The Middle Kingdom

The Source of Chinese Nationalism

Chinese nationalism is a living fire that burns in the hearts of China’s citizens. And, like any fire, it can be unpredictable. Many in the West feel as if China’s nationalistic pride is state-directed and controlled. Protests and demonstrations are seen as either government directed or fueled by misinformation from state-controlled media. This is, like many monolithic views of “the sleeping giant,” a fundamentally oversimplified view. Chinese nationalistic pride has taken on a life of its own, and it is difficult to predict where it will lead the country.

The source of Chinese nationalism stems from pride in the amazing things that China has been able to accomplish—and equally from a need to defend China’s reputation from attack.The key to understanding China’s complex nationalism is to understand that, on many occasions, the government is a victim of its own success. Early education stresses many of the abuses that China has undergone at the hands of foreign countries and the importance of becoming a strong and independent nation. Chinese history education stresses the fragmentation of China by foreign powers—the loss of Taiwan to Japan, the opening of treaty ports such as Shanghai, the “lease” of Hong Kong and Macau, and the independence of Tibet. These lessons are accompanied by a strong connotation of “never again!”

There are several flashpoints for Chinese nationalism. Topics guaranteed to cause sparks include Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. To Han Chinese, these countries are historically a part of China, and remain so to this day (never mind the details of actual history). To grant Tibet independence would be tantamount to allowing California to secede. The very first question that springs to the mind of Chinese would be “Why would they want to?”, not “Should they be allowed to?” After China has sunk billions of dollars into improving Tibet’s infrastructure and sent so many Han Chinese laborers and teachers there, it seems incomprehensible that Tibetans would be ungrateful and refuse to acknowledge that they’ve benefited from being a part of the People’s Republic. Ivory tower intellectuals are usually a bastion of liberal ideas, but in China, the educated elite are incredibly conservative when it comes to the question of Taiwanese independence. China continues to maintain that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is merely a rogue province.

In many cases, the hands of the Chinese government are tied when it comes to action involving Tibet and Taiwan. The government cannot afford to be seen as being “soft” on these issues because it would spark a great deal of popular unrest. A recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies remarked that the two foundations for the legitimacy of the Beijing government are economic prosperity and being hard on Taiwan.

But China’s hard stance on Taiwan can sometimes cost China. Chinese delegations to the APEC Women Leader’s conference in Cairns, Australia last year boycotted the conference, due to Taiwan sending an official that outranked (and therefore would take precedence over) the Chinese delegation. It’s an all-or-nothing affair, and China is more than willing to take nothing, because it cannot afford to be seen as going for less than all.

Another source of contention is a feeling of being overly criticized. Recently, China Daily ran a front-page article about a web-based petition protesting Western media bias against China. Among Chinese nationalists, there is an increasing sense of unfairness in Western media portrayals of China. They feel that there is a great deal of misrepresentation, and that the news accentuates the negatives about China and never the positive. To a large degree, this is true—bad news is more interesting than good news, and the root of critical thinking is criticism.

What many Westerners don’t understand is the feeling of anger that criticism engenders. The Chinese are well aware that they still lag behind the first world in many critical areas, and they are cognizant of China’s failings in education, politics, and environmental issues. However, they take enormous pride in what they’ve accomplished so far. When one reads accounts of what China was like prior to the Communist liberation—slave labor, feudal exploitation, lack of basic human rights (yes, the Communist Party was a champion of human rights)—one understands the unbelievable amount of progress that China has made thus far. In the space of less than 20 years, it transformed a hellish slum on the east side of the Pudong River in Shanghai into a glittering jewel of modern skyscrapers. It has lifted 400 million people out of poverty in the space of a generation. Beijing has transformed from a city of narrow alleyways and single-story courtyard houses into a modern metropolis with wide avenues, highways, and a new ultramodern subway system. Literacy is at a record high, as is access to health care. Running water and electricity have reached almost everywhere in China, car ownership has increased exponentially, and the standard of living has simply skyrocketed. The Chinese are justifiably proud of what they have achieved. Yet when they see what the West says about China, they encounter only criticism.

Many young Chinese, flush with excitement and pride about China’s achievements and with high hopes for China’s future look abroad for guidance and inspiration. What they find, however, greatly disillusions them. Many pundits have argued that the Internet would ultimately be the great leveler, expose the Chinese to ideas of political freedom and equality, and eventually cause a popular upwelling of pro-democracy movements. They could not be more wrong in this case. It has, instead, inspired fierce nationalism, sometimes contrary to the interests of the Chinese government. A recent article in The New Republic talked about a backlash against foreigners in Shanghai due to the blog of a particular offensive and promiscuous expat, who wrote demeaningly of his sexual experiences with Chinese women. It sparked a furor against Westerners and calls for a manhunt to track down this anonymous blogger; calls that attracted tens of thousands of participants.

Especially with the Olympics coming, it is strongly in the interests of the Chinese government to have the Chinese people remain pro-foreigner. In the majority of cases, they remain so. Chinese national pride, however, is a force that the government does not exercise full control over. Western journalists and pundits should take this into account when considering China.

While the charge of Western media bias may be a bit exaggerated, the basis behind the complaint is true-too often, the press has a very negative view of China, and picks the worst examples to expose. Instead of looking at how China has improved Tibetan infrastructure, the West focuses on crackdowns, never mind the fact that the recent riots were started by Tibetans and the crackdowns were reactionary. Instead of looking at the engineering marvel that is the Three Gorges Dam, the media forecasts an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Rather than looking at how fast China has been able to expand its power supply to keep up with exponential growth in consumption, news reports lambaste the Chinese for lack of emissions control. The source of Chinese nationalism stems from pride in the amazing things that China has been able to accomplish—and equally from a need to defend China’s reputation from attack. A more balanced view of China—reporting not just the negative, but also the positive—would go a long way toward defusing a potential crisis in the future and improve the relationship that China has with the West.

© 2008 The Hypermodern.