Party Legitimacy Research Articles

Thought Work Contested: Ideology and Journalism Education in China

AbstractThis article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a “hegemony of form,” highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

Evanescenza dei partiti e forza dei populismi: un problema di democrazia?

The fading charme of parties and the force of populism: A problem of democracy? Today many countries are witnessing a waning of confidence in party politics and the growing success of populist movements, with their hostility towards the principles of liberal democracy and impatience with representative and parliamentary mechanisms. We asked three eminent political scientists, Alfio Mastropaolo, Paolo Pombeni and Loris Zanatta, how we should evaluate this populist challenge to party legitimacy and to representative institutions.

A ‘necessary evil’ even during hard times? Public support for political parties in Portugal before and after the bailout (2008 and 2012)

Notwithstanding the prolific research on the crisis of democracy since the 1980s, the attention that has been given to political parties has not been enough to fully understand the (increasing lack of) citizen support for them. Additionally, there is too little research on how the economic context can contribute to changes in support for political parties. Focusing on the Portuguese case, this article has three main goals: to assess citizen support for parties before and after the economic crisis; to explore the contribution of the crisis to changes in the explanatory models of support; and finally, to identify the consequences of support for parties, with regard to electoral turnout. Findings reveal the economic crisis has affected support for parties in Portugal, specifically regarding diffuse-institutional support and party legitimacy. Changes in public support for parties between 2008 and 2012 have had consequences on voter turnout.

Pervasive, but not politicised: everyday violence, local rule and party popularity in a township in Cape Town

This paper explores relationships between political actors, local governance and violence in a community, through the case of security provision in the township of Imizamo Yethu in Cape Town. It traces the actions of key actors including SANCO, the City of Cape Town and ordinary residents in respect of crime, taxi violence, xenophobic attacks, protection rackets and service delivery protests. The extensive and varied nature of violence in Imizamo Yethu is related to uneven political legitmacy. Further, this weak governance is attributable to a lack of legitimacy of both the City of Cape Town and informal community leaders. The latter are take the form of the local branch of a civic association, the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) allied to the national ruling party, the Africa National Congress (ANC). In Imizamo Yethu, SANCO is weak and riven by factionalism, but the legitimacy of the ANC remains high and there is no violent contest for local leadership positions. Social cohesion in IY is in flux, and violence is alternately used to shore up particular notions of social cohesion; while in other examples violence erodes social cohesion. In short, inadequate state governance and informal rule co-exist with high levels of political support for the ANC and its allies, high levels of violence and uncertain implications for social cohesion. This account runs against three common key assumptions. The first is that, under conditions of weak rule, violence is primarily about contests over political power. The pervasiveness of violence by a variety of social actors in Imizamo Yethu, but not so much by SANCO or the ANC, challenges this assumption. The second is that the violence is constitutive of informal rule in such contexts. However, in Imizamo Yethu the importance of party identification and ability to extract resources from the local state are more important to effective local rule than violent capacities. Lastly, the case of IY illustrates that effective local rule is not necessarily an important condition of party legitimacy, which is rooted in larger dynamics of national and race politics. Indeed, such is the extent of political adherence , as opposed to social cohesion, that violence forms no part of competition within the ANC family for local office and political control.

Pervasive, but not politicised: everyday violence, local rule and party popularity in a township in Cape Town

This paper explores relationships between political actors, local governance and violence in a community, through the case of security provision in the township of Imizamo Yethu in Cape Town. It traces the actions of key actors including SANCO, the City of Cape Town and ordinary residents in respect of crime, taxi violence, xenophobic attacks, protection rackets and service delivery protests. The extensive and varied nature of violence in Imizamo Yethu is related to uneven political legitmacy. Further, this weak governance is attributable to a lack of legitimacy of both the City of Cape Town and informal community leaders. The latter are take the form of the local branch of a civic association, the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) allied to the national ruling party, the Africa National Congress (ANC). In Imizamo Yethu, SANCO is weak and riven by factionalism, but the legitimacy of the ANC remains high and there is no violent contest for local leadership positions. Social cohesion in IY is in flux, and violence is alternately used to shore up particular notions of social cohesion; while in other examples violence erodes social cohesion. In short, inadequate state governance and informal rule co-exist with high levels of political support for the ANC and its allies, high levels of violence and uncertain implications for social cohesion. This account runs against three common key assumptions. The first is that, under conditions of weak rule, violence is primarily about contests over political power. The pervasiveness of violence by a variety of social actors in Imizamo Yethu, but not so much by SANCO or the ANC, challenges this assumption. The second is that the violence is constitutive of informal rule in such contexts. However, in Imizamo Yethu the importance of party identification and ability to extract resources from the local state are more important to effective local rule than violent capacities. Lastly, the case of IY illustrates that effective local rule is not necessarily an important condition of party legitimacy, which is rooted in larger dynamics of national and race politics. Indeed, such is the extent of political adherence , as opposed to social cohesion, that violence forms no part of competition within the ANC family for local office and political control.

Friend or Foe?

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)China's civil society is under immense pressure. Since President Xi Jinping came to power in late 2012, Chinese authorities have cracked down on a score of civil society organisations, while hundreds of activists and dissidents have been detained, arrested, and sentenced to prison. Control over cyberspace has been further tightened, and a new commission has been established to oversee national security across a wide spectrum of issues. A campaign against ?Western values? has been launched, and even the term ?civil society? is becoming increasingly sensitive in public or classroom discussion. As the crackdown continues, one might wonder whether the fang/shoucycle, the alternating pattern of relaxation and control that unleashed China's ?reform and opening up? in the 1980s and 1990s, is still applicable under Xi's China, where control (shou) has now become the norm and relaxation (fang) the exception. Previously, moderate or ?issue-based? groups and activists, although under constant state surveillance, remained intact as long as they steered clear of a political agenda. An Economistarticle in April 2014 even argued that ?a flourishing civil society is taking hold.?(1)A year later, however, it has become questionable whether such an observation is still valid.What are the implications for the development of China's civil society? This paper reviews recent crackdown efforts and new restrictions on civil society, and argues that these measures are diminishing the space for moderate and reformist NGOs and activists to negotiate their survival. It also shows that ad-hoc repression of civil society groups and activists is now moving towards a more systematic restriction of both foreign and domestic NGOs. While civil society is unlikely to disappear due to its resilience and its ability to adapt to barriers, there is little cause for optimism in the coming years.Rampant crackdown on civil societyIn the early days after Xi Jinping assumed office as China's president, the question of whether he was a liberal political reformer emerged among China observers. Yet the debate was brief and speculation was quickly dispelled. As Xi launched a rampant anti-corruption drive targeting both ?tigers? and ?flies,? the successive downfall of high-ranking officials neither opened up room for public criticism of the government nor created space for grassroots civil society to expand and prosper. Instead, Xi ruled out political reform, emphasised cadres' adherence to the central leadership of the Party, and revived the ?mass line? as a Maoist alternative to democracy so as to rebuild the Party's legitimacy among the masses.(2)In addition, Xi also warned against dangerous Western values that constitute ideological threats to China, highlighting seven ideas, including universal values, freedom of speech, and civil society, to be forbidden in public discussion.(3)On the institutional level, Xi's administration founded at least two governmental organisations delegated with expansive power over Chinese society. The National Security Commission, established in early 2014, was made responsible for coordinating a range of national security tasks and making relevant policies, putting paramount importance on safeguarding state security. Meanwhile, a new Internet regulatory body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, was endowed with expanded powers to defend cybersecurity against both domestic and foreign threats.Against the backdrop of a tightened political and ideological space under Xi's rule, the spate of crackdowns against civil society groups and activists came as no surprise. Several activists and opinion leaders were detained and arrested as early as 2013, the most prominent being Xu Zhiyong, a legal activist and the founder of the New Citizens' Movement (xin gongmin yundong ...), who was placed under house arrest in April 2013. Whereas Xu was sentenced to four years in prison in early 2014 for ? …

Turning a Chinese Kid Red: kindergartens in the early People's Republic

To win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, Chinese Communist leaders launched a series of educational reforms to instill new socialist ideas and nationalistic fervor in kindergarteners immediately after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Under the strong influence of Soviet advisers and through a number of methods (games, singing, storytelling, site visits), Chinese kindergarteners were taught the nobility of labor, the sacrifice of soldiers, the grandeur of Tiananmen Square, the wise leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, and the evilness of enemies. However, contrary to the conventional view, this article argues that Chinese education officials and kindergarten teachers never blindly followed Soviet educational models. They appropriated Moscow's techniques to suit their domestic needs, which included promoting nationalist feelings among children to consolidate the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy and power. Ultimately, Chinese kindergarteners were turned into Party loyalists, not admirers of a foreign socialist model. Although the Party encountered difficulties in recruiting reliable teachers to implement its policies, it was able to impose nearly total control from above over the political content of kindergarten education. Under the one-party system, Chinese children were only taught what the Communist leaders wanted them to learn.

The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival by Bruce J. Dickson

Reviewed by: The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival by Bruce J. Dickson Kerry Brown (bio) Bruce J. Dickson. The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. xii, 352 pp. Hardcover $27.95, isbn 978-0-19-022855-2. The title of this new work by American political scientist Bruce J. Dickson is a little misleading. It sounds like the book will be largely speculative and join a long list of those that have already appeared contemplating various challenges the Communist Party faces along with assessments of how it might deal with these. In fact, at the heart of this study is material taken from a number of public opinion surveys conducted in China between 2010 and 2014 in different places and across different socioeconomic groups. In that sense the book is more about current public opinion in modern China than anything that is going to happen in the future. Chinese public opinion is something of a mystery. Pew and other surveys produce annual assessments of the mood within China toward the government, and they invariably record high levels of satisfaction. This is hardly surprising in view of the high costs those who challenge the Party’s monopoly on power pay—some of whom Dickson refers to in his chapter on democracy and the understanding of it within the country. Despite this, surveyors do now have strategies to uncover more nuanced aspects of Chinese opinion, and Dickson’s book illustrates some of these. The fact that the data presented covers a period of elite leadership transition, from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, during 2012 and into 2013, adds to its significance. Beyond their intrinsic value, therefore, they also provide a useful audit of how this event—one which had a huge impact on the wider public but was, as far as we know, decided by only a handful of people—affected public views about where they thought their country was going. [End Page 268] Some things widely evidenced in already extant surveys elsewhere are simply reaffirmed here. On the whole, Chinese respect central leaders more than they do local ones. Perceptions of the corruption, efficiency, and work ethic of local leaders are almost uniformly negative. There are also clear differences linked to generation and age. The older generation of Communist Party members who joined in the era prior to the 1980s are shown to have done so for idealistic reasons. Those who joined afterward largely did so through pragmatic calculations of the usefulness of membership for their career. A more complex issue addressed in the book is that of what motivates fidelity toward the one Party state among the public. Dickson refers to the large amount of material that shows that through modernization, rising living standards, and development (the things the Party currently builds public support on in China) countries are likelier to eventually end up as multiparty democracies of one form or another. In many ways, until now, China has bucked this trend. But the key question is whether, for all its declarations of marching into an eternal, glorious future, the Party is in fact stimulating the kinds of wealth-creating model that will end up leading to its inevitable demise. Dickson is frank about some of the tactics the Party utilizes now to support its rule—tolerance for most things but utter inflexibility on the matter of organized challenges in the political realm. For those who dare wander into this area, it deploys repression and threats. The problem with this tack, however, is its expense, and the likelihood it has of eventually alienating people. Does this use of such harsh methods indicate that deep down the Party is aware of the paradox of pushing for a society whose prosperity, levels of education, and demands will eventually put it out of business? Anxiety about its sustainability must be one of the reasons why the Party in recent years has been assiduous in utilizing nationalistic narratives to gain support. But Dickson is right in contesting the usual statement that Party legitimacy post-Mao until the era of Xi, relied on GDP growth to gain public...

Road to Revival: a new move in the making of legitimacy for the ruling party in China

Road to Revival, as the third musical epic in the People's Republican history, was produced and publicized in 2009 in order to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the PRC. Like the previous two epics, Revival expressed and promoted the official ideology of the time. Through a close reading of Revival's artistic presentation and comparison with the two similar musical epics, The East Is Red and The Laud for the Chinese Revolution, this article demonstrates that traditional political theory such as the ‘mandate of heaven’ (tianming) is now revitalizing and being adapted to construct the party's legitimacy. In constructing a new legitimacy for the party, Revival does not only depoliticize and recast the histories of the CCP and modern China but also tries to establish a foundation for the party's rule by displaying its successful performance in governance which has gradually become the groundwork in shaping the party's new legitimacy.

The climate change metanarrative, state of exception and China's modernisation

Part one will argue that the climate change discourse has all the hallmarks of a new metanarrative. However, the emergence of this metanarrative was in contradiction to neoliberal theory of the environment. Therefore, in an effort to reconcile the two metanarratives, an economic discourse emerged that conceptualised climate change with the neoliberal market model. The economic merging of climate change and the market discourses proved politically unsustainable, as was evident at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. Part two places the contradictions between the climate change-come-neoliberal metanarrative into a global political context, arguing that neoliberalism has so marginalised many developing countries that their sovereignty is in question, with a state of exception always in play. As such, they are highly vulnerable to any global climate change solution imposed by the corporate market on them. Lastly, the paper will argue that China is unique in its response to climate change. It is a rapidly developing state with a unique history of modernisation that places it in a position to use non-market means to address climate change. What limits the Chinese state from doing so is the political instability that this would cause to the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy built on socialist–capitalist modernisation and by the vested interests tied to economic growth.

Nationalist, heretic or populist?

I am grateful to Andreas Umland and David Marples for their thoughtful responses to my piece and appreciate the invitation of the editors of Nationalities Papers to briefly reply. Because “Stalin's Populism” is an essay rather than an article devoted to empirical research, historiography or contemporary politics, some of the objections that Umland and Marples raise are a function of genre more than anything else. Other issues require more detailed engagement, however. As both responses indicate, “Stalin's Populism” elaborates upon an argument that I've advanced in a number of places about the USSR's rehabilitation of Russian historical heroes, imagery and iconography during the 1930s and 1940s. An enduring source of debate over the past half-century, this development has been variously attributed to Stalin's retreat from world revolution, his low confidence in proletarian internationalism, his wavering commitment to Marxism and his insecurity during the Second World War. It's also been seen as evidence of a turn toward nationalism and even fascism. I have long been frustrated by the schematicism of such accounts and offer here a more contingent interpretation situated specifically within the historical contours of the Stalinist 1930s. I have also grown frustrated by the hyperbole of the traditional literature's focus on Stalin's personal failings and ideological apostasy and suggest here that the policy changes in question display all the hallmarks of authoritarian populism, inasmuch as they advanced claims of Soviet state legitimacy and authority rather than Russian political autonomy or self-rule. Indeed, it is this official emphasis on party and state legitimacy and union-wide mobilization that leads me to use terms like “national Bolshevism” and russocentrism rather than Russian nationalism in regard to the Stalinist party line.

Malaysia's 2008 General Election – Transition from Single-party Dominance?

Leading theories of transitions from single-party dominant systems begin with economic crisis, the party's loss of patronage resources, and elite-level defections. The multiparty elections that are then held exert no independent effect, but instead register neutrally the party's decline and the democratization of politics. This paper, however, shifts attention from the dominant party to citizens and elections in non-crisis conditions. It argues that on key dimensions citizens assess the dominant party's legitimacy or worthiness of support. Further, where they grow critical of its policy outputs, they scrutinize more closely its conformity to procedures. And as they anticipate that their voting preferences will be thwarted by electoral manipulations, they vote in protest, perhaps producing a “liberalizing electoral outcome.” Elections, then, do not simply indicate the dominant party's decline. By deepening alienation, they help citizens to cause it. Analysis is set in Malaysia, long an exemplar of single-party dominance, but recently a case in which the government was dealt a striking electoral setback.

Transition from Single-Party Dominance? New Data from Malaysia

Leading theories of transitions from single-party dominant systems begin with economic crisis, the party's loss of patronage resources, and elite-level defections. The multiparty elections that are then held exert no independent effect, but instead register neutrally the party's decline and the democratization of politics. This article, however, shifts attention from the dominant party to citizens and elections in noncrisis conditions. It argues that citizens assess on key dimensions the dominant party's legitimacy or worthiness of support. Further, where they grow critical of its policy outputs, they scrutinize more closely its conformity to procedures. And as they anticipate that their voting preferences will be thwarted by electoral manipulations, they vote in protest, perhaps producing a “liberalizing electoral outcome.” Elections, then, do not simply indicate the dominant party's decline. By deepening alienation, they help citizens to cause it. Analysis is set in Malaysia, long an exemplar of single-party dominance, but recently a case in which the government was dealt a striking electoral setback.

The Debate on Party Legitimacy in China: a mixed quantitative/qualitative analysis

We report results here from a mixed quantitative–qualitative analysis of 168 articles published in China on the question of regime and party legitimacy. We find that ideology remains a leading strategy of future legitimation for the CCP, alongside better known strategies of institution-building and social justice. We also find that liberalism, while less often proposed, remains a potent critique of regime legitimacy. We use these results to make predictions about the evolutionary path of institutional change of China's political system, linking up Chinese elite debate with the wider scholarly debate of authoritarian durability.

Exploring Online Structures on Chinese Government Portals

This article explores the communicative structures of Chinese government web sites and their implications for citizen political participation. Taking issue with the party-state's dubious claim of building a transparent, service-oriented, and democratic administration, the study analyzed web features on 31 Chinese provincial government portals. The UN's e-participation framework was adapted to locate venues for citizen involvement. The results suggest that by manipulating online structures, Chinese government resorts to more subtle forms of online social control through information delivery, agenda setting, and containment of public dissent. Limited improvement in administrative efficiency and transparency serves the dual role of deflating social tension and reestablishing party legitimacy. Paradoxically, citizens' political participation may generate unintended consequences of incremental reform of China's local governance and political institutions.

Can the Memory of a Historical Uprising Reduce Transitional Uncertainty?: A Comparative Study of Hungary and the Former Soviet Union

Abstract: The author explores how incumbents form their preferences when regime types change. The author juxtaposes the perceptions of the Hungarian and the Soviet Communist Party hard-liners during the transition from Communism in 1989-91. During this time, the memory of a historical uprising reduced the incumbents' misperceptions about their popular legitimacy via two mechanisms. First, historical memory functioned as a tolerance indicator because it brought the opposition together and demonstrated the true distribution of political support. Second, the memory of a past uprising served as a reformer when it opened up internal party debate about the legitimacy of the regime. The author's argument contributes to the scarce literature on actors' preferences formation under conditions of transitional uncertainty. It also provides a useful analytical bridge between actor-oriented and system-centered approaches to democratization. Keywords: historical memory, Hungary, political legitimacy, post-Communist transition, public opinion, Russia ********** Political actors form their preferences on the basis of their perceptions about their public support. As the Soviet Union began to dissolve in 1989, however, the true extent of the public support for the Communist incumbents in satellite states such as Hungary was unknown because Communist regimes did not hold contested elections. Transitional uncertainty also arose from the undefined institutional rules, the fluid party structure and the unknown reaction of the Soviet Union. Incumbents dealt with uncertainty in different ways. Some party members underestimated the importance and extent of their political legitimacy. These hard-liners stubbornly clung to the old order. Other Communist leaders appreciated the true scale of societal changes, along with the limitations of their power, early on. These politicians took timely steps to democratize and compromise with the opposition. The variance of the incumbents' preferences constitutes a puzzle. Earlier scholarship on democratic transitions has generally treated perceptions as exogenous, leaving the reasons for the disaccord largely unexamined. This study elucidates the development of actors' preferences during transitional periods. The historical memory of a failed antiregime uprising can reduce the incumbents' uncertainty about their political legitimacy by providing those in power with a barometer of public dissatisfaction. Two mechanisms are at work. First, the historical memory of a popular insurrection opens up a debate about the party's legitimacy. During the debate, the more progressive party members criticize the conservative members for their role in defeating the popular uprising. The conservative members then resign, and the party reforms and democratizes. Second, commemorations of past uprisings reveal the strength of the opposition and show the regime's limited public support. The rulers realize that the likelihood of preserving the status quo has decreased and that the only way to preserve power is to associate with the popular historical symbols. As the demonstrations commemorating historical heroes increase, the hard-liners who hoped to embrace the progressive ideas only in words discover they need to back their new image with reforms and compromises. In this article, I revisit the theoretical discussion about the nature of transitional uncertainty and the process of preference formation. I then specify how historical memory can impact the incumbents' perceptions about their legitimacy under conditions of uncertainty. Next, I position the argument within the scholarship of democratic transition and suggest that the proposition connects structural and actor-oriented explanations of regime change. In the first empirical part, I distinguish five episodes in which the memory of the 1956 uprising informed and moderated the incumbents' perceptions in Hungary: the fall of Janos Kadar, the rise of Karoly Grosz, the interview of Imre Poszgay, the demonstrations of March 15, and the reburial of Imre Nagy. …

Forgetting from Above and Memory from Below: Strategies of Legitimation and Struggle in Postsocialist Mozambique

AbstractThis article examines two opposing strategies – one used by government officials and businesses, the other expressed by urban workers – that have emerged in postsocialist Mozambique. On the one hand, government officials and businesses have pursued a deliberate strategy of what several writers in other contexts have called ‘organized forgetting', whereby they seek to airbrush the socialist past from history. They have revised the country's ideological orientation, built new coalitions of support among domestic and internal investors, and remade the ruling party's legitimacy following the abandonment of socialism and the transition to a free‐market democracy. On the other hand, some urban workers have revived and repackaged the language of socialism to protest against the effects of neo‐liberalism. Relying on collective and individual memories of socialism, they denounce ‘exploitation', ‘recolonization', ‘injustice’ and ‘inequality’ as they struggle to understand, resist or modify the impact of structural adjustment and privatization. I argue that, although the end of socialism has allowed a plurality of voices to surface in Mozambique, such discursive pluralism is characterized by increasing power inequities. The consolidation of capital and the ideological pronouncements that accompany it may ultimately silence the now dissident language of the socialist past.

Cornering the Market: State Strategies for Controlling China’s Commercial Media

Decentralization of state power over media ownership led to new challenges for state control of media content in the 1980s. Following the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy crisis aner Tiananmen , party leaders in charge of China's public media permitted greater freedom for news content deemed politically safe, while maintaining tight control over politically sensitive news content In order to supplement coercive strategies , the state developed market incentives to encourage media to produce news that was politically acceptable and popular with consumers. To test the extent to which commercial media have

Something of value: the religious response to de-Maoization in China

The title of this paper is taken from a novel written by Robert Ruark several decades ago concerning the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Ruark's contention was that when the British conquered and colonized Kenya, they destroyed the indigenous culture but failed to replace it with an alternative. The result was an ineffective search by the native population for a value system and the barbarism of the Mau Mau uprising. A similar phenomenon has been occurring in China over the past nearly 25 years. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping became China's paramount leader. He launched a series of economic reforms which allowed for a limited capitalism. This required formal ideological justification by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The Resolution on CPC history in 1981 was duly adopted. It attempted unsuccessfully to separate Mao Zedong Thought from Mao Zedong the man. Consequently, the Party's legitimacy rests solely on economic success and power. However, many people in China find this lacking and are searching for new belief systems. This paper seeks to establish the hypothesis that this search is the primary reason for the formation of new religious movements in China (Christian and other, such as Falundafa) which have not been officially recognized and accepted.

Conceptualising Uyghur separatism in Chinese nationalism

The origins of Chinese nationalism are traceable to the post‐Cold War era which saw the gradual erosion of Communist ideology and the Chinese government's me of nationalism to shore up party legitimacy. Yet, the Chinese nationalism which has emerged is representative of Han nationalism and ignores ethnic minority nationalism in the larger cause of China's unity and integrity. Therefore, the strains in Chinese nationalism are visible today, in the separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang. This paper is about Uyghur separatism as it developed in the context of the Chinese idea of nationalism. The paper discusses how the Uyghur identity emerged and became crystallised around the concept of ethnicity. It concludes that in the context of Han nationalism, minority identities are hard to sustain and are increasingly submerged.