China’s Red Collectors: History, Culture and ‘Positive Energy’

This talk will introduce the China’s ‘red collectors’, collectors of ‘red relics’: objects relating to the Chinese Communist Party, People’s Liberation Army and the history of Chinese socialism. In introducing these collectors, the talk will seek to make two arguments. The first is that these collections and the motivations of those who collect them are much more varied and diverse than most of the academic literature has hitherto acknowledged. The talk will present a history of the field and through tracing the emergence of the field of collecting from the 1980s onwards, will argue that any critical potential the field may have initially embodied has been eliminated through its gradual professionalisation. In parallel with this, the self-identity of the collectors has risen, with collectors now seeing themselves as patriotic members of the cultural elite, and as transmitters of history, culture and ‘positive energy’ to the younger generation.

About the Speaker

Emily Williams is a cultural historian of modern China, with a particular interest in Maoist material culture and collections of red relics in contemporary China. She is associate professor and head of the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, where she teaches modules in Chinese history, society, and aesthetics. Her first book, Collecting the Revolution: British Engagements with Chinese Cultural Revolution Material Culture (Rowman & Littlefield), was published in 2022.

The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.