Global Research Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c2016. xvi, 284 pp. (Figures.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-253-01846-5.
Fan Yang has written a thoughtful and accessible study of the counterfeit culture of China, specifically probing intellectual property rights (IPR) in terms of regime, culture, and power. To explore the cultural impact of IPR on the nation-state in the context of the developing world, Yang situates the discourse of post-socialist development in the historical milieu of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Influenced by a material culture perspective, Yang focuses on brands and counterfeits operating as performative objects in the “cultures of circulation,” providing a different angle to delve into the implications of creativity, heritage, and globalization.
The book presents a number of paradoxical practices in different areas (i.e., the mobile phone industry, cinema, and marketplace) to illustrate the ways through which China and its citizens participate in the creation and negotiation of identities and symbols of their Chineseness as well as the definition of authenticity in the multidimensional processes of globalization. This work expands the growing body of knowledge on the dilemma of piracy by providing a novel dimension: the nation-branding campaigns of China.
The first and second chapters trace the recent origin of China’s brand project, “From Made in China to Created in China.” In these two chapters, Yang discusses the double role of the state as an arbiter of international relations and a regulator of the “Made in China” brand. On one hand, shanzhai (“fake culture”) assumes a performative mode to manifest an “alternative national identity” in advertising campaigns. On the other hand, the state media rework the shanzhai brand into a developmental force suitable for building China’s own brand. In an attempt to resist the state propaganda, Yang argues that the discourse of “Made in China” is a brand campaign that comes with a crisis of authenticity in the global-national imagery that destabilizes “the state’s claim to the nation” (167). The state and the public create and consume different types of Chinese brand cultures, resulting in constant discordance and contestations.
In the third chapter, Yang uses literary criticism to examine a case study of the film Crazy Stone and its reception. By analyzing amateur comments and blogger responses, Yang juxtaposes the case study with the parallel development of the discourse of a national cinema brand. She argues that the making of the performative subject in the movie challenges state-sanctioned national imaginary by offering an alternative mode of being a nation.
The fourth chapter is a thorough documentation of the rise of Silk Street in Beijing, a once landmark-status bazaar then a plaza facing numerous IPR lawsuits from foreign companies, and the controversies surrounding its privatization. Most of the stories in this chapter focus on events during the 2008 Beijing Olympics to exemplify the ironies and contradictions of issues of justice, authenticity, and Chineseness in the multifaceted constructions of the image of Silk Street in media discourse vis-à-vis reality. Media introduce Silk Street as an urban heritage, an object of global tourist consumption, and a potential “incubator for China’s nation brands” (149). Yang suggests that Silk Street is an emblem of the cultural dilemma for post-socialist China, whose search for an alternative modernity remains subject to the unequal relations of power within contemporary globalization.
I appreciated Yang’s discussion of shanzhai as a discourse illustrating the interactive character of China’s new media landscape “mediated” across a multiplicity of digital media platforms. By returning the human agency to globalization studies, this study discusses the questions concerning national cultural formation in global contexts. In response to the cultural imperialism theory of John Tomlinson, Yang concludes that an alternative Chineseness, with regard to the colonization of the social imaginary by globalization, is shared by participants of shanzhai culture, the old vendors on Silk Street, and the rhetoric of the protagonist in the movie American Dreams in China. The book could be interesting for readers with a desire to think beyond the apparent conceptual framework of the IPR regime when looking at the contradictory representations of China (or some other country) in the news and in film.
Given that China has risen to be one of the leading economic powers in the world, the extent to which the Western-dominated cultural imperialism is a dominant force in cultural globalization deserves further scrutiny. The implications of the attempts of the Silk Street Market to build up local brands or other similar endeavors to “Created in China” also merit further attention by future studies. Since the concept of “intellectual property economy” has recently become a buzzword among content producers and media scholars of China’s burgeoning media and creative economies, the Chinese government has invested heavily in communications curriculum to foster an environment for talent that can contribute to the creation of original and creative media content for both local and global markets. Yang’s book is useful in media and cultural studies as well as Asian studies courses. This study also opens a dialogue between media and linguistic/cultural anthropology on the issue of counterfeit culture. In anthropology, ethnographies on counterfeit culture have burgeoned in recent years, discussing a range of topics from the translation team of pirated films in China to other creative attempts and their implications for youth culture/hack space across different regions.
Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin
National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
pp. 339-341