'Patriots' with Different Characteristics: Deconstructing the Chinese Anti--Japan Protests in 2012

Abstract

With anti-foreign protests erupting in China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, nationalism has become a buzzword in East and Southeast Asia. The popular media tends to assume that these protests took place for a singular reason: anti-foreign sentiments, for example, Chinese citizens' anti-Japan fervor and Vietnamese anger against China. Yet are all protestors equally nationalistic? More specifically, what motivated people to take part in these anti-foreign protests, especially in high-risk environments such as an authoritarian China? This paper goes against the conventional wisdom that Chinese protestors participated in anti-foreign protests because they were all nationalistic. It argues instead that different groups of people participated in anti-Japan protests with diverse motivations and repertoires. Utilizing primary Chinese-language sources such as media reports, interviews with protestors, and the micro blogs of protest organizers, the paper identifies five distinctive groups of people, all with diverse motivations of protest participation. This study contributes to the literature on nationalism by going one level down to study the subnational variation of nationalistic sentiments. It is able to demonstrate that, despite nationalism being a national-level construct, there is significant variation with regard to how the ordinary view and utilize nationalistic sentiments.