Constructing civic identity in Shanghai’s museums heritage, ideology and local distinctiveness

In post-Tiananmen, post-Cold War China, patriotic loyalty to the state has displaced class affiliation or revolutionary fervour as the supreme test of ideological correctness. A socialist emphasis on bettering the lot of ‘workers and peasants’ has been decisively supplanted by prioritisation of the pursuit of ‘comprehensive national strength’. Whatever enhances gross domestic product (GDP), enriching and strengthening the Party-State, is deemed desirable – largely irrespective of distributive implications. The resulting pseudo-corporatist yet intensely competitive economic model has been termed ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’ (Huang 2008).