Readers of Western press are easily lulled into a false sense of comfort by the recurrent application of a false dichotomy: “the China we know can only be Marxist-Leninist or it can be capitalist”. And since the country has “embarked on” a market economy (of sorts) and is eager to “do business” with the outside world then you can hardly argue that the People’s Republic is Marxist-Leninist in anything but its name. If we just give the Chinese Communist Party a little more time, the country’s rulers will eventually understand that the inevitable “end of history” is leaving them on the wrong side of the curb. Yes, there seems to be a lot of tension within the Chinese society, and its citizens’ pent-up anger will sooner or later focus on their rulers’ failures to protect the environment, stem corruption, modernize the health care system or improve education.
And yet, to date, this accumulated frustration, while certainly present, has been no match for the resentment that the Chinese mob, with some regularity, pours on Toyotas, Carrefours and foreign consulates.
How is it possible that nearly two decades since the cataclysmic events of June 1989, sizable sections of the Chinese population could be so strongly coerced against the Western, and allegedly universal ideals of freedom, democracy and human rights? Could it be that Chinese students’ anti-American demonstrations of 1999, anti-Japanese demonstrations of 2005 and anti-French demonstrations of 2008 are less of a temporary aberration and reveal more about the Communist Party’s ultimate success in molding a collective identity that is now exposed to modern technologies, but remains intellectually dulled and generally resentful of any influences suspect of being “foreign”?
The outside world has little understanding for Chinese nationalists’ grievances. Their hostility is a derivative of the obsession with “unity” and with the elusive congruence of the national identity and the state. Ernest Gellner once defined nationalism as first and foremost a sentiment - a feeling of satisfaction aroused by a fulfillment of the principle (of unity), or a feeling of anger provoked by the violation of that principle. Whether expressed as the “pride in China” or “anger at foreign interference”, the strongly affective response reflects an extraordinary attachment to an elusive collective identity. Nothing stirs these sentiments more than when these pre-judgments are being “confirmed” by the attitudes of out-groups, perceived as supercilious and insufficiently respectful of China’s aspirations.
Over several weeks, an entirely unprepared foreign audience was thus confronted with the images of overexcited fenqing, angry Chinese youth beating up Korean protesters, streaming into Australian capital in force to “protect China’s pride” and picketing outside European department stores. This is a message of the nationalist ardor instilled in the hearts and minds of the new generation by the post-Tienanmen indoctrination, the best guarantee yet for the preservation of Chinese Communist Party’s authority. The deeply aggrieved fenqing youth nervously stand up for their collective identity and eagerly proclaim their readiness to defend China against “Western influence”.
This does not bode well for the Olympic atmosphere in summer. The political gala of the 2008 Games will provide an excellent occasion for the self-glorification of the deeply repressive one-party state. Beijing’s gargantuan buildings, stupendous firework displays, extraordinary militarism of orderly dancers and choirs – all these remarkable wonders will no doubt entertain foreign officials while they choke in the stuffy, carbon-smelling air of the Chinese capital in August. But deep down, China’s rulers must suspect what we all know. The amazing show of economic growth, the sheepishness of most of its subjects, the grandeur of the imperial pomp and the intriguing addiction to size are little more than a spectacle of sublimation, an engagement in an activity that symbolically represents a fantasy of a bygone empire. It carries the seeds of self-doubt and the fear that few observers will mistake sensation for significance.
For everyone else, the spotlight on China is also an opportunity to probe the phenomenon of the country’s growing nationalism.
CHINESE IDENTITY AND CHINESE STATE
“China is a beautiful country and Chinese people are very kind and warm-hearted”,
A girl on a ferry.
Many years ago, during my first trip to Communist China, a teenage girl unexpectedly walked up to me on a river ferry and rattled off the following sentence in English: “China is a beautiful country and Chinese people are very kind and warm-hearted!” This was not an opening for a more profound exchange into these themes or others. The girl’s English began and ended with the above statement. Her diminutive figure, which quickly folded back into the grey-and-brown clad crowd, precociously functioned as a megaphone for collective identity constructs, in this case directed at the then rare foreign visitors. As I recalled this scene many years later, I could not shed the amazement at the seeming triumph of collective self-identity over Chinese people’s individual self-images. Is it possible that the self-esteem, in the eyes of the locals, is coterminous with the success, respect, pride, greatness or, indeed, beauty of a “nation”? Or this merely a stir-fry serving, destined to the senses of the impressionable outsiders?
The most striking discovery that a Westerner makes while interacting with the Mainlanders is their reluctance to dissociate their individual identity from the criticism addressed at the government. Such a criticism seems to be digestible only if emitted by a mainland-dwelling Han Chinese, but is most likely attacked as illegitimate if pronounced by a foreigner, or a representative of an ethnic minority. When confronted with a group of outsiders, a mainland Chinese will often speak in first person plural (“wo-men”), volunteering to highlight the pride, if not the burdens, of the mythical “5000 years of history”.
Assuming for the moment that at least some elements of this collective identity are genuine, then why have they developed this way?
Part of the answer could be sought in the cognitive structures that interact with the terms existing in Mandarin. It is true that the concept of “identity” (e.g. rentong – combination of ‘identify with/comply with’, or shenfen – ‘body/split’) emphasizes a set of relations, rather than individuality. There is little doubt that this conception reflects the robustly relational character of primary groups.
The second part of the answer could be searched in the Chinese intellectual tradition of obscuring the differences between the natural and the cultural, between nature and nurture. Much has been made of the primacy of family ties in Asia, as the grounding source of ethical values. But in Chinese culture, the legitimacy of family ties has been for 2500 years extended to other societal relations. Superimposition of family-like connections operated to strengthen the feelings of obligation to “tian-di-jun-qin-shi”, respectively: heaven, earth, sovereign, parent and teacher. When the arbitrary ties to the ruler and the teacher are thus couched in terms reminiscent of the patrilineal legitimacy, the freedom to choose one’s relational identity is being severely constrained. The entire Confucian emphasis on the concept of duty could thus be exploited as the backbone of the authoritarian ideological kit.
Nevertheless, it requires an enormous leap of faith to equalize the meaning of relational identity and extended patriarchalism with that of a “national bond” or “national identity”. The pre-eminence of sense-perception in East Asia makes any reference to abstract entities inherently difficult to enforce. Had the very terms “identity” and “obligation” made the definition of the Chinese collective self so simple, the country’s successive dynasties and regimes would have found it fairly straightforward to promote a coherent set of defining “values”, “customs” and “symbols”. Instead, a China in identity crisis re-defines its national character more readily in opposition to the rejected and vilified “Other” – the Westerner, the Japanese, or a “minority” group.
(This is the first in a series of articles devoted to the phenomenon of Chinese nationalism. They will appear regularly over the next couple of weeks).
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