Institutionalizing Independence: Security, Culture, and Unofficial Documentary Filmmaking under the Xi Jinping Government

This article assesses recent Chinese Communist Party responses to the issue of post-Soviet ideological fragmentation by examining independent documentary media in the context of broader policy discussions surrounding culture and the lessons of the Arab Spring. It argues that Xi-ist policies of cultural securitization began under Hu Jintao and should be understood as the outgrowth of elite consensus-based efforts to deal with the implications of new media technologies and marketization for authoritarian rule. New political and factional formations have, in turn, reconfigured the landscape of institutions, patronage networks, and quasi-legal lines of permissiveness affecting documentary producers. This political institutionalization of independent media practices is significant as a window onto broader dynamics of managed pluralism.