A mirror-maze of hope and illusion: Chinese cultural identity and globalisation

In the rich and complex history of China, Western culture (in Umberto Eco’s sense) has been a significant reference point and trigger for China’s extensive and often painful national self-reflection, in which the tensions between traditional Chinese values and Western cultural paradigms (or "the alien other") determined the radical repositioning of the Chinese cultural self. China’s preoccupation with Western culture (Modernism) peaked in the 1920s and 1930s and again in the 1980s in Deng Xiaoping’s ambitious vision of a new national identity, which resulted in the globalisation of market and cultural life. While China’s economic success has attracted considerable interest in the West, the social and cultural problems resulting from it domestically require wise and courageous solutions since the hope that globalisation will ensure equity, justice and democracy in China and in the world at large is identified by some scholars as utopian (Wang Hui) or a "fairy tale" (Naomi Klein). The proposed paper attempts to elucidate the impact of globalisation on China’s cultural and intellectual life, identifying potential dangers of cultural dislocation and loss of cultural identity. Attention will also be given to recent research, in which China’s globalisation agenda is questioned