The Integration of Neoliberalism and Neocolonialism: the Morphological Analysis of China’s Cultural Go Out Policy

Principle Investigator：Yu-Hui Tai, Department of Communication & Technology National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

The historical research focuses on the cultural “Go Out policy,” the main cultural policy of the Chinese government since the twenty-first century. It analyzes the different stages, modules, and the impact it might exert to the regional politics. This research first underscores the importance to investigate the cultural Go Out policy against the historical context, i.e. the capitalist developmental process and model since China implemented the opening-up policy in 1979 and after its integration within the global capitalist system, in order to understand the historical development from attracting foreign investment to exporting the capital. In addition to the temporal investigation of the characteristics of Chinese capitalist development, spatially, the research also explores the dialectical relation with global capitalist system, especially with neo-liberalism. Under the macrostructure, the research analyzes the stages and modules of the Chinese government’s cultural Go Out policy since the twenty-first century. It divides the policy into three major modules: capital, market, and the relations of production. The first part mainly focuses on the movement of capital expanding from China to the overseas media. It highlights how the American, Taiwan and Hong Kong media were merged by Chinese national media, Chinese private capitalists and the collaborative overseas clientelist capitalists. The second part studies the Chinese government’s monopolizing control through the proximity to the Chinese market. This results in the expansion of China’s cultural and political influence in the region outside its territorial sovereignty to censor the media’s political attitude especially by means of shut-out and boycott, resulting in the overseas expansion of censorship with Chinese characteristics. The third part analyzes the relations of production, especially focusing on the establishment of the relations of production between Chinese film and television industries and Taiwanese OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). Even the contemporary Chinese cultural policy has its origin in close dialectical relation with Cold War (neo)colonialism and the global expansion of neoliberalism since the 1970s. It includes how the latter prepares the historical conditions for the former’s implementation, how the two integrate, and how the new power relation is formed. Under such new power relation, what might the regional cultural politics be? How does it influence the production, circulation, and consumption of cultural products? What kind of influence does it exercise on the regional cultural politics?