Abstract
The topic of Astrid Nordin’s timely book is the twin concept of harmonious society/world (和谐社会/世界) and the closely related slogan of the Chinese dream (中国梦). Since the Chinese dream incorporates the notion of a harmonious world, both slogans are essential for understanding the international aspirations of China’s leadership, because the expressions describe a vision of a future world order and China’s role in it.
This book is a fine account of how – following relentless propaganda efforts in mainland China – the meaning of the concepts and even of the single words of which they consist became so ambiguous that their meaning has been lost. Harmony has been robbed of its appeal (p. 149). The process of this fading away serves as the book’s storyline. Nordin discusses the origin of the expressions which emerged during the period of Hu Jintao’s presidency, the related Chinese scholarly discourse, their advertising at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and their subsequent perception by the Chinese public. Nordin succeeds in recording the key components of how the Chinese people deconstructed harmony, their response to the order to dream the Chinese dream, and the effect of the concepts’ mass proliferation. She concludes that ‘the idea of harmony, in both the “harmonious world” and “Chinese dream” slogans, amass[es] so much meaning that the possibility of using it as a meaningful concept has disappeared’. The terms finally ‘collapsed’ and ‘can no longer function as a dream or an ideal’ (p. 149).
To analyse this process, Nordin refines Michael Schoenhals’s research on words in Chinese politics. Schoenhals demonstrates that words or ‘set phrases’ may have an inhibiting effect on the emergence of alternatives in the Chinese political discourse. Furthermore, set phrases are prescribed to reinforce a discourse and logic that support the existing system. Nordin adds another outcome of proliferating set phrases. With its prescribed phrases, the party-state does things with words in Chinese politics but simultaneously undoes things. The meaning becomes unspecific and is undone (p. 25).
The strength of the book is its multidisciplinary approach. Nordin incorporates the writings of the philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida. Furthermore, she includes works of visual art, caricatures, and examples of Chinese online spoofing and wordplay to illustrate the adaptation of propaganda expressions to life in communist-ruled China. These illustrations are revealing and entertaining as well as hugely helpful for indicating disappearing meanings.
Nordin develops her analysis in five chapters. The first chapter summarizes the policy discourse under Hu Jintao. The next chapter shows that the envisioned harmonious world excludes diversity and, despite an inclusive appearance, would eventually lead to a hierarchical world order. Those who do not appreciate Chinese-style harmony are considered ‘behind’, because difference is equalled with a distance on a historical line of development. The third chapter demonstrates how this thinking was visualized at the Shanghai Expo. The fourth chapter focuses on online spoofing by Chinese netizens who responded to the forced ‘harmonization’ of life in the People’s Republic of China. The fifth chapter is devoted to Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream. Mass proliferation and the response of the Chinese people to the dream follow the same pattern as in the case of harmony. One is expected to dream correctly! In the meantime, neither harmony itself nor the dream of a harmonious world can convey any particular meaning. A student is quoted saying that ‘before the government used this word, this was a good word. Now when everyone says ‘harmony,’ there’s a little bit of a humorous, joking feeling’ (p. 145). This has happened to countless political set phrases in communist societies before. Nordin’s book captures this process masterfully in the specific context of a rising China that seeks to define its place in the world.
Accordingly, the book’s main argument concerning the nexus between the mass proliferation of set phrases and the simultaneous disappearing of their meaning is very important for the discourse on the Chinese dream of a harmonious world in the study of international relations. By guiding the reader from the Shanghai Expo through urban landscapes of propaganda posters and further to relevant examples of Chinese modern art and eventually into the highly cynical Chinese cyberspace, one is acquainted with the immensity of the state’s efforts to cultivate harmony.
Reading Nordin’s account is truly inspiring and worthwhile. Her argumentation is logical and coherent. The use of Chinese phrases – both in pinyin and Chinese characters – is flawless, which makes the book a great read for sinologists who admire the creativity of Chinese citizens in their use of wordplay to engage with the regime. The book is a contribution to assessing time, space and multiplicity in international relations. It clearly achieves this aim. In addition, it is highly valuable for international relations scholars and diplomats who are puzzled by the concept of a harmonious world and its implications for their field of study and practice. Indeed, there is a reason for their puzzlement: the Chinese political discourse has emptied the notion of harmony.