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Special feature

Museums of Minjian: Materialist Approach to Social Remembrance from the “People’s Sphere”

Lisheng Zhang
p. 55-64

Abstract

The development of minjian museum initiatives marks a salient trend in China’s ongoing “museum boom.” Over the past 15 years or so, the number of museums in China saw a phenomenal increase from 1,722 in 2007 to 7,046 in 2024. Conceived and sustained in the nonofficial “people’s sphere” (minjian 民間), these museums offer significant alternatives to state-run museums by evincing moral and ethical concerns as the fundamental inspiration for museum work and re-define museum-making as an efficacious quest for moral well-being, social repair, and historical justice. Through comparative lenses, this ethnographic study explores this emerging phenomenon of minjian museums to contribute grounded and timely insights into the ethics and politics of social remembering in contemporary China and the moral and political implications of museum-making in general.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 1 December 2025. Accepted on 23 January 2026.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on March 2027.

Outline

Memories from the minjian
Exhibiting the Wenchuan earthquake
Between the state and the nonstate
The intimacy of minjian museums

First lines

Nearly two decades after The Economist first identified a “museum boom” in China, the boom shows no sign of abating. By the end of 2024, the country counted 7,046 registered museums, quadrupling the 2007 number. Even more striking is the accelerating share of non-state, or minjian 民間 museum initiatives: rising from roughly 200 (under 10%) in 2007, to 1,090 (over 20%) in 2015, and by the end of 2024 standing at 2,345, over one-third of China’s entire museum landscape. What kinds of institutions are minjian museums? How are they established, financed, sustained, and for what purposes? Most importantly, what distinguishes them from their state-run counterparts?

Rooted in the classical opposition of min 民 (the populace) and guan 官 (officialdom), the notion of minjian, literally, the “people’s sphere,” signals a self-conscious positioning outside the state’s economic and bureaucratic core (Veg 2019). The minjian museums offer significant alternatives to state-run museums by evincing moral...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Lisheng Zhang, Museums of Minjian: Materialist Approach to Social Remembrance from the “People’s Sphere”China Perspectives, 144 | 2026, 55-64.

Electronic reference

Lisheng Zhang, Museums of Minjian: Materialist Approach to Social Remembrance from the “People’s Sphere”China Perspectives [Online], 144 | 2026, Online since 01 March 2027, connection on 18 May 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/20223; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15zuj

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About the author

Lisheng Zhang

Lisheng Zhang is Assistant Professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Peking University, Beijing, China (lisheng.zhang@pku.edu.cn).

By this author

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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