ABSTRACT
The competing narratives of Chinese modernity introduced in Chapter 1—the nationalist project of the state and the neo-Confucianist project of Chinese transnational capitalists—all share the problem, and potential, of modernity as an unfinished project, an open-ended process. In that chapter, it was suggested that the task of defining an authentic modern Chinese subjectivity must be conceived specifically in terms of China's own historical and geographical experience, rather than via “self-orientalizing” or otherwise essentialist narratives that merely confirm the West's dominance in defining modernity's discursive playing field. It was also suggested that the alternative modernities conveyed by the Chinese state and by transnational Chinese capital are “false” modernities because they derive their claims of difference from a misplaced search for authenticity—the mythic (and now monumentalized) landscapes of the folk and their celebrated heritage. Tourism collaborates in this construction of false modernities, but it is also subject to appropriation by those seeking to transform their objectification at the hands of the state and capital into a completely new modern subjectivity.
