Xianchang as a politics of representation: mapping Sino-African interactions and bottom-up Global South connectivity in Chinese non-state documentaries

This paper examines the politics of representation in Chinese non-state documentaries within the cross-cultural context of the Global South. Through analyzing About Bintou (2019) and Bobby’s Factory (2021), I argue that Chinese non-state documentaries produce a knowledge structure of representing Sino-African interactions and perceiving Global South connectivity through the xianchang (on-the-spot realism) aesthetic and practices. Xianchang—a core concept in Chinese documentary studies—connotes a politics of representation that foregrounds everyday and bottom-up dynamics. The politics of representation embedded in xianchang can be fashioned to interrogate global racial order and represent African experiences as integral to Chinese urbanization and globalization. It manifests nuanced interracial dynamics beyond a polarized national-racial reading of African experiences and challenges the domination-subjugation framing of viewing Sino-African relationships. As part of the Global South knowledge production, xianchang serves as a site of non-Western utterance and cultural exchanges within a context-specific framework.