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1. Abstract:
The Sichuan Earthquake and the Heavenly Mandate: Reaffirming China’s
Developmental Model through Disaster Discourses
Florian Schneider1 and Yih-Jye Hwang2
The recent success of China’s mode of development is founded on a combination of
economic, political, and cultural factors (i.e. capitalism, authoritarianism, and
conservativism). The Chinese leadership is promoting this mode of development towards
developing countries as an alternative to the neo-liberal Washington Consensus, and Joshua
Cooper Ramo has termed it the ‘Beijing Consensus’. China’s success story has, however,
raised the question of how the Chinese government has been able to adopt principles of
capitalism, while still retaining an authoritarian approach to politics, and of what role
Confucianism has played in the mediation between capitalism and authoritarianism. This
paper contributes to this debate by examining the ways in which various actors use cultural
means to represent national crises in China (i.e. natural disasters). What meanings do
national crises have in the Chinese discourse on legitimacy? To what extent do government
responses to crises give the CCP a mandate to continue its rule in China? Consequently, we
need to examine how exhibitions, film, television, etc. depict Chinese crisis management,
and how state policy and popular culture interact to justify the leadership’s approach to
development on such occasions. This paper focuses on the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. The
earthquake has become part of the discourse of suffering, struggle, solidarity, and ultimately
victory, which Chinese actors frequently utilize to depict China’s mode of development. In
such discourses, the leadership of the Party, the mastery of free markets, and the Confucian
idea of benevolence are represented as the decisive factors for winning any ‘battle’. The
paper analyses two cases: Chinese film, here in the form of Feng Xiaogang’s blockbuster
‘Aftershock’, and performance-based discourses, such as the Beijing Olympics, the PRC’s 60-
Year Anniversary parade, and the Shanghai Expo. By conducting a discourse analysis, we
show how the earthquake has become part of a recurring discursive formation that is used
by state and non-state actors alike to legitimize China’s developmental model.
1
Florian Schneider is Lecturer for the Politics of Modern China at Leiden University’s Chi ese
department. His research interests include questions of governance and public administration in the
PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, political communication strategies and political content of Chinese
popular culture, recent Chinese economic development, as well as Chinese foreign policy. Dr.
S h eider’s urre t proje t deals ith staged ass-media events in mainland China, such as the
Beijing Olympic Games Opening Cere o y i 2008, the 60th A i ersary of the People’s Repu li of
China in 2009, and the Shanghai Expo 2010.
2
Yih-Jye Hwang is currently an Assistant Professor at Leiden University College the Hague, Leiden
University. In 2008, he obtained his doctoral degree in International Politics from the University of
Wales, A eryst yth. His resear h i terests i lude Fou ault’s thoughts, atio alis , atio al
identity, cultural governance, human security, and IR theories.