Special cultural zones: provincializing global media in neoliberal china

Аннотация

Special Cultural Zones: Provincializing Global Media in Neoliberal China explores how digital, televisual, and filmic productions of the liberal economic growth zones mediate constructions of ethnicity, class, gender, and citizenship in the context of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, I look at how the Guangdong Province in Southern China has been configured in media production, policy, and activism in China, Hong Kong, and the U.S. since 1980. By framing the province as a site of neoliberal globalization in the context of global media rather than a region of China, this project challenges the prevalent conception of mainland China as a monolithic cultural entity and investigates the cultural exchanges among the province, Hong Kong, and diasporic Cantonese. Bordering Hong Kong, Guangdong Province has successfully implemented the liberal economic policy of the “Special Economic Zones” to attract foreign direct investment, develop exportoriented manufacturing sector, and thus launch the nation-wide economic reform. The province has become an integral part of the global economy and it now trades far more with foreign countries than it does with the rest of China.