Cultivating Creative China: Making and Remaking Cities, Citizens, Work and Innovation

What is the role of creativity in contemporary visions of economic and social change in China? Chinese politicians and countercultural technology "makers" seem to agree that creativity is central to China's development, but do they have the same thing in mind? How is the notion of creativity simultaneously woven into the governance of everyday urban space, ideas of selfhood and citizenship, and stories of personal and corporate innovation?;Creativity is a powerful narrative invoked to justify investments in China's creative industry, to motivate regional efforts in urban renewal, and bolster grassroots efforts promoting open source and related forms of commons production. This dissertation examines in ethnographic detail how creativity is cultivated by Chinese politicians, urban planners and a group at the forefront of China's burgeoning creative vanguard, DIY makers. Politicians and DIY makers align in their arguments that China's remake can be accomplished through the making of particular kinds of spaces and particular kinds of people, but differ in how they envision change unfold. Politicians argue that creative industry development will make China into a cultural leader of the 21 st century. DIY makers believe that individual liberation and a bottom-up approach lead to social and economic transformation.;This dissertation shows that China's "remake" is accomplished through partial alignments and parasitic collaborations between seemingly opposing groups such as countercultural makers, Communist politicians, urban planners and policy makers. It explores a series of productions by these actors such as DIY maker manifestos free and open technology, governmental policy, space making projects such as the set up of creative industry clusters as well as China's first hacker space and coworking space, and the open source productions at a hardware incubator in Shenzhen. To understand the wider ramification of China's remake it is crucial to take making itself seriously as a narrative of change and a mode of material and cultural production. This focus on making includes studying the ways in which people re-imagine the world and how they in so doing also make worlds such as alternate spaces of work and leisure, conceptions of work and innovation and ideas of selfhood and collectivity.