Official and Nonofficial Nationalism in China at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

Considering how nationalism has flourished in China since the 1990s, it should not come as a surprise that intellectuals there have been vigorously debating its political meaning and significance to the Chinese people. Since the turn of the century nationalist trends have become even stronger and more powerful on account of China`s putative risk to great-power status. One way to understand the complexity of nationalist expressions in China today is to explore how official and nonofficial nationalist discourses supplement and affect each other and how they are connected through debates within the intelligentsia. My aim is to question the assumption that nationalism in China is only imposed by the state on society and to suggest that it is also shaped by longstanding and widespread notions of China c proper place in the world as an important and leading country. At the same time, however, I want to outline the two major limitations of some nationalist arguments: one being that they take an essentialist approach to understanding the Chinese nation, and the other being that they remain evasive concerning the undemocratic political condition of much of the current nationalist fervor Given the murky public space occupied by openly voiced speech and expression, nationalism in China today is neither just a spontaneous outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm nor merely a diversionary plot devised by the Communist Party to maintain its authoritarian regime. It is both of these, and this is substantiated and confirmed by the delicate interaction of the official and nonofficial versions of nationalism.