The Changing Identity of ICH Inheritors: Implementing China’s ICH to the Schools as a Nation-Building Policy

The twenty-first century has seen a growing awareness of the social and cultural value of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and the Chinese state increasingly recognises the soft power of ICH in promoting social cohesion and nationalism. Paper-cutting, a once domestic-based form of folk art, has been coopted by the state as an effective propaganda tool, with cultural and political attributes that can be harnessed at this crucial time of nation-building. We draw on heritage identity theory and in-depth interviews to explore the private to public transformation of three official provincial paper-cutting ICH inheritors in Shaanxi Province who are now educators in the state’s ICH to the Schools initiative. The paper examines how heritage identities have been transformed from rural paper-cutting practitioners to ICH inheritors. We argue that the ICH to the Schools policy, which seeks to revive certain state-mandated forms of Chinese traditional folk culture, has also redefined the identity of paper-cutting practitioners as ICH inheritors working within the framework of moral education and nation-building. The findings of semi-formal interviews with the three practitioners reveal their changing self-perception of their roles, their relationships with paper-cutting and their responsibilities to the state, and the material and financial impacts on their lives of these changing identities. The findings suggest that the state’s recognition, while of benefit to some ICH inheritors, may exclude others, and that the state continues to have strong soft power motives for promoting and supporting ICH in formal education and elsewhere.