Signs of the times: The discourse of 'Three Represents' and globalisation

Abstract

In the past two decades, the economic reforms in China not only put Chinese society on the stage of globalisation, but also eroded the established significatory system set in Mao's China, the stability of meaning of governmental linguistic production has also been challenged. It is against such background that the official discourse of 'Three Represents' emerged. This paper intends to analyse the discourse of 'Three Represents' in the light of articulation as advanced by Stuart Hall, and examine the semiosis of these representations in the context of the reconstruction of epistemological theory. It argues that this on-going discursive practice is, in a way, a significant theoretical response by the CCP to the increasingly diversified social formation, the 'signs of the times', brought along by a new globalising economic structure. When signs of wealth are reinterpreted and re-evaluated in a new economic order, signs of authority (Bourdieu, 1991) which are intended to be believed and obeyed by the masses, have also shifted and been renegotiated to accommodate social changes.