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The paradoxical relationship between Chinese creative workers and the state
Chinese Creator Economies dives into the paradoxical lives lived by creative professionals in emerging economies across China. Jian Lin contextualizes the socioeconomic conditions in which cultural production takes place and pushes back against the dominant understanding of Chinese media as a centralized, state-controlled apparatus by looking at how individual creative workers grapple with governance and precarity in the Chinese cultural industries and develop their bilateral subjectivities within the politico-economic system of Chinese media.
Drawing on intensive empirical research conducted on creative labor practices across television, journalism, design, and social media, Chinese Creative Economies looks at both Chinese and foreign-born content creators, exploring the tensions between Beijing’s limits on individual creativity, and its aspirations to become a global hub for cultural production. Lin maintains that it is the production of bilateral creatives that generates and maintains hope for the future of those who live and work within the cultural economies of China.
"Essential reading. Jian Lin offers a critical and empirically evidenced approach to rethink creative work studies beyond the confines of Western experiences and theorizations. Lin harvests his insights adroitly, boldly, and compassionately. His penchant for the schizophrenic, the multifaceted, the dilemma, the bilateral, is a rejection of any homogenizing account of the state and the market, of cultural work and creative class. In its place, I read more futures."
"You will not read a better account that dewesternizes creative-labor studies than this book. Jian Lin goes deeper than usual into creators’ lived experience and also wider—across state enterprises and international workers as well indies and the digital class. Jian’s heart is open and his mind is ablaze."
"The most updated and insightful assessment of the working condition of Chinese creative workers. Bilateral creatives work under the planned logic of state’s creative industries, and at the same time, work creatively and subtly against the system of governance and cultural policy. The most interesting and intellectually intriguing aspects of the book owes much to Lin’s five years of fieldwork."
"Chinese Creator Economies: Labor and Bilateral Creative Workers stands out as a significant work, amplifying the voices of Chinese cultural creators and shedding light on their experiences. By doing so, it enriches the discussion on contemporary China in today’s increasingly interconnected and complex global landscape."