THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATION-STATE IN CHINA IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

At the transition of the new century and the old, China faced the gunboat diplomacy of Western powers. The traditional Chinese «Tianxia» (天下) order was destroyed and disintegrated. China began to realize the existence of an international political order composed of nation states. In the face of imperialism devouring the land of China, Chinese intellectuals realized that the reason why China was invaded is because China had not completed its modernization, and political modernization was the establishment of a nation-state system to participate in the fierce national competition in modern times. Only the establishment of a nation-state could maintain China’s independence and territorial integrity. In this context, Liang Qichao, as a representative of constitutional monarchy, proposed the notion of «the Chinese Nation» (中华民族), with the effort to unite all ethnic groups in China against imperialist aggression and save Qing Dynasty from peril. Sun Yatsen put forward the idea of «Five Races Under One Union» (五族共和), and under this calling, the political forces of the North and South reached a consensus and finally a multi-ethnic bourgeois republic of China was established in 1912. Fei Xiaotong’s concept of «The Pattern of the Chinese Nation's Pluralistic Unity» (中华民族多元一体格局) was proposed after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, emphasized national diversity, unity and equality. This article takes these three political activists’ national theories as analysis objects to sort out the process of how China transitioned from the old empire into a modern nation-state. Through this analysis, I hope to understand the emergence and nature of modern China as an independent subject in international relations.