Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China

Red Creative is an exploration of China’s cultural economy over the last twenty years, particularly through the lens of its creative hub of Shanghai. The research presented here raises questions about the nature of contemporary ‘creative’ capitalism and the universal claims of Western modernity, offering new ways of thinking about cultural policy in China. Taking a long-term historical perspective, Justin O’Connor and Xin Gu analyze the ongoing development of China’s cultural industries, examining the institutions, regulations, interests, and markets that underpin the Chinese cultural economy and the strategic position of Shanghai within it. Further, the authors explore cultural policy reforms in post-colonial China and articulate Shanghai’s significance in paving China’s path to modernity and entry to global capitalism. In-depth and illuminating, Red Creative carefully situates China’s contemporary cultural economy in its larger global and historical context, revealing the limits of Western thought in understanding Chinese history, culture, and society.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction:             Unknown Knowns Chapter 1:                The Creative Industries and the China Challenge Chapter 2:                Culture, Modernity and the Nation-State Chapter 3:                Shanghai: Cultural Industries and Modernity Chapter 4:                Post-Reform China and Neo-liberalism Chapter 5:                China as a Civilizational State Chapter 6:                Shanghai: Creative City Chapter 7:                Reforming the Culture System Chapter 8:                Creative Subjects Epilogue Index

About the Author :
Justin O'Connor is professor of communications and cultural economy at Monash University and visiting professor in the School of Media and Design at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Review :
'In-depth and illuminating, Red Creative carefully situates China’s contemporary cultural economy in its larger global and historical context, revealing the limits of Western thought in understanding Chinese history, culture, and society. [...] A fascinating book.' 'Rather than another book about an apocalyptic and malevolent China, Red Creative is intensely attuned to the cross-currents of politics and culture in the country, and the ways in which revolutionary traditions and alternative modernities still influence the way in which culture is produced and politics is understood.' 'One of the biggest virtues of the book is the complex vision delineated by the arguments showcasing different perspectives and a wide array of standpoints. [...] This book demonstrates the authors’ deep knowledge in both the history of economic thought and that of China, as well as the contemporary academic debates on related topics. [...] In summary, the book takes a critical look at the Chinese creative economy, with a strong focus on Shanghai, as the exemplary formula of Chinese modernism. Contesting many of the mainstream narratives and truisms dominating the cultural and creative industries discourses the book encourages us to understand China on its own terms. Of course, the reasoning could not only apply to China but many other countries outside the Euro-Atlantic world. Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China is an extremely insightful and informative venture, which will be a valuable resource for cultural policy decision-makers, academics, as well as educators.' Red Creative is a stunning piece of synthetic scholarship. It’s an essential overview of the limitations of major bodies of western thought in understanding Chinese history, culture and society, especially the ways concepts of culture and creativity have been mobilized in China over the last twenty years. The book’s scope is as remarkable as its depth. It presents an authoritative view of contemporary Chinese cultural policy and the development of the creative industries approach/agenda in China and the Asian region generally [...] It is a carefully crafted, fully researched analysis and assessment of a culture often treated as an object of fantasy by western intellectuals. 'Wide-ranging and insightful analysis... The interrogation of the significance of the concept of creative industries to China goes beyond the erroneous assumption that the introduction of the Western construct of creative industries brought modernity to China, and instead shows a distinctive development of the concept through multiple lenses including governance, subjectivity, citizenship, and the relationship between culture and production. The authors bring a different perspective to creative industries discourse, reigniting the significance of state/citizen and unraveling the (hollow) concept of the autonomy of the creative laborer central to Western approaches. Fundamentally, this book emphasizes the continued significance of the concept of the nation-state in cultural and creative industries discourse broadly...[An] important decentering of the dominant Western position in this discourse.'