Nationalism, Patriotism, and Education for Patriotic Citizens in Mainland China

Abstract

Though the meanings and consequences of national identity in China have interested scholars from various fields, Chinese nationalism and Chinese identity remain poorly understood and inadequately studied. The terminological confusion around the idea of “nation” in the Chinese language makes the concept of “Chinese nation” an elusive landscape. Chinese nationalism and Chinese patriotism are used synonymously and interchangeably as multifaceted concepts, which are composed of the pride in Chinese culture and tradition, the sense of humiliation resulting from the struggle against outsiders, and the belief in the unity of China under the leadership of the CPC. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the three belief crises in Marxism, Socialism, and the CPC propelled China to promote patriotism to unify the nation in multiple ways, including the launching of its patriotic education campaign. Since then, patriotic education has been widely advanced in formal, informal, and hidden curricula in educational institutions. Students are expected to become patriotic Chinese, who can appreciate the Chinese nation’s 5000-year civilization, protect Chinese nation against foreign invasion, and voice their commitment to the CPC’s leadership. Faced with the challenges that globalization presents to its legitimacy as the default locus for defining individuals’ identities, China is also dedicated to multiple citizenship education to advance students’ identification of global communities, which accordingly leads to the new tensions between Chinese identity and global identity in educational settings.KeywordsNationalismPatriotismNational identityPatriotic educationCitizenship education