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Limits On China's Soft Power: Booty Shaking

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

In its post, "Hu Jintao Needs to 'Get Retarded'" the always original Mutant Palm Blog convincingly argues how China's plan to use its cultural industries to advance China's soft power worldwide is doomed to failure. The post pulls the following quote from Hu Jintao's call for developing China's cultural industry: ?[we must] create more excellent, popular works that reflect the people?s principal position in the country and their real life... vigorously develop the cultural industry, launch major projects to lead the industry as a whole, speed up development of cultural industry bases and clusters of cultural industries with regional features, nurture key enterprises and strategic investors, create a thriving cultural market and enhance the industry?s international competitiveness.? It then notes how this cultural propagation must be done under "correct guidance" and how "suppression, macro-meddling, nationalism and cultural snobbery" are a poor "recipe for a cultural renaissance." The post uses the Black Eyed Peas and the popularity of their song, "Let's Get Retarded," as proof. Pop is what sells:

Pop music and movies are where it's at (and comic books, but they totally botched the 5155 Project, which just proves how doomed these campaigns are). And globally, nothing sells like booty shaking and giant robots. But all that is going to be too low brow for the Chinese state-dominated media. China's not going to have much cultural soft power until the State Council loosens up. Which ought to be some time around, oh, never.

Mutant Palm is absolutely right. Governments can get away with telling their own people what to do. Governments can even rarely get away with telling their own people what to like. But no government has influence enough to dictate the music, movies, TV, plays, or art to which those outside its borders will listen or watch. Government edict cannot lead to a flowering of Chinese culture worldwide, but government restrictions can certainly stifle it. China's artistic culture is going to spread and it is going to influence. But those portions of it that spread and influence are not likely to be those mandated or manipulated, or even encouraged, by the state.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on January 14, 2008 (boomark / email).