Communication, the Nexus of Class and Nation, and Global Divides Reflections on China’s Post-Revolutionary Experiences

Abstract

This paper locates the problematic of communication and global divide in the nexus of class and nation in the context of post-revolutionary China’s twisted developmental path and its world historical economic ascent in the era of neoliberal globalization. After a brief overview of the politics of class mobilization for nation-building during the Maoist period, the paper moves on to examine the role of communication in contributing to reform-era China’s spectacular rise in the global hierarchy of economic power on the one hand and a drastic process of domestic social stratification and class polarization on the other. As China’s lower social classes are making redistributive and social justice claims on the Chinese state and propelling it to fulfill its socialist promises from within, China’s increasingly denationalized middle class are protecting this state from the outside by championing Chinese nationalism in the global symbolic arena. These historically specific re-articulations of class and nation not only continue to bolster China’s post-revolutionary state in the capitalist global order, but also make it impossible to completely shed its socialist color.