윤리적·창의적 기업가 주체의 정치적 재구성: 중국 도시 청년들의 사회혁신(창신) 창업활동에 대한 일고찰

How do Chinese young entrepreneurs react to the party–state’s attempt to identify the “youth dream” with the “Chinese dream,” when they, as self– claimed “change makers” or “social innovators,” try to recuperate their own selves and the world through business? Based on fieldwork in Shenzhen and Guangzhou in southern China, this article explores youth participation in social innovation startups, focusing on how it leads to the new formation of political subjectivity. Ethnographic research shows us that young entrepreneurs rediscover the political possibilities of “social innovation,” an ambiguous signifier which they summon in order to give voice to themselves, to society, and to the world. Identifying themselves as ethical and creative entrepreneurs who seek “business for good,” young people feel politically empowered rather than passively subject to state–led representations of youth. The regime of social innovation is where elite youth are more exposed to liberal and cosmopolitan dialogues, rather than bounded by national identity. In the regime of social innovation, however, “Chinese–ness” is not so much excluded as repositioned as youths reinterpret the nation’s historical and regional legacies and selectively incorporate them into their businesses.Instead of celebrating political agency stimulated among young innovators, this article ends with a lingering question: What is the meaning of the political in the regime of social innovation? Focusing on the creative design of solutions rather than the critical discussion of social problems, young entrepreneurs eventually eliminate the miserable faces of young others, such as migrant workers, in the entrepreneur’s mission to change the world.