As independent scholarship through the fringes of Academia grinds on, my life in China has been low-key pending sporadic peer review flirtations: I was asked to submit a paper to Sage following my reviewer invitation some months ago, so am finishing one, taking the time my innate sloth requires and settling into the irresolute reflections of mature age solitude. My initial optimism for this fight is slowly dwindling: however, I have begun to experiment with diary films to augment the discourse construction of the afore-mentioned "Being in Time" project reflected on in these first blogs. In that I am buoyed by recent attention in autoethnography given the diary film format (Smolny.org), since its methodologizing as a research tool by Bancroft (2016).
VIDEO 9: Experimental diary-film inspired by a visit to a Beijing venue called "Nashville" and hearing a Chinese cover band cover US song classics, one of which triggered a memory of my first stroll down Urumqi, in XUAR, where I streetside heard the iconic American song playing outside of an eatery. NOTE: the video features only actual sound from location but was nevertheless subject to a (c) strike - either way, this is Eagles, overheard playing in XUAR.
Uncertainty prevails this semester break: an email inquiry to The Autoethnographer online journal to confirm their acceptance of my multimedia submission and announced screening of my film "Being in Time" (reported in blog 2) has yielded no result as yet and I am concerned they will change their mind and not publish the video, given its geo-political take. That would put me back at the proverbial square one, though related write-up of a potential SAGE pre-print (following their invitation to submit) is forthcoming - autoethnographic methodologies in Chinese EFL-IC. To which, the home website has been updated to reflect the longitudinal transmedia digital publishing nature of the project as I envision it as praxis. Taking shape. Coincidentally, however, as I prepare for brief travel back to my home country of Australia, I see the research field in which I operate be increasingly politicized: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute [ASPI]'s latest report - Singing from the CCP Songbook - effectively seeking to obscure the legitimate methodological precepts behind the recent "My China Story" video competition, in which several foreigners produced content related to XUAR.
I had considered entering the competition but was hampered by professional budget and related equipment concerns. To me, it is the competition's celebration of the "cultural story" (Chinese specific) that has the most profound implications, discursively, not least for their extrapolation into the public sphere of EFL-IC pedagogic principles. For context: Fu Ying, former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of the Center for International Security and Strategy of Tsinghua University, stated in China Daily (Fu, 2020) that:
To tell China’s story well, we need to not only speak about the Chinese system, but also relate the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. In doing so, we should use innovative methods of communication and narrative concepts, so that we can ensure that what we want to tell can be heard by foreign audiences and enhance the affinity of our communication. We can start from the everyday lives of Chinese people, so foreigners can better understand the true myriad of “Chinese life”, and in this way gain a better appreciation of the Chinese path, Chinese theory, Chinese system and Chinese culture. (Fu, 2020)
At issue is inter-cultural communication, facilitating greater Western understanding of, and dialogue with, China through narrativized cultural storytelling by foreigners which presents a Chinese informed perspective such as would qualify their inter-cultural (and culture shock) experience. Evidently, anti-China advocates are threatened by such authentic lived experience and its means of inter-cultural communication: as it somehow, for ASPI and suchlike, "telling China's story well" is inherently to be feared. Significantly, the condemnatory ASPI report was funded through the auspices of the US State Department, specifically the Global Engagement Center [GEC], which has long been concerned with ensuring the proliferation of US propaganda. ASPI, however, deleted their initial mention of this funding bias from the current PDF version. Through ASPI and their US State Department sponsors, the attempt to smear all foreigners in China who may use media or social media to speak out in favor of China - or even merely relate their personal lived experience of being a foreigner in China (to tell their own inter-cultural story) - is intended to taint all foreigner discourse emanating domestically, to negate the effectiveness of any greater role such has in inter-cultural communication. In smearing such as formulaic propaganda, however, ASPI et.al deliberately ignore the underlying research-driven basis in auto-ethnography as a legitimate qualitative methodology for such inquiry: (geo-politically informed) personal narrativization, with "social justice" re-configured with "Chinese characteristics".
The imposition of an anti-Chinese epistemic bias to thus shape the ideological divide over “discourse power”, in relation to the narrativization of foreigner stories of China being so demonized by ASPI, thus serves to antagonistically discredit the authenticity of these foreign voices in auto-ethnographic narrativization by associating them not just with state-owned or state-decreed “propaganda” but even with psychological warfare. This blatant politicization ignores the conceptual foundation of such inter-cultural storytelling in auto-ethnographic research, participant-observation methodologies and related media production. For China’s foreigner community, auto-ethnographic multimedia storytelling from an IC participant-observational prism offering a conceptually justified, construct valid form of narrative inquiry and transmedia disseminated positionality.
ASPI (2023) assert that:
“foreign influencers are involved in a wave of experimentation and innovation in domestic and external propaganda production that’s taking place at different levels around the PRC as officials heed Xi Jinping’s call to actively participate in ‘international communication’” (p. 1).
The bias in this assertion is in 1) the qualification of “influencer” for what more accurately is simply “foreigners”; and 2) the manipulative substitution of the word “propaganda” for what more accurately should be simply “media” or “multimedia”. Furthermore, the experimental innovation they assert as spreading through PRC at “different levels” deliberately omits the specific Academic context in which such foreigner generated media is theorized and delineated: ASPI state such is a means of China asserting "discourse power". But what is that underlying Academic discourse? To objectively strip the fundamental bias in ASPI’s assertion:
foreigners in China are involved in a wave of experimental innovation in domestic and external media production anchored in recent Academic discourses within Chinese Inter-cultural Communication [IC] pedagogy.
Removed of ASPI’s bias, this is a simple statement of fact, however in need of further qualification it may be. As qualification thus: emerging from Shanghai International Studies University [SISU] is the delineation by Chi, Zhang and Kulich (2022) of a “cultural story” exercise as a means of facilitating inter-cultural communicative competence [ICC] within Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language [EFL] based IC pedagogic practice. As outlined in this author’s current work-in-progress independent research paper:
Chi, Zhang and Kulich (2022) described previous “cultural stories” classroom activities developed by intercultural instructors:... a “digital project designed for pre-service teachers, who are encouraged to make self-portraits by creatively mixing multi-modal cultural artifacts (believing) that these artistic visual representations of their ‘cultural, literacy, and teacher Self’ are funds of knowledge for meaning making”. Expanding this emphasis on teachers’ cultural identity were efforts at generating student awareness of their cultural legacy as an introduction to the course, thus Holliday and Brennan (2020) “introduced the ‘Home Culture Story’ as one of the key assignments in a teacher-training program (as) a digital presentation of the origins of one’s core cultural values related to their identity... designed to train prospective teachers to make use of their students’ cultural stories by exploring their own cultural stories first”. Consequently, Chi, Zhang and Kulich (2022) stated that “(t)hese designs share an emphasis on self-reflexivity and more perceptive contextual-awareness (and that) a similar activity that has been designed for, effectively used, regularly evaluated, and critically adjusted in a different socio-cultural context would, therefore, be a worthy addition to the list if details of and outcomes from its learning process and pedagogical adaptations are explained”.
The stated objective to facilitate student exploration (and rendering, or “telling”) of their own cultural story by first modelling such on foreign IC teacher experience is the pedagogic platform upon which foreign vlogging in China - and potential future contest entry content creation - could lead to the further innovation and channel expansion which ASPI securitize and fearmonger. From a “cultural story” rationale for Chinese EFL-IC best pedagogic practice to foreigners in China telling “My China Story” based on the narrativization of lived experience as a means of foregrounding inter-cultural communication is merely the logical (if experimental) extension of autoethnographic methodologies from their Academic origins into the public sphere. So too, from a methodological template of autoethnography “with Chinese characteristics”, content creation underlaid by multi-polar geo-political reconsiderations of autoethnography’s core belief in “social justice” strips it from the constraints of US/Western epistemic bias. Little wonder ASPI are concerned.
Presciently regarding just such a movement, on 2023/12/02, foreign vlogger Jerry Grey interviewed Shanghai Daily’s Andy Boreham (featured prominently in the ASPI report) about foreigner narratives within the Chinese media system, to which Boreham responded “(Western) people have such a bad understanding of China... if we can reach a tipping point and get them to understand the real China...the governments and the media wouldn’t be able to continue the scaremongering... the more (Western) people who could see those stories of real people... would be really beneficial” (Grey, 2023). So too, Grey and Boreham suggest that due to the currently unfolding Israeli/Palestine conflict that anti-China XUAR issues are again being promoted by Western media, and that the challenge to Chinese media is that of inter-cultural communication. In fact, Grey specifically suggested the promotion of Hofstede’s dimensions of culture as a means to educate foreigners about Chinese discourse construction: Hofstede is the basis for IC course design in Chinese EFL.
With my own EFL-IC pedagogic practice now resolved pending a belated write-up of methodological reasoning, a contact by my US publisher - McFarland & Co. Inc. - has led to an intriguing possible book deal again. !2 or so years ago, just before coming to China and arriving in XUAR to live and work over a year in 2011-12, I was a SAR Research Fellow at Australia's National Film & Sound Archive, following a development grant through ArtsSA: I researched representations of disability in Australian film. The resultant monograph - a chronological case by case account from the silent era to then present-day 2010 - was never published through uploaded onto Academic social media. It was highly critical of government policy and related media treatments. By chance, McFarland expressed interest in me reducing and updating the monograph to reflect the current state of disability politics in Australia and its media presence. To update the monograph would require examining the rise in disability politics in Australia with the visibility of Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John, whose input into Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme [NDIS] have been enormously influential. To which, tentative contact emails about related research were sent out in anticipation of resuming research for an updated volume though my schedule this trip is limited. By chance, thus, I must now prepare for a short return to my home country of Australia after being in China since before Covid-19 in 2019, and in the process potentially re-visit the concerns I had as a SAR Research Fellow prior to coming to China and XUAR. Inevitably, would such engagement yield a new set of intersectionalities in my unfolding cultural story?