中國民族主義之話語 : 內容與方向 - 政大學術集成

全文

(1)國立政治大學亞太研究英語碩士學位學程 International Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies College of Social Sciences National Chengchi University. 碩士論文 Master’s Thesis. 中國民族主義之話語 : 內容與方向 Chinese Nationalist Discourse: Contents and Orientations. STUDENT: DANIEL GLOCKLER 葛樂德 ADVISOR: PROFESSOR I YUAN 袁易教授. 中華民國 106 年 6 月 June 2017.

(2) 中國民族主義之話語 : 內容與方向 Chinese Nationalist Discourse: Contents and Orientations. 研究生：葛樂德. Student: Daniel Glockler. 指導教授：袁易教授. Advisor: Professor I Yuan. 國立政治大學亞太研究英語碩士學位學程碩士論文. A Thesis Submitted to International Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies National Chengchi University In partial fulfillment of the Requirement For the degree of Master in Asia-Pacific Studies. 中華民國 106 年 6 月 June 2017.

(3) Abstract. What kind of nationalism exists in contemporary China, and how does that nationalism imagine the Chinese nation? Has the rhetoric of nationalism in mainland China changed since the ascent of Xi Jinping to the position of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? This thesis seeks to address these questions by analyzing theories of nations and nationalisms, secondary literature on Chinese nationalism, and a volume of primary sources representative of Chinese nationalist discourse with an emphasis on the Xi Jinping era. Methodologically, this study presents a dichotomy of nations as either ethnocultural or civic-territorial in content and nationalisms as either polity-seeking (state-seeking and revisionist) or polity-based (nationalizing and status-quo reinforcing) in orientation. These distinctions are then applied to reinterpret the content and orientation of official nationalism across generations of Chinese political leadership. This study therefore generates a dialogue between theories, narratives, and “social realities” that illuminates a critical aspect of Chinese politics: the ongoing redefinition of “China” as a nation. Discovering the nature of Chinese nationalism in this context is crucial not only for an understanding of politics in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but indeed for greater clarity on a key social and political issue throughout “Greater China.” Furthermore, the approach embodied herein can be applied to other cases to bring greater consistency to the literature of nationalism studies.. i.

(4) 摘要. 何謂現當代中國之民族主義? 此種民族主義如何想像出「中華民族」這個共同體? 中國民族主義之話語是否在習近平擔任中共中央總書記以來有所變化? 本論文試圖通過有關民族主義之理論, 中國研究文獻與中國民族主義話語之分析來探討以上幾個問題. 方法論上, 本論文提供兩種二分法: 其一為民族主義話語「公民–領土」與「族裔–文化」之不同內容, 其二為民族主義「尋求建立政體」與「維護既有政體」之不同方向. 本作者適用此兩種二分法來重新解釋幾代中國政治領導層之人物所講出來的民族主義話語之內容與方向. 因此, 此篇論文將打造理論, 敘述與「社會現實」之間的對話來闡明中國政治至關重要方面之一 : 即「中華民族」持續不斷的再定義. 了解到現當代中國民族主義之內容與方向在很大程度上有助於我們對中國人民共和國政治之認識, 更能夠讓我們進一步地理解在「大中華」所存在的政治與社會問題之一. 不僅如此, 本論文所體現之學習方式具有延伸性, 而因此能夠適用在其他個案上, 使民族主義學之文獻變得更為一致.. ii.

(5) Acknowledgements. This project emerged from the marriage of the two academic fields that have fascinated me most over the past twenty-odd months living and studying in Taiwan: nationalism and Chinese language. As a newcomer to nationalism studies and a non-native speaker of Chinese, I benefited enormously from the guidance of more capable individuals. My thanks go first and foremost to the three outstanding professors who invested their time, focus, and expertise in my intellectual development over the past several months. I owe tremendous gratitude to my thesis advisor, Professor I Yuan (袁易), who not only trusted me to pursue this highly open-ended and overly ambitious project with considerable autonomy, lent me books, and steered me away from a problematic initial research question, but also sparked my interest in nationalism within Greater China through his teaching on cross-strait relations in my first semester of graduate school. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Chang Chishen (張其賢), whose superb teaching on Chinese political thought and theories of nationalism informed my research approach, and who generously provided advice throughout my study. Finally I am thankful to Professor Wang Horng-luen (汪宏倫) for his world-class feedback and guidance, and for making two trips into the misty hills of Muzha on my behalf. I am also tremendously thankful to Dr. William Vocke, Fulbright Taiwan, the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (FSE) staff, and the taxpayers of the United States and Taiwan, whose generosity provided me the opportunity to live out my dream of studying in Taiwan.. iii.

(6) I also wish to thank Colonel Tania Chacho and Lieutenant Colonel E. John Gregory, whose instruction and mentorship at West Point first inspired my interest in Chinese politics and language, and who supported me in my application for a grant from Fulbright Taiwan. Their examples as military officers, scholars, and role models will continue to inspire me. My growth as a student of Chinese language has been enabled by the dedication of two teachers in particular: Chang Hao-ling (張皓綾) and Zhou Meinu (周美女). I wish to thank them for tirelessly investing in my language growth, without which this study would have been impossible. There is no way for me to adequately thank my loving parents, my brother, Jon, and sister, Anna, for their support and example of work-ethic. Finally, I wish to thank Kevin Nie (聂晨光), whose friendship inspired me to embark on the journey of learning Chinese.. iv.

(7) TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1: Why Study Chinese Nationalism? ....................................................................................... 1 1.2: Chinese Nationalism in Theory and in Practice ................................................................... 8 1.3: Uniqueness versus Comparative Study .............................................................................. 12 1.4: Approach ............................................................................................................................ 15 1.5: Definitions .......................................................................................................................... 16 1.6: Thesis Structure.................................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 25 2.1: Sociological Approach ....................................................................................................... 27 2.2: Culturalist Approach .......................................................................................................... 30 2.3: Political-Historical Approach............................................................................................. 35 2.4: Ethno-Symbolist Approach ................................................................................................ 36 Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................... 39 3.1: The Nation’s Civic-Territorial and Ethno-Cultural Contents ............................................ 39 3.1.1: The Civic-Territorial Nation........................................................................................ 40 3.1.2: The Ethno-Cultural Nation .......................................................................................... 42 3.1.3: Issues in the Civic-Territorial, Ethno-Cultural Duality ............................................... 45 3.2: Polity-Seeking and Polity-Based Orientations of Nationalism .......................................... 47 3.3: Overall Methodology ......................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 4: Stages of Chinese Nationalism.................................................................................... 51 4.1: Nationalism Before the PRC .............................................................................................. 53 4.1.1: Late Qing Nationalism ................................................................................................ 53 4.1.2: Republican Nationalism .............................................................................................. 59 4.2: Nationalism in the PRC...................................................................................................... 63 4.2.1: The Mao Period ........................................................................................................... 63 4.2.2: The Deng Period .......................................................................................................... 69 4.2.3: The Globalization Period ............................................................................................. 72 4.2.3.1: Chinese Nationalism under Jiang Zemin .................................................................. 73 4.2.3.2: Chinese Nationalism Under Hu Jintao ..................................................................... 76 v.

(8) Chapter 5: Nationalism and the Chinese Nation under Xi Jinping ............................................... 81 5.1: Official Nationalism under Xi Jinping ............................................................................... 81 5.1.1: National Rejuvenation under Xi Jinping ......................................................................... 84 Chapter 6: Conclusion................................................................................................................... 95 6.1: Value of the Methodology ................................................................................................. 95 6.2: Implications for Theory...................................................................................................... 97 6.3: Chinese Nationalism as a Political Phenomenon ............................................................... 99 References (English) ................................................................................................................... 103 References (Chinese) .................................................................................................................. 109 Appendices .................................................................................................................................. A-1 Appendix 1: Snapshots of Ethno-Cultural Chinese-ness in the PRC. ..................................... A-1 Appendix 2: Glimpses of a Civic PRC.................................................................................... A-2 Appendix 3: Ethno-Territorial Chinese-ness in Hou Te-jian’s “Heirs of the Dragon” ........... A-3 Appendix 4: Civic/Political Attachment to State Performance? ............................................. A-4. TABLE OF FIGURES. Figure 1.5.1: National Identity, The Nation, and Nationalism by Definition……………..…….19 Figure 1.5.2: National Identity as an Object of Nationalism…………………..………………..20 Figure 1.5.3: Bi-directional Relationship between Identity and Nationalism…………………...21 Figure 2.1: Social Communication in Pre-Industrial “Society” and Industrial Society…………28 Figure 3.1.2: Logical Conformism of Ethno-Cultural Communities…………...................…….43 Figure 3:3: Possible Contents and Orientations of Chinese Nationalist Discourse……………..49. vi.

(9) Chapter 1: Introduction Towards the end of a lifetime of observing China, Lucian Pye wrote in 1996, “The content of contemporary Chinese nationalism… appears to be exceedingly thin… without a substantive core which can be readily articulated.”1 Now, over 20 years since Pye’s observation, the contents and orientations of Chinese nationalism merit reconsideration. This thesis seeks to do so, methodically, over several sections. First, this introduction presents several key disagreements in the English-language literature on Chinese nationalism, brief theoretical considerations relating to nationalism studies and comparative politics, key definitions, and a general conceptualization of the theoretical relationship between national identity, the nation as an imagined community, and nationalism as a form of politics.. 1.1: Why Study Chinese Nationalism? Many questions are considered over the following pages. One question that must be addressed at the outset, however, is the why of this study: why study Chinese nationalism? Why choose to view Chinese politics through a notoriously difficult lens, one with decades of theoretical disagreements and seemingly unresolvable disputes? And why study a Chinese political phenomenon through a theoretical lens that has been highly influenced by the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of its mostly non-Chinese theorists? I raise these points up front, not to elicit the reader’s sympathy for the difficulties inherent in this study, but rather to offer some thoughts on the vital importance of the subject matter at hand. A significant body of evidence suggests that nationhood is unusually salient in Chinese society. Surveys conducted in the PRC in 2010 and 2014 showed that over 80 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “When other people criticize China, it is as though they are criticizing me.”2 As Dickson writes, “This is a clear indicator that the self-identity of many Chinese is intimately tied to their country.”3 A 2008 survey showed that 84.3 percent of Chinese respondents agreed, “Your country should pursue its national interest even if it could harm the 1. Lucian W. Pye, “How China’s Nationalism Was Shanghaied,” in Chinese Nationalism, ed. Jonathan Unger (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 106. 2 Bruce J. Dickson, The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 235. 3 Ibid., 235.. 1.

(10) interests of another.”4 This is not typical; as Linley notes, only about 40 percent of Japanese affirm such an “unconditional support” for their national interest.5 Surveys conducted from 2005 to 2010 by Asian Barometer showed that the Chinese public had the most positive feelings about their nation among the publics of thirteen Asian countries.6 Each of these findings, of course, portrays no more than a particular facet of the sentiments that connect individual Chinese to the Chinese nation. Nonetheless, a variety of metrics support the argument that “The Chinese today possess a strong sense of nationhood.”7 It would be a mistake, of course, to assume that nationalist sentiments at the social level are deterministic of policy choices at the state level. At the same time, however, we dare not pretend that phenomena at the social level are irrelevant to policy formulated at the state level, or that state actors are fully in control of changes in the salience of nationalism within society. How then can nationalism be situated in the state-society relationship? Although seldom mentioned in studies of nationalism, political regime theory offers a way to conceptualize the state-society relationship that is particularly instructive here. As Macridis and Burg write, political regime theory emphasizes the state’s imperative to “Generate commonly shared goals… commonly shared ideas or… a prevailing ideology.”8 Often accomplished by socialization, this is said to be the first “major function” of all political systems.9 Is state-led nationalism the “prevailing ideology” that China’s political system seeks to generate? A number of scholars present essentially this argument. Some, stressing Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, argue that official nationalism seeks a position of ‘Gramscian’ hegemony within Chinese society. Gramsci theorized that power must be understood as a combination of consent and coercion, and used the concept of hegemony to discuss the interplay of consent and coercion within the state-society relationship.10 Jones notes that Gramsci’s notion 4. Findings quoted in Matthew Linley, “Nationalist Attitudes among mass publics in East Asia,” in Asian Nationalisms Reconsidered, ed. Jeff Kingston (London: Routledge, 2016), 126. 5. Linley, “Nationalist Attitudes,” 126. Ibid., 118 7 Henry S. Rowen, “When Will the Chinese People Be Free?” Journal of Democracy 18, no. 3, July 2007. 6. 8. Roy C. Macridis and Steven L. Burg, Introduction to Comparative Politics, 2nd ed. (Moosic, PA: HarperCollins, 1991), 3. 9 Ibid. 10 Originally formulated as an explanation of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie in European polities, Gramsci’s theory has been applied to a diverse set of questions far removed from his original Marxist framework. Its. 2.

(11) of hegemony allows us to analyze the relationship of a ruling group to power in terms of “expansive hegemony” and “limited hegemony.”11 Expansive hegemony is achieved when (in theory) coercion and repression are no longer necessary; the social and political status quo is fully consensual and the cultural production of power at the state level and social level are mutually compatible. Then, the “multiplicity of dispersed wills, with heterogeneous aims, are welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception of the world.”12 (In later sections, this study considers rhetoric of Chinese leaders and intellectuals since Sun Yat-sen that bears a remarkable similarity to the above quote.) Limited hegemony, on the other hand, characterizes the much more common situation in which a ruling group has not genuinely adopted “the interest of the popular classes,” but has rather “neutralized or ‘decapitated’ them through depriving them of their leadership.”13 It is in the interest of political elites to seek expansive hegemony. After all, coercion tends to be comparatively messy and expensive, and is sometimes self-defeating; consent is harmonious and “civilized.” Certainly the CCP, like other ruling groups, prefers the later to the former, and the CCP’s monopoly over the mechanisms of the state provides it with the means necessary to pursue expansive hegemony. Analyzing contemporary state media in the PRC, Yong concludes, “Party-led nationalism in China should be understood as a hegemonic ideology.”14 We can understand that to mean the following: the CCP instrumentalizes Chinese nationalism at the state level in order to construct and shape national identity at the social level such that social interests become more compatible with the goals of the party-state. Indeed, state-led nationalism appears to play a particularly clear role in the (attempted) generation of a “prevailing ideology” since the implementation of the 1990’s Patriotic Education Campaign, a development explored briefly in Chapter five. Although the larger picture of applicability to the Chinese state-society relationship is proposed in Yong Cao, “From Communism to Nationalism: China’s Press in the Transition of Dominant Ideology,” Global Media Journal 4, no. 6 (June 2005), http://www.globalmediajournal.com/ open-access/from-communism-to-nationalism-chinas-press-in-the-transitionof-dominant-ideology.php?aid=35104. Also discussed in Xueli Zhang, “Redefining Chinese Nationalism: StateSociety Relations and China’s Modernization in the Era of Globalization” (PhD diss., Northern Arizona University, 2007). 11 Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci (Routledge: New York, 2006), 52. 12 C. Mercer, “Generating Consent,” Ten, 1984, 9. Quoted in Jones, Antonio Gramsci, 53. 13 Jones, Antonio Gramsci, 52. 14 Yong Cao, “From Communism to Nationalism,” n.p.. 3.

(12) Chinese nationalism as a contested political discourse – and “China” as a putative nation – is far too complex to be reduced to the state-led perspective alone, neither can that perspective be overlooked. As explored below, nationalism certainly functions bi-directionally; it occurs in both top-down (state-led) and bottom up (society-driven) forms. It will be seen, moreover, that these two forms of nationalism are mutually influencing. But if Hobsbawm, Wang, and others are correct, then it is the state, first and foremost, that creates the nation – and it does so via nationalism.15 An abundance of secondary literature contends that the CCP has a powerful incentive to encourage the nationalization of Chinese society. English-language discussions of the PRC’s political regime politics published in the last two decades present a near-consensus that nationalism constitutes one of two primary pillars legitimating the PRC’s political regime. (The other pillar is typically called “economic growth,” although Dickson has convincingly argued that rising individual income is far more important than aggregate growth for CCP legitimacy.16) Christensen writes, “Since jettisoning Maoist Communist ideology in the reform period, the nominally Communist CCP has legitimized itself through fast-paced economic growth and by nationalism. It portrays itself as an increasingly capable protector of Chinese interests and national honor.”17 Shambaugh concurs, “Chinese nationalism continues to be a key anchor of the regime’s legitimacy.”18 Nor are Western academics alone in adhering to the “two pillar” interpretation of CCP legitimacy in post-Maoist China. An unnamed leader of the 1989 pro-Democracy movement is said to have reflected, after his release from prison in 1996, “People are more nationalistic 15. Hobsbawm writes, “it is pointless to discuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to… [the] modern territorial state… Nations do not make states and nationalisms, but the other way round.” Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 9-10. Gellner additionally discusses the nation as a product of nationalism, writing, “it is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.” Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 55. 16 Dickson’s survey data demonstrates that “neither levels of per capita GD nor rates of growth increase trust and support in China’s main political institutions – the Party, the government, and the people’s congress (China’s legislature) – at either the central or local level. However, individuals who have seen their incomes rise in recent years and believe they will continue to grow in the years ahead are more likely to support the regime.” This finding is key because it suggests that “Slower economic growth is not a threat to [the Party’s] popular support so long as incomes continue to rise.” Bruce J. Dickson, The Dictator’s Dilemma, 9. 17 Thomas J. Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), 109. 18 David Shambaugh, China’s Future (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 170.. 4.

(13) [now], and because of economic growth they have more personal space and freedom and money, so it makes it easier to accept the government’s line.”19 The argument that nationalism and economic growth constitute the two primary sources of CCP legitimacy, in fact, has become commonplace in university and graduate-level coursework in Chinese politics.20 Despite this near-consensus on national identity’s salience in Chinese society and nationalism’s importance for the CCP, there is considerable disagreement about the effects that nationalism has or could have on the PRC’s future political development and foreign relations. The most common treatment views Chinese nationalism as “a double edged sword”: a phenomenon that ordinarily generates unity, shared identity, and support for the party-state, yet also increases the potential for public rage should the government prove insufficiently “nationalist” on issues of concern to the Chinese people.21 Chen apparently views Chinese nationalism as equally likely to threaten as to strengthen regime security, thus “explaining the state’s ambivalence toward the phenomenon… While state-nurtured patriotism provides a muchneeded sense of collective identity and solidarity,” she postulates, “the CCP faces the dilemma of containing expressions of popular anger targeting foreign countries without sacrificing the nationalist credentials on which its legitimacy is based.”22 Zhao writes plainly, “nationalism… is a value that both the regime and its critics share [but also] a two-edged sword: It mobilizes people behind the state, but it also gives them a ground on which to judge the state’s performance.”23 The double-edged sword concept is frequently raised in Western media as well. In but one example, Kristof writes that nationalism is “a particularly interesting force in China, given its potential not just for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away.”24 Shambaugh presents a somewhat more controversial – although not unreasonable – view, 19. Emphasis Added. Thomas L. Friedman, “Foreign Affairs; China’s Nationalist Tide,” The New York Times, March 13, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/13/opinion/foreign-affairs-china-s-nationalist-tide.html. 20 This observation comes from the author’s coursework in the United States and Taiwan between 2013 and 2016. 21 This view of Chinese nationalism is summarized in Dickson, The Dictator’s Dilemma, 232-233. 22 Chen Chunhua, “Nationalism and its political implications in contemporary China,” in Asian Nationalisms Reconsidered, ed. Jeff Kingston (London: Routledge, 2016), 148. 23 Suisheng Zhao, “Xi Jinping’s Maoist Revival,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (July 2016): 83. 24 Nicholas D. Kristof, “The World: Fruits of Democracy; Guess who’s a Chinese Nationalist Now?” The New York Times, April 22, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/weekinreview/the-world-fruits-of-democracyguess-who-s-a-chinese-nationalist-now.html.. 5.

(14) writing that Chinese nationalism drives the PRC “in a more assertive direction” vis-à-vis its neighboring states,25 and could trigger “aggressive moves against Japan and other neighbors.”26 Apparently viewing Chinese nationalism primarily as a latent public sentiment to which CCP leaders are beholden, Shambaugh suggests that in a context of “already hyper Chinese nationalism,” the CCP could turn to a “diversionary war” if faced with a legitimacy crisis.27 The implication to this claim is that China’s leaders are somewhat at the mercy of a highly nationalistic population. Johnston notes that a similar interpretation is held within the U.S. defense establishment. “Senior U.S. military officers,” to whom he spoke in 2015 and 2016, expressed a “worry that the Chinese leadership will engage in diversionary conflict when China’s economic growth slows.28 Shirk similarly sees China’s leaders somewhat at the mercy of a nationalistic population, writing, “The worst nightmare of China’s leaders is a national protest movement of discontented groups… united against the regime by the shared fervor of nationalism” 29 Thus these scholars share a presumption that latently powerful Chinese nationalism is intimately connected with potential violence that could either manifest as an eruption of public discontent towards the party-state, or in a war pursued by the party-state in order to mitigate that risk. These concerns cannot be lightly dismissed. According to anonymous sources who attended the November 2016 meeting between Xi Jinping and Hong Hsiu-chu, chairwoman and leader of the KMT at the time, Xi offered a frank summary the relationship between nationalism and regime security in a cross-strait relations context: “From the position of Chinese people’s nationalism, 1.3 billion people on the mainland would not agree to Taiwan’s formal independence… The Communist Party would be overthrown by the people if the proindependence issue was not dealt with.”30 In this context, any war initiated by the PRC in. 25. Shambaugh, China’s Future, 170. Ibid., 52. 27 Ibid., 171. 28 Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising? Evidence from Beijing,” International Security 41, no. 3 (Winter 2016/2017): 8. 29 Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford University Press, 2007), 7. 30 Zhang Pinghui, “Xi Jinping warns Communist Party would be ‘overthrown’ if Taiwan’s independence push left unchecked.” South China Morning Post, November 4, 2016, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policiespolitics/article/2042784/xi-jinping-warns-communist-party-would-be-overthrown-if. 26. 6.

(15) accordance with the 2005 Anti-Secession law31 would be presented as a defense of “China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” but conducted for the deeper purposes of protecting the party-state’s regime security from the threat of domestic insurrection of the kind described by Shirk. Yet a number of scholars take a firmly opposing view regarding Chinese nationalism’s salience and likely effects. Kuo argues that “the appeal of nationalism in China appears to be dwindling.”32 A recent study by Johnston uses surveys conducted in Beijing to demonstrate declining “levels of nationalism since around 2009.” Johnston additionally finds that, “contrary to the conventional wisdom…it is China’s older generations that are more nationalistic than its youth.” Thus, “rising Chinese nationalism,” though a highly visible meme in Western media, “may not be a critically important variable constraining Chinese foreign policy.”33 Li similarly argues that the common description of a surge in Chinese nationalism exaggerates the nationalistic sentiments of Chinese youth. He sees, on the contrary, a Chinese youth relatively disengaged from the ideas of nation and nationalism.34 Indeed, reviewing the scholarly literature on Chinese nationalism reveals major disagreements on the impact of nationalism on Chinese politics and foreign relations. In light of these conflicting arguments, neither the popular “double-edged sword” interpretation, nor the aggressive nationalism or dwindling nationalism hypotheses are overly persuasive. Indeed, as Carlson observes, “neither those who have argued that nationalism is pushing China towards confrontational positions in the international arena, nor those who have disputed that position have supported their respective arguments in a compelling fashion.” Perhaps, he reasons, “we still have little agreement over what Chinese nationalism is,” and “a contested object” cannot. 31. Article 8 of the law states, “In the event that the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan’s secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ nonpeaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “Problems of Stateness: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,” in China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 219. 32 Kaiser Kuo, “Do we really need to worry so much about Chinese nationalism?” SupChina, February 2017, http://supchina.com/2017/02/24/really-need-worry-much-chinese-nationalism/. 33 Johnston, “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising,” 9. 34 Liqing Li, “China’s Rising Nationalism and Its Forefront: Politically Apathetic Youth,” China Report 51, no. 4 (November 2015), 311-326.. 7.

(16) readily explain or predict other phenomena.35 Enthusiastically agreeing with Carlson’s prognosis, this study aims to add clarity to the discussion of Chinese nationalism by interpreting its related discourses through an important but underutilized theoretical lens. To do so, we must first consider the conceptual distinction between “categories of practice” and “categories of analysis” in relation to Chinese nationalism.. 1.2: Chinese Nationalism in Theory and in Practice There are important constraints and implications generated by any given theoretical approach to nationalism. Carlson has noted that “in framing the study of identity in China primarily within the paradigm of nationalism, scholars have tended to reify the categories of nation, state, and identity that they are ostensibly examining.”36 Callahan likewise expresses concern that many treatments of “Chinese-ness” frame the object of their study as a kind of identity implicitly “limited to nation and state.” These studies therefore “[risk] further naturalizing the link between nation, security and identity in the service of the nation.”37 By “tethering the study of identity in China to the intellectual research tradition of nationalism,” in other words, scholars inadvertently demonstrate the existence of a “Chinese nation” by virtue of their theoretical approach.38 “Such definitional exercises become self-fulfilling prophecies, overlooking the degree to which the practice of individual agents/actors shapes the structure of social constructs” such as national identity.39 Is there no dispositive approach to studying the nation? In other words, how can we study Chinese nationalism without merely reproducing the Chinese nationalist claim that there is a particular kind of Chinese nation? We may begin by taking seriously Brubaker’s admonition to “decouple categories of analysis from categories of practice, retaining as analytically indispensable the notions of nation as practical category, nationhood as institutionalized form,. 35. Allen Carlson, “A Flawed Perspective: the Limitations Inherent within the Study of Chinese Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 15, no. 1 (January 2009): 26. 36 Ibid., 27. 37 William A. Callahan, “Nationalism, Civilization, and Transnational Relations: The Discourse of Greater China,” Journal of Contemporary China 14, no. 43 (January 2005): 5-6. Quoted in Ibid. 38 Carlson, “A Flawed Perspective,” 27. 39 Ibid.. 8.

(17) and nationness as event, but leaving ‘the nation’ as enduring community to nationalists.”40 Brubaker carefully distinguishes between the “putative nation” – the nation claimed by nationalists – and the concept of nation addressed in the theoretical literature.41 Moreover, Brubaker treats “‘nation’ as contingent event” rather than “substantial entity.”42 In following these distinctions, we aim to study Chinese nationalism without merely stating positions in favor of or against it. Distinguishing between theoretical and practical, between “contingent” and “substantial,” does not imply a particular stance with regard to the perennialist versus modernist debate within nationalism theory, nor does it mean that the insights gleaned from the theoretical literature are inapplicable to our understanding of the putative nation. But as this study considers both nationalism in the theoretical literature and the “Chinese nation” as presented in discourse of Chinese nationalists, it must apply the insights of theory without implying that the contents of the putative nation are determined by such theory. Nor should such distinctions lead us to the argument that nationhood is a “false consciousness.” Rather, as this is a study of discourse, the duality of “true” and “false” as usually employed is of little use here. Any characterization of the Chinese nation presumably communicates either “reality” as understood by the speaker, or demonstrates the speaker’s attempt to persuasively reshape “reality.” Nor must we distinguish between these two forms of speech; from a Foucaldian perspective, in fact, all discourse (re)produces both power and knowledge simultaneously.43 This is not a normative study on the truths and falsehoods of Chinese nationalist discourse, and so it can make no claims as to the “fakeness” or “reality” of China as an imagined political community. We can, in fact, predict that an impartial examination of any nationalism would yield enough dubious distortions of fact to give the reader pause. As Hobsbawm famously writes, “Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so… ‘Getting its history wrong is. 40. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22. 41 Ibid., 10. 42 Ibid., 7. 43 Pat Thomson, “A Foucaldian Approach to Discourse Analysis,” July 10, 2011, https://patthomson.net/2011/07/10/a-foucualdian-approach-to-discourse-analysis/.. 9.

(18) part of being a nation.’”44 It goes without saying that Chinese nationalism is no exception, especially when a primary aspect of that nationalism is sponsored by a self-interested actor – in this case, the Chinse Communist Party (CCP). As declared in a 2016 policy paper, the CCP expressly intends to utilize compulsory education to promote patriotism at home as well as to “gather the broad numbers of students abroad as a patriotic energy” that radiates pro-China sentiments throughout the world.45 The public arguments of Chinese nationalists – whether in the domestic arena or an international setting, and whether they align with or run counter to the official state-sponsored narrative – are not value-neutral, objective examinations of a social reality. They presume the value of such a “nation,” and we may assume that their characterizations of said nation are deliberately made to support positions of self-interest. Thus it would be banal to approach a scholarly study of Chinese nationalism with the intent to “disprove” the territorial or historical claims of Chinese nationalists, such as the historical validity of the “Nine Dashed Line” in the South China Sea or the nature of the historical relationship between past Chinese dynasties and the Tibetan Kingdom. Those debates belong to the field of history, and in a nationalist context have little power to change opinions. In fact, as something that is implicitly given tremendous moral value, a “nation” can neither be understood nor contested on rational grounds. As Haidt convincingly argues, statements that seem to support or assault our moral worldview are judged via intuition and emotion rather than dispassionate reason.46 Since nationhood is psychologically grounded in a Durkheimian. 44. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 12. In the second clause, Hobsbawm quotes Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” 7-8. 45 In addition to the relatively unremarkable proposal to “make patriotic education the perpetual theme that promotes (a spirit of) patriotism and pervades the entirety of public education” (把愛國主義教育作為弘揚愛國主義精神的永恆主題，貫穿國民教育全過程) the 2016 Ministry of Education policy document also declares the need to “gather the broad numbers of students abroad as a patriotic energy, establish an overseas propaganda model with people as the medium and real words and thoughts as the method of dissemination, and develop an effect in which everyone radiates and strives to be a public ambassador, and every sentence easily reaches hearts and minds.” (聚集廣大海外留學人員愛國能量，確立以人為媒介、以心口相傳為手段的海外宣傳模式，形成人人發揮輻射作用、個個爭做民間大使、句句易於入腦入心的宣傳效應). 中共教育部黨組，〈中共教育部黨組關於教育系統深入開展/愛國主義教育的實施意見〉,《中華人民共和國教育部》, 2016 年 1 月 26 日, http://www.moe.edu.cn/srcsite/A13/s7061/201601/t20160129_229131.html. 46 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Random House, 2012), 32-110.. 10.

(19) morality47 – a point elaborated in the next chapter – an outsider to the national community has little power to meaningfully contest its distortions of history or praise its moral value. Rather, this study endeavors to follow in the example of Wang Horng-luen’s research by treating nation, nationness, and nationalism as phenomena. Wang describes nationalism phenomenologically as an attitude or disposition that arises naturally as populations confront the broader world.48 Rather than criticizing nationalism as a “false consciousness,” Wang stresses the reality of the sentiments embodied in nationalism, and therefore seeks to understand the nationalist world view, its associated cognitive frames, and the institutions that shape and support it.49 In investigating the content of contemporary Chinese nationalism, we likewise treat that content as a phenomenon and a “social reality” rather than a delusion that needs to be dispelled. Even so, a question is begged within this approach, as perhaps in any study on the content of a particular nationalism or the nature of an imagined nation: what condition of modernity and/or human psychology explains the why of the nation? Why should the nation come to be imagined? As the following literature review will demonstrate, a variety of theoretical and historical approaches to nationalism offer vastly differing answers to this question. Examining the literature broadly, we may simply conclude that various kinds of values, ideologies, cultural institutions, ethnic bonds and socioeconomic transformations have provided a basis for the “deep, horizontal comradeship” that we find in the world’s many nations. Staying mindful of Brubaker’s crucial distinction between “categories of analysis” – in this case, nationalism or the nation as a field of study – and “categories of practice,” – in this case, existing phenomena that we call nationalism and “nations,” we may be driven to the conclusion that there is no single phenomenon called nationalism that exists across the world’s many diverse social and political contexts. In other words, “nation” and “nationalism,” as a category of analysis, may constitute an inadequate lens through which we study the diverse set of phenomena and practices commonly subsumed under “nationalism.” 47. Durkheim wrote, “What is moral is everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to … regulate his actions by something other than … his own egoism.” The nation is therefore functionally moral in a Durkheimian sense. See Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 314. 48. This is a loose paraphrasing of Wang’s somewhat more succinct description: 「用現象學的概念來說，民族主義可說是一種面對世界的『自然態度』」. 汪宏倫, 〈理解當代中國民族主義：制度、情感結構與認識框架〉,《文化研究》第 19 期, 197. 49. Ibid., 197.. 11.

(20) Pursuing that line of thought further, why study nationalism comparatively at all, or why call the object of this study “nationalism?” Pre-emptively defending his choice of classification of nationalism in history, Breuilly notes “Classifications are simply sets of interrelated definitions. Empirically they are not right or wrong; rather they are either helpful or unhelpful.”50 Although Breuilly refers to classifications within nationalism rather than the choice of considering nationalism as a classification of political phenomena, we can easily broaden his logic in defense of studying nationalism as a phenomenon. If doing so is helpful to an understanding of Chinese politics, than the choice is justified. As will be illustrated in later chapters, Chinese scholars and political leaders use the language of nationalism very liberally. We ought not, therefore, discount “nationalism” as a theoretical lens when approaching Chinese politics.. 1.3: Uniqueness versus Comparative Study An examination of nationalism must thoughtfully engage with the issue of uniqueness, including the assertion that all nations – or at least the putative nation in question – are special, morally important, and distinct. Theorists of nationhood have variously emphasized the uniqueness of “national character,”51 “the people” as “the natural repository of authentic experience,”52 and the “individuality… of the community.”53 Indeed, a view of the nation as a primarily cultural entity, one with a “common symbolic system,” including language, philosophy, and social mores that are said to grown out of “unique national history,”54 – as well as a “homogenous conception of time, space, number and cause, which makes it possible for [members of the in-group] to reach agreement or consensus on the immediate meaning of the. 50. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 9. Rousseau wrote in 1914, “The first rule that we must follow is that of national character. Every people has, or must have, a character; if it lacks one, we must begin by endowing it with one.” Quoted in Anthony Smith, The Nation in History (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000), 8. 52 Smith attributes this “cultural populism” to J. G. Herder. See Smith, The Nation in History, 9. 53 Max Weber, 1968. Quoted in Ibid., 14. 54 Pang Qin, “The Rise of Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Main Content and Causes,” Elixer International Journal 36 (2011): 3361, http://www.elixirpublishers.com/articles/1350542599_36%20 (2011)%203361-3365.pdf, 3361. 51. 12.

(21) world”55 – would suggest a significant degree of uniqueness that makes comparative study problematic. These epistemic challenges are compounded by concrete issues related to language. There is, at a minimum, a set of problems related to the application of the term “nation” outside of the Romance languages to which it is indigenous. Hobsbawm notes that even among the languages which contain a version of the original Latin natio, definitions changed dramatically in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.56 Other languages take a form of natio as a loanword, but the Chinese case is even more complicated. A common interpretation says that the modern Chinese term minzu (民族, ‘people-clan’) was translated from the Japanese minzoku (also written 民族 in kanji), which likely originated as a translation of the German term Volk.57 Thus there is no original connection between the Latin-inspired English term nation and the German-via-Japanese inspired Chinese term minzu. If minzu has come to mean “nation” at all, it is because scholars writing in Chinese have read the English-language theoretical literature and borrowed from its descriptions. But a recent trend shows the opposite occurring. In November 2008, the official English name of the Central University for Nationalities (中央民族大學) was changed to “Minzu University of China,” apparently signaling an official decision that the Chinese term minzu (民族) cannot and should not be translated into a single English term. The problem of picking a single English term for minzu is noted by Leibold: “The Chinese term minzu is exceptionally polysemic and has been used to gloss over a wide range of concepts that are largely distinct in English.” Thus in his study, Leibold variously translates minzu as “ethnicity,” “ethnic group,” “nation,” “race,” or “nationalities” depending on the context in which it appears.58 From the perspective of Chinese nationalism, however, the “Minzu University” name change has a deeper implication. It asserts that China is neither a multi-ethnic nor a multi-national state, but rather a multi-minzu state: a linguistically-bound and politically unique phenomenon that defies explanation in a foreign language. Thus minzu, the term most central to a discussion of nationalism in Chinese language,. 55. Bourdieu, 1991, quoted in Pang, “The Rise of Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China,” 3361. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, Kindle Loc. 325 – 832. 57 Tomoko Hamada, “Social and Cultural Development of Human Resources,” in Religion, Culture and Sustainable Development, vol. 3, ed. Roberto Blancarte Pimentel et al (Oxford: Eolss Publishers, 2010), 23. 58 James Leibold, “Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable?” (Honolulu: East-West Center, 2013), 53. 56. 13.

(22) joins the list of words like guoqing (國情) that imply China’s national uniqueness at the epistemic level. Challenges related to terminology, translation, and meaning are complimented by equally significant cultural challenges, which, though cliché, are nonetheless relevant in a study on nationalism. “Chinese culture”59 has been portrayed in the West as dense, subtle, deep, pervasive: inscrutable, in other words, to outsiders. This is especially the case in discussions of the rhetoric of Chinese speakers.60 These portrayals imply that an outsider – in this case, a culturally American, white male – should be unable to overcome the inter-civilizational cultural chasm that exists between him and the object of his study. As Gries notes, “Chinese cultural nationalists and postcolonial theorists” join forces to reinforce this concept of inscrutability, as in Wang Xiaodong’s assertion that observers from the West are fundamentally incapable of understanding China.61 Wang writes, “Firstly, Western scholars have views stemming from their interests, which often differ from the interests of China; Secondly, Westerners do not fully understand China…; Thirdly, methods developed due to the evolution of Western historical reality are not necessarily suited to China [as an object of study].”62 In this declaration, of course, Wang refutes not only the value of “Western scholarship” on China, but indeed the applicability of the comparative method and the use of generalized theory in understanding China. This argument of Chinese inscrutability is thus at odds with the spirit of social science as it is typically understood. Thus a set of linguistic, political, and cultural issues, both at the epistemic level and within the claims of Chinese nationalists, assert uniqueness and problematize a comparative or. 59. Here we must briefly overlook problems associated with subsuming all of the various cultures that are described as “Chinese” under the singular term “culture.” 60 In but one example, Young notes how Kissinger fawned over Mao’s conversational style, describing it “like the courtyards in the Forbidden City, each leading to a deeper recess distinguished from the others only by slight changes of proportion, with the ultimate meaning residing in a totally that only long reflection could grasp.” Linda W. L. Young, “The Ps and cues of Chinese inscrutability,” in Crosstalk and Culture in Sino-American Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1-2. 61 Peter Hayes Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 10. 62. 「第一，西方学者有其基于自己利益的立场，这个利益与中国的利益有时并不完全一致；第二，西方人并不完全了解中国（读了白杰明先生以及其他一些西方学者的文章后，我更坚信这两点）；第三，基于西方历史演进现实而发展起来的方法，未必完全适用于中国。」王小东 , 〈西方人眼中的「中国民族主义」〉, 载于《全球化阴影下的中国之路》，宋强主编 (北京 :中国社会科学出版社 , 1999 年 ). Also referenced in Gries, China’s New Nationalism, 10.. 14.

(23) theory-based study of Chinese nationalism. But only through comparative and theory-based study can we gain a richer understanding of China’s place in the broader subfield of nationalism studies.63 As Shambaugh has argued, it is “imperative for analysts of China to view the CCP through comparative and historical lenses… China may be distinct, but it is not unique.”64 Unless we begin by rejecting the intellectually unhelpful “Chinese uniqueness” or “China is China is China” theorem, then there is simply no hope for generalizable and comparable findings upon which to generate better theory.. 1.4: Approach If the content that makes up the nationalism of a given “nation” is self-evidently unique, then on what basis may we compare nationalisms?. In this case, we do so by analyzing, or. “filtering” the nationalist discourse that describes the contents of the “Chinese nation” through a theoretical lens that connects the various discursive elements of the putative nation to concepts of the theoretical nation. This study identifies ethnic, cultural, civic/political65, and territorial as four discursive elements that are employed to imagine a “nation” and communicate it as a social and political idea. Discussed more fully in Chapter Three, this approach allows for comparison between the “Chinese nation” as a phenomenon reflected in political discourse and nations in theory. When and where is the “Chinese nation” imagined as a civic-territorial or ethno-cultural community? Or is the “Chinese nation” conceived as an alternate combination of these elements of identity, such as a civic-cultural, or ethno-territorial community? Seeking an answer to these questions should also yield a deeper understanding of how nationalism interrelates with the construction of Chinese identity and the articulation of state interests.. 63. One possibility for comparison is found in the former Soviet Union, which had, like the PRC, a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population and a Leninist party-state that institutionalized “nations” within its borders. Of course differences also abound, and such comparisons are fraught with difficulty. But unless we allow for comparison and generalization, theory and case study remain perpetually isolated from one another, and we are none the wiser. 64 David Shambaugh, “Writing China: David Shambaugh, ‘China’s Future’,” Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/03/14/writing-china-david-shambaugh-chinas-future/. 65 This study uses the term “civic” rather than “political” in order to avoid confusion between nationalism itself, which is always and inherently political, and the specifically civic/political kind of nationalism, which imagines or argues that those who share citizenship, common political institutions, a political culture, a set of political values, or a desire to participate in the activities of the state are or ought to be a nation. Thus, in a sense, civic nationalism is a form of politics based on political identity, while other kinds of nationalism are forms of politics based on other dimensions of identity. If the reader can keep this distinction in mind, then, “civic” may be read as “political” throughout this study.. 15.

(24) At the same time, this study distinguishes between two very different orientations of nationalism in theory as well as Chinese political history. The first kind seeks to nationalize a population (to create a nation) within the existing state. The second kind encourages mobilization to create or reform a state in order to suit the needs of an allegedly pre-existing nation. The former, while “revisionist” at the society level, reinforces the status quo at the state level. The latter aims to inspire reform, separatism, annexation, or revolution at the state level, but presumes that the societal level (the nation) is already a “social fact.” This part of the methodology is developed in Chapter Four. Though this is not a comparative study, it deliberately uses methods that can be applied to the study of other nationalisms outside of China.. 1.5: Definitions Perhaps owing to the excessive broadness of its related theoretical literature, nationalism suffers from a degree of “definitional haze.” Like terrorism or democracy, in other words, nationalism is invoked in so many contexts and fields that its definition is easily obscured. Barrington offers a relatively un-hazy definition of nationalism that serves as a useful starting point in this study: nationalism “combines the political notion of territorial self-determination, the cultural notion of the nation as one’s primary identity, and a moral idea of justification of action to protect the rights of the nation against the other.”66 Embedded within Barrington’s definition of nationalism is “the nation” as a “cultural notion,” as “one’s primary identity,” and as a collective entity (with rights) that exists in relationship to other nations. Although Breuilly argues that nations and nationalism ought to be studied as separate phenomena,67 the simplicity of Barrington’s definition recommends that we follow suit, embedding the definition of “the nation” within that of “nationalism.” Additionally, the close connection between these two terms helps explain how Chapters Three and Four of this study must be considered in relation to one another. Thus a working definition of nationalism requires a definition of the nation. A popular and appealing conception is offered by Anderson: “the nation… is an imagined political. 66. Lowell W. Barrington, “‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’: The Misuse of Key Concepts in Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics, December 1997, 713. 67 Don H. Doyle, “H-Nationalism Interview with John Breuilly,” H-Nationalism, March 29, 2006, https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/pages/5917/h-nationalism-interview-john-breuilly.. 16.

(25) community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”68 The nation, in other words, is a mutually imagined connection between cognitive participants, made possible by shared identity. Anderson’s use of “imagined” stresses, in his words, that the nation is “both real and fictional at the same time:” although we cannot experience it, or even describe it with any great precision, “it’s actually understood to be real…. but, on the other hand, the only way you can approach it is through the imagination.”69 Thus Anderson does not argue that nations are by nature illegitimate, fake, or imaginary, but rather, that their existence in people’s collective imagination precedes and gives rise to the reality of the nation – which is to say, a population with a shared national identity. In a similar vein, Emerson concedes to the impossibility of a definition of the nation that exceeds national consciousness based on national identity: “the simplest statement that can be made about a nation is that it is a body of people who feel that they are a nation; and it may be that when all the fine-spun analysis is concluded, this will be the ultimate statement as well.”70 The feeling that one belongs to a nation is certainly nothing other than awareness, or “consciousness” of one’s national identity in relation to the national identity of others. When an awareness of others’ differing national identity highlights the reality of one’s nationality, then Emerson’s “feeling” is clarified by contrast. When an awareness of others’ same national identity highlights the qualities of one’s own nationality, then Emerson’s “feeling” is magnified and legitimized. Thus national identity, though it may be at first intuitive rather than rationally derived, must take on contents through this unavoidable process of colliding - and thus comparing and contrasting – with other national identities. What, then, fills the content of national identity? Dittmer offers a useful two-level perspective that greatly clarifies this question. Dittmer sees identity functioning in “two broad dimensions: the first is characteristics of the individual constituents of the group, such as shared language, culture, or ethnicity… the second is characteristics of the group itself, such as a founding, a narrative history, and a role in international society, leading to a sense of shared interest in the fate of the whole.”71 Evidently, some of these characteristics arise through 68. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2006), 6. 69 Benedict Anderson, “Benedict Anderson About Nationalism - Interview with Anil Ramdas,” Anthropology Online, 1994, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNJuL-Ewp-A. 70 Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 101. 71 Lowell Dittmer, “Taiwan and the Issue of National Identity,” Asian Survey 44, no. 4 (July 2004): 476.. 17.

(26) informal socialization, some through formal, mandated education, and others still by serendipitous interpersonal relations and friendships. Finally, some are largely bestowed, or “given,” by accidents of geography and birth. By combining socialized elements with “given” traits, Dittmer’s approach to identity contains both constructed and primordial elements. It is therefore suitable for this study, which combines both constructivist and primordialist insights regarding the nation. The above three paragraphs reveal a seemingly inevitable logical progression: in the process of defining nationalism we must invoke the nation; in the definition of the nation, we must reference national identity. Proceeding from the definitions offered by Barrington, to Anderson and Emerson, to Dittmer, one could conclude that nationalism is a political, moral, and cultural concept held by a group of people who share a common national identity (a nation). Defined as such, we see that if nationalism has particular contents, those contents are determined by the nation, whose view of itself stems from national identity. Based on the above definitions, the three terms appear to have a relationship as shown below: National Identity. The Nation. Nationalism. Figure 1.5.1: National Identity, The Nation, and Nationalism by Definition. However, the insight that nationalism creates nations is perhaps the second most widespread point of consensus among historians and scholars of nationalism (second only to the essential modernity of nations). Thus Kunovich offers a definition of national identity that directly contradicts the above description, writing that national identity is a “socially constructed sameness resulting from nationalism.”72 So are the definitions and relationships depicted above backwards and incorrect? Reconciling these two different views requires a more precise understanding of national identity: is it at all generative of nationalism (as the above description suggests) or is entirely an object, whose contents come from nationalism? The first possibility, in which national identity has stable contents, is a plausible independent variable, and is not exclusively an object of nationalism, is indeed found in the secondary literature. In an authoritative study on Chinese historical consciousness, Zheng Wang maintains that “national interests are constructed by national identity, and national interests in. 72. Emphasis added. Robert M. Kunovich, “The Sources and Consequences of National Identification,” American Sociological Review 74, no. 4 (August 2009): 574.. 18.

(27) turn determine foreign policy and state action”73. Wang thus posits a causal relationship between national identity and state policy, with national interests as the intervening variable. Also situated between identity and policy are “national ideas,” namely, “the collective beliefs of societies and organizations about how to act.”74 In short, “who we think we are defines what we think we want.”75 If, as Wang maintains, people view the world through the prism of national identity, then identity is generative of interests and actions, including actions and rhetoric that can be subsumed under the term “nationalism.” Alternatively, a number of theorists view identity as an object rather than a source of politics, and national identity as an object rather than source of nationalism. Brubaker states, “nationalism is not engendered by nations. It is produced – or better, it is induced – by political fields of particular kinds.”76 Likewise, “identity should be understood as a ‘changeable product of collective action,’ not as its stable underlying cause. Much the same thing could be said about nationness.”77 Indeed, for which of Dittmer’s characteristics of identity are immune to the salinizing or de-salinizing effects of political mobilization and rhetoric? Is the political salience of language, culture and ethnicity (at the individual level) or mythologized founding, history and international role (at the collective level) determined a priori? Certainly not. Going a step further, Hobsbawm argues that the definition of “nation” changes not only cross-culturally but even cross-temporally, such that the meaning of a given “nation” has little if any stable, generationally-inheritable meaning or content.78 A nation is thus a contextually defined event rather than an existing entity. The more mainstream view expressed by Hobsbawm and Brubaker can be represented as follows: Nationalism. National Identity. The Nation Figure 1.5.2: National Identity as an Object of Nationalism. Brubaker, in fact, offers a more practical definition of nationalism as “a form of remedial. 73. Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), xiii. 74 Jeffrey Legro, “What China Will Want: The Future Intentions of a Rising Power,” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 3 (September 2007): 515. Quoted in Ibid. 75 Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation, 11. 76 Breuilly, Nationalism Reconsidered, 17. 77 Ibid., 20. 78 This is a theme developed throughout Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, especially in chapters three through six.. 19.

(28) political action” that “addresses an allegedly deficient… condition and proposes to remedy it.”79 This definition of nationalism as a form of politics, rather than Barrington’s more conceptual definition, occupies a central place in the logic of this study. Nonetheless, the two approaches described above should be understood as complementary rather than contradictory. Nations are indeed created by nationalism, which, as a form of politics, constructs “sameness” and “otherness” by manipulating the political salience of particular elements of identity. This can be termed the “top-down” flow of nationalism, as we expect it to proceed from the actions and rhetoric of elites and political entrepreneurs. However, to the extent that national identity – once engendered by nationalism – either impacts the further production of nationalism, or incorporates ideational elements of a proto-national community such as an ethnic group, we can speak of a “bottom-up” flow of nationalism. Because national identity is likely a meaningless concept in the absence of nationalism, the “top-down” flow should be deemed the essential precondition to the “bottom-up” flow, and the more influential of the two in general. But only by considering both flows of nationalism together can we get a sense for the overall dynamic as well as the tremendous importance that nationalist rhetoric plays in structuring politics. Our understanding of the relationship among these three concepts can therefore be represented by a “feedback loop,” by which nationalism originally creates – and continuously re-shapes – national identity, and national identity informs – to a more limited extent – the contents of the nation and nationalism: (Bottom-up process) National Identity. The Nation. Nationalism. (Top-down process) Figure 1.5.3: Bi-directional Relationship between Identity and Nationalism. Wang’s research on historical memory and Chinese national identity corroborates with this feedback loop model. Wang writes, “There is actually a feedback loop in today’s China whereby the nationalistic history education stimulates the rise of nationalism, and the rise of. 79. Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 79.. 20.

(29) nationalism provides a bigger market for nationalistic messages.”80 Wang’s terminology here is somewhat different from that in this study. What he describes as “nationalistic history education” is, in the present terminology, a particular kind of nationalism: a form of politics designed to manipulate the salience of national identity. Meanwhile, the “rise of nationalism” which Wang observes – clearly a phenomenon occurring at the social level – is in fact an increasing salience of national identity. The fact that, as Wang describes, a change in the salience of national identity has effects on society’s demand for or acceptance of further nationalism serves to corroborate the bi-directional nature of the relationship between identity and nationalism. Thus, though the state is primarily responsible for the “nationalization” of identity in the first place, once a population considers itself a (particular kind of) nation, its appetite for and expression of nationalism need not be attributed entirely to the state. Thus we may not discount the role of society hovering within the statement, “national interests are constructed by national identity, and national interests in turn determine foreign policy and state action.”81 Nor should we dismiss the reality that public opinion among the Chinese people, partly shaped by elite-led patriotic education programs and media, constrains Beijing’s freedom of action on issues that touch on nationalist sentiment.82 After all, as Breuilly notes, “Nationalist ideology matters, not so much because it directly motivates most supporters of a nationalist movement, but rather because it provides a conceptual map which enables people to relate their particular material and moral interests to a broader terrain of action.”83 As this introduction has explained, despite evidence pointing to the extraordinary salience of nationhood within Chinese society and a near-consensus on the importance of state-led nationalism to the PRC’s legitimacy and regime-security, disagreements abound regarding Chinese nationalism’s precise impact on China’s politics and foreign relations. This may be due to the fact that a lack of agreement regarding the contents and orientation of Chinese nationalism renders it a “contested object” which must be more fully explored before we have any hope of discussing its likely “effects.” This study thus aims to develop a perhaps under-utilized theoretical approach to re-interpret the content and orientation of particular strands of Chinese 80. Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation, 9. Ibid., xiii. 82 This logical argument is presented in, and central to, Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 83 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 13. 81. 21.

(30) nationalism within modern and contemporary Chinese history,84 with particular focus on the current Xi Jinping era. In doing so, this study places an emphasis on the official nationalism as formulated by agents of the party-state, although the nationalisms of intellectuals and competing voices from outside of the CCP are considered where appropriate. Unfortunately, the precise sentiments that exist across a population of over one billion independently thinking individuals are exceedingly hard to discover with any certainty.85 But the words of leaders are clearly recorded; in seeking to understand the complex bi-directional flow of Chinese nationalism, we can begin by closely analyzing what has been said. In doing so we can gain a greater understanding of how the Chinese nation has been imagined and how the politics of nationalism are likely to impact Greater China.. 1.6: Thesis Structure This introduction has considered several key disagreements in the English-language literature on Chinese nationalism, brief theoretical considerations relating to nationalism studies and comparative politics, key definitions, and a general conceptualization of the theoretical relationship between national identity, the nation as an imagined community, and nationalism as a form of politics. Chapter two will follow with a literature review examining four approaches to the theoretical study of nations and nationalism. Overall, these four approaches, herein termed culturalist, sociological, political-historical, and ethno-symbolist, focus more on the nature of the nation in theory – and how it is that we came to live in “world of nations” – and less on the methodology of nationalism studies. Nonetheless, an understanding of the broad theoretical contestations relating to nationalism is essential in order to relate the findings of this study back to theory.. 84. Following historian Hu Sheng, this study considers “modern Chinese history” (中國近代史) as the period of 110 years between the beginning of the First Opium War and the founding of the PRC (1839-1949), and “contemporary Chinese history” (中國現代史) as the period from 1949 to the present. This study examines Chinese nationalism both prior to and after the founding of the PRC, but with extra emphasis on more recent periods. See Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 17. 85 Hobsbawm writes, “That view from below, i.e. the nation as seen not by governments and the spokesmen and activists of nationalist (or non-nationalist) movements, but by the ordinary persons who are the objects of their action and propaganda, is exceedingly difficult to discover… official ideologies of states and movements are not guides to what it is in the minds of even the most loyal citizens or supporters.” Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 11.. 22.