Chinese government policy and international exchange in performing arts 1949-2005

More than fifty years have past since the found of the People's Republic of China in1949; after which Chinese society experienced many changes owing to theadjustments of government policies. The aim of this thesis is to determine howChinese government policies have affected the international exchange of performingarts from 1949 to 2005. The assessment was conducted over three historical periods:the planned-economy (1949-76), the transitional period (1977-96), and the marketedeconomyperiod (1997-2005), in order to measure the impact of the changinggovernmental policies. Five performing entities that represent the major elements ofthe performing arts industry were selected as the case study subjects to investigate thetransformations that have occurred to these organisations over the last fifty years. Acombination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies is applied, in which thesecondary sources published and unpublished were examined, backed up by theprimary information obtained through surveys and interviews.This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first explains the purpose of this study,illustrates the development of research question, reviews the current literature on thesubjects and outlines the methodology used to complete the research. The secondchapter shows that the fundamental cultural principles of the Chinese governmentremained the consistent over the research periods, but, the specific performing-artsrelatedlegislation have shown a gradual transforming process from a planned culturaladministrative style to a market-oriented mode. The third chapter is the case study ofthe China Performing Arts Agency; chapter four studies the Hunan Opera and Ballet,and chapter five examines the performing venues of the Tianqiao Theatre, BeijingConcert Hall and Shanghai Grand Theatre. These case studies reveal that theoperational models and structures within these organisations have progressivelyadapted to a market-oriented mode, though the changes appear in different leveltowards various performing organisations, under the commercialisation of foreignrelatedperforming arts industry led by the Chinese government. However, someunchanged features such as approval procedure and state-owned identity have existed in the Chinese performing arts system throughout all three historical periods. Thesixth chapter concludes that the changed features within the international exchange ofthe performing arts industry was related to the government's intention tocommercialise the cultural sphere and the unchanged features was due to persistenceof a fundamental cultural principle held by the CCP. This thesis as a whole not onlyprovides information on how the Chinese government cultural policies developedsince 1949, but also uncovers how these polices affected the specific performingorganisations during the transformation of the international exchange of performingarts from the government cultural exchange projects to a profit-driven industry