This thesis discusses one of the primary questions of the debates on China, the question of the nature of Chinese transformation. It is suggested in this thesis that to fully grasp the transformation of China, we need to contextualize it within global neoliberal transformations since the 1980s. It is also argued that even if the transformation in China has been heavily influenced by global tendencies, we still have to recognize peculiar characteristics of Chinese transformation. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute to the scholarly discussions on the nature of Chinese transformation especially by way of critically engaging with &lsquo / Beijing Consensus&rsquo / , a notion that is relatively new and opens to the scientific debates. In the thesis, a decade-based analysis of the transformation in China is provided. In this regard, this thesis identifies the period between Deng&rsquo / s coming to power in 1978 and his Southern Tour in 1992 as the period of &lsquo / launching of the reforms&rsquo / . It is argued that the reforms introduced in the 1980s are of vital importance in terms of abandoning the legacies of Maoist period and the construction of the institutions of a capitalist market economy in China. On the other hand, the 1990s period that ends with the change of leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002 is characterized as the period of &lsquo / consolidation of the reforms&rsquo / . It is assumed that the reform drive in the 1990s has a pivotal role for the consolidation of the current configuration of state, labour, capital relations in China.

This thesis examines the political pop art of contemporary Chinese artist Wang Guangyi in light contemporaneous shifts within the political, economic, and artistic space of China from 1978 until the present. Through an analysis of the work of art as an historically determined antagonistic aesthetic praxis, this thesis attempts to reveal the sedimented traces of the alternative modernity which the Chinese government is actively attempting to construct. With its evocative juxtaposition of contrasting ideological forms, the artwork of Wang Guangyi seeks to deconstruct the normative and teleological narratives encountered within the dialectic interplay between state sponsored transnational capitalism and Marxist-Leninist communism. An understanding of the discursive structure upon which these dual modernising narratives has been based, and of the fragmented artistic space they have engendered, should serve to enliven the debate concerning the role of cultural production in questioning and revealing narratives of the nation, of the Self, and of modernity.

This thesis examines the political pop art of contemporary Chinese artist Wang Guangyi in light contemporaneous shifts within the political, economic, and artistic space of China from 1978 until the present. Through an analysis of the work of art as an historically determined antagonistic aesthetic praxis, this thesis attempts to reveal the sedimented traces of the alternative modernity which the Chinese government is actively attempting to construct. With its evocative juxtaposition of contrasting ideological forms, the artwork of Wang Guangyi seeks to deconstruct the normative and teleological narratives encountered within the dialectic interplay between state sponsored transnational capitalism and Marxist-Leninist communism. An understanding of the discursive structure upon which these dual modernising narratives has been based, and of the fragmented artistic space they have engendered, should serve to enliven the debate concerning the role of cultural production in questioning and revealing narratives of the nation, of the Self, and of modernity.