Chinese Language and National Identity

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of how Chinese language has affected, and continues to affect, the development and maintenance of national identity, drawing on a body of works which have investigated related topics. In order to embark on this task, it is first necessary to discuss how the important terms ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’, and ‘national identity’ may be applied in the context of China both synchronically and over the course of the last 150 years, and also what the language label ‘Chinese’ is regularly used to refer to. It will be seen that the relation of ‘Chinese’ to ‘national identity’ in fact varies depending on the perspective of the Chinese nation that is adopted (ethnic vs. political), and that different emphases have been placed on the role of Chinese in the development of national identity at different times in modern history. Having discussed these key terms in section 1, section 2 describes the place of Chinese in the modernization of China and the development of the People’s Republic of China through to the end of the twentieth century, examining how the growth of Mandarin Chinese has affected the emergence of national identity among different Han Chinese groups. Section 3 turns to consider language and national identity issues specifically among the nonHan minorities in the People’s Republic of China, and section 4 looks at changing attitudes towards language, national identity, and nationalism in very recent times.