Industrial museums with Chinese characteristics: theories and practices

ABSTRACT

Industrial museums are experiencing fast development in China, where they play important roles in industrial heritage preservation, the promotion of industrial culture, and nation-building. These uses, together with the particularities of the Chinese industrialisation process, have shaped new models in industrial museography. In this paper, we describe how some Western ideas regarding industrial museums and heritage have been adapted in China, and how the development of such ideas in theory and practice has resulted in different types of museums. In doing so, we use bibliometry, statistics, and quantitative and qualitative analyses to study the factors behind the growth of industrial museums in China, the scientific literature on the topic produced in the country, and basic data about 249 museums. As a result, we delimitate the specificities of the industrial museums with Chinese characteristics, which can enrich the international discussion on the subject with approaches less explored in the West.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial museums
• industrial culture
• industrial heritage
• uses of the past
• People’s Republic of China
• bibliometry

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to show their gratitude to W. Qian, M. Huang, L. Zhou, Y. Ma, R. Zhang, D. Wang, W. Zhang, W. Xia, J. Li, M. Zhang, Q. Wang, Z. Zhang, Z. Wang, R. Méndez Andrés and E. Nicolau, as well as to the reviewers of this manuscript and the staff of the museums and institutions mentioned in the paper. The authors are fully responsible for the opinions, hypotheses, conclusions and suggestions expressed in this paper, which do not necessarily reflect those of the colleagues and institutions mentioned.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Notes

1 Available in < http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2018-02/12/content_5266147.htm >. Accessed in 12 July 2022.

2 Available in < https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1747024299112932640&wfr=spider&for=pc >. Accessed in 21 November 2022

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (P. R. China) under Grant FRF-IDRY-19-014.

Notes on contributors

Lan Long

Lan Long holds a BA in cultural heritage from Capital Normal University (Beijing, China) and is a master student at the Cultural Heritage and Museology programme of the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science & Technology. Her main research interest is in education and museums. She has developed research in this field in China and South Korea, and she is currently studying the educational function of industrial museums in Beijing.

Juan Manuel Cano Sanchiz

Juan Manuel Cano Sanchiz is an associate professor in industrial archaeology and heritage. He is doctor in archaeology; master in archaeology and heritage; and bachelor in art history. His speciality is the archaeology and heritage of industrialisation. He has developed his work in these fields in Spain, Brazil and China, among other countries, mostly trying to define industrialisation as a globalisation process.