Chinese Nationalism In Perspective

Wei and Liu argue that Chinese nationalism is a multifaceted concept. At different historical moments and under certain circumstances, it had different meanings and interacted with other competing motives and interests. The authors of this timely volume, all of whom are of Chinese origin and bi-national education, have produced a balanced and non-culture-bound work of scholarship. It contains diverse, provocative, and in-depth analysis of both historical and recent case studies that can shed light on the contemporary incarnation of Chinese nationalism. This interdisciplinary anthology looks at variants of Chinese nationalism upheld and contended by social groups, classes, and power-holders from the past to the present. The authors argue that nationalism can be supported by both patriotic and group- or party-oriented interest calculations. Forms of Chinese nationalism can result from situational as well as ideological conditions.

China is a site for the evolution, not only of Chinese nationalism, but the nationalism of various non-Han ethnic groups. During the 20th century, these ethnic groups constructed and expressed their own identities and nationalism through interaction with one another and with outside influences. This interdisciplinary anthology contains nine original works that pluralize our understanding of nationalism in China by illustrating the various intellectual strains of China's nationalist discourse, the dichotomy between the political authorities' and grass roots' experiences, and the nationalizing efforts by various ethnic and political groups along China's inland and maritime frontiers. First, contributors explore the controversy surrounding the contested issue of China's national and international identity from pre-modern times to the present. Next, the authors examine China's nationalist encounters with foreign influences such as U.S. Marines in Shandong, Soviet experts in Manchuria, and recent friction between the United States and the PRC. Finally, essays expand beyond the ethnographic regions of the Han-Chinese and the political domain of the PRC to discuss the odyssey of Taiwan's nationalism in both a political and a cultural sense. Many selections are based on newly declassified archival materials.

Presenting an analysis of the tension between nationalism and globalization in China since the beginning of the ‘reform and opening’ period in the late 1970s to the present day, this book makes a unique contribution to the on-going debate on the nature of Chinese nationalism. It shows how nationalism is used to link together key areas of policy-making, including economic policy, national unification and foreign policy. Hughes provides historical context to the debate by examining how nationalism became incorporated into the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s and the ways in which this strengthened and combined with globalization discourse through the domestic crisis of the Tiananmen Massacre and the external shock of the Cold War’s conclusion. The different perspectives towards this resulting orthodoxy are discussed, including those of the state and dissent in mainland China and the alternative views from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Based on Chinese sources throughout, this book offers a systematic treatment of Chinese nationalism, providing conceptual insights that allow the reader to grasp the complex weave of Chinese nationalist sentiment today and its implications for the future.

The "war on terror" has generated a scramble for expertise on Islamic or Asian "culture" and revived support for area studies, but it has done so at the cost of reviving the kinds of dangerous generalizations that area studies have rightly been accused of. This book provides a much-needed perspective on area studies, a perspective that is attentive to both manifestations of "traditional culture" and the new global relationships in which they are being played out. The authors shake off the shackles of the orientalist legacy but retain a close reading of local processes. They challenge the boundaries of China and question its study from different perspectives, but believe that area studies have a role to play if their geographies are studied according to certain common problems. In the case of China, the book shows the diverse array of critical but solidly grounded research approaches that can be used in studying a society. Its approach neither trivializes nor dismisses the elusive effects of culture, and it pays attention to both the state and the multiplicity of voices that challenge it.

The first full length treatment of ethnic and national identity in early Twentieth-century China, Leibold traces the political and cultural strategies employed by Han Chinese elites in the process of incorporating, both discursively and physically, the diverse inhabitants of the last Qing dynasty into a new, homogenous national community.

Three American missiles hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and what Americans view as an appalling and tragic mistake, many Chinese see as a "barbaric" and intentional "criminal act," the latest in a long series of Western aggressions against China. In this book, Peter Hays Gries explores the roles of perception and sentiment in the growth of popular nationalism in China. At a time when the direction of China's foreign and domestic policies have profound ramifications worldwide, Gries offers a rare, in-depth look at the nature of China's new nationalism, particularly as it involves Sino-American and Sino-Japanese relations—two bilateral relations that carry extraordinary implications for peace and stability in the twenty-first century. Through recent Chinese books and magazines, movies, television shows, posters, and cartoons, Gries traces the emergence of this new nationalism. Anti-Western sentiment, once created and encouraged by China's ruling PRC, has been taken up independently by a new generation of Chinese. Deeply rooted in narratives about past "humiliations" at the hands of the West and impassioned notions of Chinese identity, popular nationalism is now undermining the Communist Party's monopoly on political discourse, threatening the regime's stability. As readable as it is closely researched and reasoned, this timely book analyzes the impact that popular nationalism will have on twenty-first century China and the world.

Since the Chinese were officially plugged into the virtual community in 1994, the usage of the internet in the country has developed at an incredible rate. By the end of 2008, there were approximately 298 million netizens in China, a number which surpasses that of the U.S. and ranks China the highest user in the world. The rapid development of the online Chinese community has not only boosted the information flow among citizens across the territory, but has also created a new form of social interaction between the state, the media, various professionals and intellectuals, as well as China's ordinary citizens. Although the subject of this book is online Chinese nationalism, which to a certain extent is seen as a pro-regime phenomenon, the emergence of an online civil society in China intrinsically provides some form of supervision of state power-perhaps even a check on it. The fact that the party-state has made use of this social interaction, while at the same time remaining worried about the negative impact of the same netizens, is a fundamental characteristic of the nature of the relationship between the state and the internet community. Many questions arise when considering the internet and Chinese nationalism. Which are the most important internet sites carrying online discussion of nationalism related to the author's particular area of study? What are the differences between online nationalism and the conventional form of nationalism, and why do these differences exist? Has nationalist online expression influenced actual foreign policy making? Has nationalist online expression influenced discourse in the mainstream mass media in China? Have there been any counter reactions towards online nationalism? Where do they come from? Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations seeks to address these questions.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Far East, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Institut f r Politikwissenschaft), course: China in World Politics, 42 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In the past, Chinese nationalism has shown great flexibility as a connection of contradiction, interaction, and integration between the Communist Party, state and society, between the ruling ideology and intellectual discourse. Nationalism had great effect on the ways Chinese leaders and people behaved in domestic affairs, but also on the stage of international relations. Chinese nationalist thinking is not a uniform and unchanging phenomenon, as some Western analysts suggest, but a complex phenomenon with different layers which have to be analyzed in their complexity to come to a conclusion.

DIVAn historical analysis of how the Chinese constructed their understandings of their place in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries./div