The Western Classical Music Industry in Twenty-First Century China

A Dialectical Crescendo

Weida Wang

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040300602
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

Weida Wang explores how Western classical music (WCM) has become increasingly popular in China, framing the industry as a complex entity intricately embedded within China's political landscape, cultural economy, and cultural industries. Wang highlights how authorities and organisers strive to build powerful brands to support the industry's growth, aiming to tap into the vast domestic market and showcase China's achievements in WCM on the global stage as part of broader cultural diplomacy efforts. The study delves into the mechanisms and underlying logics driving the rapid expansion of the WCM market in contemporary China.

With the rise of China's economy since its government's late-1970s economic and political reform, WCM has become a useful tool for showcasing changes to the image of 'modern' and 'contemporary' China. At the same time, a new Chinese middle class, following the rapid economic (and cultural) development in China's coastal cities, has also emerged, becoming a substantial demographic involved in the learning, appreciation, and consumption of WCM. Especially in the past 20 years, a new WCM scene has developed quickly and established as an industry in China; one critically enmeshed in both the business and political worlds. Many ground-breaking cultural events have taken place in the last decades. These have shown themselves to be huge forces behind the development of China's domestic (and fledgling international) classical music aspirations.

The book will be valuable for those interested in arts/music management, music industry studies, China studies, cultural and creative industry studies, and ethnomusicology.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Western classical music industry in China: Contexts and conditions
• 2 From political tool to soft power: Reconstructing the role
• 3 The nostalgia industry
• 4 The political economy of the Beijing Music Festival (BMF): Repertoire and programming
• 5 Zhu Xiaomei and Richard Wagner: Segmentalised audiences of the elite-within-the-elite
• 6 Media culture and China's Western classical music industry
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendix: Chronology of China's Western classical music industry over 20 years (1997–2017)
• List of abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index