Nationalism in modern China: from the late 19th century to the early 21st century

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Nationalism in modern China:

from the late 19th century to the early 21st century

Jie Li

Doctor of Philosophy in History, University of Edinburgh Lecturer, Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

In this article, the author specifies that two kinds of nationalism which have had deep rooted tradition in the history of modern China: One is positive or constructive and the other is negative or destructive.

The research traces back the origin of modern Chinese nationalism to the aftermath of Opium Wars in the 1840s, when China was under the rule of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), to its recent development in the early 21st century. It argues while the positive nationalist sentiment has united Chinese people to resist the foreign invasion since the late 19th century and to defy the repression of the communist rule in 1976 and 1989, respectively, however, since the late 1990s, nationalism in China has been exploited and manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party to divert people's attention from China's domestic problems, achieve the Party's political goals, and legitimise its authoritarian and repressive rule in China.

Such virulent and rampant nationalism culminated in the early 2000s and manifested in many violent anti-Japanese demonstrations and protests across the country. Those anti- Japanese sentiments were not only limited in political, ideological, and territorial levels, but sometimes they permeated into the fields of entertainment, sports, as well as education.

Compared to the anti-Japanese emotion during the second world war in China, which had united the whole nation and inspired all walks of Chinese people to withstand and pull back the Japanese invaders, the hatred towards Japan in the early 21st century had little to do with true patriotism. Rather, the enmity stirred by the Chinese Communist regime produced nothing but chaos, violence, social scandals, and even hooliganism and fascist behaviours.

The article concludes that the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe forced Chinese Communist leaders to redefine and re-adjust Communist ideology by supplementing it with more nationalist characteristics, so that it could be a more persuasive and more effective means of defending the legitimacy of the one-party state. However, it needs to point out that the vainglorious and fanatic nationalism could not be taken advantage by any political ruling parties, as this kind of nationalism would not have any value for political legitimacy.

At the end, the research might foresee that negative nationalism is a double-edged sword, but the positive one is not. The Chinese Communist regime in the future might be under the shadow of negative nationalism and driven by it, which may lead the country to the very dangerous situation of a dead end. In short, the Party is just shooting itself in its own foot.

Key words: patriotism, nationalism, anti-Japanese demonstration, Chinese Communist Party, Tiananmen Incident, Deng Xiaoping, Sino-Japanese conflicts.

НАЦІОНАЛІЗМ У СУЧАСНОМУ КИТАЇ: ВІД КІНЦЯ XIX СТОЛІТТЯ ДО ПОЧАТКУ XXI СТОЛІТТЯ

Цзє Лі

У щи статті автор вказує на два види націоналізму, які глибоко вкоренилися в історії сучасного Китаю: перший - позитивний, або конструктивний, а другий - негативний, або деструктивний.

У дослідженні простежується походження сучасного китайського націоналізму починаючи від наслідків опіумних війн 1840-х років, коли Китай перебував під владою династії Цін (1644-1911), до його нещодавнього розвитку на початку XX століття. Попри те, що позитивні націоналістичні настрої об?єднали китайський народ для опору іноземному вторгненню з кінця XIX століття і опору репресіям комуністичного правління в 1976 і 1989 роках, відповідно, з кінця 1990-х років націоналізм у Китаї експлуатується і використовується для маніпуляцій Комуністичною партією Китаю, щоб відвернути увагу людей від внутрішніх проблем Китаю, досягти політичних цілей партії і легітимізувати її авторитарне і репресивне правління в Китаї.

Кульмінацією такого агресивного і нестримного націоналізму стали численні насильницькі антияпонські демонстрації та протести по всій країні на початку 2000-х років. Ці антияпонські настрої не обмежилися лише політичним, ідеологічним та територіальним рівнями, також вони проникли у сферу розваг, спорту та освіти.

У порівнянні з антияпонськими настроями під час Другої світової війни в Китаї, які об'єднали націю і надихнули всі верстви китайського населення вистояти і дати відсіч японським загарбникам, ненависть до Японії на початку XX століття мала мало спільного зі справжнім патріотизмом. Навпаки, ворожнеча, розпалена китайським комуністичним режимом, призвела до хаосу, насильства, соціальних скандалів і навіть до хуліганських і фашистських проявів.

Автор доходить висновку, що крах комунізму в Радянському Союзі та Східній Європі змусив китайських комуністичних лідерів переосмислити, модифікувати комуністичну ідеологію, доповнивши її більш націоналістичними елементами, щоб зробити її більш переконливим і ефективним засобом захисту легітимності однопартійної держави. Однак слід зазначити, що марнославний і фанатичний націоналізм не міг бути використаний жодною політичною правлячою партією, оскільки такий вид націоналізму не мав би жодної цінності для політичної легітимності.

Отже, негативний націоналізм - це палиця з двома кінцями, а позитивний - ні. Китайський комуністичний режим у майбутньому може опинитися під тінню негативного націоналізму і керуватися ним, що може завести країну в дуже небезпечну ситуацію глухого кута. Іншими словами, партія просто стріляє собі в ногу.

Ключові слова: патріотизм, націоналізм, антияпонська демонстрація, Комуністична партія Китаю, інцидент на Тяньаньмень, Ден Сяопін, китайсько-японські конфлікти.

In this article, I specify that two kinds of nationalism which have deep rooted tradition in the history of modem China: One is positive or constructive and the other is negative or destructive. In fact, in this research I have distinguished the former as patriotism and the latter is nationalism, however, for the sake of following the stereotype of Chinese sense, most of the time the article uses both definitions (patriotism and nationalism) interchangeably.

The origin of modern Chinese nationalism could be traced back to the aftermath of Opium Wars in the 1840s, when the Chinese under Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) suddenly felt that they had been not only under the long time exploitation of an alien regime (Manchu rule), but were also facing the encroachment of the rapacious Western imperialism. When the Boxer Uprising occurred in 1900, Chinese nationalism turned to its peak in an extreme form, and it definitely fits into my classification of the second kind of negative nationalism. In the subsequent May Fourth movement in 1919 during the Republican period (1911-1949), it was the external crisis which helped to bring the nationalism at home, such as the Treaty of Versailles, imperialism, foreign treaty ports, and the Japanese aggressiveness. Although Xiao Jiansheng once commented that the May Fourth movement led by the university students was somewhat the origin of violent revolutionary tradition in modern China, which involved all means of destructions and brutalities (Xiao Jiansheng 2009, 325-329). However, at least the crisis compelled the Chinese, particularly the youth, to think about the very reason of Chinese backwardness and feebleness. When the Japanese launched the wholesale invasion in China after 1937, Chinese nationalism turned into its most mature and sophisticated form. As one mainland Chinese scholar argues, that the 8-year war of resisting Japanese from 1937 to 1945 was the most glorious chapter in modern Chinese history, since all people, no matter you were Republicans, Communists, or ordinary citizens, united together to fight against the Japanese, for the country's independence and the dignity of a nation (Han Gang 2005, 79-80).

After the Communist took power in China, under the stifling decades of Mao Zedong era (1949-1976), the revival of Chinese nationalism was never to be the national agenda of the regime, and the spontaneous expression of patriotism was superseded by the love of the Communist Party, or more exactly, the cult of Chair-man Mao. Only at the closing dates of Mao Zedong era, the massive nationalism was seen at first in the April Fifth movement in 1976, then the massive university student protests against the rampant Japanese products in China in the 1980s during the Hu Yaobang era (1982-1987). Afterwards, there was a notable example of university student demonstrations happened in 1989, and it was considered to be the revival of May Fourth nationalist tradition of Chinese youth after seventy years break. However, from the bloody suppression of the 1989 patriotic upheaval to the death of Chinese Communist paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1997, such mass movements were heavily cracked down in their embryonic stage.

However, a new sequence of nationalist expressions was resumed at the end of the 20th century in China. The episodes started with students demonstrating outside the American Embassy in Beijing in 1999, to protest the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the capital city of former Yugoslavia. Then it came the inci-dent on April 2001, when an American surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter collided over the South China Sea, as well as the 2000 and 2004 Taiwan presidential elections. The last was the most important one - the nationwide anti-Japanese demonstrations since 2000, and particularly in the year of 2005. Unlike the predecessor on May Fourth in 1919, almost of all of the mass nationalist movements since 1999 were no longer civil-organized but directly or indirectly state-sponsored in nature, with the exception of Falungong demonstrations in April 1999. Those fanfares had more familiarities with the Boxer Uprising one century ago, which was under official patronage and acquiesced by the Qing government then. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was alerted to those turbulences when every time the movements reached the peak. At the end of each demonstration, the Party always showed the determination to end the protests before the cards stacked against it, and tried by crook or by hook to avoid the repeat of Tiananmen in 1989.

The Oxford historian Roderick Phillips once wrote: “What generally motivated nationalism were grievances, fostering the belief that a national group was being oppressed, discriminated against, or could flourish only if allowed to control its own destiny…For most of the nineteenth century it was liberals who had championed the nation-state and national institution as the best means to attain the freedoms, education, and general improvement in the human condition that they sought. But from the late nineteenth century, nationalism became associated instead with intolerance, authoritarianism, and beliefs in national supremacy. Nationalism became a force for international misunderstanding and even conflict. This kind of crude, blustering nationalism is often called jingoism” [Phillips 1996, 63].

In order to examine Phillips's argument, in the following chapters I will present several examples to analyze two kinds of Chinese nationalism - positive and negative, ones are the April Fifth movement in 1976 and the June Fourth movement in 1989, and others are the Anti-Japanese social disturbances since 2000, particularly the demonstrations in 2005.

At the times of 1976 and 1989

The year of 1976 was a turning point in contemporary China, there were three worthies in Chinese Communist leadership died (Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and Zhu De) successively, and the Tangshan earthquake in Hebei Province broke out in August shocked Chinese society to a greater extent. Those events happened merely within the natural law, however, the demonstrations in March/April in Tiananmen Square at the capital city of Beijing was out of everybody's speculation.

After the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai died of cancer on January 8, 1976, hundred thousands of Chinese people voluntarily gathered in Beijing, to pay the homage to their beloved deceased leader. They brought not only wreathes, but also pamphlets, poems, and even the big posters to People's Hero Monument, which was located at the heart of Tiananmen Square. Their mourning for Premier Zhou was less a condolence to his death than a criticism to the “Gang of Four” (Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen, and Zhang Chunqiao) and even the paramount leader Mao Zedong then. The Chinese people bravely attacked the “Gang” as the usurpers of the state, and blamed them for their destructive efforts which led China into a chaotic abyss during the past decades. The “Gang of Four”,which still controlled the Chinese political affairs then, accused the mourners as “reactionaries” as well as the “second capitalist roader” ? Deng Xiaoping, was the black hand behind the curtain. The consequence was that the “Gang” prevailed at last, and they ordered the police to suppress the mourning and arrested many demonstrators. Deng Xiaoping was purged once again.

The real intention of the Chinese people in Tiananmen Square in 1976 was to target on Mao Zedong, rather than a tribute to Zhou Enlai. As Graham Hutchings comments: “This was largely the result of an extraordinary postscript to Zhou?s career. If, in life, simple humanity was enough to elevate Zhou above other Communist leaders in the eyes of many, in death his policies and personality were publicly commemorated as a means of criticizing the `Gang,, the Cultural Revolution and even Mao himself' [Hutchings 2001, 494].

The April Fifth movement, as posthumously defined, was the first spontaneous Chinese mass patriotic movement which marked by its anti-dictatorship characteristics since the founding of the People?s Republic (PRC) in 1949. Perhaps, many people may recall that the “Hundred Flowers” movement in 1956 was also a genuine consciousness-waken movement for many Chinese, to engage in the antiCommunist Party regime. However, in my opinion the movement in 1956 could not be compared with that in 1976, as the “Hundred Flowers” was officially initiated by the Party and sanctioned by Mao, although it turned into a reverse result by fiercely attacking the Party's lax and bureaucratic style instead of superficially venting resentments. So, it was not surprised that Mao decided to suppress “Hundred Flowers” later in the form of “Anti-Rightist” campaign in 1957. Conversely, in 1976 the demonstrators could dare to take to the streets in the disguise of mourning a dis-eased premier, but in fact they wished to express their feeling of not to be enslaved anymore by a totalitarian state. Considering that the April Fifth movement in 1976 had just been coming out of the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the suffocating Mao Zedong era (1949-1976), so the movement was deserved to be highly appreciated in its real sense of spontaneity and patriotism.

Another time was in 1989, when the former CCP leader and a liberal reform advocate Hu Yaobang, who had been forced out of office by the conservatives two years before, died prematurely in heart attack on April 15 (his death was allegedly caused by the inflammatory insults of the hardliners during an informal Party meeting on April 8), the history of 1976 was repeated again. Hu's eclipse galvanized thousands of university students in Beijing to march to Tiananmen Square, carrying memorial wreaths and chanting “Down with dictatorship!” and “Long live democracy and science!” The protest was disguised in the memorial of Hu, however, Hu's image was in fact like Zhou Enlai's in 1976, the students targeted on the corruption, inefficiency, as well as authoritarianism of the CCP regime instead.

For more than six weeks, millions of students demonstrated for democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and more than one hundred other cities from every Chinese province. Unlike the demonstrations in 1976, in 1989 all walks of life joined the chorus of university students' protests; they all demonstrated peacefully and expressed their genuine patriotism by criticizing the Party for convulsing the country of China. At the later stage of the demonstrations, the students started a hunger strike in Tiananmen, and Beijing citizens flocked to the square to show their support. Unfortunately, the consequence of demonstrations in 1989 was worse than that in 1976; the 1989 patriotic movement was brutally suppressed by the Party with more bloodshed in the form of military massacre at the midnight of June 4.

In the early 21st century

The enmity between China and Japan was mostly a historical issue; it derived from the Japanese intrusions on China from the beginning of last century and then the large scale of invasion during the 1930s and 1940s. Not only the Japanese imperial ambition causes the anxiety of Chinese government, but also the atrocities upon the Chinese people which left so much memories of suffering seems intolerable.

Although Chairman Mao Zedong decided not to require Japanese repay the war- torn compensation when Sino-Japanese diplomatic relationship established in 1972, however, Chinese ambiguous feeling toward Japanese was still strong. Such pent-up animosity emerged in post-Mao era, the massive university student protests against the rampant Japanese products in China in the mid-1980s, was not only a symbol of Chinese youth?s patriotism and anti-Japanese imperialism, but also a sign of dissatisfaction for the gloomy Chinese reality in the 1980s. Unfortunately, Chinese Communist regime did not grasp this lesson and failed to take timely action to curb the anti-Japanese hostility, and it resulted in the further turmoil of Chinese university students in the summer of 1989.

After the 1989 incident, the anti-Japanese and other nationalist issues were subsided but came back again in the 21st century. In April 2001, Junichiro Koizumi became Japan's Prime Minister and resumed the practice of doing obeisance at the Yasukuni Shrine to the war dead in Tokyo that August [Hughes 2006, 146]. In January 2003, despite warnings from Chinese government and other Asian countries, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a formal visit to the Yasukuni shrine, the third time during his tenure [Hughes 2006, 148]. In October 2003, three Japanese students offended and insulted Chinese students during a cultural festival at China's North-Western University in Xi'an, by performing a skit and doing an obscene mock striptease. Several thousand Chinese students joined a large demonstration and the demonstrations spread from campus to the city. While Chinese students assaulted the Japanese students in their dormitory and ordinary citizens in Xi'an attacked Japanese restaurants until stopped by the police [Hughes 2006, 149]. Afterwards, popular anti-Japanese activities multiplied across the country. In this year, the issue of chemical weapons left in China by Japan after World War II also came to spotlight after one person was killed and dozens were injured by the explosion of wartime gas munitions in the northeast [Hughes 2006, 151]. Furthermore, the exposure of an orgy involving hundreds of Japanese businessmen and Chinese prostitutes in the city of Zhu- hai in Guangdong Province caused widespread disgust and outrage [Hughes 2006, 67].

The territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands (called the Senkakus by the Japanese) and the surrounding waters of the East China Sea, which lie between China and Japan and claimed by both countries, is becoming a hot topic for nationalist expression in the 21st century. The Federation of Chinese Civilians Alliance for Defending the Diaoyu Islands founded in 1996, had made three attempts to land on the islands, beginning in June 2003 [Shirk 2007, 172]. During the January 2004 expedition, the patriot-sailors withstood an attack by ten Japanese warships with water cannons [Shirk 2007, 172]. On March 23, 2004, activists of the Alliance zigzagged around Japanese coast guard vessels and successfully landed on the Diaoyu Islands. Hours later, they were arrested by Japanese authorities for illegal entry. This incident triggered a flag-burning protest in Beijing and a similar protest by Japanese nationalists in Japan as well [Shirk 2007, 172]. communism nationalism china

The anti-Japanese mood is not only expressed in the streets, but also in the virtual world. There are three major Chinese nationalism websites which have played the key role in triggering and organizing the attack on Japanese since 2000: www.1931-9- 18.org; www.chinablog.com; and www.china918.net.

Anti-Japanese website of the Alliance of Patriots, www.1931-9-18.org, established in May 2002 by Beijing software engineer Lu Yunfei, has more than one hundred thousand registered members and has posted more than 1.5 million messages in all [Xu Wu 2007, 81]. On April 17, 2005, it posted a record 5,995 new messages commenting on the demonstrations. The activists of the China Patriot's Alliance encountered no government interference to their organization of online petition drives against Japan [Xu Wu 2007, 81]. The Alliance used its website to gather more one million signatures demanding that the Japanese government make amends for the Chinese injured by buried Japanese chemical weapons in August 2003 [Xu Wu 2007, 82]. The following month, the Alliance collected more than eighty thousand signatures in just ten days to demand that the Ministry of Railroads in China not award any contracts for a planned bullet train between Shanghai and Beijing to Japanese companies [Xu Wu 2007, 82].

In 2004, a noisy nuclear-powered Chinese submarine entered Japanese waters and provoked a rare military alert on the part of the Japanese self-defence forces; the Chinese apologized later but a military face-off a dangerous possibility. In the six hours after, the website of www.chinablog.com, posted the news about the Japanese government's decision to allow an oil and gas company to start drilling in the area in July 2005, twenty-four hundred people posted messages of “strong indignation and condemnation,” saying things like “it is an encroachment on China's foremost interests,” and “Japan intends to hinder China's development by the act.” The official Xinhua news agency reported on the outraged online reactions, which guaranteed that senior officials would hear about them [Xu Wu 2007, 83].

In the months leading up the April 2005 demonstrations, an online petition initiated by www.china918.net, urging the Chinese government not to support Japan's application to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council until it properly acknowledged its historical crimes [Xu Wu 2007, 84]. It was signed by more than forty million people, and people from different occupations rounded up signatures, with no hint of disapproval from Party authorities [Xu Wu 2007, 85].

However, in the wake of2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations, the CCP leaders decided to tighten the grip over the Internet. For one example, the Ministry of Information Industry issued a new regulation in mid-2005, requiring bloggers and owners of personal websites to register with the government or be forced offline [Xu Wu 2007, 87].

The Sino-Japanese conflicts are not only confined in political, ideological, and territorial levels, but sometimes they might have permeated into the fields of entertainment, sports, as well as education. In 2004, when a Chinese fashion magazine featured a photograph of the popular film star Zhao Wei wearing a dress decorated with an imperial Japanese flag, and the international well-known Chinese movie director Jiang Wen who was reportedly to pay a visit to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, in the name of drawing inspiration for his new production, a wave of popular indignation from the Chinese general public generated in the printed press and on the internet. Both Zhao and Jiang were condemned and insulted as traitors [Hughes 2006, 146-147].

In summer of 2004, the final match of Asian Soccer Cup between team Japan and team China ended with a massive protest in Beijing after Japan defeated China. The Chinese crowd assaulted a Japanese diplomat's car, breaking the rear window and the diplomat was injured. The Chinese government had to send People's Armed Police (PAP) to dismiss thousands of angry soccer fans [Hughes 2006, 757].

Since 1949, PRC schoolbooks and propaganda have been retelling the story of Japan's victimization of China and China's heroic defeat of Japan. On the other side, the Japanese government had recently approved a new textbook that glossed over the slaughter of civilians in the notorious Nanjing Massacre in 1937 and denied Japan's responsibility for its wartime inhumanity to China. When the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Japan's ambassador to China to hear its objections to the newly revised Japanese textbooks in April 2005, the ambassador's rejoinder, related to the press by the Japanese Embassy, was that China's own education has created anti-Japanese sentiment among China's youths [Shirk 2007, 170]. In the same month, a poll reported the unsurprising finding that 96 percent of people believe that the Japanese government's approval of new textbooks “has seriously hurt the Chinese people's feelings” [Shirk 2007, 175].

In the year of 2005

Now it is turn to pay attention to violent student demonstrations against Japan erupted in twenty-five cities in China in April 2005.

The first large-scale street demonstrations broke out on Saturday on April 9, 2005 in Beijing, immediately after the commemoration of the victory of 1945 resistance of Japanese invasion. More than ten thousand students marched through Beijing calling for a boycott of Japanese goods and opposing Japan's bid for a permanent mem-bership on the U.N. Security Council [Shirk 2007, 84]. The students waved China's national flags and called for a month-long boycott of Japanese goods. They targeted on Japanese electronics goods by smashing electronic billboards advertising Canon cameras and other Japanese electronic products, kicking and hammering Toyota automobiles caught in the melee, and breaking the windows of Japanese banks and restaurants [Shirk 2007, 84]. Although thousands of municipal and riot policemen followed the demonstrators and guarded the Japanese Embassy, scores of emotional protesters turned violent, throwing paint and bottles at the Japanese Embassy and at Japanese restaurants and business en route [Shirk 2007, 85]. The next day, when the students marched into the heart of Beijing, onlookers cheered them along the way, and some of them joined the parade. The Beijing police and PAP prevented the large march from entering Tiananmen, but allowed a small contingent to enter the foreign embassy district and diverted the rest. Arriving at the Japanese Embassy and the ambassador's residence, the demonstrators threw bottles, tiles, stones, and eggs over the heads of the cordon of PAP, who stood with plastic shields and cattle prods and surrounded the buildings [Shirk 2007, 86]. At the same day, thousands of Chinese demonstrators were marching on the Japanese Consulate in Guangzhou and Shenzhen [Shirk 2007, 86]. Meanwhile, beer consumers across China began to reject drinking Japanese beer Asahi as well as its Chinese partner brands, because the Asahi Corp sponsored Japan's right-wing group which drafted the new history textbook [Shirk 2007, 86]. In response to the online calling for a boycott of Japanese goods, an electronic appliance supermarket in Zhengzhou, Henan Province withdrew from its shelves all the Japanese brand [Shirk 2007, 87-88].

The Beijing demonstration was only part of a national wave of violent anti-Japanese protests. On April 16, 2005, the day when Japanese Foreign Minister Nobu- taka Machimura arrived in Beijing for an emergent diplomatic meeting, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hangzhou [Hughes 2006, 146]. As many as 20.000 demonstrators marched through Shanghai's main arteries, shouting slogans, and smashing the Japanese Consulate with rocks and bottles, attacking against Japanese restaurants, shops and even passerby [Hughes 2006, 147]. The local government at one point had to cut off cell phone service near the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai in an effort to stop the protest from escalating. The next day, this wave of demonstrations extended to Shenyang, Nanning, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Hong Kong [Hughes 2006, 148].

The demonstration on April 16 in Shanghai was also the largest and most violent. A city government spokesman estimated the size of the crowd at twenty thousand, but some eyewitness believed it was as large as one hundred thousand [Hughes 2006, 150]. Demonstrators wore T-shirts decorated with the blood-splattered face of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and carried signs vilifying him. They damaged the Japanese consulate, Japanese restaurants, and Japanese cars, and kicked and beat up some unfortunate people who were caught in the mob [Hughes 2006, 150-151].

There was a survey quoted by Susan Shirk: In 2002 43.3 percent of people said they had unfriendly feelings against Japan. By 2004 the number had risen to 53.6 percent [Shirk 2007, 151]. As Susan Shirk analyses, it seems that much of the Chinese antipathy toward Japan is genuine and historically rooted [Shirk 2007, 151]. And in the 2005 nationwide demonstrations, students were indeed joined by workers, professionals, and business people moved by patriotic emotion and personal conscience. It was unprecedented since the June Fourth movement in 1989. However, although it was “genuine and historically rooted” in the past generations, the article here still considers that the post-1980s Chinese generation has no genuine hatred towards the Japanese in the 21st century. This hatred is man-made and self-invented. The feelings and the angers are not genuine and most of them are produced by the official media and manipulated by the Communist government, as the anti-Japanese sentiments since 2000 is Chinese government's deliberate act to desperately shift the attention away from internal problems, and to put the blame on the Japanese side. On the other hand, by receiving carte blanche to participate in unbridled protests in the streets, young people in China today are catching a pretext to vent their grudges, as well as yelling for a new life value which may replace the collapsed and abandoned communist system. Therefore, it was not surprise to see, after three weeks of protests in 2005, the Communist Party finally sent a clear signal that it was time to stop before the situation turned to be undesirable. In a tour de fo^ce of “China: Fragile Superpower”,the author Susan Shirk has outstandingly analyzed the plight of the CCP in the year of 2005: “Once the authorities allow students to demonstrate outside the Japanese embassies, it is a struggle to restore order without the students turning on them. The government knows that demonstrations against Japan can escalate into antigovernment demonstrations. If they allow people to trash the Japanese embassy, how can they stabilize relations with these important countries on which China's economic growth, and its political stability, depend? Once people have gotten a taste of freely protesting against the approved targets of Japan, how do you contain their demands to participate in politics? Sometimes people express their domestic dissatisfactions by criticizing foreign policy, you see that a lot in China. The students joined in anti-Japanese protests because they want to participate politically. It's a way of demanding rights. Nationalism could be the one issue that could unite disparate groups like laid-off workers, farmers, and students in a national movement against the regime[Shirk 2007, 64].

The criticisms toward Chinese government's dealing with Japan come from not only the foreign professors, but also the domestic scholars. Recently, the People S Daily journalist Ma Licheng, who has published an article to downplay the nationalist inflammatory works of “China Can Say No” and “Behind the Demonization of China” before, criticized the anti-Japanese outbursts since 2000 were a characteristic of fascism [Hughes 2006, 746]. Ma suggested the need of building a friendly relationship between China and Japan, and he warned the Chinese government should focus their attention on the escalating domestic predicaments [Hughes 2006, 746]. Ma even went so far to have sympathy with the anxieties of the Japanese about being threatened by China economically and militarily. His words, no doubt, were dubbed by many Chinese extremists as a “traitor”. In the summer of 2003 Ma was expelled from the People S Daily and eventually took a post working for Phoenix TV in Hong Kong [Hughes 2006, 757].

Conclusions

In their marvellous book “Nationalism, National Identity, and Democratization in China”,the authors of both Baogang He and Yingjie Guo classic the nationalism in many forms: White nationalism in Europe, black nationalism in Africa, anticolonial nationalism in Asia, politics-religious nationalism in the Middle East, popular nationalism in Latin America, melting-pot nationalism in the U.S., and messianic nationalism in the former Soviet Union [Baogang He, Yingjie Guo 2000, 2-3]. The authors also divide Chinese nationalism into two categories - state and popular: “State (or official) nationalism refers to any doctrine, ideology or discourse in which the Chinese Party-state strives to identify itself as the nation, or claims that its goals embody those of the nation and are essential to its nationhood. Popular nationalism comes from “below” and represents unsystematic, popular national sentiments. Popular nationalism is reflected in, for example, folk music and literature. While the forma-tion of popular nationalism is always a natural process, the ideas and beliefs of state nationalism is the massive protest against a group of right-wing Japanese who built a lighthouse in the disputed Diaoyu Islands. Ordinary Chinese in HK and Taiwan organized mass demonstrations in response to what was perceived as an aggressive action by the Japanese. By contrast, the Chinese government did not actively protest, and university official at Shanghai's Fudan University in mainland China, ripped down posters critical of Japan…The core goal of Chinese nationalism is not only to promote and protect the national interests of China, but also to restore its “greatness”. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin are all nationalists in the sense that they were, or are ambitious for China to regain pre-eminence in power and influence as quickly as possible. In the post-2000 era, Chinese nationalism reflects a growing national confidence that, as a result of the economic development of the “big dragon” and the spread of the concept of “Greater China”,China can provide successful model for developmental states” [Baogang He, Yingjie Guo 2000, 2-3].

As Baogang He and Yingjie Guo continue, the nationalism in China is not only a weapon set against the foreign powers, but also a weapon used by domestic non-ethnic Chinese; for example, other minorities may use their own definition of nationalism against the Han Chauvinism and hurt the unity of the country: “It is suggested that Chinese nationalism is essentially a state nationalism sponsored and manipulated by the Party-state, which is inventing a pan-Chinese national identity to protect the Chinese nation-state from secessionist tendencies. It is recognized, however, that Chinese nationalism is not monolithic and also contains popular elements that undermine the CCP?s rule. Its anti-Communist, anti-Party-state thrust can create a condition, or intellectual environment, for Chinese democratization. Nevertheless, the alliance between nationalism and democracy will be expedient. Chinese nationalism, whether official or popular, comes into conflict with democracy when it confronts the national identity/boundary problem. They clash with each other where territoriality is involved” [Baogang He, Yingjie Guo 2000, 192].

Some mainland scholars in the book of “The Grown-up China” (Chengzhang de zhongguo) distinguish between the positive and negative effects of nationalism:

The positive effects [Fang Ning, Wang Bingquan, and Ma Lijun 2002, 342]:

-can facilitate the solidarity of a nation or a country;

- can safeguard the multiculturalism and toleration; can resist the imperialism, colonialism, and chauvinism;

-can boost a country's confidence, dignity, self-strengthening, heroism; for example, for the 2001 bid for Olympic game in 2008;

-can preserve a country's cultural tradition, mutual respects, trust, and morality;

- can replace the outdated state ideology and legitimate the rule of current regime;

-can protect the independence of a sovereignty, enhance the economic and commercial development of a country; become the motivation of going forward for a country which is mired in difficulties; can eradiate the regionalism and prejudice; can assert the concept of “citizenship”; can generate democracy, political participation, and national belonging.

The negative effects [Fang Ning, Wang Bingquan, and Ma Lijun 2002, 343]:

- may generate war and endanger peace;

- may cause Islamic fundamentalism;

- may produce terrorism;

- may introduce irrationality, hysterics, separatism, and warmongering;

- may cultivate dictatorship and totalitarianism;

- may perpetuate conservatism and isolationism.

At the end, the authors try to evaluate the CCP's “rediscovery of nationalism” in the following words: “Promoting nationalist themes as a way to bolster the legitimacy of the Communist Party, because now that almost no one believes in Communist ideology anymore. The CCP began to tout its patriotic credentials as a way to rally popular support. To Jiang Zemin and his colleagues trying to bolster the Communist Party's popularity after the Tiananmen crackdown, it seemed like a good idea to bind people to the Party through nationalism now that Communist ideals had lost their luster. As the nationalism sentiments and activities emerged since 2000, some attributed its origin to the CCP's intentional manipulation aiming to salvage its legitimacy after the collapse of the Communism ideology. Nationalism has replaced the vacuum of state ideology left by the Marxism in post-Mao Communist China. They are extreme nationalism, anti-democracy, anti-freedom, and fascism” [Fang Ning, Wang Bingquan, and Ma Lijun 2002, 344].

As my comparisons in preceding chapters, the April Fifth and June Fourth were positive nationalism as well as genuine patriotism, however, many post-Deng demonstrations (except Falungong and the mass petitions or shang^ang), particularly the demonstrations in the 2000s, they had nothing to do with patriotism and they were indeed fascism and were out of benightedness, ignorance, and megalomania. Please note that the negative nationalism always happened in the post-Communist era, particularly in the multination states, and the notable examples of these were Slobodan Milosevic in former Yugoslavia and Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the Russian Federation. The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe forced Chinese Communist leaders to redefine and re-adjust Communist ideology by supplementing it with more nationalist characteristics, so that it could be a more persuasive and more effective means of defending the legitimacy of the government. As Zheng Yongnian says: “Anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005 China fully prove that nationalism and racism are the two sides of one coin. Otherwise, nationalism cannot have political legitimacy” [Zheng Yongnian 1998, 112].

Another Chinese scholar Xu Zhiyuan even suggests that many Chinese university students who demonstrated in front of the gate of American Embassy during the NATO bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was the excuse to attack American for their visa problems for entering USA [Xu Zhiyuan 2005, 13]. Like this research paper, Xu also compares the nationalism movements in the 1980s with those in post-Deng era in the following way: “The Chinese youth today when they go to street to take part in demonstrations and they always say `To love our country is innocent'. That means `to demonstrate in China today may be guilty'. So, nationalism or patriotism in China today is an excuse for Chinese youth to demonstrate. Nationalism is the only one choice for releasing their pent-up energy and expressing their dissatisfaction for China's reality. Compare the Chinese youth today (post-1980s generation) to the Chinese youth in 1989 (Tiananmen generation), the former is hollow and hypocritical, while the latter were simple and sincere” [Xu Zhiyuan 2005, 4-5].

What Xu hints is that in 1989 Chinese students were more democratic in outlook, but in 1999 they were no longer redolent of democracy, but more nationalistic in real sense.

Today's Chinese nationalism like Qigong phenomenon (Chinese deep breathing exercise) in the 1980s, and Super Girl Contest (Chaolu jingsai) in the early 2000s, they are the entire artificial mirage and designated to avoid the stark reality. On the other hand, the nationalism in China since 2000 reflects a sense of fin-de-siecle anxiety and ennui.

Of course, for the Communist government in Beijing, the nationalism is the political asset to be exploited of. It can legitimate their rule after the Tiananmen Massacre. But they are also fully aware that the nationalism is a weapon with side effect. As Susan Shirk quotes, a senior Chinese Party official admitted that nationalism is a double-edged sword: “As a diplomat for our country, I am a passionate patriot myself. Some people criticize us as being “too soft”. However, the description of “soft” or “tough” can never adequately summarize the complexity and delicacy of diplomatic issues. When former leader Deng Xiaoping set up the principle for our country's foreign policy, he said that we should bide our time, and never claim leadership. We don't want to be a bully in the world stage. Although China has a fast-growing economy, China as a nation still is a developing country. The first and foremost priority for us today is and in the foreseeable future will be to safeguard a relatively peaceful environment for the economic development. China has been in the chaotic situation over the past one and half centuries. We have lost so much time. If we lose the current peaceful and stable environment, we may lose all the opportunities” [Shirk 2007, 185].

In my opinion, if the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 was the result of the CCP's overlook of the mid-1980s demonstrations against the Japanese; so, if the CCP overlooked the situation of anti-Japanese in 2005 again, then another storm of Tiananmen-like youth uprising may be ahead. Particularly considering the predicaments that inflict upon many Chinese young people now, such as unemployment, impoverishment, and economic uncertainty, etc.

While nationalism is a state ideology, however, patriotism is a natural feeling and cannot become a state ideology. In Communist China, patriotism means you have to love the party at first, then the government, and the country is the last. It is built upon mutual distrust, hatred, and suspiciousness. Our predecessors witnessed the genuine patriotism movements in 1919, 1976, and 1989, however, unfortunately we have to live in an era when the vainglorious nationalism in China has been rampant since 2000.

Negative nationalism is a double-edged sword, but the positive one is not. However, China now is following the path of negative nationalism which may leads the country to the very dangerous situation of a dead end. There is an extract from a book about Kang Sheng, who was the head of secret police under Mao Zedong era and regarded as the “King of Hell” (yanwang) in the People's Republic, and the passage in this book sounds like an apocalyptic warning which coincidently corresponds to the conclusion of this end-term paper: “Not that the danger of succumbing to the ghosts of the past is peculiar to China. Every society is haunted by demons from its collective memory - the graveyard of history. Men and women everywhere have to guard against the temptation to fall back upon the primitive, the barbaric, the demonic. In times of peace and prosperity, it is easy to resist the allure of totalitarianism. But setbacks and disasters can sweeten the siren song of nihilism that is found in all cultures” [Byron, Pack 1992, 426].

A striking statement is to be understood in its full poignancy.

REFERENCES

Chinese sources

An Qi (2002), Zhongguo minzu zhanqilai liao? - Zhengzhi zhuan^ingqi de minzu zhuyi suyuan [Did the Chinese People Stand Up? - The Origin of Nationalism in the Political Transformation Period], Xiafei'er chuban youxian gongsi, Hong Kong.

Fang Ning, Wang Bingquan, and Ma Lijun (2002), Che^gzhang de Zhongguo: Dan- gdai Zhongguo qingnian de gu?jia minzu yishi yanjiu [The Grown-up Chin^: the Study of National Consciousness of Contemporary Chinese Youth], Renmin chubanshe, Beijing.

Han Gang (2005), Shishi tanyou [The Exploration of Historical Stories], Shanghai cishu chubanshe, Shanghai.

Xiao Jiansheng (2009), Zhongguo wenming defansi [Chinese Civilization Revisited], Xinshiji chubanshe, Hong Kong.

Xu Zhiyuan (2005), Aiguo wuzui: xinyidairen de zhongguo yishi [Patriotism is Innocent: the Identity of Being Chinese among the New Generation], Tom (Cup Magazine) Publishing Ltd., Hong Kong.

Zheng Yongnian (1998), Zhongguo minzu zhuyi de fuxing: Minzu guojia xianghe chuqu? [The Revival of Chinese Nationalism: Where Does the Nation-State Go?], Sanlian shudian youxian gongsi, Hong Kong.

English sources

Baogang He and Yingjie Guo. (2000), Nationalism, NationalIdentit^y andDemoc- ratization in China, Aldershot; Brookfield USA: Ashgate.

Byron J and Robert Pack. (1992), The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng, the E^il Genius behind Mao and His Legacy of Terror in People s China, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Gaies P. (2004), China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hughes C. (2006), Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era, New York: Routledge.

Hutchings G. (2001), Modern China: A Guide to a Century of Change, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Philips R. (1996), Society, State, and Nation in Twentieth-CenWry Europe, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Shirk S. (2007), China: Fragile Superpower, New York: Oxford University Press.

Wu Xu. (2007), Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications, Lanham: Lexington Books.

Размещено на Allbest.ru