The People’s Republic of China has set itself a new goal: to become a global cultural power. If China is to “stand strong in the forest of nations,” we are told by various officials, it must “go global” with a culture that appeals to outsiders and “waste no time to occupy the emerging cultural battlefield.” To ensure the success of this “occupation,” the Communist Party devoted its 2011 plenum to “chart[ing] the future for China’s cultural power rise.”
“The Great Flourishing” is the name sometimes given to this new period of rapid cultural development. Our eponymous blog will monitor the (truly amazing) cultural transformations now underway in China, and analyze the tensions that sometimes result when the state’s vision for cultural greatness deviates from that of the artists upon whom it must rely to achieve its quest.