Safeguarding Cultural Security in Contemporary China

Though it forms an integral part of Chinese understandings of state security (guojia anquan), the concept of cultural security (wenhua anquan) remains largely unexplored in the English-language literature. This is a serious lacuna, as cultural security (which is closely linked to ideological and political security) presents a valuable lens for analyzing how China engages with the outside world. Based on the analysis of a large corpus of Chinese materials, this seminar defines the origins and evolution of the concept; discusses the specific hard defensive and soft counteroffensive strategies deployed to safeguard cultural security; and offers some reflections on its theoretical importance by focusing on the link between cultural security and regime resilience. Overall, the seminar argues that the unusual breadth of the concept of cultural security can make it a useful avenue for exploring internal regime understandings of how external forces (jingwai shili) impact domestic political processes in contemporary China.

About the Speaker

Martin K. Dimitrov is Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tulane University. He is Associate Editor of Problems of Post-Communism and The Journal of Asian Studies. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from Stanford University (2004). His books include Piracy and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Why Communism Did Not Collapse (Cambridge University Press, 2013); The Political Logic of Socialist Consumption (Ciela Publishers, 2018); Dictatorship and Information (Oxford University Press, 2023); and The Adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He is a member of the National Committee on United States–China Relations.

This seminar is supported by the Department of International Relations at ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

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