A Post-development Critique of Chinese Development Discourse

Abstract: This paper looks at how China’s domestic development discourse creates and governs realities of objects, and subject. Using the works of Xi Jinping, the thesis uses the methods of governmentality by Mitchel Dean to analyze the data from the four analytical tools of epistheme, visibility, technical aspect, and identity to look at how the subject is positioned within collective mentalities, status of authority, means of rule, and constructed identity. The author also uses a post-development approach in the findings of the data within the frame of Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ sociologies of abscences to look at how monocultures of global neoliberal capitalism are identified in the development discourse. The analysis arrives at the following results: The Chinese development discourse creates a governmentality around a subject who see his or her belief in a scientific system of objective government. Forms of reproduction can be seen in the creation of a strong identity formation around cultural values, and belief in the political system. Furthermore, the analysis of sociology of abscenses made clear that all five counts of monocultures could be identified in the data, showing that Santos’ idea of the globalized universal modernity also existed in the Chinese discourse.