Taking mainland Chinese communication studies as the main point ofreference, this article discusses four ways in which the idea of “looking East, going South” may ignite the theoretical imagination of communication research in the context of a major global power shift in the post-2008 financial crisis era. First, we need to challenge the hegemony of Western knowledge/power system and deploy “epistemologies of the South” or other post-colonial knowledge systems to develop “cognitive justice” as the epistemological foundation for global social justice. Second, we
need to transcend a cultural essentialism that reifies Eastern and Western civilizational divisions. This will enable us to imagine cultural diversity beyond glocalized versions of consumerist capitalism, while rejecting an understanding of “China’s rise” in terms of any zero-sum game between China and the United States within the global capitalist order. Third, we need to transcend the Western, especially U.S. centered “hub-and-spoke” pattern in global communication research, and focus more on the increasingly active east-south and south-south communication and cultural flows. Finally, as far as mainland Chinese communication research is concerned, we need to shift research focus from the urban and coastal areas to the rural and hinterland regions. This also compels us to move beyond a preoccupation with the “history of structure” and “history of technology” to reclaim the “history of the people” by locating their subjectivities, lived experiences, communicative practices, social imaginaries, as well as counter-hegemonic struggles within dynamic historical processes.