GSSC Seminar Series
13 January 2026
Place Branding and Rural Commodification in China Today: “Village NBA” as a case study
Gil Hizi (University of Cologne)
12:00-13:00
Venue: Room 3.29 Global South Studies Center (GSSC), Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24, 50931 Köln
Over the last decade, rural development in China has increasingly prioritized traditionalization and self-sustainable productivity, adjusting to the economic slowdown that limits labor migration and urbanization. Local governments increasingly brand villages through specific local features and activities to draw investment from state-owned and private enterprises, while mobilizing residents to engage in profit-driven activities. This article exemplifies this process through research in Taipan village in the Miao-Dong Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou, which has become synonymous with “Village NBA” (cunBA) since 2022. The cunBA uncannily blends local ethnic heritage with a transnational sport, amateur play with grand media spectacles, and local ethnic heritage with tourism and consumption. Moreover, it has become a shared project of the village—manifested in educational programs, village aesthetics, and numerous products—continuously imposed by government actors while providing uncertain economic opportunities. This talk will discuss the cunBA as a “total social brand” that brings together different subject positions and moral imaginaries while attempting to suspend the economic and ethical problems brought upon by the Chinese market economy.
Gil Hizi is an Associate Researcher at the University of Cologne’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Global South Study Centre. Before this, he has held research positions at Goethe University Frankfurt, and the University of Sydney, where he has also completed a PhD in Anthropology on soft-skills pedagogies in contemporary China. His research interests include contemporary China, self-cultivation and personhood as well as globalization and social change.