A sign in front of the National Museum of China announces the "Great Changes" exhibition celebrating forty years since China undertook "Reform and Opening".
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening (改革开放 gǎigé kāifàng) policy, a special exhibit was held at the National Museum of China in Beijing during late 2018. In this post, I share photos and observations from two visits to the exhibit.
I first went on a Friday afternoon and joined a long line of people waiting to get in for the final few hours before the museum shut. From conversations that I overheard, it seems that many in the queue were state employees who had been instructed to attend (hence the big turnout on a working day). On my second visit the following Monday (necessary to finish viewing the vast quantity of materials on display), there was nobody waiting to get in. Admission was free, indicating that this was clearly no money-making venture, but a state-funded public information (or "propaganda") campaign.
A busy waiting area on a Friday afternoon compared to a very quiet Monday.
People visiting the exhibit stopped to take photos in front of the museum and its grand entrance display featuring the classic red and gold typesetting of the communist movement, as well as a large floral display. Some of those attending were clearly party members, as indicated by their hammer and sickle flags, while others were state workers, including a team of public security personnel. Such imagery conveyed a strong association with the CCP's Leninist heritage, despite the exhibit supposedly documenting a "Reform and Opening" policy that originally aimed to break away from Mao-era Communist orthodoxy. This would be the first of several conflicting messages.
Visitors stop to take photos in front of the "Great Changes" display and other banners.
In addition to state workers and party members, school pupils were another key visitor profile at the exhibit.
Young students pose for photos in front of banners proclaiming a "new era for socialism with Chinese characteristics" with Xi Jinping at the "core" of the Party.
Some students seemed engaged in the exhibit's content, while others found a quiet corner to sit down and play on their phones....
Through the museum's many vast halls, a series of display boards, artworks and artefacts demonstrated the progress China has made since 1978, while celebrating the citizens and political leaders who have enabled that progress. The exhibit's content included all of China's paramount leaders from the past four decades, but there was a clear focus on the incumbent Xi Jinping. This is despite Xi himself declaring the start of a "New Era" at the most recent CCP national congress in October 2017, seen by China analysts as marking a formal end to the Reform period[1]. This then was the second mixed message.
I observed hundreds of photos of Xi, usually arranged in a very formulaic way, whereby a large portrait would be placed in a high position surrounded by various other images, quotations and artefacts. There were also numerous large screens playing video recordings of his speeches (see slideshow below).
Slideshow of the exhibit's images of Xi and artefacts related to him
There were also photos of Xi's predecessors, including the man most associated with Reform and Opening, Deng Xiaoping, as well as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
Jiang, Deng and Hu: the paramount leaders of China during Reform and Opening.
But the emphasis was very clearly and disproportionately on Xi, whose relevance to an exhibition on the past forty years of reform in China can be described as tenuous at best. While he has lived and served as a cadre throughout the Reform period, Xi's presidency since 2012 has been characterised much more by its counter-reform measures than reformist credentials. According to the official narrative, however, it is under the two national congresses led by Xi that China has moved decisively towards realising the "moderately prosperous society" that Deng set out as one of the original goals of his Reform and Opening policy.
Visitors gaze up at walls covered in photos of Xi, presented as the central character in China's "Reform and Opening" story.
Political iconography aside, there were many photos and displays showing how much ordinary people's lives have changed and improved in China over the past four decades.
Photos of young people whose lives have been transformed under Reform and Opening.
Realist paintings commemorating the workers who powered China's Reform era.
There were also displays showcasing China's technological advances in recent decades, from robotics and nuclear power to space travel, deep sea exploration and aeronautics.
Examples of Chinese achievements in science and technology since Reform and Opening.
Many of the displays themselves used state-of-the-art audiovisual technology, a sort of meta statement about how much China has progressed in recent decades, and a reminder to the Chinese viewing public that they should feel proud of the nation's progress (an idea promoted under Xi Jinping's signature "Confidence Doctrine").
Hi-tech audiovisual displays at the "Great Changes" exhibit.
This stood in stark contrast to the very primitive Mao-era objects on display. Within the space of just a few decades, Chinese consumers have gone from using food stamps to paying with their mobile phones for almost all daily transactions.
Ration coupons, paper money, buttons and stamps were among the historical objects on display.
Notes:
[1] An argument most prominently made by Carl Minzer in his book, End of an Era.
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