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7. Western Representations of the Other
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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7 Western Representations of the Other Qing Cao Introduction Historically, China has been a place of mystery to the Western mind. It is as remote as it is vast, ancient, alien, and fascinating. The tales of “Cathay” reached Europe as early as the seventh century, followed by generations of travelers such as Marco Polo and missionaries. During Western colonial expansion in the nineteenth century, China remained the last and largest country to resist being fully opened up, penetrated, and appropriated,1 and as a result it was not politically, economically, and intellectually possessed by the West.2 It remained, therefore, one of the least understood among ancient civilizations. Following World War II, China was suddenly “lost” to Communism and once more “withdrew”3 into total isolation. A civilization veiled in cultural mystique acquired a new veneer of the alienness of an ideological enemy. China’s membership in the Communist camp in 1949 caused fresh fear4 of the spread of Communism that coexisted alongside a romanticized rosy picture of a socialist utopia. This double alienness earned China the reputation of being one of the most unfathomable lands on earth. Over the last quarter of a century, China has again caught the world’s attention, first as a communist state that renounced orthodox Communist ideologies and embraced the market economy, and then as an unrepentant “dictatorship” refusing “political liberalization.” The 1989 crackdown of studentled protests, transmitted live into the living room of a global audience, transformed China’s image overnight. The collapse of the Soviet Empire left a Cold War style of reporting5 obsolete, as summarized by James Hoge (1995) in his article 4HE %ND OF 0REDICTABILITY. “God” (human rights concerns) or “Mammon” (trade with China), as Chris Patten described in %AST AND 7 EST (BBC2, 1998), have become two dominant but narrow ways of seeing post-Tiananmen China. The rapid growth of the Chinese economy at an annual rate of over nine 106 Qing Cao percent6 and the strategic importance of China as a potential global power make images of China not only more complex, varied, controversial, entangled with stereotypes, clichés, myths, and fantasies but also show new tensions, concerns, ambiguities, and contradictions.7 This chapter aims to review critically Western popular representation of China through an examination of broad patterns of Western images of China and theoretical and conceptual frameworks applied to the study of such images. “Image” is used here to indicate general conceptions in the public consciousness circulated mainly through the mass media. It attempts to explore the much under-researched area of latent patterns of Western discourse on China that underpins popular images. Broad features of such patterns are explored in relation to the historical context of intercultural relations. Drawing on Foucault (1972, 1980) and Said (1978, 1994), this chapter applies a socio-cultural approach to the study of representation, accentuating intercultural power relations as external forces determining underlying meanings conveyed through images. Representing China is seen as part of “discursive practice” (Foucault 1972) in the symbolic world to manage China as a cultural and ideological “other.” For Foucault, discourse constructs the topic, defines and produces the objects of knowledge, governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully reasoned about, defines an acceptable and intelligible way to talk or write about a topic, and restricts other ways of talking and writing about it. This socio-political dimension of discourse forms the basis of the investigation in this chapter. Defining representation: Establishing a position Raymond Williams (1976, 269) distinguishes two senses of the word “representation.” In the world of art, representation means “accurate reproduction,” which “runs counter to the main development of the POLITICAL sense.” In more recent times, “representation” refers mainly to how reality is “presented” or “re-presented” in cultural and media studies. Hartley (1992, 265) explains “representation” in semiotic terms as “an abstract ideological concept.” Hall (1997, 17), however, sees “representation” broadly as the “production of meaning of the concepts in our minds through language.” Nevertheless, both follow Williams in referring to “representation” as a POLITICAL CONSTRUCT in sociocultural processes. For Hall, representation constitutes one of the central practices that produce culture. It is central to the process through which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture, and, in an intercultural context, between different traditions and societies. Crucially, the two senses Williams distinguishes are essential in the study of cultural representation: “accurate representation” and “social construction.” Hall is among those who conceptualize representation as a social construction. According to Hall...