Abstract
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.
Highlights
This research note analyzes the intellectual and ideological contents of cultural conservative discourses on the internet in the past several years in China
We find that the contents of online cultural conservative discourses differ substantially from those found in scholarly cultural conservatism
The previous analysis demonstrates that online cultural conservatives valorize Han ethnic culture and Chinese cultural tradition at the same time
Summary
Our main focus is Hanminzu wang (Han ethnic group net), which is the single most important source of online cultural conservatism discourses in China. It is the recognized center of discussion of cultural conservative thoughts and the original platform of the Han ethnic dress movement. We have examine cultural conservative discourses on other specialized online forums on cultural conservatism including tianhan minzu luntan (Han ethnic group forum), Han wang (Han net), Hanzu wang (Han ethnic group net), ruxue lianhe luntan (Confucius learning alliance forum), jixia luntan (jixia forum), guoxue fuxing luntan (national learning revival forum), and others All these forums provide an online platform for discussions on Chinese traditional culture, national history, ethnicity, and traditional scholarship. Tianhan minzu luntan, Han wang, and Hanzu wang are periodically shut down by the state and some of their sensitive contents have to be deleted or self-censored
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