Abstract
“China's rising! The sleeping dragon is waking up!” It is common to see these kinds of headlines in the Western media about the recent development of People’s Republic of China. In the foreseeable future, China is expected to become one of the world’s biggest economic players. There is growing interest in the West about China’s economic boom. The government, private sector and individuals have been revisiting “design” (or Sheji in Chinese), and beginning to recognize its importance from product positioning to marketing promotion, rather than an evil ideology for Communism. This paper addresses the development of modern design and design education in China from a historical perspective with a focus on the interactions between tradition, modernity and commercialization. It reviews the formative years of modern design education development during the Republican period (1911-1945) and the most recent rapid expansion following three decades of isolation from the outside world beginning in 1979. The author exams the statement of modern design, a new modern medium, combined with a touch of arts and crafts, technology and marketing, is considered a Western import in contemporary China. This study investigates the cultural issues of design in a non-Western context with the aims at providing a contribution to the understanding of cross-cultural design and world design history.
Keywords
China, Cross-cultural design, Culture and design, Design history, Design and development
Citation
Wong, W. (2006) Contemporary Design in China: The Road to Modernity and Commercialization, in Friedman, K., Love, T., Côrte-Real, E. and Rust, C. (eds.), Wonderground - DRS International Conference 2006, 1-4 November, Lisbon, Portugal. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2006/researchpapers/42
Contemporary Design in China: The Road to Modernity and Commercialization
“China's rising! The sleeping dragon is waking up!” It is common to see these kinds of headlines in the Western media about the recent development of People’s Republic of China. In the foreseeable future, China is expected to become one of the world’s biggest economic players. There is growing interest in the West about China’s economic boom. The government, private sector and individuals have been revisiting “design” (or Sheji in Chinese), and beginning to recognize its importance from product positioning to marketing promotion, rather than an evil ideology for Communism. This paper addresses the development of modern design and design education in China from a historical perspective with a focus on the interactions between tradition, modernity and commercialization. It reviews the formative years of modern design education development during the Republican period (1911-1945) and the most recent rapid expansion following three decades of isolation from the outside world beginning in 1979. The author exams the statement of modern design, a new modern medium, combined with a touch of arts and crafts, technology and marketing, is considered a Western import in contemporary China. This study investigates the cultural issues of design in a non-Western context with the aims at providing a contribution to the understanding of cross-cultural design and world design history.