Regimes of temporality: China, Tibet and the politics of time in the post-2008 era

Abstract

While the politics of time are an important dimension of Chinese state discourse about Tibet, it remains insufficiently explored in theoretical and practical terms. This article examines the written and visual discourses of Tibetan temporality across Chinese state media in the post-2008 era. It analyses how these media discourses attempt to construct a ‘regime of temporality’ in order to manage public opinion about Tibet and consolidate Chinese rule over the region. While the expansion of online technologies has allowed the state to consolidate its discourses about Tibet’s place within the People’s Republic of China (PRC), they have also provided Tibetans a limited but valuable space to challenge these official representations through counter readings of Tibet’s past, present and future. In doing so, this article contributes new insights on the production of state power over Tibet, online media practices in China, and the disruptive potential of social media as sites of Tibetan counter discourses.

Digitally Dismantling Asian Authoritarianism

“…Rhetorician Jeannie Beard (2020) has aptly pointed out that regardless of where it happens, "when people can be cancelled for differing opinions, a toxic environment is created, one of oppression, suppression, and false consensus." CCPCC clearly meets yet far exceeds such definitions of cancel culture, in that it is globally deployed by the CCP with the purpose of "constraining, excluding and undermining alternative narratives … that contradict those of the state" (Kehoe 2020(Kehoe : 1142; it demands adherence as a prerequisite for access to China's market. These nuanced differences and their impacts on Asian democracy activists should not be overlooked-particularly, as we will see below, their impacts on the alternative political narratives these activists are generating with the use of hashtags.…”