The People’s Republic of Capitalism: The Making of the New Middle Class in Post-Socialist China, 1978-Present by Ka Man Calvin Hui Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Rey Chow, Supervisor ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Leo Ching Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 i v ABSTRACT The People’s Republic of Capitalism: The Making of the New Middle Class in Post-Socialist China, 1978-Present by Ka Man Calvin Hui Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Rey Chow, Supervisor ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Leo Ching An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Ka Man Calvin Hui 2013 Abstract My dissertation, “The People’s Republic of Capitalism: The Making of the New Middle Class in Post-Socialist China, 1978-Present,” draws on a range of visual cultural forms – cinema, documentary, and fashion – to track the cultural dimension of the emergence of the new middle class subject in China’s encounter with global capitalism. Through cultural studies methodologies and critical theoretical practices, I explore the massive reorganization of national subjectivity that has accompanied the economic reforms since 1978. How, I ask, has the middle class replaced the proletariat as the dominant subject of Chinese history? What are the competing social forces that contribute to the making of the new middle class subject, and how do they operate? By considering these questions in terms of the cultural cultivation of new sensibilities as much as identities, I trace China’s changing social formations through the realm of cultural productions. This project is organized into three parts, each of which attends to a particular constellation of middle class subjectivities and ideologies. In Part I (Introduction and Chapter 1), I explore how the Chinese middle class subject is shaped by historical, political-economic, and cultural forces. I show that the new social actor is structurally dependent on the national and transnational bourgeoisie and the post- socialist party-state. In Part II (Chapters 2-5), I focus on the relationship among fashion, iv media, and Chinese consumer culture in the socialist and post-socialist eras. By engaging with films such as Xie Tieli’s Never Forget (1964), Huang Zumo’s Romance on Lushan (1980), Qi Xingjia’s Red Dress is in Fashion (1984), and Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) and Useless (2007), I suggest that the representation of fashion and consumption in Chinese cinema, documentary, and new media is a privileged site for deciphering otherwise imperceptible meanings of class, ideology, and history in the formation of the Chinese middle class subject. In Part III (Chapter 6), I attend to the repressed underside of Chinese consumer culture: rubbish. This project reorients our understanding of socialist and post-socialist China, seeing them as underpinned by the contradictions emblematized in the Chinese middle class. v Acknowledgements I have had the good fortune to pursue my doctotal studies in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my superb dissertation committee – Rey Chow, Michael Hardt, Fredric Jameson, Robyn Wiegman, and Leo Ching – for their profound intellectual inspiration, guidance, support, and generosity over the years. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation writing group, including Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr, and Timothy Wright, and my good friends Hongsheng Jiang, Koonyong Kim, and Simon Milnes, and others for providing a vigorous intellectual community over the years. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, with my love. vi Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1. Learning to Love Again: The Libidinal and the Political in Huang Zumo's Romance on Lushan Mountain (1980) .............................................................................................................. 35 2. Wearing Class Struggle, Putting on Ideology: Fashion, Consumption, and History in Xie Tieli's Film Never Forget (1964)............................................................................................ 89 3. "Mao's Children Are Wearing Fashion!" ............................................................................ 154 4. Class, Gender, Fantasy, and Globalization in Jia Zhangke's The World (2004) ............. 225 5. Dirty Fashion ......................................................................................................................... 257 6. Rubbish! .................................................................................................................................. 298 Appendix ................................................................................................................................... 357 References .................................................................................................................................. 387 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 406 vii Introduction My project engages with the profound transformations of Chinese culture and society as a result of China’s economic reforms. During the socialist era (1949-1976), the proletariat – an alliance of workers, peasants and soldiers collectively engaged in continuous revolution and class struggle – was presented as the dominant subject of Chinese history and culture. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, the words “bourgeoisie” and “petty bourgeoisie” had very negative connotations, owing to their association with imperialist and capitalistic exploitation. In the 1980s, the intellectuals were called upon by the post-socialist party-state to be the vanguard of China’s capitalistic modernization and promote “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” By the 2000s, the new social hierarchy featured a super-rich business elite allied to the ruling Communist Party, a vast and impoverished migrant labor force, and in-between, an economically empowered and aspirant middle class. A curious anomaly in the communist regime, the Chinese middle class – the bourgeoisie (“zichanjieji”) (資产阶級), petty bourgeoisie (“xiaozichanjieji” or “xiaozi”) (小資产阶級/小資), middle-propertied class or middle class (“zhongchanjieji”) (中产阶級), and its many variations, such as middle (“zhongjian”) (中間), middle-range (“zhongdeng”) (中等), and class (“jieji”) (阶級 ), stratum (“jieceng”) (阶层), group (“qunti”) (群体), and its evasion, the modestly prosperous or well-to-do (“xiaokang”) (小康) – had just emerged onto the social scene 1 and was reshaping China in radically new ways. As a symbol of China’s rise in the 21st century, the Chinese middle class embodied overwhelmingly positive connotations: modernity, upward mobility, education, professionalization, leisure, cultural taste, and a tacit sense that the long-cherished desire to become like the U.S. was close to being realized.1 However, the emergence of this new social subject is beset by contradictions. These tensions are vividly articulated in the cultural scene, where fiction writers, film directors, documentary makers, fashion designers, television and radio presenters, newspaper columnists, and bloggers and “weibo” (the Chinese twitter) enthusiasts debate on China’s future. Indeed, cultural production has played a pivotal role in social change in China since the May Fourth movement in 1919. Before the founding of the 1 For the representation of the rise of the new Chinese middle class in the U.S. media, see the TV documentaries including Michael Murphy’s China Rises (2006) (especially Episode 1 “Getting Rich” and Episode 2 “City of Dreams”), Sue Williams’ Young and Restless in China (2008), Ted Koppel’s People’s Republic of Capitalism (2009), and Jonathan Lewis’ China From the Inside (2006). For the purpose of my research, China Rises and Young and Restless in China are more useful. For the media in Japan, see NHK’s TV documentary, 激流中国, especially the episode about the rich and the migrant worker (富 人与农民工). For the media in Hong Kong, see RTHK’s TV documentary, Zhong chan xin yi dai (The New Generation of the Middle Class) (中產新一代) (2003) – including 適逢其時, 消 費浪潮, 力爭上游, 成龍成鳳, 金錢以外. Also, see Hong Kong magazine Yazhou Zhoukan (亞洲 周刊) (Issue: February 11-17, 2002 – about the “zhongchan jieji” [middle class]; and another issue about the “xiaozi” [petty bourgeoisie] [Website: http://www.yzzk.com/cfm/main.cfm].) For media in mainland China, see, for example, Sanlian shenhuo shoukan