From Danwei today we learn that its video series, Sexy Beijing, has been branded as cultural imperialism by students at the London School of Economics.   I rise in defense of the lady: Su Fei is not a cultural imperialist.

    Perhaps I shouldn’t take this too seriously, but there is a kernel of an idea here.  Let me put it out there as a general proposition: cultural imperialism today is not what it was 50, or even 10 years ago.  In more distant times we might have been able to connect certain cultural practices or ideas with "western" state power.  After all, imperialism is all about power.  It is about forcing or enticing people from "other" cultures to accept the superiority of "our" culture, in a way that serves "our" power interests.  Edward Said, of course, had this nailed for the nineteenth, and a good part of the twentieth centuries.  But, globalization has taken us far from the conditions that existed when more straightforward cultural imperialist arguments were possible. 

     First, what is Su Fei’s power position vis-a-vis her Chinese interlocutors.  Is she an extension of "Western power" in China?   I think not.  The Chinese state is very capable in regulating and managing the movement and actions of foreigners within its borders.  There are several academics I know who cannot travel there because they are banned for making politically incorrect statements.  If the authorities wanted to get rid of Su Fei, they could – and no one, except her faithful Danwei viewers, would really notice.  The US government would not defend her in any way. And that is because China is not a colony; it enjoys a variety of power advantages in the world and its elite is quite confident about the country’s historical significance. 

     The political leadership made a conscious decision to "open and reform" in the late 1970s, knowing full well that this would affect cultural practices, but they have, time and again over the past 25 years, reaffirmed that basic strategy as best for building national power.  And who is going to say that China has not become much stronger precisely as a result of opening itself to interaction with other cultures?  Bottom line: China is powerful, Su Fei, however fetching, is not. 

      Moreover, it is now quite impossible to make the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreign".  Should we begin in the realm of ideology?  The very notion of a "modern" China, if we want to be conceptually finicky, is the result of historical interactions with the West.  Of course, this is not a clear cut distinction either – the imperial Chinese state came pretty damn close to the bureaucratic structure that Max Weber had in mind – but, at the very least, by the turn of the twentieth century no small number of Chinese understood their historical mission as rejecting Chinese traditions in order to save China.  China had to change, it had to modernize, if it was going to "stand up" eventually.  And it did.

     Are those May Fourth modernizers somehow not genuinely and authentically Chinese?  Did they sell out the nation and its traditions for some base material interests?  Of course not.  Lu Xun is as Chinese as Qinshi Huangdi.  And what about Mao?  He embraced a foreign ideology and made it a central element of modern Chinese national identity.  Is he not Chinese?  Or did he sinicize Marxism just enough to preserve his status as Chinese? 

     These are all silly questions, of course.  But they are reminders of the global impossibility of cultural authenticity.  We cannot somehow distinguish easily between "us" and "them."  We are all so balled up into a constantly transforming global flow of cultural images and ideas that we can no longer step back and say, I am purely "Chinese" or "Indian" or "Irish" or "American."

    And don’t even get me started on the decline of US "soft power" in the world during the Bush administration (full pdf version here)….

    I am going on at length here because I am wary of the flip side of this argument and the way it might be deployed against me. 

    For those new to this blog: I am a guy who is interested in how ancient Chinese thought can apply to modern American issues.  This line of work cannot really be branded "cultural imperialism," because I am not trying to make China adopt "Western culture."  I could be attacked by Chinese nationalists as being an impostor – that is, a non-Chinese who tries to interpret ancient Chinese thought.  Such a charge, however, runs counter to the universalism embraced by the early texts themselves.  Confucius believed that his ideas were expressions of "civilization," which could be extended to "barbarians" anywhere.  To paraphrase Marx: Confucians have no nation.  So, I don’t really worry about that attack (because I do not believe that the only way to understand a culture is to exist within it; interiority is one stance; exteriority is another; each brings its own perspective; neither is complete or final).

     No, what I anticipate (and it really hasn’t happened yet) is the opposite: the charge that I have gone "soft on China" and am advancing a "Chinese soft power strategy" in the US.  This, of course, would be a line taken by US nationalists (Lou Dobbs might be on to this any day now…).  It is, ironically, the mirror image of the "critique" of the LSE students.  The main premise is that "our" authentic culture is being eroded by the importation of "foreign" ideas and practices, our traditions are being lost, our identity forfeited.  And, for those who want to make such arguments, my work, which attempts to make ancient Chinese thought a part of contemporary American discourse, promotes American "decline." 

    I don’t buy this, obviously.  And my reasons are precisely the same as my reasons for rejecting the "cultural imperialist" attack on Su Fei: it is all flux now everywhere.  Instead of fretting about imperialism and authenticity, why not focus instead about the new possibilities for cultural hybridity and the necessity of constructing practices of Humanity in these more dynamic circumstances.