China's Selective Identities. State, Ideology and Culture. (original) (raw)
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China's Global Identity--Introduction Chapter
China's Global Identity (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press), 2018
China is today regarded as a major player in world politics, with growing expectations for it to do more to address global challenges. Yet relatively little is known about how it sees itself as a great power and understands its obligations to the world. In China's Global Identity, Hoo Tiang Boon embarks on the first sustained study of China's great power identity. Focus is drawn to China's positioning of itself as a responsible power and the underestimated role played by the United States in shaping this face. In 1995 President Bill Clinton notably called for China to become a responsible great power, one that integrates itself into existing international institutions and becomes a leader in solving global problems. Chinese leaders were at that time already debating their future course and obligations to the world. Hoo examines this ongoing internal debate through Chinese sources and reveals the underestimated role that the United States has in this dialogue. Unraveling the big power politics, history, events, and ideas behind the emergence and evolution of China's great power identity, the book provides fresh insights into the real-world issues of how China might use its power as it grows.
China’s National Identity and the Root Causes of China’s Ethnic Tensions
East Asia, 2018
This paper seeks to examine the People’s Republic of China’s (China) self-defined national identity and the consequences on China’s ethnic relations with its ethnic minorities. This paper argues that China’s identity is equated with the identity and culture of its ethnic Han Chinese majority—a narrative originally constructed by the Chinese state which its ethnic Han Chinese majority since indulges in. However, this hegemonic narrative is at the root of interethnic issues and tensions in China today, as further ethnic tensions stem from the resistance of ethnic minorities against Sinicization and the imposition of this “Chinese” identity against them. These phenomena thus both indicate what I term a weak “internal soft power appeal” of Han Chinese Confucian culture for ethnic minorities living in the PRC, and imply that China must adopt a different, more inclusive national identity if it were to maintain ethnic stability in the long term.
Identity and Security in China: The Negative Soft Power of the China Dream
Joseph Nye concentrates on the positive attractive aspects of soft power as a foreign policy tool. This article will argue that the Chinese discussion of soft power is interesting because it does the opposite: soft power is negative rather than positive, and is employed as a tool in domestic policy more than in foreign affairs. It will use Chinese President Xi Jinping's new 'China Dream' discourse to explore China's 'negative soft power' strategy. Rather than take for granted that we understand what the 'Chinese values' are that inform the PRC's soft power, it argues that soft power discourse is a useful heuristic device for understanding how Chinese policy makers and public intellectuals are actively constructing a 'China' and a 'world' to promote regime legitimacy. The Chinese case thus suggests that we need a more complex view of power that considers the contingent dynamics of its hard/soft, positive/negative, foreign/domestic aspects.
Chinese Political Science Review
China’s image abroad is not anymore shaped by Party bureaucrats with no knowledge of foreign contexts and languages, nor by ideologically driven old-fashioned officials, but by an increasingly diverse network of multiple actors partnering with new players, adopting new channels of communication and continuously adjusting to local contexts, as well as proposing more and more sophisticated messages about China as a country and as an ancient civilization. This paper is aimed at assessing the activities that Chinese actors have been recently engaging in while presenting the country and spreading its cultural messages abroad, with a particular focus on the role and identity of the Chinese state [for a conceptualization of the identity of the Chinese State, see Brødsgaard (China Int J 16(3):1–17, 2018) and Heilmann (Das politische System der Volksrepublik China. Springer, Heidelberg, 2016; Red swan how unorthodox policy-making facilitated China’s rise. Chinese University Press, Hong Kong,...
Book Review: China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy
China Information, 2005
China's New Nationalism is a timely book. It addresses head-on what could be one of the most important determinants of the international order in the 21st century-the direction and intentions of modern China. Gries wastes no time in getting to the heart of the matter. In his introduction he asks bluntly what China is-"an evil dragon, or cute panda?" The two extremes frame views of China in the West. Conservative media, such as the Weekly Standard, refer to China as "violent and primitive … a regime of hair-curling, systematic barbarity." Meanwhile, many others, including Henry Kissinger, see China as a practitioner of realpolitik-interested only in integration with the world community, and imbued with only "the best of intentions" (p. 2). Gries maps out the polarity, noting that most in academia are firmly in the latter camp-"romanticizing" China's economic reforms and gradual liberalization, while shying away from China's continuing human rights violations. On the other end of the spectrum is a strange collection of politicians, celebrities, and journalists-like Nancy Pelosi, William Triplett, and Richard Gere-who have made "China-bashing" a kind of cottage industry, particularly in the United States. Gries notes that the only way to avoid both extremes is through careful analysis of the Chinese themselves, and particularly the voices of China's youth. He begins by linking modern Chinese nationalism to Confucianism, which according to some scholars reinforced notions of cultural superiority, even racism. Gries then turns to the fascinating question of language, diction, and imagery-which have long played roles in shaping China's relations with other countries. Here Gries details from personal experience the difficulty a white man has in studying Chinese nationalism. Derisively referred to as laowai-"whitey"-he is often regarded with suspicion. But beyond this is the problem of sifting through Chinese views of China and the world, which can be just as diverse and complicated as anything in the West. From this introductory discussion, Gries lays out eight chapters in a remarkably busy book. The first deals with Chinese reaction to the 1999 US bombing of Belgrade, in which Beijing's Embassy was damaged and three Chinese killed. Gries argues that the widespread, angry reactions by Chinese against the USA stemmed not just from the bombing, but rather a long line of perceived Western "aggressions" against China. This, coupled with the
IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
When facing the political, historical and cultural complexities of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, problematic issues arise in relation to understanding the sorts of national/cultural identities that might be projected by them. With regard to these three Chinese language cinemas, a traditional national cinema approach focussing predominantly upon nation-state as a source of meaning would provide only a limited understanding of the meanings generated. This article, however, draws on what Benedict Anderson (1991) put forward as the theory of 'Imagined Communities' which assumes a large body of people regard themselves as members of a 'nation' (and here we interpret this term broadly and beyond understandings of geographical borders and political systems) through a variety of historical legacies, cultural memories and acts of consumption. In this article we hold the assumption that there is a shared cultural meaning (namely 'Chineseness') that extends across the three Chinese language cinemas and consider cultural affinity as greater than national and political boundaries.