Research projects

The CCP Information Order in the Early People’s Republic of China, 1949-1966

Funded by the DFG, this project seeks to understand how and according to what criteria the CCP top leadership collected information on domestic and international affairs prior to the Cultural Revolution. While the party-state sought to project unity in external communication, the controlled circulation of information within its sprawling bureaucracy was diverse and took place in separate bureaucratic circuits, each with its own logic and fields of interest.

The project focuses on three of the most crucial channels through which information reached the state and party leadership: the Central Propaganda Department, the CCP General Office, and Xinhua News Agency Headquarters. These institutions compiled top-secret internal reference bulletins, so-called neican materials for the country’s top leaders. The three bulletins selected for this project: Xuanjiao dongtai, Qingkuang jianbao, and Neibu cankao, constitute the three most important neican sources in the early PRC.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Daniel Leese

Relevant Publications

• The CCP Information Order in the Early People’s Republic of China: The Case of Xuanjiao Dongtai

“Personalization: Subjectification and Authority”, subproject of the
Collaborative Research Center 948 “Heroes, Heroizations, Heroisms”

Heroes and heroines are granted authority because they are followed and looked up to. However, heroes also provide models of self-description, self-fashioning and action-orientation; in this sense, they can impact subjectification. Heroic bonds of authority and invocations of the heroic subject are linked by a logic of personalization. Obedience and subordination are not established by stronger weapons, superior resources, an appeal to tradition, legitimization through procedure, or the unforced force of the better argument. Similarly, the self is not formed by general value systems, codes of conduct or cost-benefit calculations. Rather, the self is formed by a role model demanding imitation, or by the admiration and worship of an exceptional figure. The case studies developed so far at the SFB have historically classified and described in detail the connection between personalized ties of authority and asymmetrical modes of subjectification. In this project, these case studies will now be the object of theoretical reflection.

Co-Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Nicola Spakowski

This project was funded by the DFG (2020-2024).

More information

Populäre chinesische Druckgrafik des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts: Die Sammlung des Museums am Rothenbaum, Hamburg

Gegenstand dieses Projekts sind gut 360 Exemplare populärer chinesischer Druckgrafik aus der noch weitestgehend unerforschten Sammlung von fast 1300 Drucken des Hamburger Museums am Rothenbaum, Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), dem ehemaligen Museum für Völkerkunde. Es handelt sich dabei um im Shanghai der späten 1920er und frühen 30er-Jahre maschinell hergestellte Farbdrucke, welche Formen und Inhalte der bislang ausschließlich als Blockdrucke identifizierten, populären Neujahrsdrucke (nianhua 年畫) reproduzieren. Diese Farbdrucke sind offenbar ein einmaliger Bestand, welcher die bisher in der Forschung gängige historische Typisierung chinesischer Druckgrafik in Frage stellt. Ausgehend von den an den Sammlungsaktivitäten beteiligten Akteuren wird daher in diesem Projekt eine chinesisch-deutsche Verflechtungsgeschichte der frühen wissenschaftlichen Konzeption und Imagination populärer chinesischer Druckgrafik und visueller Volkskultur ausgearbeitet.

Das Projekt wird von Dr. Bernd Spyra (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) in Kooperation mit dem MARKK durchgeführt. Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG.