{"id":34692,"date":"2023-06-08T06:53:36","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T20:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinaheritage.net\/?p=34692"},"modified":"2023-06-11T06:32:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T20:32:51","slug":"communist-chinese-mantras-keywords-and-the-importance-of-formulaic-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaheritage.net\/journal\/communist-chinese-mantras-keywords-and-the-importance-of-formulaic-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Communist Chinese Mantras \u2014 keywords and the importance of formulaic language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching China Watching <\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

Chapter XLI<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

\u5927\u4e2d\u898b\u5c0f\uff0c\u5c0f\u4e2d\u898b\u5927\uff0c\u865b\u4e2d\u6709\u5be6\uff0c
\n\u5be6\u4e2d\u6709\u865b\uff0c\u6216\u85cf\u6216\u9732\uff0c\u6216\u6dfa\u6216\u6df1\u3002<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

In\u00a0Watching China Watching<\/em><\/a>, a China Heritage<\/em> series launched in January 2018, we offer essays and reflections on studying the Chinese world and approaches to understanding the Chinese People\u2019s Republic. Our method is underpinned by\u00a0New Sinology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The men and women who taught us to engage with the Chinese world and to appreciate things Chinese in a holistic fashion were motivated and inspired by many things: their personal histories, a diverse range of interests, as well as a pressing necessity to watch (and to watch out for) China. For many of them, Chinese and non-Chinese alike (after all, some of the greatest China Watchers are from China), China was not a distant subject for study but an essential part of lived reality. Their insights were generally based not on some crude social science or anthropological approach to observing The Other, or the result of dissecting an object rich in possibility as part of some ambitious career trajectory. Their understanding was based as much on entanglement, fraught questioning, a spirit of self-discovery and personal enrichment as the result of a lifelong effort to approach what is in fact an all-encompassing cultural-political world from a broad humanistic perspective.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In June 2010, China Heritage Quarterly<\/em> published a note on the term \u6298\u9a30 zh\u0113 teng<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and, in December 2011, that note \u00a0became the first entry in a fledgling\u00a0China Heritage Glossary<\/a>. The Glossary developed slowly as it was sidetracked by a short-lived, although ambitious venture titled\u00a0China Story Keywords<\/a>\u00a0that I created for The China Story<\/a> site founded in 2012. Both of those modest undertakings feature in the present China Heritage Glossary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although our Glossary took its immediate inspiration from Lin Yutang (\u6797\u8a9e\u5802, 1895-1976), we also snuck a sidewards glance at Raymond Williams and Keywords of the Chinese Revolution<\/a> (1993-1996), a project initiated by Timothy Cheek<\/a>, an old friend, among others, and spearheaded by Jeffrey Wasserstrom<\/a>, a collaborator in The Gate of Heavenly Peace<\/em><\/a> documentary film on which I worked from 1991 to 1995.<\/p>\n

Below, we reproduce Robert Barnett’s<\/a> introduction to a special section in the May 2023 issue of Inner Asia<\/em> titled ‘Keywords\u2014A Window into China\u2019s Governance of Its Inner Asian Borderlands’ in which the author draws together some of those disparate ventures in his insightful discussion of the political mantras of China’s Communists. The six studies of \u2018Other China\u2019 that Professor Barnett introduces, focus on \u2018the role of formalistic, ritualised political language as a technology for ruling, and as sources for the circulation of narratives that declare and facilitate state policies and goals.\u2019 He concludes his overview of \u2018Communist Party mantras\u2019 (our term) with the observation that \u2018the study of official language, guided by scholars from the peripheries of the state to whom its underlying logic of unity is most apparent, presents itself as a powerful avenue for ethnographic research\u2019. This approach is particularly relevant for those embroiled in the study of what we call Xi Jinping\u2019s Empire of Tedium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We are delighted to be able to include Professor Barnett’s insightful essay in Watching China Watching<\/em><\/a>. It is also included in our New Sinology Bibliography<\/em><\/a>. We have added some hyperlinks to the essay and split up the introductory paragraph for ease of reading. Additional Chinese characters have been included in square brackets [].<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The extended Chinese epigram of this chapter in Watching China Watching<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is taken from \u2018The Little Pleasures of Life\u2019 \u9592\u60c5\u8a18\u8da3, chapter two of\u00a0Six Chapters of a Floating Life<\/em><\/a> \u6d6e\u751f\u516d\u8a18<\/a>, a Qing-era memoir by Shen Fu \u6c88\u5fa9:<\/p>\n

\u5927\u4e2d\u898b\u5c0f\uff0c\u5c0f\u4e2d\u898b\u5927\uff0c\u865b\u4e2d\u6709\u5be6\uff0c
\n\u5be6\u4e2d\u6709\u865b\uff0c\u6216\u85cf\u6216\u9732\uff0c\u6216\u6dfa\u6216\u6df1\u3002<\/p>\n

Lin Yutang translates this passage as:<\/p>\n

‘One should try to show the big in the small and the small in the big, and provide for the real in the unreal. One reveals and conceals alternatively, making it sometimes apparent and sometimes hidden.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, Shen Fu\u2019s description of how best to design a garden may also resonate with students of contemporary Chinese political discourse.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Geremie R. Barm\u00e9
\nEditor, China Heritage<\/em>
\n8 June 2023<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Related Material:<\/strong><\/p>\n