China and Orientalism

7 The China-reference andorientalism in the global economy

So far we have focused on China discourse in variously specialized, journalistic, popular, and creative texts within Western but also global intellectual political culture. I have argued that Sinological-orientalism - evidenced in the representation and codings of Tiananmen in the Western imaginary, in the demonization of the Mao era and Chinese governance, in the elision of Maoist or radical discourse, in the enumerative modality producing dubious Great Leap Forward scholarship, and in the totalitarianist codings of China in film studies and in DeLillo - pervades and helps form that culture and politics today. There is a weight to the construction and place of “China” across these