Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China

Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China
Author: Yiu Fai Chow
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-10-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9048535530

With its emergence as a global power, China aspires to transform from "made in China" to "created in China". Mobilised as a crucial source for solid growth and "soft power," creativity has become part of the new China Dream. This anthology engages with the imperative of creativity by aligning it to three interrelated phenomena: boredom, shanzhai, and digitisation. How does creativity help mitigate boredom? Does boredom incubate creativity? How do shanzhai practices and the omnipresence of fake stuffs challenge notions of the original and authentic? Which spaces for expressions and contestations has China's fast-developing digital world of Weixin, Taobao, Youku and Internet Plus Policy opened up? Are new technologies serving old interests? Essays, dialogues, audio-visual documents and field notes, from thinkers, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers, contribute to explore, examine and problematize what is going on in China now, ultimately to tease out its implication to our understanding of "creativity".

Chinas Digital Presence in the Asia-Pacific

Chinas Digital Presence in the Asia-Pacific
Author: Michael Keane
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785276239

China’s Digital Presence in the Asia-Pacific explores China’s digital presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on political economy of the media, industry analysis, platform studies and cultural policy studies, the book shows that China’s commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government supported media. It illustrates how these platforms are contributing to Chinese cultural influence, their perceived reputation and obstacles in the region while pursuing a combined approach of culture+, industry+, internet+, and platform+. In considering the multi-layered rise of the China argument, the book considers its growing technological status as an innovative nation through four policy approaches: culture+, industry+, Internet+ and platform+. Other + characterizations include intelligent+ and social+. These + characterizations show how China is rejuvenating, drawing technological knowhow from the region and adding to its cultural (and soft) power. The book focuses on six locations: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The authors analyse Beijing’s changing policies towards the governance of culture, Internet technologies and digital platforms, as well as examining consumer perceptions of China and Chinese products in the Asia-Pacific region. In using the + characterizations, the authors provide a comprehensive analysis of how Chinese cultural and creative industries became digital, as well as investigating the key players and the leading platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, TikTok, Baidu, iQiyi and Meituan.

Wanghong as Social Media Entertainment in China

Wanghong as Social Media Entertainment in China
Author: David Craig
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030653765

In Chinese, the term wanghong refers to creators, social media entrepreneurs alternatively known as KOLs (key opinion leaders) and zhubo (showroom hosts), influencers and micro-celebrities. Wanghong also refers to an emerging media ecology in which these creators cultivate online communities for cultural and commercial value by harnessing Chinese social media platforms, like Weibo, WeChat, Douyu, Huya, Bilibili, Douyin, and Kuaishuo. Framed by the concepts of cultural, creative, and social industries, the book maps the development of wanghong policies and platforms, labor and management, content and culture, as they operate in contrast to its non-Chinese counterpart, social media entertainment, driven by platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. As evidenced by the backlash to TikTok, the threat of competition from global wanghong signals advancing platform nationalism.

Digital Immersive Art in China

Digital Immersive Art in China
Author: Xinyang Zhao
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2024-10-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1839993049

China has been stereotypically perceived as a place of backwardness. However, the 21st century has been a transitional period for China to express its cultural power. This book explores how digital technology, in particular virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), is playing a role in China’s rejuvenation, especially in relation to cultural displays, performances and art exhibitions. It examines how audiences, both in China and globally, respond to Digital China through digital immersive art. Drawing on the author's anthropological research and empirical studies on stakeholders and audience reception, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of transformative power of digital technology and its impact on cultural experience in contemporary China. The ‘reform of the cultural system’ over the past two decades in China has fostered a techno-cultural imaginary mixed with the celebration of Chinese civilisation and advanced by digital technology and entrepreneurs. Such a hybrid imaginary influences how people view and consume digital immersive art. Much digital immersive art within China is thus viewed within the framework of modernisation, as the case studies in this book will show. Outside China, however, the dominant narrative of techno-orientalism prevails, constructing a different image of Digital China, a technocratic state.

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema
Author: Dan Luo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538157306

Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896, and today China is a major player in the global film industry. However, the story of how Chinese cinema became what it is today is exceptionally turbulent, encompassing incursions by foreign powers, warfare among contending rulers, the collapse of the Chinese empire, and the massive setback of the Cultural Revolution. This book coversthe cinematic history of mainland China spanning across over one hundred and twenty years since its inception. Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the major filmmakers, actors, and historical figures, representative cinematic productions, genre evolution, significant events and institutions, and market changes. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chinese Cinema.

The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China

The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China
Author: Jiehong Jiang
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2024-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004703608

Through the perspective of the ‘conformed body’, this groundbreaking book examines the role in art of everyday conformist practices in the People’s Republic of China, such as mass assemblies and bodily trainings and exercises, as well as their impact on people’s perceptions and collective memories. It identifies related artworks, reassesses artistic interpretations with critical reflections, and explores a key origin of artistic productions in post-Mao China. Featuring 200 colour illustrations, the book discusses works by more than 30 internationally acclaimed Chinese contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Geng Jianyi, Song Dong, Xu Bing, Zhang Peili and Zhang Xiaogang.

Apps

Apps
Author: Gerard Goggin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 150953850X

Since the rise of the smartphone, apps have become entrenched in billions of users' daily lives. Accessible across phones and tablets, watches and wearables, connected cars, sensors, and cities, they are an inescapable feature of our current culture. In this book, Gerard Goggin provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the development of apps as a digital media technology. Covering the technological, social, cultural, and policy dynamics of apps, Goggin ultimately considers what a post-app world might look like. He argues that apps represent a pivowtal moment in the development of digital media, acting as a hinge between the visions and realities of the “mobile,” “cyber,” and “online” societies envisaged since the late 1980s and the imaginaries and materialities of the digital societies that emerged from 2010. Apps offer frames, construct tools, and constitute “small worlds” for users to reorient themselves in digital media settings. This fascinating book will reframe the conversation about the software that underwrites our digital worlds. It is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as for anyone interested in this ubiquitous technology.

Freedom of the Press in China Hb

Freedom of the Press in China Hb
Author: GUO
Publisher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9789463726115

Western commentators have often criticized the state of press freedom in China, arguing that individual speech still suffers from arbitrary restrictions and that its mass media remains under an authoritarian mode. Yet the history of press freedom in the Chinese context has received little examination. Unlike conventional historical accounts which narrate the institutional development of censorship and people's resistance to arbitrary repression, this book is the first comprehensive study presenting the intellectual trajectory of press freedom. It sheds light on the transcultural transference and localization of the concept in modern Chinese history, spanning from its initial introduction in 1831 to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. By examining intellectuals' thoughts, common people's attitudes, and official opinions, along with the social-cultural factors that were involved in negotiating Chinese interpretations and practices in history, this book uncovers the dynamic and changing meanings of press freedom in modern China.

Gaming, Simulation and Innovations: Challenges and Opportunities

Gaming, Simulation and Innovations: Challenges and Opportunities
Author: Upinder Dhar
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3031099591

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 52nd International Simulation and Gaming Association Conference, ISAGA 2021, held in Indore, India, during September 6–10, 2021. The 24 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: game design and facilitation; gaming in education; player experience in simulations; and policy formulation and serious games.

The Global Smartphone

The Global Smartphone
Author: Daniel Miller
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787359611

The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world.