“Heritage Politics in China” examines the process of heritage-making in China, focusing on how “universal” heritage regimes and discourses promoted by UNESCO are appropriated by different stakeholders in China to legitimise the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Drawing on “value appropriation” as a central analytical framework, Zhu and Maags analyse how state institutions in China have mobilised these “universal” heritage discourses and policies locally to reinforce a collective national identity and promote economic development. Through such value appropriation, local cultural practices are transformed from the private domains into a form of public good amenable to state governance and exploitation. This book engages with these complex politics of heritage appropriation, contestation, and negotiation in contemporary China. It makes an important contribution to research on critical heritage studies, especially in mainland China, which is experiencing a heritage renaissance or what the authors term as “a heritage fever”.
This highly accessible book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter introduces the key concepts that the book engages with. It outlines the historical roots of the term “heritage” and the broader scholarship surrounding the concept of “heritage”, before explaining how the notion of “value appropriation” can offer a useful perspective for understanding the power of heritage in both discourse and practice. It then offers a brief account of the emergence of the international heritage regime, focusing on UNESCO and its mechanisms, and how this “universal” heritage regime is appropriated in China, leading to a “heritage fever” or “Chinese renaissance” that has been observed in China over the last two decades. Chapter two traces the cultural history of heritage in China, beginning with an overview of the heritage practices that have existed during the imperial era, to the introduction of Western heritage discourses and institutions from the late Qing dynasty, and the subsequent appropriation and domestication of these discourses to suit the political and economic agendas of the Chinese state government that. Crucially, it highlights how built heritage in imperial China underwent continuous cycles of destruction and rebuilding that chimed with the rise and fall of new political dynasties, which accounts for the lack of material preservation of China's architectural heritage over time. Instead, much of Chinese preoccupation with its material heritage lies within the preservation of its historical records and imperial collections, as well as in the development of Chinese antiquarianism. Chapter three unpacks the organisational structure of China's state heritage institutions, and the heritage discourses they promote, demonstrating how “universal” heritage discourses are translated into state policies for local implementation through its internal bureaucratic channels, which in turn further legitimises these heritage discourses in China.
Chapters four to six examines the impacts of these heritage discourses and policies on the cultural heritage of the local communities, focusing on the case studies of heritage preservation efforts in Xi'an, Nanjing and Lijiang. In Xi'an, the local authorities recreated the architectural features and aesthetics that harked back to the city's historical position as the imperial capital of China during the Tang dynasty in its redevelopment efforts, converting urban spaces into heritage spaces on display. These urban regeneration efforts, arguably a form of “spatial cleansing” (Herzfeld Reference Herzfeld2006), offered opportunities for the romantic consumption of heritage experiences and served to engender a sense of national pride among its residents and domestic tourists. In the Qujiang New District in the suburbs of Xi'an, state-led developments of heritage theme-parks and luxury apartments led to the gentrification and repopulation of the area by the new middle class, pushing out the peasants and migrant workers that once inhabited the area. At the Muslim Quarter, initial resistance of the ethnic Hui Muslim minority to urban renewal gave way to organic touristification of the area, leading to the erosion of social cohesion among the Hui community and their subsequent absorption into the state model of urban governance. An online campaign against the state-led conversion of the Xingjiao Temple from a place of worship to a tourism attraction, while successfully reversing a government directive, did little to reconfigure the unequal power dynamics between the state and the local communities. These examples show how heritage can be mobilised as a positive discourse to diffuse tensions surrounding urban redevelopment, a phenomenon that I have similarly observed in a heritage conservation project at the coastal city of Quanzhou in China (Cai Reference Cai, Lam-Knott, Connolly and Kong Chong2019).
The case study on Nanjing analyses the politics surrounding the preservation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as a resource for development. In Nanjing, the provincial government localised the statewide ICH safeguarding programmes and policies by commissioning surveys on local ICH practices, setting up museums and other public spaces to facilitate the exhibition and performance of ICH, and instituting programmes to recognise master handcrafters as ICH inheritors. These efforts were aimed co-opting the local craft practitioners into state agendas of rebranding the city for nationalism and tourism, while making them amenable to state governance. While such state-sponsored efforts to promote ICH led to the growth of a thriving handicraft market locally, they also spurred the production of cheap mass-produced alternatives that compromised efforts to safeguard the workmanship associated with the production of these handicrafts. Similar to the heritage-making processes in Xi'an, state-led initiatives to promote ICH in Nanjing has led to the commercialisation of heritage, producing complex implications on the cultural heritage and the lives of the cultural practitioners.
The last case study focuses on the impacts of the state-led heritage discourse and policy on ethnic minority heritage in Lijiang. At Lijiang, heritage had been mobilised to promote a discourse of unity in diversity to project an image of a unified and harmonious China, in ways which exoticised and downplayed the uniqueness of each ethnic minority heritage. This not only served to depoliticise the complicated ethnic politics in China, but also legitimised their governance of the ethnic minorities by the Han majority. The heritagisation of Lijiang's Old Town not only displaced the Naxi communities from the town, but also contributed to the commodification of their cultural heritage for touristic consumption, leading to their marginalisation both spatially and culturally. Yet, these cultural revitalisation efforts were actively embraced by the Naxi communities, who saw these initiatives as government endorsement for their Naxi cultural identity as well as new opportunities for employment through tourism.
Chapter seven proposes a five-stage linear process for understanding the heritage-making process in China that evolves from institutionalisation, authentication, recognition, museumification to commercialisation. It also offers a model for mapping the different societal responses to the heritage-making process that range from active embrace, passive acceptance, reframing to resistance. Chapter eight concludes by summarising the key arguments of the book and outlining its contribution to the broader literature on heritage studies. Importantly, the authors argue that the domination of “universal” heritage practices and policies as “authorised heritage discourse” (Smith Reference Smith2006) in China renders any resistance to this dominant discourse futile, since these heritage transformations are often framed as positive processes which bring socio-economic development to the local communities.
Overall, this book offers a systematic approach for understanding the complex political dynamics of heritage-making in China. The work of unpacking China's cultural history of heritage, as well as the organisational structure of its state heritage institutions and their relationship at different levels is especially useful for shedding light on the complex bureaucratic structures of governance within China. The case studies of Xi'an, Nanjing and Lijiang are well-selected as they exemplify the broader processes of heritage transformation that are unfolding in different parts of China resulting from China's statewide institutionalisation of these “universal” heritage discourses and policies.
While the two models proposed in chapter seven are useful in helping readers understand the dynamics of heritage-making in China, they may risk oversimplifying the complex politics and dynamics surrounding China's appropriation and domestication of the “universal” heritage discourses, as well as societal responses to them. The five-stage process on heritage-making in China takes a top-down, structuralist approach, showing how heritage discourses in China are translated from official to public and later private domains. This top-down approach does not sufficiently account for local agency in shaping these heritage discourses and practices. I wonder if the “heritage from below approach” (see Muzaini and Minca Reference Muzaini and Minca2018; Robertson Reference Robertson2012) can offer a theoretical perspective to examine the role of local agency in shaping these heritage discourses instituted by the Chinese state. In my own study of contemporary cultural practices in Malaysia, I have observed that the Lotud ritual specialists in Sabah have requested tourists to conform to the cultural expectations of ritual ceremonies by observing silence and not taking photographs as a way of holding control and retaining agency of their cultural heritage, preventing them from giving way to cultural commodification (Cai Reference Cai2020). For example, it will be interesting to understand if and how the Naxi communities valorise their cultural heritage differently in their own community or ritual settings away from the prying eyes of tourists, and how these activities may shape the heritage discourses from below.
While I appreciate that the authors are alluding to how the process of museumification can enhance the value of certain cultural objects and practices, which can in turn provide opportunities for other private enterprises to extract their commercial value through heritage tourism and the commercialisation of these cultural products and practices, I feel that it can engage more critically with the broader scholarship on the materiality of objects, especially that of museum objects and their replicas. Walter Benjamin's (Reference Benjamin and Arendt1969[1936]) seminal work “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production” argues that the reproduction of the cultural products de-value the aura, and hence, the commercial value of the work. It may be interesting to consider more critically the relationship between objects in museums, and their replicas in the form of souvenirs, which are on sale at commercial enterprises.
On the typologies of societal responses identified by the authors, I feel that the authors can engage more critically with the range and nature of local negotiations and resistance to the hegemonic state discourses of heritage in China. James Scott analyses the different forms of resistance among subordinated and powerless groups that can range from the subtle non-cooperation of the subaltern Malaysian peasants in Weapons of the Weak (Scott Reference Scott1985), to the use of public transcripts and hidden transcripts in Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Scott Reference Scott1990). Given the unequal power dynamics between the state and its subjects in China, I wonder if Scott's framing of domination and resistance may offer a more productive framework for understanding the complex nuances surrounding societal responses to China's heritage discourses and policies.
“Heritage Politics in China” is an important work that engages with the critical scholarship on heritage-making in China, focusing on the institutionalisation and appropriation of “universal” heritage discourses in China, and their implications on the lives and cultural heritage of the local communities. Its systematic and well-structured analysis of China's heritage policies and their local impacts will help readers make sense of the complex processes and dynamics of heritage transformation in China. It is a highly recommended read for anyone who has an interest in cultural heritage, especially in the context of mainland China.
