The Postmodern Paradox: Reconstructing China’s National Identity

This paper confronts an extraordinary contradiction: With an ideology built on historical continuity and collectivism, the world’s most populous authoritarian state now finds itself enmeshed in the contradictions of postmodern identity politics. With its gleeful pulverizing of truth, identity, and coherence, postmodernism has inadvertently infiltrated the narrative-driven fortress of the People’s Republic of China. In its national narrative, however, postmodernism erodes “Chineseness” from within. I explore how this paradox stretches across cultural, political, and diplomatic spheres, complicating China’s global image and muddling its efforts to project ideological coherence on the world stage.