Red Creative

'In-depth and illuminating, Red Creative carefully situates China’s contemporary cultural economy in its larger global and historical context, revealing the limits of Western thought in understanding Chinese history, culture, and society. [...] A fascinating book.'

-- New Books Network (New Books in Critical Theory)

'Rather than another book about an apocalyptic and malevolent China, Red Creative is intensely attuned to the cross-currents of politics and culture in the country, and the ways in which revolutionary traditions and alternative modernities still influence the way in which culture is produced and politics is understood.'

-- Owen Hatherley, Tribune

'One of the biggest virtues of the book is the complex vision delineated by the arguments showcasing different perspectives and a wide array of standpoints. [...] This book demonstrates the authors’ deep knowledge in both the history of economic thought and that of China, as well as the contemporary academic debates on related topics. [...] In summary, the book takes a critical look at the Chinese creative economy, with a strong focus on Shanghai, as the exemplary formula of Chinese modernism. Contesting many of the mainstream narratives and truisms dominating the cultural and creative industries discourses the book encourages us to understand China on its own terms. Of course, the reasoning could not only apply to China but many other countries outside the Euro-Atlantic world. Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China is an extremely insightful and informative venture, which will be a valuable resource for cultural policy decision-makers, academics, as well as educators.'

-- Kinga Hamvai, International Journal of Cultural Policy

Red Creative is a stunning piece of synthetic scholarship. It’s an essential overview of the limitations of major bodies of western thought in understanding Chinese history, culture and society, especially the ways concepts of culture and creativity have been mobilized in China over the last twenty years.

-- David Hesmondhalgh, Professor of Media, Music and Culture, University of Leeds.

The book’s scope is as remarkable as its depth. It presents an authoritative view of contemporary Chinese cultural policy and the development of the creative industries approach/agenda in China and the Asian region generally [...] It is a carefully crafted, fully researched analysis and assessment of a culture often treated as an object of fantasy by western intellectuals.

-- Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University, Australia

'Wide-ranging and insightful analysis... The interrogation of the significance of the concept of creative industries to China goes beyond the erroneous assumption that the introduction of the Western construct of creative industries brought modernity to China, and instead shows a distinctive development of the concept through multiple lenses including governance, subjectivity, citizenship, and the relationship between culture and production. The authors bring a different perspective to creative industries discourse, reigniting the significance of state/citizen and unraveling the (hollow) concept of the autonomy of the creative laborer central to Western approaches. Fundamentally, this book emphasizes the continued significance of the concept of the nation-state in cultural and creative industries discourse broadly...[An] important decentering of the dominant Western position in this discourse.'

-- Maria O’Brien, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Soc