포스트사회주의시대, 중국의 전통문화에 대한 정치적 함의

Abstract

This paper started from the critical mind, “Why are the Chinese sensitive to a cultural issue and trying to pursue a ‘Culture Power’?” This paper is aimed at analyzing China’s cultural policy, change in their attitudes toward culture, and the status and role of culture in China. Since the modern age, the major historical events in China have been always associated with culture, and the culture has been the center of the controversy over national development. China, which emerged after its reform and opening, has expanded their influence in the field of international politics, economy, and the military, but relatively, they perceived their influence in the cultural area as vulnerable. Accordingly, the Chinese government expanded the influence of Chinese cultures externally while promoting the cultural policy that would make it possible to establish national identity and integrate society using their traditional cultures internally. In this process, China achieved the ‘Paradigm Shift’ in which they began to perceive the traditional cultures, which were once the target to be overthrown in the past, as the target to be inherited and developed. At present, China has entered into the period of Post-Socialism, during which socialist mechanism and capitalism-created new institutions are mixed. At this period, the Chinese culture attempted at cultural turn using the logic of convergence, and they are walking the path of hybridization. China is still proceeding with a ‘state-led’ cultural turn. Presently, the Chinese culture is developing into the more active and externally oriented character while gradually diverging itself from defensive and reactive attitudes.