Pre-Heritagisation and the Cultural Sustainability of Classical Suzhou Gardens During China’s Modern Transformation: A Study of Periodical Discourse, 1870–1948

A dual discursive process during China's modern transformation (1870–1948) laid the socio-cultural foundation for the later recognition of Suzhou's classical gardens as heritage sites. This study reveals how periodical discourse simultaneously portrayed the gardens as multifunctional civic spaces and reinforced their classical value through historical memory, creating broader public intelligibility and cultural legitimacy before formal designation. Analyzing 699 historical texts using mixed-methods approaches, including quantitative content analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the research demonstrates that pre-heritagisation is not merely an administrative process but a complex discursive mechanism that materially refunctioned and symbolically re-anchored these cultural landscapes under modern conditions.

Guo, Z., Tang, Z., Sun, J., Zhou, H., & Chen, Y. (2026). Pre-Heritagisation and the Cultural Sustainability of Classical Suzhou Gardens During China’s Modern Transformation: A Study of Periodical Discourse, 1870–1948. Sustainability, 18(9), 4282. https://doi.org/10.3390/su18094282