The research study aims to raise questions about and gain new insights into the development of performance art in China. The development of performance art in China is set out in a chronological account of the events and art works that illustrate the development of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables. The events and works included in this study are executed by Chinese artists impatient with the limitations of traditional or established forms and determined to take their performance art works directly to the public. Following the rapid socio-economic development that started in the late 1970's, soon after the end of the Cultural Revolution and the start of economic reform. The chronological account of the development of Chinese performance art explains how Chinese artists, in creating their work, draw freely on a number of disciplines and media including literature, poetry, theatre, music, dance, architecture and painting, as well as video, film, slides and narrative. The account also illustrates how Chinese performance art has gradually moved away from the traditions of Chinese performance and how performance art works often promote interpretive individualism. Research shows that Chinese artists choose performance art to break free from the dominant media and the constraints of working within the evolving social and political environment in China. Research further shows that artists use performance art as a provocation to respond to changes. Finally, performance art is gaining acceptance from the public in recent Chinese socio-economic development.

This thesis examines China’s contemporary global cultural footprints through its recent development of cultural diplomacy and its global expansion of the Confucius Institute, whose prominent features are investigated by exploring the four specific research questions of ‘why’ China wants to launch cultural diplomacy and the CI, ‘what’ is the vehicle, ‘who’ is the agent, and ‘how’ it is carried out in the field. The thesis challenges the adequacy of the mainstream concepts of ‘soft power’ and ‘nation branding’ that are most commonly cited in the current literature, and argued for an alternative analytical framework that goes beyond and beneath these Western-defined concepts. After deciphering the multiple contexts, Gramsci’s concepts of cultural hegemony and ideology and Said’s critique of Orientalism are adopted to frame a different understanding of the historical and international contexts, while the double-edged role played by nationalism is analysed to deepen our understanding of the domestic context. The proposed new perspectives are then applied to chart the global cultural terrain of struggle, where the cultural encounters in the shifting global power relations between China’s long-held image as the “cultural other” and the ‘ideological other’ and its self-representations are examined. A comparative case study of the CIs, one of the most visible and controversial manifestations of China’s cultural diplomacy, is carried out to answer the main research question of why China’s similar efforts in promoting its culture were perceived and received differently to other Western countries and encountered unexpected controversies. The answers outline the unique challenges faced by China’s cultural diplomacy in both the cultural encounters and the interactions between its internal articulations and external communications. Primary data were collected from 25 interviews with staff from nine CIs in five different countries and one Goethe Institute in Beijing. The dynamics between these interweaving contexts elaborate the complexity of China’s cultural diplomacy and the CI project, whose prominent features are presented as the major research findings of this thesis, while what will make it a truly ‘great leap outward’ is also discussed.