Depoliticization through Cultural Policy and Intellectual Property Rights: The Case of Lijiang

In this article I first relate and analyze the overall development of cultural policy and the intellectual property rights (IPR) legal structure in China, in order to show how China's policy and its legal environment increasingly adapt to global conditions. I then use Lijiang, a tourist area, as an example to show how national cultural policy and global IPR overlap in the local economy. I also demonstrate how this history escapes Aihwa Ong's theorization of "exception," as the related global and state interests converge not at areas of exception but at the heart of numerous local economies, allowing the new economy to penetrate and prevail.