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National identity is the cognition of citizens regarding to which political community they belong, and the tendency to accept the political, cultural and ethnic values of the state. Previous studies have found that national identity is heterogeneous at the subnational levels. Why do people hold different degrees of nationalism and patriotism in the subnational units? In this paper, we offer a political economic explanation of national identity, which links the state capacity with political attitudes. We employ a nationalism-patriotism framework to decompose the concept of national identity, then use the supervised learning approach to measure nationalism and patriotism based on a massive number of Weibo posts dating from 2011 to 2017. Automated text analysis shows that the state capacity plays an important role preventing the national identity from being weakened by globalization and the diversity of social information. Specifically, with the progress of China's globalization, multiculturalism and various information have crossed the national boundaries, which undermines China's national identity. In order to maintain this identity, the Chinese government utilizes its redistribution capacity to reinforce both nationalism and patriotism, and also its information capacity to strengthen nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing a surge of nationalism throughout an ostensibly globalized world. In this article, we focus on the "narrative battle" over COVID-19 that has escalated between two competing major powers – China and the US. Guided by a cultural sociological approach, we reveal the meaning-making processes behind the narrative battle through in-depth, hermeneutical reconstruction of the "reactive performance" of each country, as articulated in political speeches and mass media. We point out that, in the Chinese narrative, the country emerges from a "century of humiliation," becoming a major world power that will no longer be subject to the "bullying" of the West. In the US narrative, even though Trump initially highlights the country's "very good" relationship with China, as the storyline unfolds, China is blamed for the global pandemic, assuming again the role of a dangerous actor on the world stage. Our research shows that the current reactive communicative mechanism is not only unsustainable, but also dangerous in times of crisis. We suggest that recognition of the narrative battle and acknowledgement of its performative function in the public sphere is the first step toward mutual understanding and meaningful dialogue between these two world powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on quotidian expressions of nationalism of Chinese netizens and analyzing their "Liking" behavior, this article tries to inductively explore during the COVID-19 pandemic what and how Chinese netizens say about nationalism. This article finds that during the pandemic, Chinese netizens show a confident and rational but confrontational and xenophobic posture in their quotidian discourses. They value reasoning and deliberation in their expressions of nationalist discourses. In the quotidian discourses, they maintain a confident tone when comparing China's performance with other countries during the pandemic, but show vigilance and even hostile sentiments toward external provocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia-China relations have been relatively stable over the last decade. However, soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, Australia took an increasingly assertive stance toward China, one that is arguably even more assertive than those of its Western allies. What prompted Australia to adopt a tougher policy against China? This article argues that COVID-19 has brought significant uncertainty to the international system and, hence, to Australia's external environment, which has affected the country's decision-making, accelerating the formation of a hardline policy toward China. A contributing factor behind this policy is Australia's quest for ontological security, which, in the context of COVID-19, has triggered a rise in anti-China sentiment. Meanwhile, this strategy backfired when it encountered China's own nationalism, which exacerbated the widening political chasm, dragging the two countries into an unprecedented diplomatic confrontation. The core of ontological security lies in maintaining the stability of the identity needed for the formation of consistent policy. The uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the familiar external environment and challenged Australia's ability to interpret this new environment and adjust to it, which has triggered ontological insecurity. By analyzing Australia's identity as a middle power in the context of changing regional security and its commitment to certain values, the article shows how COVID-19 has accelerated Australia's quest for ontological security, which has changed the country's China policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, 43 leading International Relations scholars in the United States signed a public statement in support of an urgent call to preserve the current international order, triggering heated scholarly debates. The idealized form of the liberal international order was criticized by many scholars for its chronic problems, including the contradictions between proclaimed liberal values and illiberal behaviors, the inability to reform its institutional pillars to accommodate the diverse group of emerging powers, and the tensions between the defenders of this order and its challengers. These problems became fully exposed under the external shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic. As the coronavirus spreads globally and disrupts the world's political, economic, and social fabric, several forces that have gained momentum and strength during the last decade are now converging as a formidable force that may reconfigure the post-pandemic international order. This paper addresses three significant challenges to the foundations of the current liberal order: (1) the entrenchment of authoritarianism, characterized by authoritarian resilience, autocratization, and the consolidation of competing authoritarian political-economic models; (2) the exacerbation of nationalism enabled by nationalist and populist politicians; and (3) the intensified competition among major powers. China has played mixed roles in the process of reconfiguring the current order. It challenges the mythologized liberal international order and exposes the contradictions in the dominant Western model, while promoting an alternative hybrid political-economic model. The shock brought by the pandemic has provided ample opportunities for China to extend its networks and expand international space for its model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employing discourse-historical approach and corpus linguistics, this paper examines media reports to analyze the Chinese official discourse in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results demonstrate that a paradox of globalism and nationalism has been simultaneously reflected when reporting the global pandemic. Based on a polarizing discursive construction of positive "self" and negative "others," on many occasions, the globalist and nationalist arguments have been closely intertwined and complement each other to reinforce the legitimacy of the ruling party at home and the international reputation of China under the leadership of the ruling party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of the China Model, China's sharp power has infringed upon the exercise of liberal democracy in other nations. A concern for governments of the Taiwan Strait and other democratic countries is whether visits to Mainland China alter the national identity of Taiwanese youth. This research conducted a panel study of 331 Taiwanese youths who had visited Mainland China. Social contact, rational choice, and political socialization theories were introduced to establish hypotheses; a questionnaire was employed to collect panel data, and statistical regression models were utilized to test the hypotheses. Following visits to Mainland China, the number of participants perceiving themselves as only Taiwanese decreased by 4.59%; those perceiving themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese increased by 3.98%, and those perceiving themselves as Chinese increased by 0.61%. According to the mean survey results, the average change to national identity was 0.05, indicating that visiting Mainland China slightly negatively influenced participants' Taiwanese identity. Following visits to Mainland China, participants' impression of China improved, their preference for an independent Taiwan reduced, they seemed less satisfied with Taiwan's democratic government, and their personal sense of being Taiwanese was reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnitude of China's energy needs and global energy acquisitions, and their recent emergence as key features of the international system, raise many sensitive questions: will China adapt to or reshape the international system as historically defined by the hegemonic West, and what is the role of its energy policy, politics, and resource nationalism in a possible new Great Game? While much of the current literature posits an either/or approach (China adapts to energy market or tries to redefine them as a part of a wider political plan), our hypothesis is that China is essentially a pragmatic actor who reacts to the forces in presence, rather than a revisionist power with a grand plan to realign the world order to suit its needs and satisfy some kind of pre-established grand vision. We posit that China goes beyond conformity with or resistance to the established energy market and the power relations they underpin: While local circumstances may be considered variables, its fixed objective is a stable international order and the pragmatic satisfaction of its energy needs in order to insure continued economic growth and general stability at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the theory of social construction of reality deriving from the writings of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during the process of socialization. Individuals make sense out of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become actor's stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political tension. This theory will be applied to understand the tensions in Tibet and along the Taiwan Strait. The paper further argues that Taiwan can hardly separate from mainland China in the future, while strong Tibetan consciousness continues to defy against powerful Chineseness, resulting in endless upheavals in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese writings on international relations increasingly invoke history. In the past Chinese and foreigners alike have seen China's foreign policies through the lens of history, but recent Chinese stress on the 'harmonious world' resulting from Confucianism has shifted the discussion. It serves as a guide to resurgent claims for leadership, a source of legitimation for why China deserves leadership, and a warning of how its leadership may be abused to the detriment of countries agreeing to regionalism or multilateralism. Claims to superiority raise tensions in Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere where hopes had existed for a shared view of history. They arouse controversy among advocates of socialist ideology who fear that Confucianism will eclipse communism. The increasingly hereditary elite of Party leaders continues to bridge the gap between these two types of memory, but they face an ideological challenge at home and a credibility challenge abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of Chinese political science was not a relatively neat and tidy event. It was profoundly impacted by two revolutions, war, civil war, and political turmoil throughout most of the 20th Century. In the first three decades of New China, political science suffered from both ideological rigidity and political suspicion. With the heralding of Reform and Opening-up, Chinese political science has experienced a renaissance, influenced as much by the concept of indigenization ( ben tu hua) as Western ideas. Much like its American counterpart, Chinese political science is now experiencing a healthy debate about the primacy of the discipline's contending intellectual influences and traditions, as well as its core functions and future direction. The on-going debate suggests that Chinese political science is developing, in the words of Deng Zhenglai, 'its own plurality of methodological approaches to the study of politics'. This article examines the rise and growth of contemporary Chinese political science, with particular emphasis devoted to the influence that a burgeoning political science with 'Chinese Characteristics' will have on the discipline both within and outside China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that at the root of the Taiwan question are the myriad differences in politics, ideology, identity, and economy between mainland China and Taiwan. Any prospect for its peaceful resolution, it seems, hinges on bridging those differences through economic and/or political integration. Although the Taiwan conundrum has much to do with wide-ranging cross-strait divergence, this article argues that it cannot be disconnected from one important commonality between Beijing and Taipei, namely, a cross-strait normative convergence on the Westphalian notion of state sovereignty. Encompassing an exclusionary understanding of final authority, territory, and identity, Westphalian sovereignty provides both Beijing and Taipei with a common meaning that Taiwan is an issue of sovereignty, central to their respective national identity and political survival and hence not subject to compromise. As a consequence, it argues that this common meaning is paradoxically responsible for much of the mistrust, tension, and deadlock in cross-strait relations. In order to find a long-term solution to the Taiwan impasse, we need to pay attention to this particular normative convergence as well as to the many differences across the Taiwan Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how and why China has been perceived as an economic threat in Taiwan through an examination of Taipei's post-Cold War economic policy with respect to the mainland. While Taipei's restriction on trade and investment across the Taiwan Strait until mid-2008 was widely considered a failure by both opponents and supporters of closer cross-Strait economic ties, this analysis points to an overlooked function of Taiwan's economic policy that was not just about tackling the problems of the security externalities or promoting the island's economic development. What appeared to be an ineffective policy can be understood as a successful boundary-drawing practice that discursively constituted a vulnerable Taiwan under Chinese economic threat, hence conducive to the (re)production of Taiwanese national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Sino-Japanese relations are quite stable presently, it was as recent as 2004–2005 that the two nations slid into the worst bilateral quagmire in decades. When in 2007 Japan was China’s third largest trading partner and China surpassed the US to become Japan’s largest trading partner, what is eating these two otherwise very pragmatic traders? History, nationalism and face, enabled by recent changes in the strategic environment, are the factors that have been most salient in bringing about the plunge in Sino-Japanese relations in 2004–05 and though Sino-Japanese relations have been much better since, these factors hang like a storm front over Sino-Japanese relations today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the Chinese intellectual response to the US War on Terror, and how the battle between the Chinese liberals and nonliberals fitted into the above debate, the article focuses on two cases, 9-11 and the war in Iraq. Each will be divided into the expressive response (i.e., how the intellectuals reacted physically); the ideological response (i.e., how they interpreted the incidents in ideologically); and the strategic response (i.e., how they proposed the right strategies for the party-state to manage global affairs). After studying the cases, we should discover how the Chinese intellectuals used nationalist rhetoric to disguise their real disagreements, i.e., their views on domestic politics as well as to advance their own national importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature has sought to address the question of Chinese nationalism, and particularly whether or not its rise over the last decade could make China more prone to international conflict. Yet these discussions have often not been well grounded in either theories of nationalism or international relations (IR) theory. This paper will seek to fill this gap by using a constructivist approach to examine how nationalism is constituted by the interaction of states. By doing so, it will be argued that Chinese nationalism can best be understood as a reactive response to international events rather than domestic political manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although territorial disputes have been much studied, the application of "two-level game" analysis in peace research and conflict resolution is still relatively unexplored. In this essay, I seek to use the analytical propositions derived from this "two-level game" bargaining framework to explain the success, failure, or partial resolution of sovereignty negotiations over China's island claims to the disputed islands of the Diaoyu/Senkaku, Amur/Ussuri rivers, and South China Sea. This essay will focus on the interaction between governments and domestic nationalist groups, the role of institutions, and the strategies of negotiators to explain the development of the territorial disputes. I will evaluate how different political and social preferences, historical memories, economic priorities, side payments, and institutional constraints affect inter-state bargaining behavior and relations between the government and different segments of society. Basically, I am interested in finding out what significant roles national, sub-national and transnational actors can and do play in aggravating, minimizing, terminating or preventing conflicts over island claims involving China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current state of China-Japan relations is characterized by two seemingly contradictory developments adjacent to each other: while economic and cultural relations have experienced an unprecedented and continuous improvement since the 1980s, Chinese and Japanese public perceptions of each other have been deteriorating. This raises interesting questions. How do we explain this discrepancy and what are the sources of the increasing public animosity in China or Japan toward the other country? Can China and Japan maintain amicable relations and continue economic cooperation in spite of the enduring mistrust between their peoples? What is the role of public perception and memory of history in the foreign policies of East Asia? This paper addresses these questions, focusing especially on the last one — the role of history and collective historical memory in international relations and the interaction between public sentiment and government foreign policies. Through a detailed study of recent events and the issue of Japanese textbooks, the author argues that public perception of history can and should be guided toward more positive directions. Otherwise, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain amicable relations between the two countries, especially when new nationalism is on the rise in both counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reexamines American policy toward China, Taiwan, and their ambivalent bilateral relationship, focusing on the period since Washington's shift from strong (but not unconditional) support of Nationalist China to the role of balancer in the early 1970s, particularly on the most recent period under George W. Bush. We analyze the relationship from a strategic triangular perspective. The China-Taiwan-US relationship is triangular in the sense that each actor's relations with the other two depend on its relations with the third. It is strategic in its focus on security. The United States has been the consistent "pivot" of this triangle, having better relations with both "wings" than they have with each other. Washington has retained this structurally advantageous position partly because of its disproportionate strategic weight, and partly because of the inherent difficulties Taipei and Being have had forging a cooperative bilateral relationship. This structure has been quite stable since the Cold War, as Washington has periodically shifted its balance from one wing to the other without altering the triangle's basic configuration. Yet so long as the configuration is maintained, the basic problem on which the triangle is based - the contested independence of Taiwan - cannot be resolved. This creates a sense of national identity frustration that will continue to generate attempts at resolution, either by Taiwan's declaration of independence or China's forced reunification (or both). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]