Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
On Saturday, February 12, 2022, UBC’s Centre for Chinese Research hosted a symposium featuring Professor Vivienne Shue. She discussed certain notable features in the ‘political aesthetics’ of Chinese Communist Party rule under Xi Jinping today, placing these into longer and fuller historical perspective.
Recalling successive transformations in the communications technologies available to political leaders pursuing propaganda work over the past 100 years, her analysis highlights the almost unceasingly strenuous effort of the party to radiate its own positive spirit, outward, over the people— to sustain a keen sensation of dynamic social energy and purpose. This palpable sensation of energetic purpose, distilled initially within the core of the party itself, is meant to permeate the hearts and minds of people in all corners of the realm — generating (through a process akin to sympathetic resonance) a vibrantly charged hum of popular recognition, assent, and appreciation for the party’s leadership and direction. This distinctive model of political legitimation, she argues, borrows its inspiration from concepts and practices of political authority first articulated within the cosmological frames of very early Chinese thought; later refined and augmented over centuries of imperial governing practice; all quite intentionally being revived under Xi Jinping today.
Commenter: Dr. Shoufu Yin
Moderator: Dr. Timothy Cheek
On Saturday, February 12, 2022, UBC’s Centre for Chinese Research hosted a symposium featuring Professor Vivienne Shue. She discussed certain notable features in the ‘political aesthetics’ of Chinese Communist Party rule under Xi Jinping today, placing these into longer and fuller historical perspective.
Recalling successive transformations in the communications technologies available to political leaders pursuing propaganda work over the past 100 years, her analysis highlights the almost unceasingly strenuous effort of the party to radiate its own positive spirit, outward, over the people— to sustain a keen sensation of dynamic social energy and purpose. This palpable sensation of energetic purpose, distilled initially within the core of the party itself, is meant to permeate the hearts and minds of people in all corners of the realm — generating (through a process akin to sympathetic resonance) a vibrantly charged hum of popular recognition, assent, and appreciation for the party’s leadership and direction. This distinctive model of political legitimation, she argues, borrows its inspiration from concepts and practices of political authority first articulated within the cosmological frames of very early Chinese thought; later refined and augmented over centuries of imperial governing practice; all quite intentionally being revived under Xi Jinping today.
Commenter: Dr. Shoufu Yin
Moderator: Dr. Timothy Cheek
