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This essay examines Fruit Chan's... 2004 horror film Dumplings, which uses cannibalism as a metaphor for Chinese tradition. In this respect, the film has inherited Lu Xun's ... criticism of Chinese tradition in his "Diary of a Madman" at the beginning of the 20th century. This tradition, however, has been changed radically through the modernization process. Dumplings presents contemporary Chinese culture as a hybrid combination, which has been transformed not only by Maoist legacy but also by the powerful influence of global capitalism.
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In 1997 Hong Kong, the freest capitalist market, was returned to China, the most populated communist country. How should one write the following chapter? The situation seems so complicated: there may be as many responses as there are responders to this question. Instead of fearing for its loss of economic freedom, post-1997 Hong Kong has not only kept its "peculiarly advantageous position to profit from distortions and partial openings of China's economic reform" but also served as a model for China, as the motherland aspires to become an economic power through its integration into the global market.1 At the end of the 20th century, the American Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, ranked Hong Kong first in the world in terms of economic freedom. 2 Meanwhile, China has experienced for the past three decades the fastest growing economy in the world.
Post-Cold War "global modernity" has contributed to reinforcing the contradictory state of contemporary China-a mixture of socialist discourse, capital investments, as well as traditional and modern values.3 With its political pragmatism, the Chinese Communist government has followed the former British colonial government in Hong Kong in terms of depoliticization by creating a "paradoxical atmosphere of doom and boom," as Ackbar Abbas puts it. "The more frustrated or blocked the aspirations to 'democracy' are, the more the market booms."4 At the same time, the "doom and boom" situation on the mainland is further complicated by egalitarian discourse, indispensable for the ideological justification of the regime, and by the collaboration and exchange between the overflow of global capital and various forms of communist state power. Wang Hui ... considers this Chinese trend as part of "the contemporary world's depoliticization process": "[T]hrough new political arrangements that...