Chinese nationalism
Flame on

Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Rather than shout themselves hoarse, maybe foreign and Chinese prοtesters could try talking

Reuters

WHATEVER hopes there were that this August's Beijing Olympics would be a festival of fun and friendship with a bit of sport thrown in are fading fast. The event was intended to mark China's reintegration into the world, and re-emergence as a great power. Instead, preparations for the games have degenerated into some of the ugliest verbal confrontations for years between China and its critics. Passions and tempers are running high on both sides. On China's, even those suggesting something as innocuous as a dialogue are being pilloried as “traitors”. Foreign journalists have received death threats. Far from being a celebration of China's new openness, the Olympics risk vindicating those abroad who argued it was not a fit host and those at home who think a fearful, envious world will never give a resurgent China its due.

As in 1999, after NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, or in 2005, when anti-Japanese prοtests in China threatened to get out of hand, China's government finds itself in an awkward fix. It wants to rein in the popular anger before it descends into violence, or turns on the government itself. Yet its own policies and its control of information have stoked the anger in the first place.

That is not to deny that the angry Chinese nationalists who have deluged the internet with their splenetic outpourings and staged prοtests in China (see article) have a point. Coverage in the Western press of unrest in t¡bet has been rather one-sided. It has stressed the harsh Chinese crackdown on peaceful prοtests and tended to overlook the violence by t¡betans. For most Chinese observers, what happened was an outburst of vicious racist thuggery directed at ethnic Han Chinese in Lhasa, the t¡betan capital. And the authorities, incomprehensibly, tolerated it until 19 people had been killed.

Similarly, views of the prοtests attracted by the round-the-world tour on which China is taking the Olympic flame differ sharply. In the West most attention has been paid to the exploits of pro-Tibetan prοtesters, such as hanging banners high above the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, and the menacing behaviour of the Chinese torch guards. In China, the defining moment was when a prοtester in France tried to grab the flame from a female torchbearer in a wheelchair. How dare the outside world, runs the refrain of a legion of Chinese bloggers, lecture China about uncivilised behaviour?

Of course, the antics of unruly demonstrators in Paris cannot be used to condone or justify Chinese repression in t¡bet. Although it remains unclear exactly what happened in Lhasa, it is certain that Chinese police shot prοtesters in neighbouring Sichuan; that thousands of t¡betans have been detained; and that others are forced to undergo hated “patriotic re-education”, which many see as aimed at obliterating their own culture. t¡betans have real grievances, after decades of cultural discrimination and economic marginalisation.
All over bar the shouting

China's government cannot admit that. Nor, having blamed the da1a¡ 1ama, t¡bet's exiled spiritual leader, for the unrest, is it easy to open talks with him. So it has closed the obvious path to reconciliation with its t¡betan minority. Having lied to its people about t¡bet for so long, how could it explain to them a new, less hostile policy? It seems also to have convinced many of its people of the truth of two other egregious lies: that criticism of China's government is an attack on the Chinese people, and that dialogue is a sign of weakness. In fact, both foreign and Chinese prοtesters might learn something from each other. But it is hard to learn with one hand holding a megaphone and the other clenched into a fist.



Manage that anger

Apr 24th 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
The nationalist genie is out of the bottle

NOT for the first time, and probably not for the last, large numbers of Chinese citizens are awash in a potentially dangerous flood of patriotic indignation. The cause this time is what they see as grossly unfair criticism of China by foreign activists and governments, and biased coverage of China by foreign news outlets. In mid-March riots in t¡bet laid bare the vast differences in Chinese and foreign perceptions of China's human rights in general and its rule of t¡bet in particular.
Reuters No French fries for him

At first Chinese anger was largely confined to the internet, with fiery postings on blogs, message boards and purpose-built sites (eg, www.anti-cnn.com). But now the rage has begun to take to the streets. On April 19th crowds of prοtesters, estimated by the police at between 1,000 and 2,000, carried banners and chanted patriotic slogans in several Chinese cities. Small-scale prοtests took place even in Beijing, where hypersensitive security officials seldom tolerate such things. But whereas, on the internet, bullying, foul language and explicit threats of violence have been commonplace, the demonstrations have been peaceful and orderly.

The prοtesters have many targets. The CNN television channel stoked anger not only with its coverage of events in China, but also with some intemperate remarks made by a curmudgeonly in-house commentator, Jack Cafferty. He said that although America's relationship with China has changed a great deal, “they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.” Few in China were mollified when he later made it clear that he had meant China's government, not its people. And few seem to see any parallel with a recent commentary by Xinhua—a state-run news agency that serves, it is worth noting, as the mouthpiece for China's government—calling Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, “disgusting” and “detested”.

France has also come under fire. A relay around the world of the Olympic torch, en route to Beijing for the games in August, has had troubles at several stages. But its reception in Paris was particularly unruly. One torchbearer, Jin Jing, a wheelchair-bound Chinese fencer, was accosted by prοtesters trying to snatch the flame. And France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been among the most outspoken of foreign leaders about the possibility of boycotting the Olympics' opening ceremony. Moreover, Paris's city council is to award honorary citizenship to the da1a¡ 1ama, t¡bet's exiled spiritual leader. Mr Sarkozy opposed the decision, but Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, called the da1a¡ 1ama, reviled by China's government as a “splittist”, a “champion of peace”.

All this has made Carrefour, a French retail chain with more than 100 shops in China, a target for prοtests and boycott calls. Both Carrefour and the French government have tried to repair the damage. Carrefour has repeated its support for the Beijing Olympics and denied rumours that it has provided financial support to the da1a¡ 1ama. The French government has offered Ms Jin a formal apology for the abuse she suffered in Paris, and invited her back for a more enjoyable visit.

The display of outraged patriotism serves the interests of China's government in ways both obvious and subtle, at least up to a point. It naturally prefers to see people united behind government policies and cross at foreigners than to have them complaining about corruption, inequality, environmental degradation and the many other problems at home. And the government will be pleased if its people turn against foreign forms of democracy and freedom of expression that they have sometimes been tempted to argue it might consider adopting.

But things could easily go too far. One danger is that anger could shift away from foreigners who offend the nation's dignity, and toward the Chinese government for failing to do enough about it. This has happened before, as in the violent 1999 prοtests that erupted after NATO aircraft bombed China's embassy in Belgrade. Another danger is that too much anti-foreign sentiment will scuttle China's effort to play the gracious host in August, when hundreds of thousands of visitors will descend on Beijing for the Olympics.

By April 20th authorities had begun the delicate work of trying to rein things in without offending the nation's more hot-blooded nationalists. Permits for further demonstrations were reportedly being denied and websites purged of their more rabid content. A front-page editorial that day in the Communist Party's People's Daily urged people to “cherish patriotism while expressing it in a rational way”. “The more complicated the international situation is,” argued the paper, “the more calm, wisdom, and unity need to be shown by the Chinese people.”

Mixed in with all the nationalist bluster have been a few voices of moderation. But a bit of calm and wisdom could go a long way, as could a more nuanced understanding among Chinese nationalists of the outside world that so frequently angers them. Chinese prοtesters who were so incensed by Mr Cafferty's comment might, for example, be surprised at some of the venom he's poured on America's own leaders. And they might be even more surprised at just how little anybody cares.

Nationalism in China
Author: Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

Introduction
With China hosting its first-ever Olympics, the country has seen a surge in national pride. But Chinese are angry at what they see as the West trying to spoil their party. In March, anti-government prοtests in t¡bet followed by human rights’ demonstrations during the international leg of the Olympic torch relay sparked a sharp response from Chinese both at home and abroad. Their anger has taken the form of public demonstrations, newspaper editorials, online petitions, and other Internet activism. Olympic prοtests in Paris during the torch relay have drawn particular ire in China and have led to calls for a boycott of French goods. Flaring nationalism is not new. It has been set off in instances such as the accidental bombing of a Chinese embassy in 1999 during the Kosovo War and a 2001 incident in which a U.S. surveillance aircraft collided with a Chinese fighter jet off China’s coast. But experts say this time the public outrage appears to be more genuine, instigated by perceived unfair treatment by the West rather than stoked by the Communist Party. This change could pose challenges not only for the West coming to terms with a rising China, but also for China’s government trying to maintain peace and stability within its borders.

A Pillar of Legitimacy
China’s nationalism today is shaped by its pride in its history as well as its century of humiliation at the hands of the West and Japan. China expert Peter Hays Gries writes: (PDF) “Chinese nationalists today find pride in stories about the superiority of China’s ‘5000 years’ of ‘glorious civilization.’” This yearning for lost glory is accompanied by the story of victimization in the past, a narrative central to what being Chinese today means, says Gries. China perceives itself as a victim of Western imperialism that began with the First Opium War and the British acquisition of Hong Kong in 1842 and lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, during which it suffered humiliating losses of sovereignty.

“Chinese nationalism was actually partly a creation of Western imperialism,” says Minxin Pei, a senior associate in the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pei says the first surge of Chinese nationalism was seen in 1919 in what’s now widely referred to as the May 4th Movement when thousands of students demonstrated against the Treaty of Versailles’ transfer of Chinese territory to Japan. Some of these student leaders went on to form the Chinese Communist Party two years later in 1921. “The current Chinese communist government is more a product of nationalism than a product of ideology like Marxism and Communism,” says Liu Kang, a professor of Chinese cultural studies at Duke University. Kang says today nationalism has probably “become the most powerful legitimating ideology.”

“The current Chinese communist government is more a product of nationalism than a product of ideology like Marxism and Communism.” —Liu Kang, Duke University
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening up of the Chinese economy by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and the pro-democracy prοtests of 1989, nationalism was once again revived by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), say experts. Gries writes: “Lacking the procedural legitimacy accorded to democratically elected governments and facing the collapse of communist ideology, the CCP is increasingly dependent upon its nationalist credentials to rule.” As the International Herald Tribune noted in an April 2008 editorial, stripped of Maoism as its guiding light, the CCP frequently has fallen back on nationalism as societal glue.

Beyond the party’s control, the emergence of the Internet in the last two decades has given nationalists more power to vent their anger after particular incidents. It has also brought the huge Chinese diaspora in places like Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Europe, and North America, into closer contact with those residing within China’s borders, facilitating an easy flow of information. “It makes it much easier for the nationalistic rhetoric,” says Pei. He says the young, urban, and educated Chinese are more nationalistic and they are the ones using the Internet. “Compared to before, the Internet has democratized opinion but this democratization of opinion is not evenly distributed and the fringe elements tend to exploit this new opportunity far more actively than the mainstream,” Pei says.

Anti-West Sentiment
On May 8, 1999, a U.S. plane accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade mistaking it for a Serbian arms depot, killing three Chinese and injuring several others. prοtests erupted around China. The Chinese government called it a “gross encroachment upon China ’s sovereignty,” demanded an apology from the U.S. government, and asserted: “The great People’s Republic of China was not to be bullied.” Chinese nationalism was also active on the Internet at the time. In his book China’s New Nationalism, Gries writes: “deluged by e-mail from China, the White House Web site in Washington, D.C. was temporarily shut down” and “cyber-nationalists also hacked into the U.S. embassy’s website in Beijing, inserting ‘Down with the Barbarians!’ on the homepage.”

In April 2001, a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane, in what China says was a violation of its airspace, collided with a Chinese F-8 jet fighter, killing the Chinese pilot. Chinese authorities took the crew of the U.S. spy plane into custody after it made an emergency landing in China and said it would only be released after Washington issued a formal apology. The crew was eventually released after U.S. expressions of remorse over the loss of the pilot and aircraft. Experts say China's government stoked nationalism during the incident.

“I think that it is not only nationalism in China that gets more attention. It is almost everything in China that gets more attention.” —Kenneth G. Lieberthal, University of Michigan
These incidents are not seen as isolated incidents in the Chinese view. Experts say the Chinese see them as the latest in the long series of Western aggressions against China. Pei says the Chinese feel very strongly about issues such as sovereignty and integrity of their territory because “they still have the historical memory of Western imperialism.” And so the current prοtests in support of t¡bet in the West, the coverage of the issue in the Western media, and linking the Olympics to the t¡bet issue rouses anti-West sentiment in China.

On the t¡bet issue, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a professor at the University of Michigan, says the Western view is shaped by a notion of Shangri-La while the Chinese views are shaped by the assumption that t¡betans are backward, feudal, superstitious, and badly in need of modernization—Chinese style. “So I think they regard it as bizarre that the advanced industrial countries would humiliate them by boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Olympics over the t¡bet issue,” he says, “as America would find it if President Hu Jintao suddenly refused to visit the United States because of our history of treatment of Native Americans.” Lieberthal says the Chinese see these anti-Olympic prοtests as an indication that regardless of how much China strives to become a constructive player in the world, “many in the West will never accept that, [and] will seek to humiliate them.”

Conflict with Japan
Tensions between the two countries date to the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War, and more recently Japan’s abusive conduct during the 1931-1945 occupation of China. As this Backgrounder points out these animosities surface in recurring cycles, often involving Chinese anger over Japan’s perceived lack of contrition for wartime crimes. Instances of recent Chinese nationalism against Japan include outcries over the annual pilgrimages of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a Tokyo shrine that contains the remains of convicted war criminals from World War II and outrage over a 2005 Japanese history textbook that has been criticized as soft-pedaling Japanese wartime atrocities. The 2005 textbook incident led to riots against Japanese businesses in cities across China.

Edward Friedman, an expert on Chinese nationalism at the University of Wisconsin, says when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1977, “anti-Japan nationalism became a great legitimating glue to hold the society together, eventually ending up in the really ugly April 2005 anti-Japan racist riots in China.” But under the administration of Hu Jintao, China has sought better relations with Japan. Experts say outbreaks of virulent nationalism can become a problem for the Communist Party. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International writes, “in the past they have stoked anti-Japanese and anti-American outbursts, only to panic that things were getting out of control and then reverse course.”

Unwarranted Focus?
Lieberthal says since the 1989 T1annamun massacre, China is regularly blamed for abuses on a wide range of issues. “I think that it is not only nationalism in China that gets more attention. It is almost everything in China that gets more attention,” especially if they are negative. He says Chinese nationalism is a “natural outgrowth of (China’s) recent accomplishments and very unhappy narratives.”

From the Western perspective, Pei says fears regarding Chinese nationalism spring from the negative feelings toward the communist regime. “Somehow they believe the political system in China is not legitimate,” he says.

Lieberthal says nationalistic prοtests are a combination of genuine popular outrage and government manipulations to let that prοtest grow, which often helps the Chinese government’s bargaining position as that incident is negotiated with the offending party.

A Double-Edged Sword
Beijing’s top priority today is to maintain peace at home while pursuing its development goals and a greater role in global affairs. Experts say while nationalism may be an effective tool for the Chinese regime to maintain control at home, it can harm its claim of “peaceful rise” globally. Pei says nationalism is certainly an obstacle in China’s image as a responsible stakeholder. “A very nationalistic public makes foreigners very wary of China and harms China’s image,” he says.

Domestically, too, excessive nationalism poses problems for the authoritarian government. The government takes great care to suppress ethnic nationalism among its minorities such as t¡betans and Uighurs who are denied the right to establish separate states. Nationalism in Taiwan, too, is seen as a threat by Beijing, which hopes to unite with the island someday. The Chinese leaders also fear nationalism could turn against them in the form of criticism if they failed to deliver on their nationalistic promises. New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes: “All this makes nationalism a particularly interesting force in China, given its potential not just for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away.”

Angry China

May 1st 2008
From The Economist print edition
The recent glimpses of a snarling China should scare the country's government as much as the world

CHINA is in a frightening mood. The sight of thousands of Chinese people waving xenophobic fists suggests that a country on its way to becoming a superpower may turn out to be a more dangerous force than optimists had hoped. But it isn't just foreigners who should be worried by these scenes: the Chinese government, which has encouraged this outburst of nationalism, should also be afraid.

For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.

The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing prοtests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents (see article), it could easily turn on the government itself.
A million mutinies

The torch relay has galvanised prοtests about all manner of alleged Chinese crimes: in t¡bet, in China's broader human-rights record, in its cosy relations with repellent regimes. And these in turn have drawn counter-protests from thousands of expatriate Chinese, from Chinese within the country and on the internet.

Chinese rage has focused on the alleged “anti-China” bias of the Western press, which is accused of ignoring violence by t¡betans in the unrest in March. From this starting-point China's defenders have gone on to denounce the entire edifice of Western liberal democracy as a sham. Using its tenets to criticise China is, they claim, sheer hypocrisy. They cite further evidence of double standards: having exported its dirtiest industries to China, the West wants the country to curb its carbon emissions, potentially impeding its growth and depriving newly well-off Chinese of their right to a motor car. And as the presidential election campaign in America progresses, more China-bashing can be expected, with protectionism disguised as noble fury at “coddling dictators”.

China's rage is out of all proportion to the alleged offences. It reflects a fear that a resentful, threatened West is determined to thwart China's rise. The Olympics have become a symbol of China's right to the respect it is due. prοtests, criticism and boycott threats are seen as part of a broader refusal to accept and accommodate China.

There is no doubt genuine fury in China at these offences; yet the impression the response gives of a people united behind the government is an illusion. China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now. Legions of farmers are angry that their land has been swallowed up for building by greedy local officials. People everywhere are aghast at the poisoning of China's air, rivers and lakes in the race for growth. Hardworking, honest citizens chafe at corrupt officials who treat them with contempt and get rich quick. And the party still makes an ass of the law and a mockery of justice.

Herein lies the danger for the government. Popular anger, once roused, can easily switch targets. This weekend China will be commemorating an event seen as pivotal in its long revolution—the prοtests on May 4th 1919 against the humiliation of China by the Versailles treaty (which bequeathed German “concessions” in China to Japan). The Communist Party had roots in that movement. Now, as then, prοtests at perceived slights against China's dignity could turn against a government accused of not doing enough to safeguard it.
Remember the ides of May

Western businessmen and policymakers are pulled in opposite directions by Chinese anger. As the sponsors of the Olympics have learned to their cost, while consumer- and shareholder-activists in the West demand they take a stand against perceived Chinese abuses, in China itself firms' partners and customers are all too ready to take offence. Western policymakers also face a difficult balancing act. They need to recognise that China has come a long way very quickly, and offers its citizens new opportunities and even new freedoms, though these are still far short of what would constitute democracy. Yet that does not mean they should pander to China's pride. Western leaders have a duty to raise concerns about human rights, t¡bet and other “sensitive” subjects. They do not need to resign themselves to ineffectiveness: up to a point, pressure works: China has been modestly helpful over Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan. It has even agreed to reopen talks with the da1a¡ 1ama's representatives. This has happened because of, not despite, criticism from abroad.

Pessimists fear that if China faces too much such pressure, hardliners within the ruling elite will triumph over the “moderates” in charge now. But even if they did, it is hard to see how they could end the 30-year-old process of opening up and turn China in on itself. This unprecedented phenomenon, of the rapid integration into the world of its most populous country, seems irreversible. There are things that could be done to make it easier to manage—including reform of the architecture of the global institutions that reflect a 60-year-old world order. But the world and China have to learn to live with each other.

For China, that means learning to respect foreigners' rights to engage it even on its “internal affairs”. A more measured response to such criticism is necessary not only to China's great-power ambitions, but also to its internal stability; for while the government may distract Chinese people from their domestic discontents by breathing fire at foreigners, such anger, once roused, can run out of control. In the end, China's leaders will have to deal with those frustrations head-on, by tackling the pollution, the corruption and the human-rights abuses that contribute to the country's dangerous mood. The Chinese people will demand it.