Abstract

The Mimetic Landscape: A Phase of Chinese Capitalism Now Over?

This article analyzes the Chinese mimetic landscape as a symptom of a phase in national capitalism rooted in the reproduction of Western forms. By imitating foreign cities and architectures, China has staged its ability to replicate the world, turning imitation into an instrument of power. Yet the recent real estate crisis reveals the limits of this model: architectural mimicry, once a sign of modernity, has become the visible expression of an exhausted speculative system. As the landscape deteriorates, it exposes the entanglement of cultural, political, and economic forces in contemporary China.

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