The culturalisation of politics in contemporary Chinese citizenship education

While historically and ideologically peripheralised in modern Chinese politics, traditional culture has been discursively rehabilitated by the Chinese communist regime in recent years. Existing literature on this phenomenon tends to focus on the politicisation of culture, that is, how Chinese culture, particularly the Confucian tradition, is appropriated by the regime to legitimatise and stabilise its ideopolitical control in schools and society. This article draws attention to the interweaving but distinct and underexplored tendency of the culturalisation of politics, that is, the party-state's discursive construction of politics in culturalist terms. It examines how politics is culturally constructed, or culturalised, in the official textbooks for the guiding political doctrine Xi Jinping Thought, the teaching of which has been mandatory in schools and universities since 2021. Situating the Chinese case in the broader context of the 'cultural turn' in postmodern politics, this article discusses the implications for citizenship education under China's authoritarian regime.