Modern Chinese Nationalism Research Articles

Modern Chinese Nationalism and the Han Nation: An Analysis based on the Hanfu Movement

The development of the Hanfu movement in modern China reflects the Chinese peoples quest for national identity. Hanfu is the traditional dress of the Han nation. Initially, some Hanfu activists attempted to use Hanfu to restore the core status of the Han nation in China. Later, Hanfu became more popular among the Chinese public and represented increasing Chinese cultural influence abroad. However, the association of the Hanfu movement with nationalism has not been widely studied. It is introduced Benediction Andersons imagined communities, Anthony Smiths ethno-symbolism, and Manuel Castellss three identities in the age of the Internet in the paper to explore the changes in the construction of Han Chinese identity at different times in China and the flow of nationalist sentiment. In addition, the network soil and radical nationalism at the birth of the Hanfu Movement are also noteworthy. This is linked to the modern online forms of nationalism and the new issues of Chinese nationalism in the context of online media under the control of the Chinese government to remind the future Hanfu movement not to fall into a narrow nationalist dilemma. Finally, this paper argues that moderate nationalism is conducive to the cohesion of Chinese national identity and the overall cultural revival of modern China.

The evolution of Li Dazhao’s Chinese nationalism

ABSTRACT Studies on Chinese nationalism in Western academia have been influenced by a popular theory called ‘the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis’, a loosely formulated interpretive paradigm which emerged in late 1960s. The literature on this topic, however, reveals an inadequate understanding of traditional Chinese thinking and its influence on Chinese thought in modern history. An examination of the work of Li Dazhao (1889–1927) and his philosophical heritage not only will open up a valuable source for us to rethink about this thesis and its defects, but also will shed light on the complicated background and perspective that give rise to modern Chinese nationalism. Given the interest in Chinese nationalism in contemporary world, an understanding of its historical roots is particularly timely, since in order to understand China’s current and future actions one must understand the origins of Chinese nationalist thinking and its transformations in time. This paper makes a contribution to that historical understanding. I argue that traditional Chinese philosophy, especially the Daoist world view and Confucian ethics played a significant role in shaping Li’s patriotic and nationalist stance. It also predisposed him intellectually to accept the internationalist characteristic of Marxism.

중국공산당 100년의 세계인식과 외교 노선 변천사 試論

The process of change in the world perception of Mao Zedong and the CCP before the reform era was ultimately a process of struggling to establish an independent worldview. From the beginning of its foundation, the CCP interpreted the international situation from the viewpoint of ‘world revolution’ rather than from the Chinese reality, accepting the world view of the Comintern as it is. As a consequence, the CCP subordinated the strategy of the Chinese revolution to the interests of the Soviet Union and the Comintern’s world revolution. Although it is true that Mao stressed the importance of ‘independence and self-reliance’, the CCP’s official world view and interpretation of international circumstances, even after Mao’s rise to power in the party, was basically a copy of Comintern’s viewpoint, at least until the end of the Sino-Japanese war.BR Mao Zedong’s ‘intermediate-zone’ theory, which was raised in 1946, was a very important turning point in the centenary of the CCP’s world perception in that it was the starting point for establishing an independent worldview based on the ‘attitude toward China’. During Mao’s era, this ‘intermediate-zone’ theory showed various variations and finally resulted in the ‘three-worlds theory’ of the 1970s. Also, even when there was a paradigm shift in the CCP’s world strategy under the discourse of ‘peace and development’ in Deng Xiaoping’s era, assessing other countries’ attitude towards China has always been at the core of CCP’s world perception since 1946. During Mao’s period, when the antagonistic ideological atmosphere prevailed in the Cold War regime, it was expressed in the ideological concept and term of ‘anti-imperialism’. But after Deng Xiaoping, when ideological confrontation weakened, ‘anti-hegemonism’ became the new keyword, which was a more specific and exact expression in explaining the worldview of Mao’s and Deng’s era.BR The world perceptions of the CCP in the Mao’s and Deng’s era were basically ‘responsive’ in that they took the attitude of foreign powers toward China as the core factor of their perception. However, following the rise of China in the end of the 20th century, important changes have been taking place in this ‘responsive’ world view. The CCP is gradually admitting its status as a world power and is actively demonstrating its will to reform the international regime according to ‘Chinese standards’. These changes appearing in the 21st century are very different from the CCP’s world perception that has been maintained throughout Mao’s and Deng’s era. Breaking away from the existing worldview which was focused on understanding the international situation mainly in response to external threats, China is now seeing itself as the center of world civilization and is revealing its grand ambition to reconstruct the world order based on Chinese model.BR ‘Modern Chinese nationalism’ and ‘Traditional Sino-centrism’ were the two pillars that constituted the CCP’s worldview in the past 100 years. Whereas the former became the main melody in the eras of Mao and Deng, as China accomplished its basic goals of nationalism at the end of the 20th century, it is very likely that the center of gravity gradually shifted to the latter.

Arabic language learning anxiety in Chinese social media: a study of discursive habitus and language symbolism

Arabic language learning anxiety (AA) is common among Arabic learners in China. Its causes lie beyond the language and its structural features per se but elsewhere in the sociopolitical world. Analyzing discussions on Arabic learning on the Chinese social media site Zhihu and identifying the discursive habitus, i.e., statements recurrently made and strategies recurrently used in these discussions, this paper shows that AA is both a symptom of and a reaction to the entanglement of Arabic via language symbolism in three longue dureé sociopolitical circumstances: the building of the modern Chinese nation, the redefining of the Muslim constituents of the Chinese national identity, and power negotiation in the modern world-system of knowledge.

The Dimensions of Nationalism: A Case Study of the U.S. in the Eighteenth Century

This article seeks a new understanding of nationalism theory by comparing the historical evolution of American and Chinese nationalism, analyzing the cosmopolitan origins of the two nations in different historical contexts. Although modern American and Chinese nation were born in different time and space, their nationalism has a similarly ideological origin which can be traced back to universal ideal based on regionally cultural community. Different with American nationalism that cut off the cosmopolitan traditions of Atlantic Republic of Letters, using localism of evangelical ideology as a national binder, modern Chinese nationalism was born in the collapse of traditional Tian-xia state, under the pressure from European nation-states theory based on national model from Atlantic world in the late of nineteenth century.

The role of popular religion in the Red Spears Movement in modern China, 1925-1942

This paper examines how did the nationalists and the communist revolutionaries tried to transform local Chinese peasants into modern Chinese nation with the case of the Red Spears, a local self-defensive and religious society of Republican period. It demonstrates how did the various political powers in Chinese territory, including Japanese Imperial forces during the Sino-Japanese war, competing with each other to appeal to Chinese common population. By doing so, the paper explores several issues: how did Chinese peasants develop their local identities into national ones; what was the role of religious doctrines and secular features in the transformation. The paper argues that, regardless of religious beliefs, the secular regulations strongly influenced by Confucian teachings of the Red Spears also should be regarded as an important factor in the lives of the Red Spear Society’s members. It also deserves to note that local commoners’ engagement with the Red Spears resulted not just from their religious transformation, but also from their practical needs for using the Society’s doctrines and organization to resist government’s excessive extraction. It also demonstrates that there were little difference between the Chinese communists’ strategic approach to the Red Spears and that of other political powers, especially Japanese imperial forces, in mobilizing the peasant forces of the Red Spear Society. During the Sino-Japanese War. They both acknowledged the important role of hybrid religious belief of the Red Spears as a core factor in sustaining their solidarity. In utilizing the forces of the Red Spear Society, Japanese imperialist and Chinese communist policy makers tried to avoid provoking the Society with attacking their “superstitious” beliefs.

The Cosmopolitan Moment in Colonial Modernity: The Bahá’í faith, spiritual networks, and universalist movements in early twentieth-century China

AbstractThis article outlines the spread of the Bahá’í religion—known in Chinese asDatong jiao大同教)— as a form of religious cosmopolitanism in Republican China (1912–1949). Originating in Iran, its spread to China can be traced to links with the Ottoman empire, British Palestine, the United States, and Japan. By tracking the individuals, connections, and events through which knowledge of the Bahá’í movement spread in China, our study reveals an overlapping nexus of networks—intellectual reformers, liberal Christians, Esperantists, Confucian modernizers, redemptive society activists, and socialists—that shared cosmopolitan ideals. The Bahá’í connections thus serve as a thread that reveals the influence of a unique ‘cosmopolitan moment’ in Republican China, hitherto largely ignored in the scholarly literature on this period, which has focused primarily on the growth of modern Chinese nationalism. Leading nationalist figures endorsed these movements at a specific juncture of Asian colonial modernity, showing that nationalism and cosmopolitanism were seen as expressions of the same ideal of a world community. We argue that the sociology of cosmopolitanism should attend to non-secular and non-state movements that advocated utopian visions of cosmopolitanism, map the circulations that form the nexus of such groups, and identify the contextual dynamics that produce ‘cosmopolitan moments’ at specific historical junctures and locations.

Modern Chinese nationalism and the awakening of self-consciousness of the Chinese Nation

The concept of “Chinese nation” has a close relationship with the rise, development and upsurge of modern Chinese nationalism from its proposition to establishment, and to universal identification among people of all ethnic groups. The period of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China was the formation stage of modern Chinese nationalism and also the stage of the proposition and initial usage of the concept of “Chinese nation”: Modern Chinese nationalism developed around the period of the May 4th Movement. Under the impetus of the establishment of national self-determination theory, especially the rise of a national self-determination movement, the concept of “Chinese nation” was accepted and adopted by more and more people and finally established and formed. After the September 18th Incident, especially after the North China Incident and the July 7th Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the worsening national crisis promoted the upsurge of modern Chinese nationalism, and this upsurge made the concept of “Chinese nation” more widely and deeply disseminated and accepted.

Chinese People and the Others: Notes on Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and the May Fourth Movement

The May Fourth Movement (1917-1921) has always been an important part of the official historical narrative of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, the Movement is often celebrated as being closely connected with the emergence of modern Chinese patriotism and nationalism in contemporary China. In the 21st century, Chinese nationalism has voiced more assertive overtones with a tendency to glorify Chinese imperial history. What is more, contemporary Chinese nationalism often adopts a negative attitude towards foreign ideas and thought trends. This article discusses the differences between contemporary Chinese nationalism and the May Fourth Movement nationalism by examining the argumentation structures wherein the concept of nationalism was used during the May Fourth period. The article shows that the concept was, in fact, given primarily a negative meaning in the May Fourth context. The article shows that, in May Fourth journals, nationalism was associated with imperialism, capitalism, and Darwinism, which were presented as destructive ideas that were responsible for the First World War. Unlike the radical Chinese nationalists of the 21st century, May Fourth authors supported a cosmopolitan spirit and international cooperation. The desire to strengthen and develop China involved dreams of creating an international operational environment based on equality and cooperation, instead of aggressive power politics. Keywords: Chinese nationalism, May Fourth Movement, Chinese Communist Party

Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies ed. by Cheng-Tian Kuo

Reviewed by: Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies ed. by Cheng-Tian Kuo Jonathan Brasnett Cheng-tian Kuo, ed., Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press B.V., 2017. 425 pp. €109 (hb) ISBN 978-94-6298-439-4 Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies is an impressive volume that aims to explore the evolution of religion-state relations, the influence of religion in nationalist discourse and the phenomenon of nationalism as a quasi-religion in the “Greater China” region (i.e., China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). Kuo’s introduction lays out the competing theories of modernism, which sees religion as having no place in the modern Chinese polities, and revisionism, which holds that religion and politics have influenced one another throughout Chinese dynastic history and that this has continued into modern China, with nationalism replacing religion as the primary tool for strengthening the legitimacy of the rulers. He summarizes the current context in contemporary “Greater China,” arguing that the People’s Republic of China (PRC, or mainland China) mobilizes a “political Trinity: patriotism, socialism, and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)” with all other religions subservient (p. 13); in the Republic of China (ROC, or Taiwan), religions enjoy both freedom of worship and freedom to influence politics; in Hong Kong, a “civil religion” is developing which defends democratic values but remains fragile (p. 14). Part I of the volume examines the nexus between Chinese religion and nationalism before the foundation of the PRC in 1949. Chapter 2, by Chi-shen Chang, explores the different form of “Chineseness” or Chinese identity, which form the basis of modern Chinese nationalism. This “Chineseness” could have a political-geographic connotation, based on the territory historically controlled by Chinese rulers; it could have a cultural connotation, based on sharing a common “language, costumes, customs, and values” (p. 62); or it could have an ethnic connotation based on common Han ethnicity descended from the mythical Yellow Emperor. Chang cites Wang Fuzhi 王夫之, the seventeenth-century Chinese philosopher, who argued that Chinese identity was based on the Confucian ideal of defending the Chinese territory, culture and ethnicity from barbarian invasions, which remains a key aspect of “Chineseness” to this day. [End Page 101] The third chapter, by Julia C. Schneider, examines the ways in which China sought to assimilate or “sinicize” those living within its territory who did not share the same Chinese linguistic, cultural, ethnic or even national identity. Applying Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 concept of “lesser nationalism,” which regards those who are not ethnically Han residing inside the Chinese territory as inferior, she argues that the Ming and Qing dynasties undertook “Confucian civilizing” missions to assimilate other ethnic groups to the dominant Han culture. Likening this practice to Christian missionizing, Schneider insists that the Han Chinese perceived their Confucian values and culture as supreme, thereby justifying expansionism and sinicization during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which continues to inspire Chinese nationalism today. The fourth chapter, by Adam Yuet Chau, discusses different “spheres” (jie 界) that formed in Chinese society as it modernized in the early 20th century, each advocating on behalf of different interest groups, including the scholarly sphere, the minorities sphere, the political sphere, and the religion sphere. These spheres, in theory, should complement each other in a functioning modern state, but during the Maoist era of the PRC, many of them, including religion, were deprived of their autonomy and co-opted by the CCP to serve as “instruments in the state’s effort to mobilize society for building socialism” (p. 132). Chau argues that, in an effort to ensure that the religion sector could never be influenced by foreign interests, the CCP encouraged the creation of representational bodies for each religion which are amenable to state control, fostering greater Chinese nationalism among actors in the state-sanctioned religion sphere. Chapter 5, by Robert D. Weatherly and Qiang Zhang, outlines two different types of nationalism employed by the CCP, and gives an example of each type. First, confrontational nationalism emphasizes one’s victimization at the hands of an “enemy” by focusing on a symbolic injustice. The CCP has used this approach by often highlighting the Yuanmingyuan incident (1860), in...

Chinese People and the Others: Notes on Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and the May Fourth Movement

The May Fourth Movement (1917-1921) has always been an important part of the official historical narrative of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, the Movement is often celebrated as being closely connected with the emergence of modern Chinese patriotism and nationalism in contemporary China. In the 21st century, Chinese nationalism has voiced more assertive overtones with a tendency to glorify Chinese imperial history. What is more, contemporary Chinese nationalism often adopts a negative attitude towards foreign ideas and thought trends. This article discusses the differences between contemporary Chinese nationalism and the May Fourth Movement nationalism by examining the argumentation structures wherein the concept of nationalism was used during the May Fourth period. The article shows that the concept was, in fact, given primarily a negative meaning in the May Fourth context. The article shows that, in May Fourth journals, nationalism was associated with imperialism, capitalism, and Darwinism, which were presented as destructive ideas that were responsible for the First World War. Unlike the radical Chinese nationalists of the 21st century, May Fourth authors supported a cosmopolitan spirit and international cooperation. The desire to strengthen and develop China involved dreams of creating an international operational environment based on equality and cooperation, instead of aggressive power politics. Keywords: Chinese nationalism, May Fourth Movement, Chinese Communist Party

Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s by Evan N. Dawley

Reviewed by: Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s by Evan N. Dawley Madeline Y. Hsu (bio) Evan N. Dawley. Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City 1880s–1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. xxii, 413 pp. Hardcover $65.00, isbn 978-0-674-23720-9. The transformative impact of Japanese colonization of Taiwanese society and identity is commonly presumed but has not been systematically scrutinized, until this monograph. Evan Dawley's deeply researched study of the northern port city of Jilong (Keelung) spans the waning years of the Qing dynasty, the highly organized enactment of Japan's imperial projects after the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, and the island's conflicted return to Chinese rule in 1945, under the shadow of the Nationalists' losing civil war against the Communists on the mainland. Dawley attributes "the process of Taiwanese ethnic formation" to "collective efforts and a shared urban consciousness" developed on the part of Jilongese elites "in resistance against, and dialogue with, Japanese and Chinese nationalisms" (p. 348). Becoming Taiwanese scrupulously traces how Jilong's leaders adapted to multiple regime changes and navigated in service to local interests politically, economically, and organizationally. Their success in [End Page 119] mitigating the imposition of external controls—such as efforts first to Japanize and then to Sinicize them—furthered the coalescing of community consciousness into ethnic identity formations by the 1920s. Jilong's local elites performed critical services as brokers for the minority regimes that held power and through repeated practice navigating changing authority structures learned to juggle their cooptation into foreign administrations against their defense of certain boundaries around Jilong Taiwaneseness, a balancing act visible in the development of institutions for credit and banking, public welfare, and religious practices. Under Japanese colonization, Jilongese developed attitudes and strategies to conserve local autonomy that came into ready redeployment when Taiwanese, tellingly identifying as benshengren or "insiders," quickly realized the considerable gulf between their interests and the priorities of their new rulers from mainland China, waishengren or "outsiders." From the perspective of Jilongese, the waishengren replaced Japanese as an outsider, authoritarian administration that excluded them from positions of power and economic opportunities. Despite shared Chinese ancestry, the Nationalists were focused on winning the civil war on the mainland, rather than reintegrating Taiwan's population as racial equals, in part because they seemed to have identified too much with the Japanese enemy. Benshengren and waishengren held incompatible conceptions of "modernity," leading each to simultaneously perceive the other as less civilized: benshengren because the mainland Chinese did not uphold the standards of public hygiene and health that had prevailed under Japanese rule and the waishengren because Taiwanese had not participated in the Sinicizing processes forging citizens in service of the modern Chinese nation. The precipitous deterioration of social stability and economic conditions under Nationalist fostered such general anger and discontent that island-wide violence erupted barely a year and a half after Retrocession (guangfu), or the glorious return, leaving wounds that have required decades to scar over and gain resolution. The February 28th Incident, followed by the White Terror and martial law eras, is often credited with sowing the seeds of Taiwanese nationalism, but Dawley traces the deeper roots for Taiwan ethnic consciousness to community strategies and organizational practices that developed under Japanese colonial rule. By focusing on one locality and generations of its Taiwanese leadership, Dawley is able to render more visible how Japanese colonization reshaped Taiwanese society and political behaviors in ways that distinguished islanders from mainlanders when reunited under Nationalist rule in 1945, adding to an already rich scholarship on Taiwan's colonial history, including Ming-cheng Lo's Doctors within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (UC Press, 2002); Andrew Morris's Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (UC Press, 2010); and Paul D. Barclay's Outcasts [End Page 120] of Empire: Japan's Rule on Taiwan's "Savage Border," 1874-1945 (UC Press, 2017). It is Dawley's approach, however, that speaks most directly to ethnic identity formations and how well-equipped Taiwanese had become to resist Nationalist efforts to impose sinicization on them. Becoming Taiwanese illuminates the highly topical question of how...

Power, Property and Governmentality in South China: The Case of the Wen (Man) Clan in Hong Kong and Shenzhen

Based on fieldwork in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, we approach the case of the Wen Clan in contemporary China in terms of the interaction between formal institutions of government and informal institutions of kinship and village. This reveals the multi-facetted nature of property rights on land, which do not only enable and regulate economic action, but also structure power relations in society and vis a vis the state. In this context, we build on recent research on the role of colonialism in creating ‘Chinese tradition’ in the New Territories, and establish similarities with the extension of state power in Mainland local society. We argue that property relations are an essential aspect of governmentality, and are embedded into broader cultural phenomena, especially religion. Thus, the resurgence of lineages in Guangdong cannot be interpreted simplistically as revival of tradition, but is a distinct phenomenon in the evolution of the modern Chinese nation state.

Beyond the Nationalist Narrative: Contextualising the History of the Overseas Chinese Press in Japan

Scholars tend to overlook the overseas Chinese press as a communicative tool for Chinese nationalism. This paper takes media history as its focal point to demonstrate the contextual influences that shaped the operations of Chinese print media and gave rise to the manifestation of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) identity in Japan. In particular, it emphasises that the mobilisation of the modern Chinese nationalism movement of the time was not the sole determinant of Chinese identity. It was also influenced by the way in which Chinese ethnic boundaries came to be shaped and reshaped in different historical periods through the dynamics between overseas Chinese communities and Japanese society. I use two overseas Chinese publications from different periods to illustrate the impacts of modern Chinese nationalism and the changing social and political context of Japan on the Chinese press. Finally, I present a synthetic narrative to account for the history of the overseas Chinese press in Japan.

Translating the socialist nation

Abstract The first seventeen years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, 1949–1966) was a critical period for the newly established nation to gain international recognition. The period witnessed a unique translation activity, i.e. SL-generated translation of a large number of classical and modern Chinese literature into English and other foreign languages. These state-sponsored translations were mainly undertaken by teams of Chinese and foreign translators in the Foreign Languages Press (FLP) in Beijing. This paper aims to explore how literary translation was used for nation branding and promoting Chinese communism abroad. It reveals the political agenda behind the outward translation activity. It goes on to probe into the patronage of the FLP to disclose the relationship between the translating institution and the political discourse on the nation. Lastly, the study of the English translation of Linhai Xueyuan (林海雪原), i.e. Tracks in the Snowy Forest, a bestseller representative of the ‘revolutionary novel’ of the time, will show that the adaptations aim at recasting revolutionary characters as “perfect” heroes so as to project an ideal image of the modern Chinese nation. The paper concludes with a call to integrate outward translation into TS. Based on Luhmann’s sociology of communication it provides a preliminary observation on the reception of the PRC’s export enterprise, which, more often than not, turned out to be counterproductive.

China in the World: On Photography, Montages, and the Magic Lantern

Two examples of photographic montages from the first half of the twentieth century, one by the Modern Sketch Society in the magazine Shidai manhua and the other by the photographer Lang Jingshan, craft images of the modern Chinese nation. Although dramatically different, both images rely on assemblage formats and the photographic fragment in order to present a vision of a new China within a larger global context. This article proposes a nineteenth-century precursor to these photomontages in the form of an 1885 Shanghai magic lantern show as presented in the pages of the pictorial magazine Dianshizhai huabao. Originating as a lecture on world travel by the Chinese pastor and educator Yen Yung Kiung, the lecture was reconstituted into a lithographic series by the famous illustrator Wu Youru. Intended simultaneously as entertainment, as an educational and charity event, and as a series of lithographic and photographic images, the heterogeneous components of Yen and Wu’s travelogue bring together a complex but coordinated vision of the nation. Like a photomontage in its constant juxtaposition of pictorial pieces, this transmedial ‘Tour round the world’ strives to offer a particular view of China and its place in the modern world.

Staging the Silk Road Journey Abroad: The Case of Dunhuang Performative Arts

Staging the Silk Road Journey Abroad: The Case of Dunhuang Performative Arts

Space, mobility, modernity: The figure of the prostitute in Chinese-language cinema

Abstract This article is a study of the figure of the modern Chinese prostitute by examining a series of important Chinese-language films. I describe a pattern of increasing mobility on the part of the Chinese prostitute from the turn of the twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first century. The spatial expansion of the Chinese prostitute over a long historical time span has to do with the evolving conceptions and realities of the modern Chinese nation state within a global capitalist system. I demarcate successively three times in modern Chinese history and describe the corresponding phases/faces of gender politics as embodied by the figure of the Chinese prostitute.

The Opium War: drugs, dreams and the making of China

Book synopsis: In October 1839, Britain entered the first Opium War with China. Its brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also threaded with tragicomedy: with Victorian hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past hundred and seventy years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding episode of modern Chinese nationalism. Starting from this first conflict, The Opium War explores how China’s national myths mould its interactions with the outside world, how public memory is spun to serve the present, and how delusion and prejudice have bedevilled its relationship with the modern West.

The Shaping of National History in Textbooks of Modern China and "Zhonghua Minzu"

This paper examines the modern transition of historical studies and the impact of national history on modern Chinese textbooks in order to observe ongoing international disputes over history in East Asia today. The main subject here concerns “Zhonghua minzu，” the idea central to the depiction of Chinas national history.BR The search for modern historical studies between the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China began against a backdrop of nationalism that arose in the late Qing dynasty. Important is that the conception of such studies was influenced by Meiji Japan’s history of civilization and idea of evolution. Representative of this was Liang Qichao’s appropriation of Japanese concepts and classifications in categorizing the histories of China and East Asia in order to redefine the category of Chinese history and coin the term Zhonghua minzu. This new historiography had great bearing on the shape of new textbooks not only concentrating on the foundation, unification and conquests of a dynasty, but also illustrating its cultural heroes. It is in this process that a Sinocentric distinction between Hua and Yi, as well as historical knowledge produced by modern Japan, had seeped into Chinese textbooks. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals sought to describe their national history based on modern scholarly methods. For example, Gu Jiegang applied anti-traditionalist thoughts to dismantle the unitary, single-rooted nature from the origin of Zhonghua minzu and attempted to put forth a pluralistic narrative encompassing the cultures of all ethnicities. This sort of descriptive tendency held the potential to develop into diverse directions once modernity became established in the methods and system of studying Chinese history. However, the Nationalist Government of China intensified training on nationalism through a centralized education system and curriculum. The leadership of the Han Chinese and their integration of surrounding ethnicities was highlighted over the nation’s ethnic-plurality and cultural diversity. Along with mass mobilization against Japanese invasion during the period, this rationale incorporated Han Chinese into Zhonghua minzu and subsumed the history of northeastern China and the northern part of the Korean peninsula under the history of China.BR To conclude, modern Chinese nationalism consistently affected the development of national history that accepted the nationalist historiography of modern Japan, promoted the idea of Zhonghua minzu sufficient to assimilate minor ethnicities, and legitimated the political necessity of defending China’s borderlands against Japanese imperialism. Hence, it is necessary to understand the perception of history in China’s Northeast Project as a knowledge system formed over a lengthy process throughout modem China.