Description
The Chinese foreign ministry told the media that ‘we have answered the question (that about not congratulating Sanae Takaichi’s premiership) for many times’ while they had not addressed this question. Taking a disdaining posture towards major global counterparts has been increasingly common in China’s diplomatic exercise in the context of rivalry against the US. Existing literature has approached such a practice in terms of ‘silent treatment’ or ‘strategic ghosting’ as an aggressive move towards predominant powers or international order by China as a revisionist power. While states do strategize the act of disdain as part of a rational calculation of national interests, such an act could be found not only on the official, but also the everyday level as an emotionalised response to changing international circumstances. This paper argues that the act of disdain has constituted a consistent mode of practice by both the Chinese state and society, and it represents a collective aesthetic movement to reflect on China’s political and cultural positioning in the emergent order of multipolarity. For both the authorities and the public, resembling forms of disdaining act has enabled them a vehicle for exchanging views on the officially sanctioned, public-emotionally reproduced discourse of the ‘China model’, which has in turn warrant a restructuring of international hierarchy based upon appreciation of industrially powered developmentalism dismissive of contemporary western public life.
