When engaging Chinese arts, keep in mind they operate under government sanction. This helps the Chinese government coordinate a unified message. An article about the Chinese space program shows how the arts in China can promote science and technology.
Main point: “The government and related organisations have made concerted efforts to establish a unique ‘Chinese space culture’ alongside the country’s advances in space technology. While the target audience for many of these cultural creations remains domestic, China’s space ambitions are directed at global audiences in a variety of ways.”
More about it:
- Bringing the past forward: “…the most obvious example of this is the naming of these programmes after China’s traditional roots.”
- A stamp of identity: “The linking of China’s traditional past to its forward-looking space activities serves to strengthen the identity of these space programmes as distinctly Chinese.”
- Reinforcing national pride: “In connecting these achievements to the country’s cultural heritage, they are presented not as mere copies of their space power predecessors, but as having developed from national talents and progresses.”
- Integrating traditions and progress: “They also serve as a reminder that while the programmes aim for the furthest reaches of space, China’s future will never be disconnected from its national and cultural roots.”
- Expanding the club: “… these legendary names are a signal to the international community that space is not the exclusive domain of historical western figures such as Apollo or Artemis, but that it also belongs to the lineage of the Chinese people.”
- From the top: “Recognised by politicians as a potentially powerful tool for promoting state-approved narratives, government bodies have encouraged China’s sci-fi filmmakers to incorporate narratives that fit with the regime’s wider ideological and technological ambitions.”
Why it matters:
- Soft power: “Able to incorporate the backdrop of a technologically powerful China into entertaining and compelling narratives, such stories allow foreign audiences to engage with the idea of China as a space power without the kind of political discourse that surrounds its real space activities.”
- “…a foreign audience may begin to grow more comfortable with the notion of China as a technological world leader.”