The China Dream: Global Enchantment or National Anxiety?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Since Xi Jinping announced in 2012 that his “China Dream” is for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” there has been much discussion of the meaning of this slogan. A multimedia campaign by the communist party has worked to guide the meaning of the China Dream in ways that reaffirm CCP’s leadership of the PRC. But such official propaganda campaigns do not exhaust the meaning of this fruitfully ambiguous phrase. The roundtable will explore the multiple meanings of the China Dream through the optics of politics, society, culture and the environment. Callahan will explore the tension between official and unofficial meanings of the China Dream in national and international space. Kraus will compare the political art of the Cultural Revolution with that of current China Dream campaigns. Larson will examine how pre-official expressions of the China Dream—the 2008 Beijing Olympics slogan “One World, One Dream”—guide China’s identity politics through visual spectacles at global mega events. Riemenschnitter will consider how the China Dream operates in environmental politics at the intersection of values and traditions, dream narratives and landscape representation. Wielander will examine the aspect of “happiness” within the China Dream, the psychological theories this discourse builds on, and the role the individual is expected to play in realizing the dream of a “happy China.” All participants will address wider questions: does the China Dream present an alternative political, cultural, social or environmental vision of the future? Does it, like the American Dream, mobilize followers beyond its national space?

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• William Callahan, London School of Economics

Chair

• Pheng Cheah, University of California, Berkeley

Discussants

• William Callahan, London School of Economics

• Wendy Larson, University of Oregon, Eugene

• Andrea Riemenschnitter, University of Zürich

• Gerda Wielander, University of Westminster

• Theodore Huters, The Chinese University of Hong Kong