ABSTRACT
In the context of Xi Jinping’s leadership, China’s political culture has become increasingly authoritarian: there have been crackdowns on human rights lawyers, an institutionalized persecution of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, an increasing control of information, and a general tightening of political dissent in all aspects of public life. In the context of Hong Kong, there is a deep concern about China’s corrupting influence on democratic and civil society, as the local government continues to promote a pro-Beijing agenda. There is a long history of figuratively casting China as the villain of modernity. For Marx and others, China was the source of vast material wealth, but was ultimately inaccessible, hindered by ‘oriental despotism’ and a retrograde ‘Asiatic mode of production’. Looking back further, there was the failures of the British trade embassies of 1796 and 1816, which became narrativized as British entrepreneurialism in the face of Chinese intransigence and unwillingness to accept demands for a more open market.
