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The Rise of Han-Centrism and What It Means for International Politics
Abstract
This article addresses the rise of Han-centrism, a form of hyper-nationalism, in contemporary China. As Chinese nationalism has become more ethnocentric since the 1990s, the cultural chauvinism of Han-centrism has become increasingly more influential in the debate over national identity. Within this narrative, Han culture is considered to be the authentic character of the nation; to deviate from the Han identity will only tarnish Chinese exceptionalism and impede China's rise. While Chinese nationalism consists of many competing discourses, we argue that Han-centrism has a significant influence within both policy-making circles and the public sphere in China, and, as a result, has important consequences for the future of international politics. Journal compilation
... It is little wonder then that a system that would put control over regional trade and security in the hands of Beijing should become so popular in a world marked by increasing chaos and international anarchy. Moreover, the notion contributes to feeding the egos of power holders that exhibit Han-centrism, a form of hyper-nationalism that has taken hold in contemporary China, and which is very rarely talked about in the West (Lee, 2016;Friend -Thayer, 2017). ...
... This was achieved through a campaign of patriotic education designed to reshape collective memory by "misremembering the past". This involved downplaying or erasing the more egregious crimes of the CCP such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Massacre, and crafting a new history that interweaves the Mao-era "victor narrative" about heroic Chinese triumphs over Western and Japanese enemies with a new "victim narrative", which focuses on historical Chinese humiliation at the hands of said enemies (Gries, 2005, p. 254;Friedman, 2008;Friend -Thayer, 2017). ...
The edited volume is part of the OBIC Book Series, in which ten books have been published so far. This edited work covers a variety of topics, from economic development
strategies to concentrated works focusing on a single country. This book is about
perceptions of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept, which has been regularly
featured as the American response to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
The Trump administration unveiled its “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) concept in
November 2017. The idea was originally floated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe in 2006, who advocated for the “confluence” of the two oceans to form an “arc of
freedom and prosperity”. The concept was not well received at the time, but in 2017
US President Donald Trump reiterated the strategy and gave his support, arguing that
the region enjoyed growing importance for American direct investment. In addition to
its economic importance, it is clear that the strategy is not a value-neutral or descriptive term but a political one, often interpreted in Beijing as a containment strategy.
Recently, France and Germany have also released their versions of the Indo-Pacific
concept, expressing geopolitical concerns about China’s growing power in the region
and the world.
The volume contains ten chapters on various aspects of the “Free and Open IndoPacific” concept, and the authors of the book come from six countries and ensure that
the book ofers a comprehensive view of the subject, while special emphasis was put
on the strategies of India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and greater China.
We are very grateful for the support of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of
Hungary, MNB) and the Budapest Business School, without whose generosity and
commitment to collaboration, this volume would not have been possible.
... cholars have focused tremendous attention on nationalism over the last decades, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Friend and Thayer 2017). China is no exception. ...
... Although there are numerous empirical studies on nationalism, it is difficult to define nationalism clearly. Nationalism, as a word, was first mentioned in 1409 (Kecmanovic 1996); Many scholars further elaborated on the definition of nationalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Friend and Thayer 2017). However, due to the complex and multi-dimensional nature, the definition of nationalism differs depending upon how scholars define the nation as a community (Oruc 2019). ...
China’s digital nationalism has been on the rise during the last decade. This article examines the digital nationalistic expression of solidarity and unity on China’s 70th National Day celebration in 2019. It conducted a qualitative content analysis of 500 posts regarding China’s National Day, which were posted on October 1, 2019, on Sina Weibo. This study finds that Chinese internet users employ textual and visual posts to express their pride and loyalty, thereby reflecting their Chinese identity, a call for national unity, and their best wishes for China’s bright future. This study suggests that Weibo offers a virtual “imagined community” for netizens to interact with national symbols to spontaneously strengthen a sense of national identity by highlighting the Chinese Communist Party’s achievements. The findings concluded that national identity is socially constructed, rather than being permanent. Moreover, the Internet facilitates a more liberating Chinese media system; however, digital media is also somehow influenced by the Chinese government’ s media logic, which helps to further disseminate the government’ s interests.
... This paper specifically uses the term 'Africans' to refer to black Sub-Saharan Africans, while acknowledging the diversity within Africa that is often overlooked in racial discourse. The racialization process in China, which affects not only Africans but also other ethnic minorities, is a result of historical and contemporary socio-political dynamics (Friend & Thayer, 2017). ...
... Despite de jure legal protections for minority cultures and languages, Mandarin (普通话) is now the only medium of instruction in all schools and even kindergartens. Patriotic Han-centric education begins at the age of three in state preschools, and the CCP is actively erasing ethnic cultures and traditions and replacing them with those of the Han majority (Lavička 2021;Friend and Thayer 2017). Recent work by Lavička and Chen (2023) demonstrates how religious policies in China are becoming more draconian under Xi Jinping as he insists on the "sincization" (中国化) of "foreign" religious traditions in China, removing domes and minarets from mosques, for example, and replacing them with Han-style pagoda rooftops and towers. ...
Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan) and their ruling parties have altered over time, there are quite a few similarities between their models of nation-building, more than is commonly acknowledged. The guofu (father) of the modern Chinese state, Sun Yat-sen, one of the few political leaders who is still honored on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, claimed all the peoples and territories of the former Qing empire comprised a single national community, the so-called Zhonghua minzu. Yet a Han super-majority has long sat at the center of this national imaginary. In this article, we ask what has happened to Sun’s imagined community across the last century, and how it has evolved in the two competing Chinese states the PRC and the ROC. We seek to demonstrate the enduring challenge of Han-centrism for multiethnic nation-building in both countries, while illustrating how shifts in domestic and international politics are altering this national imaginary and the place of ethnocultural diversity within it.
... First, it features a well-defined in-group and out-group. The CCP casts itself as the guarantor of Han interests (Friend and Thayer 2017;Tobin 2020) and has long repressed non-ethnic Han (Weiner 2020). Second, since its founding in 1949, the CCP has repressed several pro-democracy movements by Han citizens, which now constitute focal moments for protest. ...
Many autocrats govern with an in-group, whose support must be secured, and an out-group, which is subject to repression. How do autocrats exploit in-group/out-group dynamics to secure their survival? One strategy, we argue, is to broadcast out-group repression to the in-group as a signal of the regime’s capacity for violence. Empirically, we focus on China, where the government represses ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Drawing on 1 million articles from six propaganda newspapers, we show that the regime broadcasts out-group repression to urban elites on each anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when 10% of Beijing residents joined anti-regime protests. To understand its effects, we conducted a survey experiment balanced on the national census during the June 2020 Tiananmen anniversary. Using a list experiment to mitigate preference falsification, we show that CCP propaganda about Uyghurs during the Tiananmen anniversary discourages protests among politically engaged urban elites because they fear repression.
... Moreover, we also recognize that Africans are not the only group subject to racialization processes within China. As documented across several works, the rise of Han-centrism in contemporary China has led to distinct forms of "Han racism" and cultural prejudice toward other ethnic identities and minorities in the country, such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans (see, e.g., Friend and Thayer, 2017). However, due to the specific scope of this article on externally oriented forms of racialization, we restrict our analysis to instances of China-Africa encounters, tackling in this section processes affecting (Black) African nationals in China. ...
While contemporary China–Africa relations are often discussed in (geo)political and economic terms, they cannot be disentangled from “racial” orderings and tensions. Still, “race” remains underexplored in these encounters. This article seeks to further the conversation on the role of “race” in China–Africa relations. We build on the concept of “racialization” to examine the various ways in which race shapes both the Chinese-in-Africa and Africans-in-China contexts. We do so without losing sight of historical constructions and socio-political drivers. Drawing and expanding on a burgeoning strand of China–Africa “race”-related research, we argue that racialization processes are fused with strategic interests, historical “racial” consciousnesses, and political and economic discontent. Our analysis questions oft-repeated programmatic claims of a “Sino-African friendship” and posits that thinking through “race” is fundamental for an adequate comprehension of the narratives and modalities configuring China–Africa relations.
... Scholars have since suggested many Chinese identities, but two of them are repeatedly discussed in the literature. One, often termed Chinese ethnocultural or historical identity, focuses on the traditional (and most likely Han-centric, see: Friend and Thayer 2017) culture, values, traditions, and symbols of the glorious history of China. The other one, the Chinese nationalist identity, calls for a more political identification with China, emphasising not just the ancient Chinese civilisation but also China's anti-imperialist resistance and the great power status under the leadership of the Communist Party (Modongal and Lu 2016;Wang 1988). ...
In the face of the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed the city’s education system for its inability to develop a sense of ‘I am Chinese’ national identity and vowed to step up ‘national education’ from preschool. This article explores how 188 young preschool teachers perceived their national identity and viewed the applicability of national education in Hong Kong preschools. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings showed that even though the participants strongly resisted their Chinese identity, they agreed that national education could be introduced in preschools if it would be rendered rational and apolitical. Nevertheless, they suspected that the administration’s motive behind national education was political indoctrination. They also noted several pedagogical difficulties. Finally, the implications are discussed against the changing socio-political context, serving as lessons for local and international readers.
... The authors have generally engaged with national identity studies from two perspectives. On the one hand, this has been done by analyzing a specific feature that gives substance to this identity, like ancient philosophy (Fawcett, 2017) or Han-centrism (Friend and Thayer, 2017). On the other, authors have analyzed the contradictions in China's own conceptions of its national identity and the discussion of assigned and self-perceived identities (Wang, 2003;Shih and Yin, 2013;Mierzejewski and Kowalski, 2019). ...
The analysis of Chinese foreign policy presents itself as a challenging but necessary field. The complexities of its political system and the lack of official information about its processes are usually stated as reasons for apprehension about the exploration of the topic and any conclusions drawn. New narratives of China’s peaceful or threatening rise, the possibilities of a “Second Cold” War and Thucydides’ Trap further complicate its exploration by the inclusion of political considerations. Notwithstanding these considerations, since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China scholars have examined a wide range of alternatives to the understanding of Chinese foreign policy rationale. After a brief overview of historical perspectives, this paper categorizes and presents different entry points in the English literature to study Chinese foreign policy. Its objective, hence, is to introduce different perspectives to disentangle the topic, serving as an initial reading.
... In these narratives, the condemnation of traditional culture during the Mao era is absent. Importantly, adding to the Mao-era narrative of victory over foreign imperialism, the current identity narratives also emphasise past humiliation and victimhood at the hands of Japan and the West (Friend & Thayer, 2017). As Peter Gries (2005) argues, the point of the identity narratives that revitalise traditional culture and past humiliation is to polish the in-group and redefine Chinese cultural superiority. ...
This article offers a critical analysis of four kung fu films that were co-produced by Hong Kong and Mainland China and depict the legend of Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s teacher. It discusses different representations in the Ip Man saga, and argues that while othering Japan and the West, the Chinese self is depicted in the saga as a benevolent but powerful actor. The texts of the films are thus found to echo past and present Mainland identity narratives and to be connected to the Mainland’s push for soft power. The article links popular culture to politics by showing how political narratives are made attractive at an everyday level, thus contributing to the literature on identity and soft power.
... Interestingly, even if Xi's exerts a tight control on the Chinese internet, his administration has been incredibly tolerant with (and sometimes has even incentivized) such discourses. Friend and Thayer (2017) individuate the difference between Han supremacy and plain nationalism in the fact that the former poses a greater emphasis on culture and ethnic belonging, according to which the "Chinese Nation is believed to be the home of the Han people and the revival of Han culture is required for China's continued development" 114 . Since Han culture is believed to be the most advanced, they "know better" and their "interests are equivalent to the interests of China as a whole and the welfare of its people" 115 . ...
Taking into consideration the increasingly restrictive and oppressive control of the Chinese government over its Turkic Muslim ethnic minorities, more specifically, over the Uyghurs, this dissertation will investigate the ongoing process of securitization of their very ethnic difference. In order to do that, firstly a theoretical framework and brief literature review will be provided. Secondly, a historical revisit will be done to elucidate how securitization was undertaken and within which historical context was it constructed. Thirdly, three different explanatory factors will be inspected to attempt to understand governmental decisions towards securitization, and, finally, an analysis of the macro-securitization of terrorism and the specific instruments undertaken by the Chinese War on Terror will be investigated to attempt to figure out its mechanisms and potential consequences on the Uyghurs - among which genocide is contemplated.
... However, as a theory of political legitimacy, nationalism explicitly or implicitly refers to a peculiar link between ethnicity and nation-state (Gellner, 1983;Smith, 2009). In the case of China and Taiwan, the ethnic foundation of nationalism is different: the former is based on a "Han-centrism" and sees Taiwanese and Hong Konger as part of it (Friend & Thayer, 2017); while others argue that Taiwanese has indigenous ethnic uniqueness which involves the rejection of Chinese ethnicity or anti-Sinoist nationalism (Chun, 2017;Pain, 2018;Wu, 2016). ...
Research on race and ethnicity has focused on conditions under which solidarity will be developed to consolidate collective benefits. For example, facing racial discrimination can bring large-scale affiliations (e.g., people of color, Latinos, or Asians) to fight against racial injustice. Focusing on the negotiation and struggle between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia-a politicizing context associated with a prior definition of Chinese category, despite inherent differences within it, this article shows the complexity of ethnicity when ethnic identity/solidarity intersects with nationalism and racial discrimination. I argue that Taiwanese migrants attach specific meanings to the ethnic (Chinese) category and constantly connect to and shift its boundaries in different contexts. Meanwhile, they also make a distinction between racial discrimination from white Australians and political hostility from PRC-Chinese. This article proposes a procedural and contextual understanding of ethnic identity, solidarity, nationalism, and boundary making/unmaking within the Chinese category as it is enacted in Taiwanese migrants' everyday lives. It also examines situational variability in the salience of ethnic identifications, racialization of the ethnic category, and people's interpretation of ethnic and national identity when facing racial discrimination.
... Meanwhile, over the last decades, nationalism has received tremendous attention from scholars, since the end of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia (Friend and Thayer 2017). China is not an exception since it became one of the important international powers in the world. ...
Search engines play a vital role in positioning, organizing, and disseminating knowledge in China. Although there is a growing interest in China’s search engines, relatively few researches systematically examine their role involving nationalism. In order to address the research gap, this article compares the top thirty search results,from Baidu, 360 Search, Sogou Search, and Google regarding the “Meng Wanzhou Incident” while focusing on the overlap, ranking, and bias patterns. Furthermore, this study also analyses the differences between Wikipedia and China’s online encyclopedias concerning the “Meng Wanzhou Incident” in terms of content, structure, sources, and their main arguments. This article finds: 1) Chinese search engines favor their own services, thereby offering a unique and selective content bias; 2) Chinese search engines and online encyclopedias only provide Chinese sources that provide national biased knowledge, which raises search bias concerns; and 3) Chinese online encyclopedias offer a strong one-sided argument that is positive to China. Overall, this study finds that China’s search engines service the Chinese government’s self-interest by rendering overly biased social realities; moreover, they produce a logic of “imagined communities” to promote and stimulate feelings of nationalism.
... Like India, China has a long and complicated history of anti-Muslim exclusionary politics, and a complex geography of domestic and international legal strategies that have supported and challenged those politics. Although Muslim groups were incorporated into certain multicultural nationalist storylines under Mao, a "Han-centric" ethnonationalism has always been an important thread in Chinese identity narratives (Friend and Thayer, 2017). Increasing in prominence and virulence since the 1990s, this ethnonationalist thread has culminated most recently with the Chinese government's internment of at least 1.5 million people, primarily Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. ...
... The failure of the Qing ruler, a Manchu minority regime, provided an opportunity for nationalists, predominately Han, to construct an ethnocentric anti-West front. Mao's China followed the anti-West line and drew from communist ideology to construct a common identity for all Chinese nationalities oppressed by Western imperialism but at the same time maintained the supremacy of the Han as the most representative of the Chinese nation (Friend and Thayer 2017). In the postreform era, neither conservatives nor reformists had problems with the Han-centric identity discourse, and the self-perception of homogeneity was strengthened among Chinese millennials through state-led patriotic education following the Tiananmen crackdown (Chang 2001: 182-5). ...
Since 2015, the strong resentment in Chinese social media against international immigration triggered by the European migrant crisis has been noticed, and in many cases harshly criticised, by foreign media. Using primary sources retrieved from a major microblogging site, this article provides a critical review of the way in which the crisis was represented in popular discourse between 2015 and 2017and explores the intricate sentiments it provoked. It employs the analytical framework of critical discourse analysis developed by Fairclough to illustrate how multi-dimensional discourse construction shaped the perceptions in social media. It argues that the mostly sensationalist narratives, created through recontextualisation of long-standing nationalist discourses, reflect the dilemma between China’s ambitious globalist vision for future development and the persistent myth of homogeneity of Chinese nationhood. As China undergoes a slow and reluctant transition from a traditional source of emigration to a budding destination for international immigrants, such a dilemma has broader implications for the Chinese perceptions of the European Other and China’s self-positioning in the world.
... Scholars have analyzed Han-centrism from different perspectives, such as identity, ethnicity, nationalism, cultural movement, and international relations (Carrico, 2017;Chew and Wang, 2012;Friend and Thayer, 2017;Leibold, 2010Leibold, , 2016 and have also discussed its historical narratives, although concepts such as collective memory or digital memory may not be employed. This article advances the study of Han-centrism and bridges it with memory studies. ...
Digital technology has brought critical changes to mnemonic practices in China, such as the empowerment of social groups to discover previously underrepresented historical accounts and produce alternative historical narratives. This article examines the mnemonic practices of Han-centrism, a type of ethnic and cultural nationalist movement based on the Chinese Internet. It analyzes how Han-centrist netizens reinterpret national history through their efforts to rediscover forgotten historical narratives of glory and trauma. It suggests that digital technology in China facilitates the emergence of online groups that are dedicated to the struggle for “historical truth” and social-cultural changes, motivated by a crisis of identity. Their mnemonic practices may be partly tolerated by the authoritarian state under some conditions. However, given China’s complicated and conflictual history, such online groups can easily turn the Internet into a battlefield of nationalism. This article highlights the confusion and contestation of memory and identity in contemporary China and the role of digital technology in the long battle.
Current racial discourses surrounding Chinese athletes signify that they not only lack the physical tools to succeed but also are socialized with cultural values that demonstrate their perceived negativity and resistance towards sport and physical culture. However, in today's society where increasing Chinese athletes are commended for their triumphs and excellence in international sporting arenas, such a racialized understanding demonstrates a mismatch to the Chinese athletes’ holistic viewpoints. Based on interview data collected from n = 24 male provincial professional and university badminton athletes from China, I articulate that Chinese sportsmen are seen to identify strictly with collective Sinicized ideals, termed as “Chineseness,” in constructing their racial consciousness, which arises from their physical and cultural inter-group differences and/or intra-group similarities.
Anadolu coğrafyası tarihin bilinmeyen çağlarından beri sürekli olarak nüfus hareketliliğine sahne olmuş dünyanın ender bölgelerinden biridir. Türklerin bu coğrafyaya egemen olmasından sonra Türkistan-Kafkasya güzergâhından gelen göçler neredeyse daimî olduğu Selçuklu, Osmanlı ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti tarihinden malumdur. Aynı zamanda özellikle Osmanlının son dönemi ile Cumhuriyet döneminde Ortadoğu ve Balkanlardan milyonlarca insanlar göç etmiştir. Bu göç hareketleri Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin demografik yapısını hatta etno-dinsel yapısını önemli ölçüde etkilemiştir. Bu süreç Körfez savaşı ve Suriye savaşları ile devam etmiştir. Günümüz Türkiye’sinde mutlak çoğunluğunu Ortadoğulu göçmen-sığınmacıların oluşturduğu yaklaşık 5 milyon göçmenlerin yaşıyor olması, onların sosyal ve kültürel yapıya uyumu, bütünleşme maliyetleri üzerinde düşünülmesi, ciddi araştırmaların yapılması önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışma işbu kaygı ile ele alınmış, farklı göçmen grupların Türkiye Türk toplumuna uyum ve bütünleşme maliyetleri üzerine bir deneme niteliği taşımaktadır.
Bu bölümde, günümüzde kendilerini Hanzu (Han milliyeti) veya Huxia diye adlandıran Çin milletinin kadim medeniyetinden beslenerek geliştirdiği modern “Çin Tarzını”, dolayısıyla güçlü özgüvene sahip Çin milliyetçiliğini besleyen medeniyet ve kültür kodlarındaki norm ve değerlerini, Çin kültüründe belirgin olan “biz” ve “öteki” anlayışını anlamayı amaçlamaktayız. Ayrıca, Çin Halk Cumhuriyeti’nin (ÇHC) Soğuk Savaş sonrası süreçte, politik ve kültürel sınırları içindeki farklılıklara yönelik ısrarla devam ettirilen orantısız uygulamaları; farklı ülkelerdeki yeni sömürgecilik faaliyetleri (Kasongo, 2011), Pakistan hariç bütün komşuları ile olan sınır anlaşmazlıkları (Elleman ve Schofield, 2015: XIV) veya Uygur Türkleri başta olmak üzere diğer azınlıklar hatta siyahi insanlar için çok incitici etiketler2 kullanmaları, Çin’in ulusal kanallarında yayımlanan reklamlarda gayet normal olarak sunulan görüntülerin uluslararası arenada ırkçılık olarak nitelendirilmesi gibi hadiselerin kökenindeki Çin milliyetçiliğinden gelen zihni altyapısını ortaya koymayı amaç edinmiş bulunmaktayız.
Islamophobia, along with other forms of alt-right discourse and hate speech, is a well-documented phenomenon in the Euro-American world. Despite increasing scholarly attention in the West, however, research on Islamophobia in authoritarian regimes is more limited. Using content analysis of key online Islamophobic accounts, this paper shows that there are two distinct types of Islamophobic narratives in the Chinese cyberspace: a “confessional” narrative attributed to Uyghur authors, and a warning narrative specifically for Han readership, cautioning them about the hidden dangers posed by the Hui. This paper explores how these Islamophobic pieces share a Han-centric gaze where the Han, the majority-dominant group in China today, are placed in both a saviour role in terms of the Uyghurs, and a victim role as underdogs coming under attack from the Hui. The successful assimilation of the Hui has led to suspicion and narratives of betrayal, despite state efforts to promote Hui assimilation as a successful example of ethnic harmony. Whereas the Uyghurs are welcomed and accepted as long as they are willing to admit Han superiority, the Hui are rejected based on their perceived threat to Han dominance.
This chapter explores how students experience the shift between their home country and China, particularly focusing on how their pre-mobility habitus ‘travels’ with them to China. I explore how adaption to life in China, and resultant habitus mutability, differs along the lines of social background. In addition, the chapter emphasises how the historical, cultural, and legal frameworks around migration act as structural forces which shape the experiences of mobile students in the country. In particular, I argue that these facets of Chinese modernity lead to the positioning of African international students as ‘unprivileged outsiders’, in contrast to the ‘privileged’ yet alienated status of white Western foreign residents in the country. In doing so, the chapter contributes to the development of a more nuanced understanding of global and context-specific processes of racialisation, beyond those found in the West.
In the globalizing era, contrary to most non-Western
countries, China has become more efficient and expandable in his
national culture. At the same time, while most nation-states are
oriented toward pluralism or multiculturalism, the People's Republic
of China (PRC), on the contrary, has begun to transform from the
pluralistic and multicultural reality of the country into a monolingual,
monoculturalist structure. In this process, China’s zero tolerance
policies, which the PRC continues to apply against the disparities, have
been criticized and debated. This article argues that the only way to
understand China's present mentality against the disparities is to fully
comprehend the origins of the nation's thought that has revealed the
mindset. This work is a sociological assessment of China’s roots of
national sense of community and the point of view towards others.
This article discusses how the legendary general Yue Fei (1103–1142) and his legacy have been perceived and appropriated in Chinese history. Twentieth-century historians approached Yue's career by highlighting the tension between his dedication to the nation ( baoguo ) and his personal loyalty ( jinzhong ) to Emperor Gaozong (1107–1187) of the Song. I argue that for Yue Fei himself and those who wrote about him in late imperial China, Yue's guo , from which he derived his political identity and toward which he devoted his service, meant first and foremost the Song dynastic state. The pushing and pulling of multivalent themes of loyalty and state service in the “historic assessment” of Yue Fei since the turn of the twentieth century speak to the complexities embedded in different Chinese governments’ navigation of ethnic and class politics in their pursuit of a new national identity for China.
İnsanlar mekân değiştirirken sadece coğrafi manada bir mekân değiştirmiyor, aynı zamanda aradığı huzuru bulabileceği psiko-kültürel yakınlığı bulunan ülke ve toplumların içlerine göç ederler. Göçmen kabul eden ülkeler açısından yeni gelen göçmen grupların egemen topluma uyumu ve sosyo-kültürel açıdan bütünleşmesi önemlidir. Modern çağda en fazla göçmen nüfus kabul eden Batılı ülkeler sosyo-kültürel bütünleşmeyi sağlamak için bir birinden farklı uygulamalara başvurmuştur. Gelinen aşamada göçmenlerin egemen toplum ile uyumlu ve entegre olmuş olması hususu üzerinde en çok durulan konu olmuştur. İşbu çalışmamızda göçmenlerin göç ettikleri bölgelerdeki uyum ve sosyal katılımını etkileyen önemli faktörler arasında olan kültürel mesafe konusu üzerinde sosyolojik değerlendirmeler yapılacaktır. Özellikle göçmenlerin göç ettikleri toplumlara bütünleşmesinde kültürel mesafenin nasıl bir rol oynayacağı; Kültürel mesafenin göçmenleri kabul eden ülkeye nasıl bir maliyet yükleyeceği sorusuna cevap aranacaktır.
This article attempts to build a rational case about China’s burgeoning expansion, revisiting the interrelated questions of the long cycles, hegemonic transitions and the so-called “Thucydides’s Trap” among other analytical dimensions, drawing mainly upon some of the most important theoretical propositions from Thucydides, Kautilya, Organski, Modelski, Gilpin, and G. Allison. The conclusion points to the idea that the current international system already reveals a new phase of strategic containment.
This article attempts to build a rational case about China’s burgeoning expansion revisiting the interrelated questions of the long cycles, hegemonic transitions and the so-called “Thucydides’s trap” among other analytical dimensions, drawing mainly upon some of the most important theoretical propositions from Thucydides, Kautilya, Organski, Modelski, Gilpin, and G. Allison. The conclusion points to the idea that the current international system already reveals a new phase of strategic containment.
This article opens with a review of the origins of the term ‘ethnocentrism’ as the linchpin of modern anthropology despite the discipline's background in the colonial past. The author is stimulated by Step Stuurman's The invention of humanity: Equality and cultural difference in human history (2017) to ask to what extent the critique of ethnocentrism, which gradually gathered strength in the West, has had parallels in non‐Western civilizations. His conclusion is that the astonishing sophistication of a Persian and a Chinese polymath in studying cultures alien to their own does not seem, according to records available, to have influenced their respective civilizations in the same way that modern ‘anthropological intelligence’ (to borrow Gillian Tett's term) was extensively foreshadowed in Europe. Counter‐ethnocentrism as a principle has now become indispensable to all the social sciences that aspire to be cosmopolitan, though it still has to compete with the baleful legacy of scientific racism.
Since the late Qing period, when reformists and revolutionaries structured a new shared national identity in their plan to overthrow the Manchu ruler, Huangdi 黃帝 (literally translated as Yellow Emperor or Yellow Thearchy; hereafter the Yellow Emperor) has been said to be the national ancestor of an “imagined community” Anderson (2016) referred to as the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu 中華民族).
In the globalizing era, contrary to most non-Western
countries, China has become more efficient and expandable in his
national culture. At the same time, while most nation-states are
oriented toward pluralism or multiculturalism, the People's Republic
of China (PRC), on the contrary, has begun to transform from the
pluralistic and multicultural reality of the country into a monolingual,
monoculturalist structure. In this process, China’s zero tolerance
policies, which the PRC continues to apply against the disparities, have been criticized and debated. This article argues that the only way to understand China's present mentality against the disparities is to fully comprehend the origins of the nation's thought that has revealed the mindset. This work is a sociological assessment of China’s roots of national sense of community and the point of view towards others.
This article examines an underexplored area of communication studies to date, the relationship between news translation and national identity construction in China. By analysing the translation into Chinese of Korean language news that takes place on the Chinese volunteer news translation website Ltaaa.com , this article shows how the translation of news reports, and the discussions which these translations engender within the Ltaaa.com community, help to foster an aggressive form of Chinese national identity among community members. By constantly emphasising difference and promoting hostility, through attempts to control historical discussion and by asserting a superordinate status and position for China in its relations with Korea, the translation activities that take place within the Ltaaa.com community encourage the growth of a xenophobic, belligerent and condescending nationalism that is likely to hinder the development of more productive Sino-South Korean ties.
The study of Chinese politics has become increasingly specialized, reflecting broader trends in social science that favor islands of knowledge that can be defended with rigor. Yet many phenomena of interest in Chinese politics are located at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations, where the two levels are connected and strategically linked. Nationalist, anti-foreign protest is a good example, as Chinese officials must choose whether to repress or tolerate nationalist demonstrations based on domestic and international considerations. In turn, the decision to allow or stifle street demonstrations affects the degree of popular influence on Chinese foreign policy, constraining the government's diplomatic options or enhancing its flexibility. Ongoing research into the subnational patterns of Chinese nationalism and popular protest offers a promising avenue of inquiry. Combined with close qualitative assessments to identify mechanisms and processes, meso-level investigations can provide additional leverage in the study of Chinese nationalism. Future research should aim to bring nationalism back into the mainstream study of state-society relations in China, bridging the gap between nationalism and other varieties of social mobilization and political contestation.
Keywords:
China;
nationalism;
protest;
comparative politics;
international relations;
public opinion;
civil society
This article examines how China's rise and increasing tensions with Japan are portrayed by South Korean bloggers. The deterioration in relations between China and Japan over the last two years generally projects onto the ways and means by which China's rise is portrayed in South Korea. Since Korea's relations with both its more populous neighbours have been historically fraught, and since it is also implicated in various territorial disputes with both countries, determining Korean sensibilities is an important way of gauging shifts in public opinion across the region. Although the conservative political establishments in both South Korea and Japan might see China as a constant threat, South Korean and Japanese netizens still popularly view each other with suspicion. By contrast, popular perceptions of the China threat in either country can be swayed by escalation of territorial disputes these two US allies still have with one another.
It would be a mistake to attribute to the Communist Party complete control over Chinese nationalism today. With the emergence of the Internet, cell phones, and text messaging, popular nationalists in China are increasingly able to act independently of the state.
China has a strong interest in pursuing a smart power strategy towards Southeast Asia and has worked laboriously to engage with regional countries economically, socially, and politically. But China has been only partially successful in achieving its goals in the region. This paper argues that China’s security policy towards Southeast Asia significantly contradicts many other objectives that Beijing wishes to accomplish. Given the deep-seated, narrowly-defined national interests of the Chinese military in the South China Sea disputes, it is likely that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to pose the main obstacle to the effective implementation of a Chinese smart strategy in Southeast Asia.
This research note analyzes the intellectual and ideological contents of cultural conservative discourses on the internet in the past several years in China. Our findings show that online cultural conservatives valorize Han ethnic culture and Chinese cultural tradition at the same time through conflating the two. They also demonstrate that online cultural conservatives reinterpret historical China in order to represent it in a totally positive light and that they vehemently attack the negative images of historical China found in intellectual, official, and popular cultural discourses. They claim that the real culprit that had prevented historical China from progressing into modernity was a non-Han ethnic group (the Manchus). Our analysis on political thoughts of online cultural conservatives shows that they partially agree with Chinese neo-leftists and liberals on critical assessment of contemporary Chinese reality but they diverge greatly from the two schools on the choice of solution for the problems. Online cultural conservatives’ proposal is to reinvigorate traditional Chinese culture and their political vision combines international relations realism, cultural determinism, and Han ethnicism.
The tumultuous events of summer 2009 have brought Uighur protests and minority mobilization in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to the forefront. But this focus overlooks similar protests organized by various groups of Han Chinese settlers over the years. This paper contributes to the body of literature on minority mobilization and ethnic relations in Xinjiang by illustrating how the political mobilization of a group that is simultaneously a national majority and a regional minority differs substantially from ‘traditional’ minority mobilization. Reviewing the main instances of Han Chinese political mobilization since the XUAR was created in 1955, I argue that two factors are particularly important in enabling their mobilization: the Han Chinese's subjective perception of discrimination and their close ethnic ties to the state. This paper concludes with a discussion on the presence of a cycle of protests between Han settlers and the Uighurs in Xinjiang.
One of the outstanding features of China's domestic politics is the prominence of the bureaucracy in the policy-making process. Arguably, bureaucracy is the next major player in the policy-making process in China after the top leaders. In this article, the three following aspects of the role of bureaucracy in the Chinese foreign policy-making process are examined: (1) the structure of the bureaucracy, especially the main agencies of the bureaucracy involved in foreign policy making; (2) the respective responsibilities of these agencies and their roles in the process; and (3) inter-agency coordination including the resolution of conflict among them. It observes that while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs plays a key role in the process, other ministries and bureaucratic agencies have significant and even growing input in an increasing number of functional areas, such as trade, finance, economy, climate change, soft power and military affairs. In addition, coordination among these agencies has become a key in the policy-making process.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
A series of moves in China's foreign policies since the global financial crisis in 2008 seems to suggest that China is now more confident than ever in its external behaviour. Indeed, some Western observers argue that China's new confidence even borders on arrogance. Domestically, there is an emerging debate over the famous "tao guang yang hui" (TGYH) strategy. Is China beginning to behave in an arrogant way? Will China change the TGYH strategy? This article documents the evolution of the TGYH strategy and explains why there is an emerging interest in it today. It argues that the TGYH strategy will be continued as a national strategy, though some modifications to it will be highly likely in coming years.
Over the past two years, China's foreign policy has become markedly more belligerent toward both its neighbors and the United States. But Washington should not wish for a weaker Beijing. In fact, on problems from nuclear proliferation to climate change, what the United States needs is a more confident and constructive China as a partner.
This article examines Chinese cyberspace debates over the racial and national identity of a television show contestant Lou Jing, a biracial woman of Chinese and African American descent. We argue that the online commentary about her offers a productive entry point into contemporary Chinese cultural struggles over race. In particular, we consider how the Internet and other digital communication technologies are being mobilized as discursive sites for articulations of Chinese anti-black racism, as well as discursive sites of contestation, knowledge production, and cultural exchange regarding Chinese constructions of race and nationality.
The rise of China presents a long‐term challenge to the world not only economically, but also politically and culturally. Callahan meets this challenge in China: The Pessoptimist Nation by using new Chinese sources and innovative analysis to see how Chinese people understand their new place in the world. The heart of Chinese foreign policy is not a security dilemma, but an identity dilemma. Chinese identity emerges through the interplay of positive and negative feelings: China thus is the pessoptimist nation. This positive–negative dynamic intertwines China's domestic and international politic ...
This article discusses the rationale for, and progress to date of, creating a National Security Commission in China, a move first announced in late 2013. Central impulses for the Commission's establishment are to help better coordinate a very fragmented bureaucracy and to advance Xi Jinping's drive to consolidate his personal power over the internal and external coercive and diplomatic arms of the governing structure. The Commission is a work in progress and its full institutional maturation will take a protracted period. In the midst of the Commission's construction, there is considerable confusion among subordinates in the foreign policy and security areas about lines of authority and ultimate objectives. Beyond Xi Jinping, it is difficult to discern an authoritative voice. It is an open question as to whether this institutional attempt to achieve coordination will improve, or further complicate, China's long-standing coordination problem, some recent foreign policy achievements notwithstanding. The Commission's focus is heavily weighted toward internal and periphery security, but it also is an institution-building response to new global and transnational issues. It is not self-evident that Xi, or any single individual, can effectively manage the span of control he is constructing.
A prominent political and human geographer outlines a way of thinking about China's "place in the world" that is based on a penetrating examination of how influential Chinese thinkers and politicians use analogies to China's past historical practices and geographical forms as sources of inspiration for contemporary and future directions in Chinese foreign policy. Different venues within China, such as military academies, universities, and civilian think-thanks, are producing interpretive frames (geopolitical narratives) that are competing for influence within the leadership of the Communist Party and the state bureaucracy. The author distinguishes four such narratives, each with a different emphasis on China's past: (a) Pacific Rim, (b) Orientalist, (c) nationalist geopolitik, and (d) international relations with Chinese characteristics. He argues that rather than simply imposing Western narratives on China, investigators should be concerned with exploring the geopolitical narratives that are arising from within China and that will plausibly provide the justifications for future Chinese foreign policy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F020, F500, P200. 43 references.
Many American policymakers and Sinologists believe that China will inevitably become nonideological, pragmatic, materialistic, and progressively freer in its culture and politics. Beijing, however, sees the United States not as a strategic partner but as the chief obstacle to its regional and global ambitions. Under cover of its current conciliatory mood, China acquires the wherewithal to back its aspirations regarding Taiwan and beyond with real power. America's number one objective in Asia must be to derail China's quest to become a 21st-century hegemon.
For almost 20 years China has been implementing a policy of sending urban dwellers to the countryside in a mass movement of reverse migration. From 1961 through 1963 some 20 million were sent and from 1969 through 1973 more than 8 million urban youths had been "plunged into the battle to build a socialist countryside." The movement which assumes different interrelated forms has a variety of objectives. The following are included among the political aims: ideological rectification and remolding; ethnic and military strategies; and shifting allegiance away from the family unit. Among the primary economic objectives is that of relieving actual and preventing potential urban unemployment. More or less spontaneous migration of rural labor to towns was significant during the 1st 5-year plan (1953-57) and phenomenal during the 1st year (1958) of the Great Leap Forward. In 1958 alone urban population increased by 15.6 million of which about 10 million are thought to have resulted from migration from the countryside. Total industrial employment in 1958 rose by 16.6 million according to official Chinese sources but a large part of this increase consisted of jobs in workshop type labor intensive rural industry. Yet modern urban industrial enterprises markedly increased their labor intake in response to pressures for higher output. Even assuming that the 10 million migrants were absorbed in urban industrial employment the economic value of such employment is questionable. There must have been considerable overstaffing (labor hoarding) and consequent underemployment. Between 1950-57 many instructions were issued in order to control the "blind outflow" of rural labor to the cities. The network of administrative controls over labor mobility came to include local authority permisision to leave the farm permission from city authorities to stay and the imposition in 1961 of a ban lasting 3 years on recruitment of rural labor for urban industry. The intent of all these measures was to make labor allocation as much as possible an administrative function of the planning authorities. Currently the most important form of rustication is the transfer of unemployable urban youths with middle school education a transfer in most cases intended to be permanent. In mid 1974 the strategy of inserting urban educated young people into the countryside began to show a definite pattern. The whole process is marked by considerable compulsion primarily moral and partly internalized through a long drawn out process of ecucation. The 1st step is to lower the young peoples level of expectation. This is followed by enormous and organized peer group pressure on school leavers to move to the country. The general impression is that there must be considerable dissatisfaction and frustration among the rusticated youths some of whom are not so young any more.
This article examines the emergence of distorted memories of Imperial China. Through popular online sites and media, populist nationalists have obtained exaggerated yet extremely sensational knowledge of Chinese history, which portrays Imperial China as benevolent, strong and more advanced than the western world. Based on these distorted memories, they blame all diplomatic controversies on other countries—western nations for their imperialist exploitation and especially neighboring countries for their ungratefulness to the Chinese empire. Due to the declining appeal of communism, as well as the corruption and isolation of official academia, the Chinese government is under heavy pressure to follow the distorted memory and restore China's historical glory.
The previous essay in this series on China's assertive behavior (CLM 36) examined the general role of the Chinese military in the PRC foreign policy process, focusing on leadership and organizational issues. This CLM essay builds directly on that essay by focusing in particular on the military's role in leadership decision-making and lower-level implementation with regard to political-military crises with foreign powers. As one would expect, the same caveats apply in this instance as with the previous CLM, except even more so. That is, very little detailed, reliable information exists regarding crisis decision-making in general and the military's role in particular, especially concerning the informal and high-level dimensions of the decision-making process. Much of the information presented herein is thus derived from interviews with both civilian and military Chinese scholars and analysts conducted by the author and other analysts—especially Bonnie Glaser and Alastair Iain Johnston—and from the existing literature on past political-military crises. The latter includes some of the findings to date of an ongoing collaborative project on crisis management issues in which the author is involved. Hence, many of the observations herein are tentative and certainly subject to future clarification and correction. Nonetheless, enough is known about certain aspects of the role of the PLA in foreign political-military crises to draw an overall picture of the decision process, and to identify significant gaps or gray areas in our knowledge.
A series of moves in China's foreign policies since the global financial crisis in 2008 seems to suggest that China is now more confident than ever in its external behaviour. Indeed, some Western observers argue that China's new confidence even borders on arrogance. Domestically, there is an emerging debate over the famous "tao guang yang hui" (TGYH) strategy. Is China beginning to behave in an arrogant way? Will China change the TGYH strategy? This article documents the evolution of the TGYH strategy and explains why there is an emerging interest in it today. It argues that the TGYH strategy will be continued as a national strategy, though some modifications to it will be highly likely in coming years.
Comparing China's 2012 anti-Japan protests against three previous rounds of anti-Japan protests in 1985, 1996 and 2005 reveals a cyclical pattern, best characterized as a wave of popular mobilization. In each case, external events sparked a swell of public anger and activism which Chinese leaders initially tolerated before cooling. This pattern of contained contention has not led to Beijing loosening control over its foreign policy. However, the 2012 protests did feature one new element: a consumer boycott augmented by China's more assertive economic statecraft.
The PLA's role in Beijing's foreign policy-making process is a closed book but it is a key research topic in our study of Chinese diplomacy. This paper argues that generally the PLA abides by a fine division of labor with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) in managing Beijing's international pursuits. The civilians are in charge of China's generic foreign affairs and daily diplomacy. The Central Military Commission (CMC) is responsible for security/military-related foreign affairs and defines the bottom-line for employing force in conflicts. Institutionally the PLA's role is more directional than detailed and is often behind the scenes. This complicates our research of the subject matter, as the line between this division of labor is thin over many diplomatic issues. Often times it is hard to demarcate where Beijing's normal diplomacy ends and where security/military dynamics begin. This paper adopts a two-layered analysis on civil–military interaction on foreign and security affairs: the broad consensus of CCP–PLA leaders on CCP regime stability at a time of drastic domestic change and world pressure; and the PLA's directional role in China's security/military-related foreign affairs under a generic civilian guidance.
Though the PLA elite perceptions of the United States have fluctuated over time, there has been some regularity in the evolution of their perceptions. Comparing the dominant perceptions of the United States among different generations of Chinese military elites in the PRC, we find that the PLA elite perceptions of US intentions have been foremost influenced by China's strategic interest in a certain period, rather than the level and intensity of bilateral exchanges at the time. Using the case of US arms sales to Taiwan and the case of the South China Sea and the Diaoyu Islands, we try to assess how consistent and persistent PLA elite perceptions of the US have been in recent years. While we agree that these outspoken military men cannot be taken on the surface as indicative of China's national policies, we will also point out several important dimensions that are likely to allow the PLA to play a more influential role in setting the agenda for China's strategic interest in the era of Xi Jinping.
The massive worldwide protests initiated by China's angry youths (Fen Qings) over biased reports on the Tibet issue in the West in 2008 and perceived unfriendly actions toward China's Beijing Olympic Games shocked the world. Although scholars and the media have shown great interest in China's Fen Qing phenomenon, there is no serious scholarly research. Based on interviews, investigative field trips, and an exhaustive web search, this paper explores the Fen Qing phenomenon. Through an analysis of three cases, namely, the anti-CNN Web, the Han Han phenomenon, and the ‘69 Holy War’, it distinguishes three types of Fen Qings: nationalistic, China-critical, and resentment-venting. These Fen Qings vary in the people who constitute them, the causes of their anger, and their targets. The paper places the Fen Qing phenomenon in the broader context of China's socio-economic transformation and its relations with other countries.