Telos 213 (Winter 2025): China Keywords I is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
China saturates Western media and academic discourse, invoked incessantly as a force remaking the world, while the political and social-theoretical ideas through which China thinks, judges, and interprets that world remain largely unheard. Western discourses on China exhibit a persistent tendency toward objectification and reification. Chinese phenomena figure as objects of analysis, yet such analyses rarely delve into their subjective-interpretative depth. Were they to do so, they would encounter these “objects” as subjects who actively make sense of their worlds, carrying ideas, ideals, and self-conceptions embedded in distinct interpretive traditions. At the same time, Western media and academics are often unaware that their own views are actively influenced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which spends $10 billion per year on international propaganda efforts that include advertising, news production, and social media campaigns.
