Cultural heritage politics in China

Understanding cultural heritage politics in China means to grasp the multiple ways in which the Party-state employs the Chinese past to achieve its objectives in the present. Since 1978, ‘cultural heritage’ has been ‘revitalized’ and become a resource for the pursuit of various state political, economic, and social objectives. This chapter inquires into the reasons, processes, and effects of the ‘revitalization’ of Chinese cultural heritage by conducting a comparative case study of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH) protection on the ground – in urban Nanjing and rural Lancang County. I argue that the Party-state has adopted a heritage regime to revitalize China’s cultural heritage to enhance its political legitimacy. This heritage regime allows the Party-state to gain control of interpreting and exploiting the Chinese past at the expense of local communities. While, on the one hand, China’s cultural heritage has thus been ‘revitalized’ – allowing Chinese people to reconnect with the past which was cast aside during the early 20th century – it, on the other hand, however, enables the Party-state to exploit this process to the extent of offsetting the positive gains made by this cultural revitalization process.