Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture: Tradition, Modernity, and Gl ...

during this period, they would have faced dire consequences, ranging from public humiliation to imprisonment and perhaps execution. This is why it is so important to contextualise the current debates about traditional culture; forty years ago it was a very dangerous topic.

The Cultural Revolution period came to a close with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Deng Xiaoping, who had been persecuted during Mao’s reign, became powerful once again and denounced the Cultural Revolution in 1977. He laid the foundation of the new market economy in China that ultimately led to Jiang Zemin’s signing of the protocol that ratified China’s membership in the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This, in turn, opened the floodgates for the globalised visual culture that is now commonplace in China. Chinese cities are full of imagery from the consumer industries, and Chinese universities are filled with eager students who wish to be part of the global cultural industries, just like their Western counterparts. The remnants of traditional visual culture that continue to persevere in the countryside and smaller towns are now being threatened as much, if not more, by consumerism as they were by the four olds campaign, and they are being nurtured in these neglected corners of the country that are still resistant to this influx of mass culture. A curious contradiction has been established after a century of debate and the active destruction of traditional cultural artefacts during the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, it seems the ideas and qualities of traditional culture can be appreciated now that they are no longer culturally dominant, and the agents of modernisation that destroyed traditional culture now have the confidence to try to resuscitate it. It is this process of attempted restitution in which the contributors to this book are engaged.

For a myriad of reasons, from the academic concerned with cultural integrity, to the business man keen to develop tradition economically, to the state that sees tradition as a means to sustain social cohesion during a time of economic upheaval, China is not alone in trying to protect its heritage. In fields ranging from linguistics to ethical philosophy, a contemporary global transformation is taking place concerning the way traditional cultures are viewed. The transformation of people’s thinking about traditional cultures is inexorably formed by changes in material