicit confrontation between the government andthe people. Re-imposing strict ideological surveillance, the central govern-ment prevented subsequent social unrest, but failed to demonstrate the in-applicability of Western ideas and eradicate the popular belief that Chinawas geographically or racially inferior. Keeping in mind David Der-weiWang’s reminder that “modern Chinese history” has a record of “seem-ingly endless brutality totted up in disheartening large figures” (2), we canconclude that the Communist Party of China (CPC/CCP)’s continuouspractices of violence not only evoked the “tragic historical consciousness”of the public (B. Wang 68), but also consolidated its self-identity as untilthen inferior-to-the-West.

The 1980s is a pivotal decade to trace how the divisions between Chinaand the West arose, and how the Chinese public internalized those divi-sions after the death of Mao Zedong and before the consolidation of ideo-logical control stemming from the June Fourth Incident. The documentaryHe Shang offers a case study of how collective consensus was formedaround the aforementioned inferior-superior dyad. In her book High Cul-ture Fever, Jing Wang focuses on the function of enlightenment and mod-ernization, caused by Deng Xiaoping’s new policies, in Chinese culturalformation. She provides a broad historical context that elucidates howChinese intellectuals’ subjective positions inspired the production of HeShang. In her view, “as early as 1978, when the Third Plenary Session ofthe Eleventh Party Congress launched the campaign of ‘thought emanci-pation’ and initiated the agenda of modernization” (139), the seeds of

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modern Chinese consciousness had been sown, paving the way for theWesternizing enlightenment of intellectuals. After “the 1982 debate overChinese modernism,” which kept “reproducing [‘an aggressive appropria-tion of the foreign’] throughout the decade of the 1980s” (146), intellectu-als’ increasing enthusiasm for theoretical discussion and artistic creationrelating to the modernization of China gradually fomented into a requestfor entirely remolding China according to an idealized Western model.Their intensified activities transformed public discontent with economicfluctuation and social instability, caused by rapid capitalist development,into abstract demands for freedom and democracy. The years 1985 and1986 “witness[ed] the intensification of the intellectuals’ ‘methodologyfever’ on the nation’s cultural agenda, the massive propagation of the for-mula for a market economy, and the reiteration of the imperative that theParty discuss political reform” (i). The intellectuals did not take the post-socialist context into account, but merely attributed the problems of eco-nomic reform to the lack of support for Western values.

Their perspectives triggered the production of He Shang, which “at-tack[s] the historical, mythological and social foundation of China,” andoutlines the defining characteristics of the West (Lee 257). Chinese Cen-tral Television broadcast this six-episode documentary, with thirty-sevenminutes per episode, in 1988. Of its key content, Edward Gunn concludes,

each episode begins with scenes of various forms of templeworship in China, followed by an aerial shot of the YellowRiver, thus associating the Yellow River as one objectamong many that are worshipped by humans. It hasdrowned many, literally and symbolically, who have triedto master it (Episode One), frustrated every attempt to turnit to constructive use in modernization (scenes of SanmenDam in Episode Five), and generally built up an image ofitself as a burdensome, obscurantist tyrant, until it flowsdown and out into the sea of wider and more promisinghuman ideas (Episode Six). (256)

The Yellow River symbolism implies that Chinese culture is incompatiblewith modern development unless it emulates the West. As Xiaomei Chenstates, this documentary distinguishes the “Yellow-River” (26) from the

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“Blue-Sea” (29) civilization, oversimplifying the Chinese national charac-ter by portraying it as irrational and inferior, in contrast to the depiction ofWestern countries as oceanic, ambitious, and superior. In Chen’s view,such geographical determination of cultural qualities is “an Oriental fabri-cation of the Occidental Other” (30). In addition, the documentary chartsintellectuals’ attempts to stabilize Chinese people’s identities within theframework of self-marginalization. Derogatory images of China as viewedthrough the Western gaze aid the process of self-marginalization; theWest’s level of civilization, military power, and economic developmentdetermines its central position.

Moreover, the criticism of self-Orientalized China in the documentaryempties out the cultural space of China, associated with history, tradition,and routine. In every episode, the narrator repeatedly undervalues thecountry with a tone of absolute authority to show that Chinese people needto give up the values belonging to China and adopt the values belonging tothe West. For instance, in the first episode, after juxtaposing the presentsituation in China with the past portrayed as glorious, the narrator con-cludes, “She [Chinese civilization] is old. She needs new cultural ele-ments.” This portrayal of China implies that cultural inertia prevents fur-ther growth of the country. Only by discarding its conservativeperspectives can China become fill-in-able, and hence new, Western, andsustainable. In the final episode, the narrator even implies that Chinashould, like the Yellow River, flow out of the continent and becomeoceanic, completely uprooting its culture in preparation for assimilation tothe West. The either-or logic developed over the course of the six episodesrefutes the view that China could successfully practice mild Westerniza-tion or “Chinese-style socialism,” advocated by Deng Xiaoping, which“combines capitalistic market economy with socialist political orienta-tion” (Lu 11). It suggests a radical reform rather than a compromise be-tween extremes. This documentary, as an underlying cause of the JuneFourth Incident, successfully fulfilled the popular desire for political andeconomic changes, effectively motivating intellectuals while providingclear guidance out of the negative side of the binary oppositions used tocharacterize the Chinese situation. The ideas and imaginative registers ofHe Shang have continued to accumulate over an entire decade, a sophisti-cated cultural translation still disseminating its viewpoints in contempo-

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rary China even though the central government banned the documentaryafter the June Fourth Incident.

The Uses of Western Democratic Discourses

In the first section, I explained how the divisions between China andthe idealized West coincided with the popular desire to become moreWesternized, and how such differences were represented to broad Chineseaudiences through He Shang. In the following two sections, I will examinehow Chinese democrats and the PRC government develop specific politi-cal narratives while simultaneously fulfilling public expectations by build-ing consensus around Western values.

To begin with, we need to define what democracy is and how Chinesedemocrats interpret it. In the West, democracy is derived from the Greekδηµοκϱατια that means “rule of the people,” emphasizing the politicalrights that different individuals share. In China, democracy is translated asMinzhu, or “people-first,” highlighting the superior position of the peoplewithin a political structure. The dual meaning of democracy, depending ontranslation, enables democrats, on the one hand, to make use of its broadmeaning in Chinese to produce a discourse that serves their own purposesand, on the other hand, to take advantage of its etymological link with aWestern concept to reinforce their discursive power. In contrast to Chineseleaders, who from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao subordinated the position ofdemocracy to their political agendas,4 Chinese democrats centralize it inorder to criticize the government. Their political strategizing can beviewed as a narrative process in what Walter calls a “constellation”—aninteraction of text and image according to purpose rather than logical con-sistency. According to Benjamin, “ideas are timeless constellations, and byvirtue of the elements being seen as points in such constellations, phe-nomena are subdivided and at the same time redeemed” (34). In Ben-jamin’s view, delinking ideas from their temporal dimension and internalunity can help reconstruct them through subdividing and re-matching. InSigrid Weigel’s interpretation of this insight, such deconstruction and re-construction of ideas, as “figures of thought,” correlate with history, expe-rience, and reality (xiii). That the constellation’s metaphysical significanceconnects to its practical signification in the context of the complexities of

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real life helps to explain how democrats’ use of Western concepts exposestheir intentions.

An examination of the constellations of ideas in speeches, interviews,and stories by Chinese democrats reveals that the explanation for democ-ratic ideas is usually absent. Their approach to representing democracyseems to prevent the public from critical thinking; in fact, many texts call-ing for democracy in China abound in traumatic descriptions and com-plaints concerning the policies of the central government. For instance, inThe Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995), a documentary about the June FourthIncident directed by Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton, the democratsWang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi, Feng Congde, Han Dongfang, and Chai Ling,who were the leaders of the student movement in 1989, focus on narratinghow they deployed strategies against the central government and how thestudents engaged in the protests that they initiated. Their discourse presup-poses the necessity of practicing democracy in China and hence rational-izes the irrational behaviors of the democracy-seeking students. In theirinterviews, they use an expository, storytelling style rather than develop-ing an argument to express the importance of democracy. In this narrative,the tragic end of the enthusiastic students not only evokes sympathy in theaudience, but also engraves an image of China as backwards in the audi-ence’s minds. Even though democrats’ political requests remain abstractand unexplained throughout the film, the foregrounding of the govern-ment’s uncivilized political action (military suppression involving tanks,soldiers, and machine guns) emotionally motivates the audience to inter-nalize the message that China must accept Western values, especiallydemocracy, to be reformed.

Aside from storytelling, the democrats’ emotional performance isworth examining. The emotional performance is twofold: body languageand textual expression, both of which can stimulate the audience’s imagi-nation and increase narrative control of the make-believe process. In onescene of the documentary, Chai Ling expresses anxiety about the toughstand of Chinese leaders. Her weeping as she speaks helps the audience toimagine the degree of despotism of the central government and demon-strates that she, as a representative of democrats, is a persecuted outcast inChina due to her Westernized political views. Whether intentionally ornot, this sincerely grieving image on the screen leads the audience to think

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that resolving the conflict between her and the government requires re-forming China according to the superior Western model that she espouses.

Importantly, the democrats’ use of performative linguistic expressioncan affect the audience’s emotion as much as their body language. J. L.Austin’s differentiates between “constative” (declarative) and “performa-tive” statements (3), stating that “performative utterance” is not merely “atrue or false report of something” and “not, or not merely, saying some-thing but doing something”(25). An utterance not only functions inside thetext, but also affects the reality that it references. Determined by authorialintention before speaking (“illocutionary act”), it can “produce certainconsequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audi-ence, or of the speaker, or of other persons” (101). Thus, in The Gate ofHeavenly Peace, Chai Ling’s slogan-like exclamations reflect her anxietyas well as her passion when she says, “The final moment has come for thesurvival of our nation! Compatriots, awaken! Down with fascists! Downwith military rule! The people will be victorious!” She delivers an urgentmessage to the Chinese audience (identified as “compatriots”) to say thatthe country’s very survival will be at stake if the Chinese people do not en-gage in democratic development. This statement promotes a self-Oriental-ized image of China as decaying rather than progressive, as fascist ratherthan democratic/Minzhu, and as ruled by the military rather than the peo-ple. Her short, mostly imperative mood clauses performatively signal hersupport for emptying out the conceptual space of China that Chinese-ness/being-China occupies in order to fill it with the universal values de-termined by Western societies. The audience’s imaginations can supply theabsent definitions of those universal values, such as peace, justice, and hu-manism, through the either-or binary logic embedded in her speaking inlieu of the absent rationale for Minzhu. This absence grants her audienceutopian expectations that are vague, open to interpretation, and thereforepotentially more attractive.

Chinese democrats commonly use this combination of rhetorical tech-niques in a variety of media, including documentaries, radio broadcasts,newspapers, and public events, crucially affecting the way in which the gen-eral public understands democracy and democrats in the contemporary Chi-nese context. In such constellations of images and texts, Chinese democratsevoke popular sympathy by performing tragic plots rather than employingwell-supported arguments. They manipulate the audience’s emotional re-

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sponses to promote the necessity of pursuing democratic ideals without pro-viding a sophisticated evaluation of the Chinese political situation.

Overall, despite being filmed by non-Chinese directors and forbiddenby the Chinese government, The Gate of Heavenly Peace has had a strongimpact on Chinese democratic development, especially in the post-JuneFourth context. For instance, in the last interview of the film, the mother ofa student victim, says, “Should we then wait for another chance to start thedemocratic movement like 1989? Would that save China? I don’t think so.The only way to change our situation is for each one of us to make a per-sonal effort. Every small action counts.” Her speech, as the culmination ofall witness testimonies on the protest, reveals the directors’ position on thefailure of the collective radical democratic movement and resolution to re-sume democratic progress through individual effort. The wide range of in-terviews outlined a big picture, in spite of being criticized as stereotypical,so that audiences, especially those involved in the incident, could discussand reflect on past democratic developments and propose a more practicalway of supporting Chinese democracy in the future. On the one hand, themessages shown in the documentary drew the attention of local and over-seas Chinese intellectuals who had access to it; on the other hand, they in-cited a “particular controversy” which, as Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smithclaim, led to Bill Clinton’s visit to Beijing University to “discuss humanrights and deliver a speech in support of human rights that was broadcaston public television in China” (214). For both the Chinese democratic com-munity and international observers, this documentary mobilized a concernthat the democratic movement could potentially trigger bloodshed.

The appearances of Chinese democrats in the media show that, ratherthan merely furthering democratic development, they potentially wantedto attract public attention according to their own aims, such as making theaudience believe something, increasing personal power in the mass move-ments, or, possibly, as the central government claims, earning the financialor political support of Western countries. These various aims influence theorganization of their personal discourses. The aggregation of the narra-tives of particular individuals not only increases the complexity of Chi-nese politics, transcending either the pro- or the anti-government stance ofcollectivity in Chinese politics, but also consolidates the formulaic use ofthe rhetorical skills described above. The success of democratic narrativesdepends on their effectiveness in inciting the audience to action and pro-

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ducing anti-governmental criticism. While emotionally discouraging theaudience from accepting the current situation in China, democrats neces-sarily seek to eliminate the imagined distance between the West andChina. Since the main source of their power rests in making China identi-cal to the West, they must keep on speaking and performing in this direc-tion, regardless of personal convictions.

The Central Government’s Use of the “Harmonious Discourse”

In contrast to democrats, regarded as dissidents against the central gov-ernment, Chinese leaders express their support of Westernization implic-itly. In order to maintain China’s economic relationship with the Westwhile safeguarding the authority of China and preventing democrats’ spec-ulative use of Western ideas—which could cause nation-wide politicalrisks like the June Fourth Incident—Chinese leaders promote the “harmo-nious discourse,” which is based on Confucianism instead of Western de-mocratic discourses or Mao’s despotism.

Baogang Guo and Sujian Guo emphasize how the notion of a harmo-nious society highlights Chinese leaders’ search for “a Confucian dream-land of the ‘great unity’” (4). Historicizing the deployment of this conceptin Chinese politics, the authors explain that

The concept of “a harmonious society” represents the valueorientation of the 4th generation of CCP leaders, and hasbeen considered a major advance in CCP’s theory building.The concept first appeared vaguely in Jiang Zemin’s Re-port to the 16th Party Congress of the Chinese CommunistParty in 2002 which mentioned “social harmony” as one ofthe six goals of “building a well-off society,” which wasthe immediate goal proposed by Deng Xiaoping for China.In the 4th Plenary Session of the 16th CCP Party Congressheld September 16 through 19, 2004, “building socialistharmonious society” was officially introduced for the firsttime. . . . Hu Jintao expounded upon this new concept in aspeech delivered to the CCP Central Party School. (2)5

Scholars Kinglun Ngok and Yapeng Zhu praised this strategic vision of“building a harmonious socialist society,” formulated in 2004, for being

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“on the right track” in “struggling to alleviate different kinds of socialproblems, integrate social and economic development, and harmonizeeconomic development and environment protection” (91). Chinese lead-ers’ efforts to reinterpret socialism made grappling with the problems ofsimultaneous globalization and democratization especially important.Post-Deng China entailed a stable acceleration of capitalist development,which favored the accumulation of economic resources for effective diplo-matic deployment. On the one hand, after the end of the Cold War in 1991,the world situation transformed from being an explicit confrontation be-tween two camps (capitalism and socialism) into a strategic internationalcompetition for resources and information. On the other hand, Chinajoined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Group ofTwenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G20), and theWorld Trade Organization in 1991, 1999, and 2001, respectively, andneeded not only to reform its economic system, according to the regula-tions of investment, trading, finance, and contract established by the West-ern countries, but also to respond to the international community’s requestfor moral assimilation.

Economic activities have facilitated increasing interpersonal communi-cation and cultural exchanges that have made China and the West sociallyand politically interdependent. In this arrangement, if China wants to guar-antee economic stability, growth, or strength, it needs to practice a certaindegree of dependence on (or assimilation to) the West in both economicand non-economic exchanges. However, in the process of compromisingwith the West on some political issues, such as in arguments over territory,restrictions of human rights, and calls for greater democracy, China cre-ates a perception—whether among the Chinese public or the internationalcommunity—that its central government recognizes the West as superiorto China, or at least as a model for China to study, a perception that seri-ously undermines its authority, autonomy, and unity of governance. Toavoid the potential diminishment of political power caused by the need fordevelopment, China requires a strategic direction that is inclusive, univer-sal, abstract, localized, and reasonable.

The strategic vision of “building a harmonious socialist society” ful-fills all of these requirements, especially in reinforcing the narrative ofChineseness by drawing on Confucianism to re-interpret China’s desire toparticipate in the Western imperial consensus. The discourse drafted ac-

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cording to this strategic vision addresses both the consensus and dissensusthat Chinese leaders express in response to internal and international pres-sures. First, Confucian philosophy represents Chinese traditional val-ues, making harmony inclusive and neutral in nature. As illustrated by theadvice in The Analects of Confucius to “act in harmony with others but . . .not seek to be like them” (13.23), harmony encourages coexistence ratherthan conflict, diversity rather than monopoly, compromise rather than ar-gument—priorities in line with China’s global pursuit of the “win-win”situation, internal unity, and mutual understanding. It facilitates whatDaniel F. Vukovich terms the integration between “capitalism and orien-talism” that favors the maintenance of economic partnership, yet its desig-nation as a national direction also prevents China from seeming conceptu-ally like the West (2). As a term originally derived from another Confuciansaying, “in the practice of li [propriety], harmony is key” (1.12), harmonyconstructs a commensurable link between the inferior image of modernChina and the idealized image of traditional China for the contemporarycontext. Its pragmatic use enables the rejection of ideological narrativesespoused by two influential leaders: Mao Zedong, whose failure in theGreat Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution consolidated both internaland external negative stereotypes of Chinese leadership, the CPC, and thePRC as a whole; and Deng Xiaoping, whose over-emphasis on economicdevelopment gave rise to various ethical, bureaucratic, and ecologicalproblems, in spite of having improved the living standard and infrastruc-ture of China tremendously.

Since harmony is an abstract concept unbound to historical context(unlike Marxism which is tied to Mao’s rule), Chinese leaders can freelyinterpret it to create new political narratives and arrangements. It not onlyenables Chinese leaders to coordinate universal with local values flexibly,and thus alleviate the tension between Chinese development and Western-ization, but it also empties out a historical space for democratic progres-sion in response to the constellation of historical narratives and imagesdeployed by democrats. Whenever democrats blame the Chinese govern-ment for unexamined historical mistakes, like those made during the JuneFourth Incident, for instance, Chinese leaders can reply with a correspond-ing discourse that reverses the historical significance of those mistakes bystressing their own democratic achievement in following the economicsuccess founded on national stability. From the perspective of Hu Jintao,

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the fourth-generation leader of China from 2002 to 2012, democracy isconditional. Hu agrees with Deng Xiaoping, from whom he inherited thepolicy of developmentalism and economic determinism, that sustainingthe development of a superstructure satisfying both the material and themoral needs of the Chinese people requires a well-established base of pro-duction (economy) in safe and stable conditions. At the Eighteenth PartyCongress, while discussing the “democratic stride” carried out by the suc-cessful practice of harmonious direction, Hu aimed not only to acquiremore diplomatic power through his claim of democratic practice—whichshowed his fulfillment of the Western request for improving the humanrights situation in China—but also to subordinate the importance ofdemocracy to that of harmony.

Analysis of Hu Jintao’s political discourse reveals a lack of explana-tion for democratic concepts, a rhetorical strategy similar to that of the de-mocrats. Where democrats instead foreground sentimental texts and im-ages about the necessity of freedom, Hu typically emphasizes China’seconomic performance, while at the same time downplaying unfavorablereports about his political decisions, such as to prevent economic and fi-nancial fluctuations caused by riots through severe media censorship andthe persecution of dissidents. Hu constructs his personal image in the sameway as Chai Ling: using non-verbal communication—gestures, emotions,and facial expressions—to reinforce his discursive power. Willy Wo-LapLam describes Hu as “project[ing] the image of can-do” and marketinghimself as a “proactive leader . . . who ‘put[s] people first,’” particularlywhen influencing the “disadvantaged groupings” like “peasants and low-income workers” (34) through his expressions of caring. According to LiCheng and Lynn White, he built his “appealing public image during crisessuch as the 2003 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),”using his skills in “coalition building and consensus making” (83-84). Forinstance, in “Hu Jintao Zuinanwang Shashi Yiyi [Most Unforgettable Bat-tle for Hu Jintao],” a 2003 news report for Wenwei Po, a Hong Kong dailynewspaper with a leftist stance, Qiu Pinggei writes,

When Hu Jintao was asked about the most difficult prob-lem he encountered since his inauguration seven monthsago, he expressed his sorrow. In as somber voice, he said,“If you ask me what my most vexing thing was, I can

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frankly tell you: SARS. When thousands of compatriotswere threatened by SARS, when hundreds of compatriotsdied because of SARS, as the leader of China, my heartwas anxious like burning” (author’s translation).

Hu highlights his concern for public health during the SARS epidemic toshow his sympathy for the Chinese people. In the process of recalling thisevent, he projects his past compassion to the present. The rhetorical skillsemployed in his speech, such as parallel-sentence structure and metaphor,help him convey a significant theme in his political narrative that repre-sents him as always being there for the people. With the addition of affec-tive performance, described by the reporter as sorrowful and somber, hissophisticated manipulation of political language delivers the message thatstabilizing the national situation should be prioritized. If we also take intoaccount his failure to comment on such controversial issues as the arrest ofJiang Yanyong, a retired doctor who reported the SARS situation in Bei-jing to foreign media and later called for greater transparency regardingthe June Fourth Incident, we can see that this emphasis on stability effectsthe elimination of dissidents’ voices.

Undeniably, Hu Jintao’s strategic encouragement of harmony overother values, which was strengthened after the declaration of “building aharmonious socialist society,” guarantees the unity and stability of a dom-inant ideology that favors internal economic production and internationalcooperation. As a result, the accumulation of capital can generate matureconditions for his successors to incrementally and comprehensively im-prove China. However, even if the current, fifth-generation Chineseleader, Xi Jinping, or the sixth- or even seventh-generation leaders were tohave no intention of initiating any further steps, the process of “harmoniz-ing” China still provides space for later reformers, given that the opennessto interpretation of the “harmonious discourse” provides sufficient flexi-bility for Hu’s followers to achieve democracy in the long run. In anycase, CPC leaders still hold the dominant authority to determine how todevelop China and make it as ideologically, constitutionally, or in otherways democratic as the democrats hope. Nonetheless, that will depend onthe decisions of a few people with power rather than on the Chinesepublic.

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Conclusion

While Chinese democrats advocate Westernization, Chinese leaders tryto practice Chinese-style universalism by aiming to become global politi-cal and economic players instead of objects of Western control. Bothgroups deploy specific narrative strategies against each other in order towin public support, and both have symmetrical goals of changing their au-dience’s perspectives by appealing to emotions. Regardless of their differ-ent political visions, they share the same tendency towards building a con-sensus around Western values and aligning China with the internationalcommunity—the only problem being, as Peter Nolan notes, the Chinesegovernment’s burden of “2000 years of bureaucratic rule as well as 40years of Stalinist administration superimposed upon that” (76). The inter-nal complexity of the Chinese regime is therefore inextricably bound withunresolved historical and cultural issues—from the factional struggleswithin the CPC, to the potential influence by external powers, to the bulk-iness of the bureaucratic system—all of which continue to discourageChina from welcoming either fast or large changes.

Notes

1. After Mao Zedong died in 1977, Deng Xiaoping outmaneuvered Hua Guofeng, thesuccessor of Mao, becoming the leader of China from 1978 to 1992. He attributed thesocial and cultural problems in the past to China’s inferior economic power, thus pri-oritizing economic development in order to facilitate overall development, an idea in-herited by his successors, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xijinping.

2. The full name of the Cultural Revolution is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.It was a socio-political movement set into motion by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lastinguntil 1976. During this period, three million people were violently killed (Chang andHalliday 569). Due to social unrest, the low productivity and starvation earlier trig-gered by the failure of the 1961 Great Leap Forward continued unabated. Since 1968,on the pretext of solving the Red Guard problems, over seventeen million intellectuals,regardless of whether members of the Red Guard or not, were sent to labor in ruralareas (Bonnin 1).

3. Edward Said defines Orientalism as “a style of thought based upon an ontological andepistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Oc-cident’” (2). Chinese intellectuals disseminated a self-Orientalizing vision of China to

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the larger public by strategically “citing works and authors” (3), and promoting stereo-typical imagery of China’s inferiority in “[t]elevision, the films, and all the media’s re-sources” (26).

4. The “Scientific Development Concept” of Hu Jintao, the leader of China from 2002 to2012, aimed to build a “Harmonious Socialist Society,” and Xi Jinping, his successor,inherited his pursuit of “China’s peaceful development.”

5. For more information, see also Ying Zhu’s Television in Post-Reform China, whichanalyzes the cultural transformation of the harmonious concept, from a political toolinto Confucian-related cultural products. Also, in “The Road to Tiananmen,” Baum ex-plains how the goal of “social harmony” is juxtaposed with Hu Jintao’s “eight honorsand disgraces” to justify the “resurrection of elements of Confucian tradition in Chi-nese political discourse” (588).

Works Cited

The Analects of Confucius. Ed. and trans. Robert Eno. Early Chinese Thought. IndianaUniversity. 1 July. 2014. <http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Analects_of_Confucius_(Eno-2012).pdf>.

Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. London: Oxford UP, 1962.

Baum, Richard. “The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s.” The Politics of

China: Sixty Years of the People Republic of China. Ed. Roderick MacFarquhar. 3rd

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for the future. Her book project, From the Ashes of the Archive: CulturalMemory in Ex-Yugoslav Collections, 1993-2013, connects the dissolutionof Yugoslavia with the rise of experimental genres for representingtransnational regional belonging.

Natas̊a Kovac̊evicå is Associate Professor of global and postcolonial litera-ture at Eastern Michigan University. Her research on Cold War Oriental-ism and (post)communist dissident literature has been the subject of herbook Narrating Post/Communism: Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Bor-derline Civilization (2008). Her essays have appeared in Interventions: In-ternational Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Critique, ModernFiction Studies, and several collections. Her current research exploreschallenges to multicultural discourses in the European Union, specificallypostcolonial and postcommunist immigrant texts that imagine a suprana-tional community not based on filiative resemblance, racial, ethnic, or oth-erwise.

Irena S entevska is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Arts andMedia Theory at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. Her interdisci-plinary research focuses on identity (re)construction in post-Yugoslav po-litical and cultural contexts, as reflected in contemporary arts, media, pop-ular and, specifically, urban culture. S entevska has taught in theinterdisciplinary doctoral studies program at the University of Arts in Bel-grade and in the Departments of Architecture at the University of Belgradeand the University of Novi Sad. Her first book, The Swinging 90s: Theaterand Social Reality in Serbia in 29 Pictures, is forthcoming from Orion Artin Belgrade in 2015.

Erin Trapp teaches in the department of Cultural Studies and Compara-tive Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is cur-rently working on a book project titled The Revolutionary Spectator:Human Rights Poetry and the Eclipse of Contemplation. She has pub-lished essays on poetics and psychoanalysis in MLN, Cultural Critique,and Postmodern Culture.

Gabriel F. Y. Tsang is currently a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literatureat King’s College London, formerly at the University of Hong Kong for

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his Master of Arts degree. He is a member of the European NarratologyNetwork and the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies. Hisrecent research concerns the topics of ideology, narratology, body theory,subjectivity, and contemporary Chinese literature. As a writer, he has wonliterary awards in Hong Kong and published three novels, Stand (2010),Low Level Love (2012) and Silent Desire and Nothingness (2014).

Contributors 487

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