Creativity and Its Discontents Creativity and Its Discontents China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses Laikwan Pang Duke University Press Durham and London 2012 © 2012 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ♾ Typeset in Minion and Hypatia Sans by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which provided funds toward the production of this book. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Part I UnderstandIng CreatIvIty 1 Creativity as a Problem of Modernity 29 2 Creativity as a Product of Labor 47 3 Creativity as a Construct of Rights 67 Part II ChIna’s CreatIve IndUstrIes and IPr Offenses 4 Cultural Policy, Intellectual Property Rights, and Cultural Tourism 89 5 Cinema as a Creative Industry 113 6 Branding the Creative City with Fine Arts 133 7 Animation and Transcultural Signification 161 8 A Semiotics of the Counterfeit Product 183 9 Imitation or Appropriation Arts? 203 Notes 231 Bibliography 261 Index 289 Acknowledgments It took me a long time to come up with a page of acknowledgments for my first book. But the list of people I feel obliged to thank grows as my research broadens, and I realize that the older I get, the more people I am indebted to. This is a good feeling. Several scholars have read parts of the manuscript in different stages and offered me their valuable comments and criticisms. They include Sandra Luft, Arif Dirlik, Helen Grace, Stefano Harney, Francis Ching- Wah Yip, Winnie Wong, and the anonymous reviewers at positions, Social Text, Theory, Culture and Society, and Hong Kong University Press. My love and gratitude goes particularly to Sandra, who first introduced me to the world of theories and taught me that doing scholarship is ultimately a leap of faith. I did not know how much I was indebted to her teaching until I began this project, and her lessons will continue to enrich my scholarly attempts in the years to come. Among others, Jane Gaines, Michael Dutton, Lisa Rofel, Meaghan Morris, and Rey Chow have genuinely believed in my endeavor, giving me the needed courage to embark on this almost directionless academic journey. I also want to thank those artists, curators, and filmmakers, including Leung Mee Ping, Li Xianting, Li Feixue, Wang Yan, Zhang Tingjun, and a number of young film directors in Hong Kong whose identities I would like to keep anonymous, who have generously shared with me their works, future ambitions, and cur- rent frustrations. Their real- life experiences as creative agents are essential for me to understand the ways creativity is practiced and embedded in their social conditions. Earlier versions of chapters of this book were presented in invited lectures at Hong Kong Baptist University, National Taiwan University, Vanderbilt Uni- versity, New York University, Columbia University, University of Washington, and Lancaster University. Here I must thank Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh, Tsung- yi Michelle Huang, Ling Hon Lam, Zhen Zhang, Rebecca Karl, Weihong Bao, viii Acknowledgments Yomi Braester, and Adrian MacKenzie for their kind invitations. I also thank Chris Berry, Nitin Govil, Olivia Khoo, and Sean Metzger for inviting me to conferences in London, New Delhi, and Sydney, which gave me the fuel I needed to continue the project. I am grateful for all the questions and com- ments from participants in these and other events where I presented parts of this manuscript. I particularly want to thank those participants in the bound- ary 2 Hong Kong conference in 2006 who have shown their support and en- dorsed this research when it was still in its formative stage. The anonymous reviewers of Duke University Press have generously shared with me their scholarship and expertise, pointing out the weaknesses and bias of my previ- ous draft and reminding me what else needed to be read. All the mistakes still contained in this version, of course, are mine. A good part of the manuscript was written during my sabbatical at New York University, and I would like to thank nyU’s Department of East Asian Studies for hosting my stay, and specifically Rebecca Karl for her belief in my work and her unyielding friendship. Among others, Angela Zito, Zhen Zhang, Magnus Fiskesjö, Qian Zhu, Lorraine Wong, Jane Gaines, and Weihong Bao kindly welcomed my family as theirs. I thank Reynolds Smith, Ken Wissoker, and other colleagues of Duke University Press for bringing this manuscript to print, and I sincerely appreciate the careful and constructive copy- editing of Dawn Ollila and Fiona Ng. Wu Zhi, Cui Yanli, Leung Mee Ping, Dominique Chiu, Adele Wong, Zhang Weiping, and the Cai Studio helped me with some of the figures in the book. Jeannie Simms and Fiona Ng never stop giving me the illusion that my work is important. They are dear to me. Some of the research carried out for this book was made possible by the generous support of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council and the Chi- nese University of Hong Kong. My research also benefited from the contribu- tions of my research assistants at various stages; they include Amy Li, Olive Cheung, Zhou Weiwei, Yeung Yang, and Joseph Li. The colleagues and stu- dents at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, my home institute, support my work, accept my weaknesses, and nourish my intellectual and emotional growth. Angela Wong continues to be my dearest friend and sister, who never reserves her love and care for people around her. I am indebted to Helen Grace for the many intelligent insights she has shared with me, which directly inform my studies. I would particularly like to take this chance to salute my research students. They inspire me to learn, to respect, and to be gentle. I also thank them for trusting me as a friend and allowing me to be a part, however small, of their lives. I am proud of every one of them, and humbly hope for the vice versa. Acknowledgments ix I live under the shelter made up of the affection and tolerance of Kwai- cheung Lo, my husband, as well as the cheerfulness of my sons, Haven and Hayden. My academic career would not be possible without their understand- ing, compassion, and support. As I know I will never be able to pay back what they have given me, let me be reminded how fortunate I am to be a part of this family. This research began where my earlier book on movie piracy ended, when I realized how ignorant I was about the related fields and how important intel- lectual property rights are to the understanding of today’s global capitalism. But I had no idea where I was heading, knowing how extensive the scope of this research could be, which also excites me exceedingly. Those who know my work are familiar with my interdisciplinary approach, which does not reflect any grand academic mission but simply my impulsive tendency to ven- ture into areas with which I am not familiar. To quote Joshua Goldstein’s sym- pathetic review on my previous book, “The importance of Pang’s book lies not in her theorizations of Chinese modern subjectivities but, rather, in her daring to leave her comfort zone (film studies) to tackle the intertextual. As such, Pang is both blessed and cursed” (“The Distorting Mirror,” 519). I am sure this book is even more cursed than my earlier one in this regard, and in the pages to come specialists might find lots of academic holes and too many inadequate conclusions reached without full scholarly justification. But I also hope that readers will find my academic journey as recorded in this book a delightful one that deserves your company. Needless to say, I thank all readers who have found my work worthy of reading. The earlier versions of chapters 3, 4, 7, and 8 appeared in the following publications, respectively: “The Labor Factor in the Creative Economy: A Marxist Reading,” Social Text 99 (Summer 2009), 55–76; “Depoliticization through Cultural Policy and Intellectual Property Rights: The Case of Lijiang in China,” positions, forthcoming; “The Transgression of Sharing and Copy- ing: Pirating Japanese Animation in China,” in Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes, ed. Chris Berry, Jonathan D. Mackintosh, and Nicola Liscutin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 119–34; and “‘China Who Makes and Fakes’: A Semi- otics of the Counterfeit,” Theory, Culture and Society 25, no. 6 (2008), 115–38. A small part of chapter 5 appeared in Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technolo- gies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures, ed. Sean Metzger and Olivia Khoo (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2008). I thank these publications for granting me the rights to publish updated versions of these essays. Introduction A global innovation and design consultancy firm based in Palo Alto, IdeO, has been ranked in the top twenty-five most innovative companies by Busi- ness Week; most impressive, it does consulting work for all the other twenty- four companies on the list.1 The company designed Apple’s first mouse and the Palm v Pda, and it also engages in many nonprofit activities, such as de- veloping a social marketing campaign for Acumen Fund to spread awareness in India and Kenya about the importance of safe drinking water.2 Like almost all global firms, IdeO is also trying to expand its business in China, which, however, is reportedly not faring well. As IdeO’s chairman David Kelley says, “There will be one day when the China market becomes ready for us.”3 Obvi- ously there is something incongruent between the practices of this allegedly “most innovative” global firm and China’s own situation.