Introduction

Abstract

This monograph analyzes current cultural resource management, archeological heritage management, and exhibition practices and policies in the People’s Republic of China, where state officials, preservationists, and other interested parties seek to balance the needs and demands of heritage preservation with rapid economic and social changes. On the one hand, state-supported development policies and projects often threaten and in some cases lead to the destruction of archeological and cultural sites. On the other hand, current national cultural policies also encourage the preservation, renovation, and in some situations reconstruction of precisely such sites as heritage and tourism destinations that can serve as development resources. Underlining this paradox is a key political quandary. Over the past two decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has abandoned the core tenants of Maoist revolutionary socialism (an emphasis on class struggle, collectivism, and public ownership of the means of production) in favor of neoliberal policies that emphasize personal responsibility, economic efficiency, and the efficacy of market forces in shaping society. As a result, the post-1949 state historical narrative utilized to explain China’s past at museums, historic sites, and other cultural spaces has been reshaped, since a temporal narrative rooted in socialist ideology no longer explains the current social reality of China, which includes a growing class divide, a scaling back of state services, and a party-encouraged focus on mass consumption. The central government’s challenge is to manage this transformation in a way that justifies continued CCP rule (Denton 2005). As part of this process, both the Communist Party and the national-level state have deemphasized global socialism in favor of cultural nationalism and highlighted the current government’s efforts to protect and preserve China’s long historical past in the two decades since popular protests erupted in the spring of 1989 (Hevia 2001; Lee 2008). It is for these reasons that “heritage” (yichan), although a relatively recent neologism first promoted by the CCP in 1982, has become a crucial part of the political process in contemporary China. And the personal experiencing of this shared tangible and intangible storehouse of knowledge is the basis of the rapidly expanding domestic tourism industry in the PRC (Sofield and Li 1998: 367).