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This chapter examines the development of copyright in Russia, focusing on one aspect of the debates—the balance of the private interests of the author (as a producer of material and immaterial values) and the interests of society. These debates involved people of different professions—lawyers, journalists, economists, publishers, and literary critics—and encompassed a wide range of problems—cultural reform and Russia's backwardness, the role of intellectual capital in social development, the value of individual freedom, the state's role in the provision of cultural goods, and the importance and protection of private property. It shows that Russian discussions of copyright often masked attempts to provoke significant political and cultural shifts.

This chapter argues that the 2008 global economic crisis and the economic restructuring that followed have accelerated state-led digitization, corporation, and capital accumulation within the state media system. After contextualizing media reforms as part of the state’s cultural-system reform program, the chapter examines the case of digital TV, tracing the bumpy process of using convergence as a cover to corporatize cable networks and content production while revealing the leading role of state-owned digital media companies exemplified by Shanghai Media Group and Zhejiang Wasu in this process. It also underscores the inherent contradictions of the corporate digital-TV enterprise, especially demand deficiency resulting from systematic socioeconomic inequality and the contingency of public service left to the discretion of state companies that manage digital TV.

The deaths of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in 1976 and subsequent arrests of the “Gang of Four” for their perpetuation of the Cultural Revolution paved the way for cultural reform, including in the realm of cartooning. After some hesitancy, cartoonists attacked the “Gang of Four” and in some cases, followed the “Scar” art tenets that gave them a sense of individualism and advocated that the audience be active. Professional cartoonists organizations were instituted and individual cartoonists began to organize common people into worker-related cartoon groups for farmers, workers, and soldiers. New satire periodicals and columns in newspapers provided outlets for cartoonists. Lianhuanhua sales peaked and then bottomed out; Japanese-originated, Chinese manga hybridized with new comics (xinmanhua), and independent cartoonists popped up as comic book and online artists. The state played key roles in supporting comics and animation with large sums of money, tax incentives, and subsidies, but also continued as a regulator and censor under a revamped infrastructure, and found ways to use comic art to suit its purposes.

Cai Yuanpei clearly believed that fundamental cultural and social reform was a long-term process built on a foundation of new and reordered knowledge, but he also believed that intellectuals were the rightful leaders of the nation in a broader, moral sense. The months leading up to the May Fourth Movement witnessed a notable acceleration and expansion of the New Culture group's campaign to shape public opinion. Cai refuted Lin Shu's attacks one by one, pointing out that Beida still taught classical Chinese and that many professors were admirers of Confucianism. The May Fourth Movement was both “overdetermined” and contingent. This Movement demonstrated to Cai that they were in fact more difficult to balance than he had realized, and that he had to be clearer as to his vision for the university.

After emancipation and national reunion had been achieved, the American liberal critics returned to their earlier work on cultural reform. This chapter focuses on the Gilded Age project that liberal men of letters were engaged in to foster a national commitment to liberal culture. It describes Higginson's “plea for culture” in which he insisted that aesthetic endeavors allow the country to continue its moral development even as it entered a prolonged period of peace and “gilded” prosperity. The chapter also discusses the “Arnoldian” view of culture and its role in Gilded Age cultural debates.

Like reformers in many other places around the world, early twentieth century Chinese intellectuals believed rural China was disorganized, a state of being that was unnatural and the direct result of violent incorporation into the global economy. Focusing on the notion that peasants lacked “organization” and should be encouraged to form group associations, Chinese reformers emphasized “social education” via both traditional and new village institutions, like teahouses, agricultural cooperatives, and opera troupes. Rural people, however, had their own ideas about what kinds of reform were useful or acceptable and they embraced some efforts in some places and rejected others, setting the stage for tensions between reformers and reformed that in part explain the contraction of excitement over rural reconstruction in the late 1930s. Moreover, notions of rural organization were easily adapted by the government and authoritarian regional leaders to their own ends of using rural social organization to extend government’s reach into the villages.

This chapter looks at another consequence of late nineteenth-century developments: the emergence of cultural civil wars within Muslim communities. Matters pertaining to education were not simply the concern of intellectuals. Rather, developments relating to schools had been highly politicized for years prior to the Revolution of 1905. This was largely the result of highly unpopular policies adopted by government officials in connection to Muslim education. The interests of the pan-Turkists were hardly on the fringe. While these figures were not always popular, they were nevertheless part of events that were seen by many Muslims as important and consequential.

This chapter narrates the events that happened after the fall of the Tsarist Autocracy in February 1917. The abdication of the tsar was universally acclaimed as the dawn of liberty—the beginning of a new era in the history of the various peoples inhabiting the empire. In a series of sweeping reforms, the Provisional Government abolished all legal distinctions between citizens on the basis of rank, religion, sex, or ethnicity, and granted every citizen over the age of twenty the right to vote. The government also guaranteed the absolute freedom of the press and of assembly. In general, the fall of the Tsarist Autocracy gave way to the cultural mobilization of Turkestan.

This chapter concerns the decade transpiring between the summer of 1779 until the autumn of 1780 in Moses Mendelssohn's life. Much of this chronicle is based on his lengthy correspondence with August Hennings and on the letters written to Hennings by his sister-in-law, Elise Reimarus. During this period, Mendelssohn took on a greater role within the West European Jewish Enlightenment movement. He was now the acknowledged head of a group, and he was well aware of it. Moreover, the influx of men of great talent enabled him to embark upon a bold project of cultural reform. The chapter thus looks into his German Pentateuch translation and the new Hebrew commentary, both of which became a feasible proposition because his circle provided him with the necessary scholarly and administrative manpower. His decision to devote his energy to the advancement of his people thus came at the right moment.