Politics of love: Love as a religious and political discourse in modern China through the lens of political leaders

Guo, Ting Ting

doi:10.1177/2050303219874366

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The foundational value of love taught at the Wu-Wei School has seen a complex social history in modern China. As Guo (2020) shows, the articulatory category of love (understood as private sentiments) is a recent and politically charged addition to the Chinese lexicon. The character 愛 originally denoted Confucian values of generosity, clemency and kindness, manifested through status-appropriate conduct.…”

Section: Social Implications Of Ethical Self-improvement: Cultivating...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Practicing citizenship privately: ethical self-fashioning and citizen-making in the revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture”

Zhang

2022

STICS

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Purpose This paper aims to explore the relationship between ethical self-fashioning and citizenship practices in the ongoing revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture” pursued in tandem by the party-state and by private actors in present-day China. Design/methodology/approach Adopting an anthropological approach, the author draws from three sets of resources: (1) research literature on China’s political history and key texts of early Chinese thought, (2) contemporary state discourses on citizen formation, and (3) participant observation notes and interviews with organizers and followers of the Wu-Wei School (a pseudonym). The author conducts a textual analysis of primary and secondary literature and a critical discourse analysis of the ethnographic data and examines emerging themes. Findings Firstly, the author identifies a crucial dimension in the historical and cultural roots of Chinese citizenship practices: an enduring conception that binds individual ethical self-improvement with socio-political flourishing. Secondly, examining contemporary state discourses on “citizen quality” and “reviving China’s outstanding traditional culture”, the author showcases how party-state authorities call on individuals to self-reform for national rejuvenation. Thirdly, the author investigates how members of the Wu-Wei School construe their individual pursuits of ethical self-improvement as significant for societal progress. Originality/value Based on these findings, the author demonstrates the ways in which autochthonous conceptions of Chinese citizenship give a central place to private acts of self-fashioning. The author argues that the entanglement between individual ethics and citizenship practices constitutes a crucial but largely understudied dimension of Chinese citizenship.

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Section: Social Implications Of Ethical Self-improvement: Cultivating...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Practicing citizenship privately: ethical self-fashioning and citizen-making in the revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture”

Zhang

2022

STICS

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“…The substitution of "Christian standpoint" by "people's standpoint" aims to regulate the object of Christian loyalty, discipline their understanding of "love of God", and to channel that religious sentiment toward the partystate. With no doubt, behind the discourse of "supra-politics" was a battle for shaping the Christians' ideological and emotional consciousness that contributed to the construction of a new political faith or religion (Guo 2019). 9…”

Section: Behind "Supra-politics"mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Christian Discourses of “Chao Zhengzhi” (Supra-Politics) in the Early PRC: A Religio-Political Reappraisal

Ying

2022

Religions

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In the context of the Chinese churches, religio-political relations or interaction is an unavoidable but widely controversial issue. On the one hand, the political control of religion can be regarded as the dominant model of the relationship between state and church in Chinese society. On the other hand, different religions and even diverse traditions within religious bodies have developed divided attitudes and stances on how to deal with their relationships with state and politics. The year 1949 was an important watershed in the contemporary history of China. The new regime carried out a comprehensive remolding and reformation of all sectors of Chinese society, and the religious sphere was not spared. “Supra-politics” (“chao zhengzhi”) was one of the charges that often appeared in the communists’ criticism and reform movement against Christianity after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This article aims to address the following questions: (1) What does “supra-politics” mean? What is the political context of the emergence of this discourse? (2) Why and how did the Communist Party of China (CPC) use the discourse of “supra-politics” to criticize Christian churches? (3) What are the different understandings and interpretations of the “supra-politics” discourse among churches in China? This article offers a review of the controversy and discourse of the “supra-political” position of Christianity, which may contribute to the critical investigation of the religio-political relations of the early PRC.

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“…. it is also elevated to the level of propaganda in order to encourage and strengthen people’s devotion to the regime” (Guo, 2020, p. 48). In our case study, we see modalities of both filial and intimate devotion, with the critical addition of cuteness as a resource in the state’s productive management of emotion.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework: Fandom Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”: Fandom Governance and the Political Power of Cuteness in China

Wong

Lee

Long

et al. 2021

Social Media + Society

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This article describes how the Chinese state borrows from the culture of celebrity fandom to implement a novel strategy of governing that we term “fandom governance.” We illustrate how state-run social media employed fandom governance early in the COVID-19 pandemic when the country was convulsed with anxiety. As the state faced a crisis of confidence, state social media responded with a propagandistic display of state efficacy, broadcasting a round-the-clock livestream of a massive emergency hospital construction project. Chinese internet users playfully embellished imagery from the livestream. They unexpectedly transformed the construction vehicles into cute personified memes, with Baby Forklift and Baby Mud Barfer (a cement mixer) among the most popular. In turn, state social media strategically channeled this playful engagement in politically productive directions by resignifying the personified vehicles as celebrity idols. Combining social media studies with cultural and linguistic anthropology, we offer a processual account of the semiotic mediations involved in turning vehicles into memes, memes into idols, and citizens into fans. We show how, by embedding cute memes within modules of fandom management such as celebrity ranking lists, state social media rendered them artificially vulnerable to a fall in status. Fans, in turn, rallied around to “protect” these cute idols with small but significant acts of digital devotion and care, organizing themselves into fan circles and exhorting each other to vote. In elevating the memes to the status of celebrity idols, state social media thereby created a disposable pantheon of virtual avatars for the state, and consolidated state power by exploiting citizens’ voluntary response to vulnerability. We analyze fandom governance as a new development in the Chinese state’s long history of governing citizens through the management of emotion.

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Politics of love: Love as a religious and political discourse in modern China through the lens of political leaders

Cited by 12 publications

References 12 publications

Practicing citizenship privately: ethical self-fashioning and citizen-making in the revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture”

Practicing citizenship privately: ethical self-fashioning and citizen-making in the revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture”

The Christian Discourses of “Chao Zhengzhi” (Supra-Politics) in the Early PRC: A Religio-Political Reappraisal

“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”: Fandom Governance and the Political Power of Cuteness in China

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