China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Philip E. Lilienthal Books (Paperback))

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Three American missiles hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and what Americans view as an appalling and tragic mistake, many Chinese see as a "barbaric" and intentional "criminal act," the latest in a long series of Western aggressions against China. In this book, Peter Hays Gries explores the roles of perception and sentiment in the growth of popular nationalism in China Three American missiles hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and what Americans view as an appalling and tragic mistake, many Chinese see as a "barbaric" and intentional "criminal act," the latest in a long series of Western aggressions against China.

In this book, Peter Hays Gries explores the roles of perception and sentiment in the growth of popular nationalism in China. At a time when the direction of China's foreign and domestic policies have profound ramifications worldwide, Gries offers a rare, in-depth look at the nature of China's new nationalism, particularly as it involves Sino-American and Sino-Japanese relations—two bilateral relations that carry extraordinary implications for peace and stability in the twenty-first century.

Through recent Chinese books and magazines, movies, television shows, posters, and cartoons, Gries traces the emergence of this new nationalism. Anti-Western sentiment, once created and encouraged by China's ruling PRC, has been taken up independently by a new generation of Chinese. Deeply rooted in narratives about past "humiliations" at the hands of the West and impassioned notions of Chinese identity, popular nationalism is now undermining the Communist Party's monopoly on political discourse, threatening the regime's stability.

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As readable as it is closely researched and reasoned, this timely book analyzes the impact that popular nationalism will have on twenty-first century China and the world. Paperback , pages. Published July 5th by University of California Press first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about China's New Nationalism , please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about China's New Nationalism. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Apr 10, Az rated it really liked it Shelves: Britt rated it it was amazing Apr 06, Julian Harper rated it really liked it Aug 11, Vanhelsing rated it it was amazing Feb 25, Agne rated it really liked it Mar 23, Andrew rated it liked it Jun 09, Alex rated it liked it Aug 25, Lan rated it liked it Dec 26, Rob Shurmer rated it really liked it Jan 21, Henry Jin rated it it was amazing Nov 06, Raymond Chen rated it really liked it Oct 06, CJ rated it liked it Jan 02, Hermes rated it it was ok Jul 11, Knut EB rated it it was amazing Aug 01, Two millennia ago, the Art of Writing demonstrated how language could be used to mold popular opinion.

For instance, China's emperors commissioned literati to re write official dynastic histories to legitimate their rule. China's rulers could also be quite ruthless. Emperors from Qin Shihuang ruled circa 1 B. The reader of Chinese political materials is therefore challenged to listen to "the sound outside the strings" xianwai zhi yin , relying on a deep immersion in the historical and cultural context of Chinese politics today.

Identical events or words can have different meanings in different contexts. The reader must "listen to the sound of the gong" luo gu ting yin. Is it rejoicing a marriage , or mourning a death? Descriptions of China as "inferior" and "great," for example, cannot be read literally, but must be understood in their historical and political contexts. When tributary missions came to pay obeisance, imperial officials referred to China as "our inferior nation" biguo and the tributaries as "your superior nation" guiguo. They were so confident that China was the undisputed center of civilization wenming that they could afford the self-deprecation.

By contrast, Chinese diplomats under the People's Republic have routinely referred to China as "great" weida. These diametrically opposite choices of diction point to an insecurity-central to today's nationalism-about China's international status. Understanding the diplomatic tendency to say the opposite of what is meant helps one interpret China's relationships with other nations.

It was only after reading the phrase "Sino-Japanese friendship" literally hundreds of times in a Beijing library, for instance, that I came to realize that the phrase frequently conceals animosity. Authors irate about Japanese atrocities in China, Japanese "historical revisionism," or the "revival of Japanese militarism" nonetheless use the phrase in the conclusions of their articles and books. While it is possible to speak of feelings of both the love and hate that many Chinese have for America, it is decidedly not possible to speak about a genuine Chinese "friendship" for Japan.

A person who wants to do it well must also be sensitive to his or her own cultural standpoint: Being a white American male undoubtedly had a major influence on my research experience. As a Caucasian in China, I am seen as a " laowai ," which means "foreigner" or even "Whitey. The presence of an American presented an opportunity for many Chinese to vent their feelings-positive or negative-about the United States; Sino-American relations is not a subject an American in Beijing can easily avoid. And foreign men are the object of many Chinese nationalists' anxiety: In a China Quarterly he asserts, "Contrary to.

Gries' argument that the [Belgrade] embassy bombing marked a long term negative shift in popular Chinese perceptions of America, th[is] study demonstrates that the anger expressed during the anti-U. Zhao also criticizes my article as "not drawn from a representative sample"-despite the fact that I openly acknowledge in the piece that my sources are "not.

Instead, I take comfort in the fact that Alexander de Tocqueville, a Frenchman with an outsider's perspective, produced one of the most astute analyses of American politics ever written, Democracy in America. Where possible, I supplement my own readings of Chinese texts with Chinese analyses of the same texts.

Public diplomacy perspectives on the news

Numerous psychobiographies of the "fourth generation" of Chinese nationalists have been published. This secondary Chinese literature on Chinese nationalism provides an invaluable source of primary material, against which I have verified and developed my own views. Perhaps my greatest challenge, however, has been assessing how my Chinese sources relate to each other. Chinese, like Americans, project their fears and fantasies onto our bilateral relations. China has its own fair share of Kissingers and Tripletts-America lovers and America haters.

The challenge, therefore, is to figure out how the views of extreme nationalists are accepted by mainstream Chinese. Following the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the spy plane collision over the South China Sea, however, the propagators of anti-American views are now speaking to a much broader Chinese audience. Meanwhile in America, two summer reports painted a dark picture of China's international activities.

Congress, expressing concern that China's America policy is driven by a coherent set of expansionist goals.

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The report asserts, for instance, that "China is not a status quo country. Anti-American and anti-Chinese polemics are pernicious: Chinese and Americans who paint rosy pictures of the bilateral relationship are irresponsible; we should squarely confront the dangers inherent in a relationship devoid of mutual trust. But it is Chinese America bashers and American China bashers who are the most dangerous.

This book, therefore, seeks to present a balanced view of China's new nationalism—one that both acknowledges its legitimate grievances and recognizes its potential dangers. Eckholm, "China Faults the U. Thus, his primary audience may have been the Chinese public, not the U.

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I thank Allen Whiting for this insight. Lam, "Behind the Scenes. Derbyshire, "Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous. Pelosi's Web site is at http: Patten was persona non grata in Beijing until he returned as a European Union High Commissioner, when his colonial past was forgiven.

China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Philip E. Lilienthal Books)

Evelyn Iritani, "News Corp. That is not to say that sentiments directed against Britain, Russia, Korea, or other nations do not play a role in Chinese nationalism today. I choose anti-Japanese and anti-American views both because they are more prominent, and because they are more consequential: Random sampling of all cases of Chinese antiforeign in the mids, in any case, would create as many problems as it would resolve. On case selection biases, see, for example, Collier and Mahoney, "Insights and Pitfalls. For three fine accounts of the U. Note that this categorization of Chinese youth generations conflicts with the delineation of generations of political leadership.

To distance himself from Mao, leader of the "First Generation," Deng declared himself leader of the "Second Generation," despite the fact that they both participated in the Long March and the War of Resistance. See Li Cheng, China's Leaders. Song Qiang et al. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Chinese are my own.

Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Maurice Halbwachs, father of social memory studies, has similarly argued that "autobiographical memories" of events personally experienced tend to be richer and more meaningful than "historical memories. Xu Ben, "Contesting Memory.

See, for example, Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. John Fitzgerald, as we shall see in chapter 7, even suggests that twentieth-century China has undergone just the opposite process, with states vying to create nations. See John Fitzgerald, "Nationless State. Duara cites William Skinner's work on regional systems, which demonstrates the extensive commercial and social networks that linked villages in imperial China. He also cites his and James Watson's essays on popular gods during the Qing Dynasty.

Religious and kinship institutions, they argue, fostered a shared cosmology that linked the peasant to Beijing, creating a consciousness of a larger "China. Mike Szonyi, for example, has challenged Duara and James Watson's separate contentions that popular gods served to unify China more than they accentuated regional differences. See, for example, Metzger and Myers. See, for instance, Duara, "Nationalists among Transnationals.

Kedourie, Nationalism , p. I thus follow Henri Tajfel, who defined social identity as "that part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group. Five Roads to Modernity , p.

Nationalism

I owe the term "indirection" to a personal communication with Donald Munro, summer Proverbs, incidentally, are particularly useful at revealing deeply rooted, if not always realized, ideals that form the basis for Chinese perspectives and behavior. I thus agree with Allen Whiting's assessment in China Eyes Japan that negative images of Japan have thwarted China's interest in closer relations with its Asian neighbor.

Other foreigners can be "devils" too, but would require specification, as in "Western devils" Yang guizi or "American devils" Meiguo guizi. Left unspecified, "devils" is assumed to be short for "Japanese devils" Riben guizi. See In the Red , p. Zhang and other young male Chinese nationalists, furthermore, frequently generalize from such "anecdotes" to make racist remarks about all white males.

Zhao Dingxin, "An Angle on Nationalism," pp. Zhao's survey-research methodology takes replicability as its standard; my interpretive content-analysis approach takes validity as its standard. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. For one thing, Zhao has a representative sample of a tiny population students at three elite Beijing schools ; I have a nonrepresentative sample, but it is national in scope and is not limited to students.

Although our arguments are similar, I believe that my method positions me to make the argument more persuasively.

Utilizing a survey-research methodology, Zhao would need longitudinal data to make any claims about whether the outrage was "momentary" or not. But Zhao lacks such data, having performed surveys just once. My content-analysis approach, in contrast, allows me to interpret the language used by Chinese reacting to the bombing. Drawing on experimental findings in social psychology on collective self-esteem, I argue that by choosing to express an "outrage" or "indignation" fennu, fenkai, qifen tied to the notion of injustice, rather than more visceral forms of anger, like being "irritated" or "ticked off" for example, shengqi , they were seeking to right a wrong-not expressing an enduring, blind anger.

See de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. As the University of California at Davis's Michelle Yeh has cogently argued, "cultural nationalism cannot be an effective critique of Orientalism because it replicates and perpetuates the latter epistemologically. It also inverts it, by privileging mainland Chinese forms of knowledge as "experiential" or "intuitive.

The synchronic methods of literary criticism, French cultural historian Roger Chartier has suggested, can be combined with a diachronic examination of "interpretive communities" of contemporary agents and their evolving interactions with those same texts over time. See Chartier, "Texts, Printing, Readings," pp.

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