Gladston, P., Kennedy-Schtyk, B., Turner, M., 2021.

Introduction

This introduction begins by situating the territorial conflicts and discursive struggles addressed by Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China within their wider material and discursive contexts. In doing so, it discusses the intense connectivity and heightened factionalism characteristic of post-Cold War contemporaneity in addition to the emerging "post-West" world resulting from shifts in socio-economic and cultural power towards the East brought about by globalisation. Cultural conflicts at the borders of contemporary China are identified as a significant aspect of those contexts. It is argued that the visual culture wars under discussion cannot be characterised simply in terms of an opposition between liberal cosmopolitanism and Chinese authoritarian nationalism but in addition a complex intersection of differing socio-political and cultural outlooks traversing the ostensible boundaries of that opposition.