Abstract—This paper looks at China’s official cultural
identity that has been constructed as discourses and used as
China’s soft power as reflected in contemporary Chinese art
externally and internally. The Chinese Government constructed
a unitary official cultural identity to ensure China’s social
cohesion and national unity when communist ideology was no
longer upheld as China’s central belief system after Deng
Xiaoping’s economic reforms in 1979. “Chinese culture” has
been regarded as the core of China’s soft power in exercising
China’s cultural influence in the face of Western cultural
imperialism in the post-Mao era in which China’s rapid
economic growth has largely strengthened the nation’s
confidence in asserting its position on the global stage and in
holding its own world view. This paper argues that there is,
however, a void behind China’s soft power. The recuperation of
China’s traditional culture and Confucianism is more of a
strategic political language than a return to an “authentic”
cultural root.
Index Terms—Cultural identity, cultural diplomacy, soft
power, contemporary Chinese art.
Yao Yung-Wen is with the Culture Film and Media Department,
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK (e-mail: ajxyy1@
nottingham.ac.uk).
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Cite: Yao Yung-Wen, " The Void of Chineseness: Contemporary Art and Cultural
Diplomacy in China," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 5, no. 11, pp. 971-975, 2015.