Panel: The Battle for Hearts and Minds in China and Central Asia: Narratives and Propaganda

Conveners: Rune Steenberg, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Ondřej Klimeš, Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Revolving around the developments in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region since 2009, this panel invites contributions on state propaganda and other narrative or textual expressions of ideology in China and Central Asia. Xi Jinping has brought back a focus on ideology and doctrine that had been widely abandoned in the PRC since the Reform Era of the 1980s. At the same time, religious narratives stemming from globalized and textually focused forms of Islam have made inroads into Central Asia including Xinjiang. Here, massive government propaganda in the form of posters, books and banners with slogans has targeted expressions of piousness and religiosity. Along with this a certain kind of “modern ethnicity” has been created both in pictures and through enforcement of a certain “modern” dress code by police on the streets. Local Uyghur intellectuals and artists have long been involved in the shaping of this battle through films, music and a broad stream of publications of both articles and books, though in the past two years many of them have been detained in so called “re-education camps”, their voices have been silenced and any open discourse has become one-sidedly that of the government. The panel looks at the development, expression and products of these ideological struggles and also invites contributions on similar phenomenon in other parts of Central Asia or China.

Download abstracts here (PDF)