Project leader: Rossella Ferrari (PI)

Co-investigators: Li Yizhuo, Fabrizio Massini

Project administration: Song Xinyi

Project Funds: 600,004.08 Euro
Funded by the FWF, Principal Investigator Projects (PAT9791923)

Project period: 01/01/2025- 31/12/2027

The project explores China’s postmillennial cultures of performance-making through the conceptual lens of postsocialism, focusing on experimental theatre, dance, and performance art produced by newly emerging independent practitioners since the 21st century. The project adopts a definition of Chinese postsocialism as a cultural condition characterized by the interpenetration of multiple temporalities and socio-economic structures, in which a capitalist economy coexists with a socialist state and traditional values with new globalized behaviours. It thus introduces the theoretical framework of “performing postsocialism” to assess both the implications of China’s postsocialist condition for performance cultures and how the study of performance cultures can enhance our understanding of postsocialist China.

The main objective is to examine what the project terms “China’s postmillennial cultures of performance-making” in the historical context of postmillennial postsocialism. First, the research seeks to assess how the postsocialist zeitgeist is reflected in the practice of a cohort of performing and visual artists who work largely independently of state institutions, also considering changes that have occurred as a result of fluctuating cultural and political norms in the transition to the Xi Jinping era since 2013. A central hypothesis is that this practice exhibits three significant aesthetic modalities or cultural dispositions that reflect the inherent heterochronicity of postsocialism, characterized respectively by a hauntological engagement with the past, an impulse to capture present reality, and a future-oriented sensibility. Second, the project takes an expanded view of performance to suggest that postsocialist China itself can be seen as a culture of performance, as the country and its citizens engage in social acts that can be construed as performative. The research thus asks not only how China performs its postsocialist condition, but also what the study of performance can reveal about postsocialist China.

The research bridges approaches from cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, and art history. It combines textual, performance, and visual analysis with critical discourse analysis, archival research, interviews, and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork.

The project extends the theory of Chinese postsocialism by applying it to performance studies for the first time. It also fills a gap in the study of Chinese performance cultures by documenting, analysing, and archiving a corpus of historically significant but under-researched practices and related critical discourses.

Projektleiter: Christian Göbel

Projektmittel: 1,292.440 Euro (gefördert vom European Research Council)

Projektlaufzeit: 2016 bis 2021

China's success story of the past three decades is seen as an anomaly. Market-based reforms have generated an economic system that can hardly be described as socialist anymore, but the Communist Party of China remains in power. Although social unrest is on the rise, the CCP enjoys the consent of the overwhelming majority of its people. Most agree that China's economic performance is the key to solving this apparent puzzle, but how can extraordinary high rates of public support be maintained in a country where income inequality is so extreme? We believe that the answer to this question lies in the responsiveness of China's authoritarian one-party regime to popular demands and grievances, a capability that has so far been attributed only to democratic regimes. We further believe that the rapid improvement of e-participation, the opportunity to evaluate public services on the Internet, has greatly facilitated regime responsiveness – China's score in the United Nations e-participation index is higher than the European average. We suggest, however, that as the government increasingly calibrates public policy towards satisfying the demand of China's netizens, the "technologically illiterate" are forced to express their demands in public protests and other forms of social unrest. The proposed project sheds light on the intended and unintended consequences of enhanced e-participation in China by exploring which social interests China's rulers incorporate into public policy making, and how these decisions influence the propensity of particular social groups to voice their demands by either participating online or taking to the streets. By exploring the "complex system" in which online complaints, social unrest and public policy interact, the project provides insights into the micro-foundations of regime responsiveness in China. It thereby increases our knowledge of how the CCP seeks to defer the antagonism that prompted the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.

Projektleiter: H. Christoph Steinhardt 

Projektmittel: 1,887,444 Euro (European Research Council Consolidator Grant) 

Projektlaufzeit: 2021 bis 2026 

The Social Credit System (SCS) is an ambitious social engineering project by the Chinese state with the goal of creating a more trustworthy society. It collects information from all citizens, businesses and organizations and seeks to steer behavior through incentives and penalties. The SCS challenges long-standing scholarly assumptions regarding the role of the state in managing social and economic exchange. It has become a central component of the system of governance the Chinese government promotes as a viable alternative to liberal democracy. Thus far, the SCS is a work in progress and displays substantial regional variation. The ENGINEERING project will trace the SCS’s evolution and regional variation, its perception by the Chinese public, as well as its social, political and cultural impacts. It will thereby help to evaluate which of its objectives the Chinese state achieves and which unintended consequences this novel governance instrument might bring about.