Negotiating remembrance: the colonial past in China’s built heritage

This editorial introduces the special issue Negotiating Remembrance of the Colonial Past in China, which examines how material legacies of foreign imperial intervention are interpreted and mobilised in contemporary China. Focusing on architecture, infrastructure, and urban landscapes as sites of memory politics, the collection explores the paradox between commemoration, commodification, and selective erasure in representing this difficult past.
Organised around three themes—the institutionalised, marketed, and lived past—the contributions show how state narratives, market forces, and everyday practices shape heritage meanings that are historically contingent. The special issue demonstrates that engagements with colonial legacies remain unresolved but continually negotiated, producing multilayered landscapes of remembrance. By situating China within wider debates on difficult heritage, the issue offers comparative insights into how contested pasts are negotiated through the built environment.