Towards national socialism with Chinese characteristics?

Abstract

Dominant Han Chinese conceptions of nationhood are both profoundly biological and rooted in a narrative of victimhood at the hands of foreign imperialism. Under the Communist Party (CCP), this strain of anti-imperialist nationalism was long intertwined with an ideological commitment to egalitarianism and internationalism. However, the post-Mao period has witnessed a growing embrace of neo-traditionalism, as the CCP has adopted a more undiluted form of ethnonationalism. The result today is an official vision of China as a unified but stratified entity, whose domestic and international agendas are alike shaped by assumptions of hierarchy and the overriding goal of control. This chapter analyzes the elaboration of this vision in school curricula, with reference also to vehicles for ‘patriotic education’ outside the school, such as museums and the media. It also explains how an insistence on unity belies profound societal fragmentation along lines of gender, class, ethnicity, language, culture, religion and, especially, residency. Determined to maintain and reinforce control, the party relies not only on ideology, propaganda and the content of schooling, but also, increasingly, on surveillance and assessment both of pupils and of the entire population. While the main focus here is on the ‘inland’ core of the Chinese mainland, reference will also be made to ways in which this apparatus has been trialled in restive regions on China’s periphery and is now being extended to Hong Kong. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the implications, both for China and the wider world, of the increasing reliance on extreme ethnocentrism to legitimate CCP authoritarianism.