HIKMA SUMMIT
OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

What is culture ?

When we think about culture we think about what is common to us, what we would define as normality. In reality, defining the concept of culture in a strict sense can be problematic as it crosses a variety of fields including anthropology, sociology, linguistics, psychology, archaeology, evolutionary biology and ecology.  Here it’s important to focus on one point : culture as a system of shared meanings. To be fair, the concept of culture is dualistic ; that is, it can be understood in both individual and collective contexts. But, when we refer to collective culture, it often means ‘groups of people who exist within a shared context, where they are exposed to similar institutions, engage in similar practices, and communicate with each other on a regular basis’.

Why is it relevant ? What we frame as a cultural war is an opposition and a direct clash with what we perceive as foreign and identify as “The Other”. Having an Other often reinforce the sense of common identity in the collectives/groups, and act as glue to bind national identity.

When we talk about cultural war, it is today tightly linked with the concept of soft power - state’s ability to achieve positive outcomes by attracting and persuading others to adopt their goals through cultural and economic means rather than coercive ones. As any form of war, perhaps even more in this one, visual representation plays a central role. Depictions of the Other reinforce the perceived gap between us. As such, the relationship between the United States and China has long been mediated through competing visual narratives.

It is worth noting that in recent decades, it has become common in Chinese academic and official discourse to describe China not merely as a country, but as a “civilization state” that approaches the world as such. Xi, for his part, regularly speaks in civilizational terms. For example, when extolling the virtues of China’s “5,000-year old civilization,” calling for “inter-civilizational dialogue,” or claiming that the CCP has succeeded in solidifying “a new form of human civilization” that others may attempt to emulate.

Xi’s narration heavily draws on Chinese historian and public intellectual Xu Jilin. In 1994, he wrote : “This struggle over cultural sovereignty will develop into an open struggle for political sovereignty,” making it an existential question of regime legitimacy. In other words, the clash over cultural sovereignty would become the core conflict between China and the West.

Historical Materialism

To understand why cultural narratives succeed or fail, we must turn to historical materialism. This framework, rooted in Marx and Engels's dialectical materialism, posits that societies develop through material contradictions rather than ideological evolution alone. In simpler terms, the theory states that all things develop through material contradictions. Animals and plants, for example, biologically evolve when their methods of survival contradict their environment. Because the world is material in nature [made entirely of matter] rather than mental or spiritual, these contradictions cannot be harmonized through reason or divine power ; incompatible elements must oppose each other until adaptation or destruction takes place.  All this being a continuous process.

Since every society relies on its mode of production [and so the material condition that derives from it] , all institutions, including cultural narratives, must adapt to that material base or be eliminated. This changes the meaning of cultural warfare. Narratives don't succeed simply because they're compelling or well-crafted ; they succeed because they align with people's lived material conditions.

For decades, the West portrayed China as totalitarian and backward, while positioning itself as the beacon of freedom and prosperity.  Even though China did invest heavily in soft power through Confucius Institutes, television dramas, and cultural exports ;  the breaking point, the “becoming Chinese trend” cannot be attributed [solely] to their attempt at being [a better] soft power.

As material conditions deteriorate in Western democracies, the narratives that once justified Western superiority have begun to collapse. The story we told ourselves about who we are no longer matches the reality we inhabit. Our Western tale of democratic superiority held sway not merely because of effective [visual] propaganda, but because it corresponded with relative prosperity and stability. We could believe in our system's superiority because that system appeared to deliver material benefits ; this is no longer the case, as we see the erosion of our so-called democratic institutions. Authoritarian tendencies rise in Europe and the United States. Political dysfunction becomes normalized. The promise of prosperity rings hollow for entire generations locked out of homeownership and economic security.

The role of social media platforms

Ironically, visual propaganda is failing nowadays, too. Technology has accelerated this narrative shift in ways that earlier media could not. We went from a static state-owned TV channel to a small device capable of  accessing the world. Propaganda depends on controlling representation, on maintaining a monopoly over which images circulate and how they are contextualized… When that control erodes, so does the narrative power it sustains too. As much as we can be enslaved by our phones, sometimes there is good use to it.

The TikTok ban in the United States was the perfect example. When the platform faced prohibition, thousands of American users migrated to Xiaohongshu (RedNote), a Chinese social media platform, in a mass exodus that became known as the "TikTok refugee" phenomenon.

Going back to the concept of “shared space” and the place they occupied in defining a civilization,it is worth understanding the role the Internet can play. The delimitation of what is considered your everyday conversation and the ritualisation of the so-called normality become blurred lines when you have access to it everywhere. One can even argue that the Internet  is a shared physical space. It is interesting to see cultures/civilizations mingle when there are no borders, even better, when the language barrier can be surpassed.

However in the case of China, the Great Firewall always acted as a prevention, and by doing so facilitated Western monopoly of China’s portrayal. The TikTok  ban was the first time where Western people had direct access to imagery of China made by Chinese people. This contributed not only in a disillusionment with western “propaganda” but also the realisation that countries framed as bad and “backward” had access to commodities that were inexistent or falling in the West.

Sun Wukong and the Immortality Peaches

So what is left to do now ?

The  "becoming Chinese"  manifests in foreign netizens expressing their interest in, affection for, and identification with Chinese culture by imitating and experiencing Chinese lifestyles. However, to be in a "very Chinese time" in one's life does not necessarily mean adopting Chinese political values or embracing the Chinese system. Rather, it signifies a rejection of Western legitimacy so profound that alternatives previously dismissed become thinkable, even attractive.

The turn toward China is fundamentally a turn away from the West. When systems collapse, humans seek viable alternatives rather than attempting to reinvent from ruins. If Western democracy appears to be failing, if Western prosperity was always more myth than reality, if Western freedom is revealed as increasingly constrained, then the demonization of China loses its persuasive force.

This doesn't mean Western populations are converting to Chinese socialism. It means the ideological binary that structured Cold War (and after to some extent) cultural conflict - free West versus repressive East - no longer holds. The West's moral authority depended on that contrast.

Now, political inefficiency seems to have become the norm in the West… So are our institutions really dead ? Not necessarily. Institutions are by nature reformist ; they should be able to adapt to changing [material] conditions. When they cannot, they ossify and eventually vanish. The fact that people are nurturing an interest toward China, obviously  does not mean the West is destined for collapse or that China will simply replace it as the new hegemon. There is still room for reform, and arguably, reform has never been more urgent. Politicians can still care [they must !] if these institutions are to survive in any meaningful form.

Ultimately, the Jade Emperor's heavenly order was not overthrown because Sun Wukong was particularly powerful, but because that order contained internal contradictions that made it vulnerable to disruption. The immortality peach was never truly ours if the garden never was effectively guarded.

新年快乐 !

TO DO READ

https://www.britannica.com/topic/historical-materialism

https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/australian-army-journal-aaj/volume-8-number-2-winter/implications-cultural-entrenchment-counterinsurgency-operations

https://time.com/7225725/cultural-exchange-between-the-u-s-and-china/

https://www.heritage.org/china/report/china-and-the-global-culture-war-western-civilizational-turmoil-and-beijings-strategic

https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/the-silent-parallels-of-us-china-rivalry-a-clash-of-power-not-models/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6eljqvyp1o

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/western-democracy-backsliding-diagnosing-risks