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English is often ideologically constructed as a global language to facilitate intercultural communication between people of diverse cultural backgrounds. However, it still remains unknown to what extent English learning can enhance English learners' awareness of global diversity. Given the dominant population of English learners in China, it is of great significance to investigate how English learning might facilitate Chinese learners' global vision and cultivate their intercultural competence. Seeing language textbooks as a key site of cultural and linguistic representation, this study scrutinizes the hidden ideologies discursively constructed in an English Intercultural Communication (EIC) textbook targeting Chinese English learners. Data are collected from dialogues, case studies, reading passages, cultural notes, exercises in the textbook. Informed by concepts of orientalism and banal nationalism, the study reveals that the distribution of characters is nation-based, essentialized, and even stigmatized. There is an inconsistency between the discursive construction of English as a global language and the actual representation of USA/UK-centered ideology. Chinese and other non-English learners are linguistically and culturally subjected to orientalist interpretation. The internal orientalist representation of Chinese speakers is also reproduced within the diverse backgrounds of Chinese population. Based on the findings, we argue that the simplified, unbalanced and unequal representations of cultural elements may hinder English learners' awareness of cultural diversity. The study suggests that a more diversified representation of cultural practices should be adopted in EIC textbooks to cultivate the global citizenship through English language education.

Doctoral education is often lauded as a site of academic socialization and research training for nascent scholars. However, discussions of socialization seldom problematize the dangers of intellectual imperialism and methodological nationalism inherent in doctoral researcher socialization. As such, the traditional socialization practices for doctoral students in the United States (U.S.) must be interrogated and expanded to move towards equitable practices for research, especially for students conducting international research. Using social and spatial positioning as our conceptual framing, we problematize and question current approaches and practices to doctoral researcher training in the U.S. We use the academic hood, which is granted upon successful completion of doctoral studies, as a metaphor to reconsider how to reflect upon and navigate power dynamics and knowledge production within the U.S. academy.

This article examines how politics has shaped Hong Kong's education system and the curriculum 23 years after the British handover of Hong Kong to China. Particularly, through the concept of nationalism, the article examines how the education system is being shaped. The article is intended to provide international readers with a perspective of the political and socio-educational dynamics at play in Hong Kong. The central question at issue is: how has political culture and identity been promoted in school education under the framework of "One Country, Two Systems" after the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from Britain to China? Two areas--the censorship of curriculum materials and the politicization of nationalism-- particularly reflect the influence of power relationships, and the historical and societal pressures on the formation of students' identity in school education.

Efforts have been made among scholars from Japan, South Korea, and China since the 1980s--on both private and state initiatives--to narrow the gaps in their historiographies and to cultivate mutual understanding. This article offers an extensive discussion of the author's history project, "A Student Project of Writing a Common History Textbook," which which was incorporated in a multinational class environment in the Spring 2019 semester. First the author explains the development of the conceptual framework and the organization and management of the class. Then, some of the history teaching materials that the students created is introduced. Finally, the author examines what the students actually learned from this exercise and working with their group members, based on their journals and answers to the project survey. The author would argue that this was a success in promoting mutual understanding among students by having them learn history together from various points of view, as the goal was not a complete reconciliation of their historical viewpoints. Young people from different countries, even those from the countries embroiled in politico-historical controversies, are able to learn from one another to create more complex historical narratives that look beyond competing nationalisms. The results of the course confirm the value of teaching history from a global standpoint and hold promise that if adopted widely, it might have a long-term and larger, positive effect on society and even on international relations by producing globally competent future generations.

China is a multi-ethnic nation. However, formal education often neglects differences in ethnicity, and school music education tends to marginalize the musics of ethnic minorities, owing to the government's political ideology of maintaining national unity. Thus, ethnic musics incorporated in teaching materials are often politicized and tokenized, and pedagogies used for teaching ethnic musics in classroom teaching tend to be oversimplified. Addressing social justice in music education is centrally concerned with equity, which I suggest can be promoted by positive changes, including institutional changes, education for music teachers that incorporates learning ethnic musics and pedagogies appropriate to teaching these musics.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is (1) to provide a critical analysis of the Finnish experience of education reforms based on published Chinese research on Finnish education and (2) to discuss how such experience can serve as a model as China embarks on its own path toward educational reform. Design/Approach/Methods: This article is based on an analysis of the research on Finnish education contained in the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database from 2000 to 2017. Findings: The analysis shows that although the various aspects of Finnish education have been extensively studied in China, the content of prior studies has generally been similar and is insufficiently in depth. In particular, current research (1) lacks effective exploration of the successful experience of Finnish education reform and (2) devotes insufficient attention to the social culture perspective and core concepts that serve as the basis of education in Finland. Originality/Value: This article extends the authors' recent review of Chinese research on Finnish education and places special emphasis on the discussions regarding how China can learn from Finland's experience with educational reform. It also identifies gaps in the current research in the field and calls for a change in the future research agenda from examining the successful elements of Finnish education to focusing on how the experience of Finnish education is relevant to reforms in China.

In this memoir, I accounted several episodes of my childhood of a middle class family in early 1990s in a Chinese urban city. Two major discourses permeated my account: the nationalism and socialism discourse and the upward social mobility discourse. While my family and I cherish the comfort and joy of everyday life enjoyed in the era of "socialism with Chinese characteristics," the suffering past is like a ghost, peeking out behind the curtain.

This paper attempts to compare interactions between social changes and the integration of nationalism and multiculturalism in the context of music education by focusing on the ways in which the governmental politics of mainland China and the United States have managed nationalism and diversity in school music education. This paper also explores the ways in which music education, in response to different sociopolitical contexts, relates to the teaching of both musical and non-musical meanings in the dual context of nationalism and multiculturalism, and discusses some of the challenges facing music education in music classrooms today in these two nations. This paper argues that the interplay of tensions in the current wave of nationalism and multiculturalism seen in both mainland China and the United States show the enduring nature of state ideologies in a dynamic, contentious process of social construction.

Drawing on a recent collaborative and interdisciplinary study of East Asian Images of Japan, this article discusses contemporary Chinese portrayals of Japan, their political context, and their significance for Sino-Japanese relations. It questions some widely-held assumptions concerning the extent of "thought control" in an authoritarian state, the nature of popular protest, and the relationship between official propaganda and popular lived experience. While the main focus is on portrayals of Japan in mainland China, for comparative purposes some reference is made to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The latter part of the article also features a brief discussion of images of China in Japan, especially relating to the Second World War. This reflects particularly on the role of museums as vehicles for "peace education," focusing on two key institutions in Kyushu. China's "bases for patriotic education" and Japan's "peace museums" ostensibly embody radically different institutional missions. However while Japan's memorials to the war evince greater diversity, in harping on national victimhood and obscuring the reasons for war key sites of "peace education" arguably deliver a message that is just as nationalistic as that conveyed by their Chinese counterparts. The article concludes by arguing that, notwithstanding its "totalitarian" facade, China's social and political fragility in fact limits the scope for the authorities there to moderate anti-Japanese public discourse. In democratic Japan, by contrast, a more honest and open engagement with the national past is--or should be--far more achievable. For both moral and political reasons, scholars and educationalists in Japan therefore urgently need to consider their role in improving Sino-Japanese relations, not least through more forceful engagement in public debate over the socialization of the young.

Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese textbooks tend to present the Second World War in chronological order with a passive voice and avoid discussing why the war occurred and how it ended. The examined Chinese textbooks develop narratives in chronological order as well, but thematic units are structured to highlight the coalition of Mao's Communist Party and Chang Kai-Shek's Nationalists as the decisive factor in the victory against Japanese imperialists contributing to the worldwide fight against fascism. The examined Korean textbooks tend toward a single, patriotic perspective of a people that overcame Japanese colonialism and developed as an independent nation, often ignoring issues that complicated the relationship between the two nations.

In the current stage of China's modernization construction and social transformation, the cultivation of sound civic consciousness in the context of the servant consciousness lasting for thousands of years is the premise to cultivate citizens with civic rights and responsibilities, the foundation to achieve the modernization of individuals or the all-round development of individuals and the key to realize social modernization in this country. Through an empirical research we could see that a kind of modern civic consciousness in Chinese citizens' mind is taking shape, but the influence of the servant consciousness is still obdurately existing, so on the whole, Chinese civic consciousness is relatively insufficient. And the current situation, the system of contents and methodology to cultivate the sound civic consciousness should be taken seriously.

Background: Prior to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the civic education were characterized by denationalization and depoliticization. After the Joint Declaration, many of the conflicts emerged between the national interests advocated by the nationalistic camp and the Hong Kong interests promoted by the Liberal camp in the newly politicized Hong Kong not only unfolded that citizenship and national identity conceptually compartmentalized into unrelated ideas but also redefined civic education in such a way as to juxtapose and include both citizenship education and national education. The teachers' paradigms of the "China Today" module were explored because the module is directly related to both citizenship education and national education. Aim: This study is to examine teachers' paradigms of the "China Today" module through their national attitude and their implementation in informal and nonformal education. Sample: One secondary teacher taught the module of "China Today" a year ago and three secondary teachers are teaching the same module. As for methods, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to assess the teachers' perception and practices. Results: Data revealed that the national attitude of the CSS1 teacher can be described as a cultural patriot; the CSS2 teacher, critical patriot; the CSS3 teacher, cultural nationalist or cultural patriot; the CSS4, critically cultural patriot. Conclusion: The critical and cultural stances are not unrelated. "Critical" implies something about the evaluative framework of the teachers, while "cultural" understood in Confucian, World citizenship, Democracy or their combination terms, could be the philosophical foundation of an evaluative framework. In other words, the CSS1 teacher predominantly adopted the Confucianism as his evaluative framework in patriotism and world citizenship in nationalism; the CSS2 teacher, the concept of world citizenship in both patriotism and nationalism; the CSS3 teacher and the CSS4 teacher, Confucianism in both patriotism and nationalism. Only the CSS2 and CSS3 teachers carried out the informal and nonformal education. Thus, motivational and behavioral components of citizenship as volition are not yet part of the CSS1 and CSS4 teachers' (cognitive) evaluative frameworks. (Contains 7 tables.)

The purpose of this paper is to review ethnic diversity, national unity and multicultural education in China with graduate students in a multicultural education course and pose some questions for discussion. China is a rapidly developing multiethnic country facing several challenges, including pollution, growing income inequality and low political participation of ordinary citizens. These can threaten social stability. In addition, China must address ethnic conflict, particularly in urban, autonomous and border regions. The Chinese government is advocating national unity education in the school and college curriculum to help address these some of these issues. Multicultural education could provide a framework for addressing social, economic, political and educational inequalities in China. Excerpts from different sources provide information on relevant issues. The instructor could distribute this material to students to read before the lesson, and/or, use his/her own material. Teachers in China and other countries should: (1) avoid teaching a hidden curriculum; (2) understand the characteristics of a culturally assaultive classroom; (3) learn how to prepare a multicultural curriculum; (4) set objectives while using a multicultural education model; (5) involve parents in the education of children; and (6) work on changing their attitudes. Some ideas for teaching multi-culturally are listed in seven Tables. (Contains 7 tables.)

The nationalities universities and colleges set up the crisis pre-warning management system, not only related to the management of our nationalities universities and colleges and their growth, but also related to the country's national unity plan in some way. However, because of minority students in the particularity of the national cultural beliefs, the ethnic and religious values, sense of national identity and national belonging sense, the system of ethnic universities is different from the regular universities. Thus, we should pay attention to particularities in every aspect of the system, and go to establish the crisis warning management system which is consistent with the characteristics of the ethnic universities.

In her book on the national cosmology of Hutu refugees in Tanzania, "Purity and Exile," Liisa Malkki argues that in the modern age of nation-states, culture and identity are conceived in fundamentally territorial terms. Thus, being "out of place" disrupts and threatens national identity which attempts to appear pure, whole and natural. The "[v]iolated, broken roots" of displacement "signal an ailing cultural identity and a damaged national identity". This theory of diaspora, of communities outside of their "original" place, the place they call their homeland, is the fundamental basis upon which this study rests. This paper examines the way one diasporic community negotiates the local boundaries of its host country and community, and constructs and expresses a national identity and national cause outside of the territory that defines it. Like the refugees of mass violence in Malkki's study, the community presented here, Tibetan refugees in Nepal, also defines itself in light of a specific history of violence and subjugation. The force of the violence experienced by individuals, and collectively experienced by members of the community produced profound trauma and a particular way of constructing their identity as a group whose cultural and physical survival is at risk, threatened from the outside. The purpose of this paper is to examine the local conditions of Tibetan refugee life in Nepal, and discover how this community constructs its identity as Tibetan. The author's research finds that they seek resources outside of their host nation, from an international network of Western supporters, and eventually define themselves globally. However, the certainty of belonging for exiled Tibetans is ultimately challenged. While the Tibetans embraced the Western aid workers and sponsors as "second parents," ultimately, intermarriage with westerners, for example, was feared and seen as challenging the natural order of national identity. (Contains a bibliography.)

The concept of "resilience" originated in both ecology and psychology, and refers to the propensity of a system or entity to "bounce back" from a disturbance. Recently, the concept has found increasing application within linguistics, particularly the study of endangered languages. In this context, resilience is used to describe one aspect of long-term, cyclical changes in language vitality. Proponents of "resilience linguistics" argue that understanding long-term patterns of language vitality can be of use in fostering resilience in, and therefore maintenance of, endangered languages. This article takes a critical look at these proposals, based on the examination of long-term trends in the Monguor and Saami languages.

This paper examines the ways in which the ethnic minority group the Tujia in Enshi, China, engages with heritage tourism, as a complex project of designing authenticity. Authenticity is taken as part of the chronotopic phenomena of identity making: the complex interplay of multiple, nonrandom timespace frames of discourses and semiotic performances which condition and offer new potentials to the meanings of authenticity. We show ethnographically the chronotopic nature of the local production of "authentic" heritage for tourism in Enshi. This leads to a historical grounding of the Tujia in China's nation-building and state politics of multiculturalism, which uncovers the anxiety of inauthenticity experienced by the Tujia in Enshi with their own minority status and cultural heritage, as well as their strategic chronotopic incorporation of both "authentic" and "inauthentic" aspects of local identity practices into a new order of authenticity afforded by heritage tourism as a form of new economy. Through such practices, we argue, the Tujia in Enshi chronotopically shift away from the periphery towards a new and reconfigured center of meaning-making, although this reappropriation of authenticity still must be understood within the "cunning of recognition" scheme, i.e. within the constraints of late modernity.

Textbooks in foreign-language education are by their nature ideological, representing the dominant culture and values. This study attempts to critically examine the discourse in language textbooks, specifically those used for Chinese as a foreign-language education in Mainland China, in order to reveal the national identity embedded in them. Drawing on a corpus-based analysis, this study found the frequency of referring to "nation" in relation to China far exceeded that of other countries, indicating that aspects of Chinese national identity may be emphasized and foregrounded. Furthermore, content analysis revealed five major aspects of national identity in the textbook, forming part of the social and cultural knowledge that only native speakers could be expected to have. The study finds that current Chinese as a foreign language textbooks contain a large part of the learning content involves topics pertaining to Chinese moral and civic education, which may not be of the interests for international language learners. The study ends by suggesting offering open discourse to enable a higher level of classroom participation of international learners, and to develop an intercultural understanding of cultural content in the curriculum.

The paper reviews Asia-Pacific higher education and university research, focusing principally on the "Confucian" education nations Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong China, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam. Except for Vietnam, these systems exhibit a special developmental dynamism--still playing out everywhere except Japan--and have created a distinctive model of higher education more effective in some respects than systems in North America, the English-speaking world and Europe where the modern university was incubated. The Confucian Model rests on four interdependent elements: (1) strong nation-state shaping of structures, funding and priorities; (2) a tendency to universal tertiary participation, partly financed by growing levels of household funding of tuition, sustained by a private duty, grounded in Confucian values, to invest in education; (3) "one chance" national examinations that mediate social competition and university hierarchy and focus family commitments to education; (4) accelerated public investment in research and "world-class" universities. The Model has downsides for social equity in participation, and in the potential for state interference in executive autonomy and academic creativity. But together with economic growth amid low tax regimes, the Confucian Model enables these systems to move forward rapidly and simultaneously in relation to each and all of mass tertiary participation, university quality, and research quantity and quality.

In recent decades, educational and curricular reforms worldwide have been designed with the goal of preparing citizens for the challenges of globalization. Globalization has been thought to require the broadening of children's occupational perspectives beyond conventional geopolitical borders and cultures. And this requirement has led to doubts about the importance of borders and nation-states and to calls for a multileveled citizenship polity. This article discusses citizenship education in detail. Sections include: (1) Globalization, Nation-State, and Citizenship Education; (2) Broadening the Global Component of Citizenship Education; (3) From Delocalization to Localization in Citizenship Education; (4) Localism in the Hong Kong Curriculum in the 1990s; (5) "Nativist" Education in Taiwan in the 1990s; (6) Redefining the National Dimension of Citizenship Education; (6) Chinese Identity Tendencies in Taiwanese Education; and (7) The Tension of Global and Local Identity in a Multileveled Community.

Last June the author, a teacher of political theory at Tsinghua University, was asked by a Canadian television crew to get hold of some students for a special on modern China. During the discussion, the author observed that his Chinese students express a thoughtful and informed nationalism, and a distrust of Western-style democracy. Some of the students become "nationalistic" in the sense of being committed to learning more about Chinese culture and philosophy: They really confront the need to think about their roots only when they clash with another culture. That is not to say that students entirely reject Western influence; many still hope to go abroad and learn about the West. Today Chinese students commonly believe that any stable and legitimate political arrangement needs to be founded, at least partly, on political ideals from their own tradition.

Research on public opinion and foreign policy in China has focused on nationalism as the driver behind public support for the use of force. However, nationalism is just one of many potentially significant factors that can increase support for military deployments. In this article we build a mediation model to test the relative effects of psychological predispositions, foreign policy attitudes, perceptions of the opposing state and calculations about the likely outcome of the conflict on support for China sending naval forces to the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. We find that dislike of the Japanese government and a belief that China would be victorious in a conflict with Japan are both powerful predictors of support for the use of force. Nationalism and militarism directly increase support but also indirectly increase it via different pathways. Nationalists are more confident in a Chinese victory while militarists have a stronger dislike of the Japanese government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are growing concerns about the role of identity narratives in spreading misinformation on social media, which threatens informed citizenship. Drawing on the social identity model of deindividualization effects (SIDE) and social identity theory, we investigate how the use of national identity language is associated with the diffusion and discourse of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Our results reveal a pattern of identity communication contagion in public conversations about conspiracies: national identity language usage in original posts is associated with more frequent use of such language in all subsequent conversations. Users who engaged in discussions about COVID-19 conspiracies used more national identity expressions in everyday social media conversations. By extending the SIDE model and social identity theory to misinformation studies, our article offers theoretical and empirical insight into how identity–contagious communication might exacerbate public engagement with misinformation on social media in non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the evolution of Vietnam–China relations in the post-Cold War to identify the factors that shapes its dynamics. It finds that the bilateral relations have been significantly changed overtime, from strategic antagonism to ideology-shared partnership and subsequently from economic sistership to security rivalry. The two countries' worldviews have gradually diverged. Given geographical nearness is a constant, such a course is driven by the interactions of four factours, including shifts in security environment, internal factional politics, economic calculations, and rising nationalism. At different points of time, some factor rises dominantly and these others matter less. However, it is observed that since the normalization in 1991 shared ideology figured less and less significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on cyber politics in China have highlighted the antagonistic relationship between the state and society, either emphasizing on how the state controls online opinions or how the Internet politically empowers individuals. Recent studies went further to reveal the possibility of collaboration between the state and certain online groups. Following the new line of research, this paper presents a case study of the "Little Pinks" and argues that the heterogeneous cyberspace could spontaneously generate netizen groups that may well align and cooperate with the authoritarian regime. The Little Pinks is a group of influential young Chinese netizens who are nationalistic-oriented and readily defend their government online. Although Chinese authorities have attempted to guide and mobilize them, they are at most allies, but never a subsidiary of the government. They have demonstrated astonishing organizational capability in collective actions, which is derived from the vibrant fandom culture in the Chinese cyberspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disgust is one of the basic emotions and is part of the behavioral immune system, which evolutionarily protects humans from toxic substances as well as from contamination threats by outgroup members. Previous works reveal that disgust not only activates humans' defense against potential individual and collective threats, but also leads to severe moral judgments, negative intergroup attitudes, and even conservative political orientations. As is already known, nationalism is an ideology that features both negative feelings toward outgroups and beliefs about native superiority or privileges. Evidence from previous studies suggests that disgust is related to nationalism's several components but lacks direct research on nationalism and disgust. The current study examines the relationship between disgust and nationalism in China at both individual and regional levels. In study 1, participants temporally induced disgust (vs. control) increasing the adoption of nationalism. In Study 2, we analyzed covariation in disgust expression in the Chinese micro-blog Weibo and the nationalism index as part of an online large-scale political survey http://zuobiao.me/ at the province level across Mainland China. The results show that online expression of disgust positively predicts nationalistic orientation at the regional level. Finally, we discuss how the findings shed light on research concerning online emotion expression and potential future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study critically examines two Chinese newspapers' representation of China as a "nation" and "culture." Prior studies have deeply and broadly explored various ways through which China, Chinese culture, and nationalism were constructed in popular media forums. What has been missing is a continued exploration of these constructions offered by the Chinese media sources that are published outside the dominant Chinese cultural, national, and political contexts. Using World Journal and Sing Tao Daily, two major Chinese immigrant newspapers, as the texts for analysis, this study produces important findings that demonstrate how China is constructed as a contested, multi-layered, powerful, and divided culture and nation. Based on the study's result, future inquiries can continue to analyze the representation of China across multiple media and linguistic platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at the sources of anti-Japanese sentiment in today's China. Using original survey data collected in June 2014 from 1,458 students at three elite universities in Beijing, we quantitatively investigate which factors are associated with stronger anti-Japanese sentiment among elite university students. In particular, we examine the link between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s nationalist propaganda (especially patriotic education) and university students' anti-Japanese sentiment. We find that nationalist propaganda does indeed have a significant effect on negative sentiment towards Japan. Reliance on state-sanctioned textbooks for information about Japan, visiting museums and memorials or watching television programmes and movies relating to the War of Resistance against Japan are all associated with higher levels of anti-Japanese sentiment. The findings suggest the effectiveness of nationalist propaganda in promoting anti-Japanese sentiment. We also find that alternative sources of information, especially personal contact with Japan, can mitigate anti-Japanese sentiment. Thus, visiting Japan and knowing Japanese people in person can potentially offset some of the influences of nationalist propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critique of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) pragmatic retrieval of traditional precepts, arguing for a fuller re-embrace of the traditional Chinese mores as a way to resolve the crisis afflicting China today. It begins by addressing Beijing's current sweeping offensive against a corrupt officialdom, contending that in order to restore moral rectitude China needs to transcend the prevailing secular temperament and reabsorb the ancient sacred ethos anchored on Tien. The next criticism is Beijing's stoking of ethnic and cultural pride to coalesce a fragmented country. If committed to a harmonious world a unified China ought to be founded on Confucian universalism in lieu of the prevalent ethnocentric nationalism. Finally, for a comprehensive response to a looming ecological disaster, the case is made for China to undertake a fundamental realignment in worldview, from the present anthropocentric to the ancient anthropocosmic view of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is debate in the literature regarding whether China can become a new world hegemonic power in the 21st century. Most existing analyses focus on economic aspects of world hegemony-building processes and ignore its macro-political dimensions. This article starts with the premise that reshaping the geopolitical configuration of the inter-state system is an important part of world hegemony-building processes. One of the ways in which previous and current world hegemonic powers established their world hegemonies was through the inclusion of new nations by co-opting, supporting or sometimes selectively leading a section of nationalist movements into independence. Our comparative analysis shows that, as of now, contemporary China has not been following this historical pattern. Compared to Mao-era China, which was perceived as a champion of national liberation--at least when colonial and semi-colonial areas were at stake--today's People's Republic of China (PRC) is emerging as a champion of the global geo-political status quo. The current Chinese government is not actively pursuing the transformation of the inter-state system or seeking to create instabilities at different levels. This is because, unlike previous and current world hegemonic powers, during its rise to global preeminence, Chinese territorial integrity has been challenged due to rapid escalation of nationalist/secessionist movements within its own state boundaries. Hence, the PRC's foreign policy has consistently been concerned with creating and preserving macro-political stability at national and international levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work argues that writer Emmanuel John Hevi's works, written half a century ago about China's likely influence in Africa are still relevant today. Using relevant qualitative data and a constructivist analysis this paper argues that although Hevi was wary of China's influence because of the specific context in which he was writing, Africa would do well to keep his argument in mind and adopt from China only that which can aid the continent's development and spurn that which cannot. Constructivism has been used here to help explain the intersection of Chinese and African identities and interests as the main unifying factor in a growing China-Africa relationship. Hence, it is suggested that the West does not share such depth of identities and interests with China which has hugely influenced Western suspicions of China's growth and incursions in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst political tensions between China and Japan, and against the backdrop of the patriotic education campaign in China that promotes a negative image of Japan as the victimiser, Chinese students in Japanese educational institutions study and work in Japan in a highly politicised context. In general, how they chose to interpret their experiences in Japan, and their views on history and controversial political issues involving China and Japan, demonstrates two levels of cosmopolitanism - namely, the ability and the willingness to engage with Japanese people on such issues, and reflexivity towards their own national identities. Meanwhile, some informants would deliberately avoid talking about history and controversial political issues involving China and Japan. While they lacked the willingness to engage with Japanese people on controversial issues, their keenness to separate their daily lives in Japan from the political context means they were also engaged in a reflexive reconfiguration of their national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the relationship between the 2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Relay mega-event and contemporary imaginings of China's geopolitical position and the Chinese national geo-body. The performance of China's territorial presence at the international and domestic scales drew both support and resistance. Chinese media coverage of the spectacle reiterated tropes of geopolitical struggle and national unity. While these tropes resonated with some Chinese audiences who have been primed to recognize the Chinese geo-body through banal nationalism, Chinese citizens' satirical online comments reveal that some rejected the stilted ideological representations of the relay. Further, protesting groups' high-profile disruptions of the relay mega-event outside of the national territory of the host country worked to undermine the relay's international reception. Drawing from analyses of Chinese and international media sources and Chinese Internet satire, this article suggests that the scripted nature and geographical extent of mega-events compromises the geopolitical and nation-building aspects of such events in both neoliberal and postsocialist contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows multiple articulations of national identity by Hong Kong's people since the handover in 1997. An issue of contention is whether the dichotomy of China as the "other" vis-à-vis Hong Kong's local identity still prevails in the context of top-down renationalisation and new developments in transborder spatiality. While the existing literature has illustrated Hong Kong people's steady growth of pride and affinity for national symbols, re-examination of three representative surveys (2006, 2008, and 2010) demonstrates that resistance to these cultural icons is also growing. Furthermore, while previous studies have revealed that a "cultural-economic China" is more welcome than a "political China," the three surveys mentioned above indicate that even the former is meeting growing local resistance. The otherness of China hence should be re-visited in light of the ambivalence of Hong Kong identity. The theoretical and social implications of this sense of the otherness of China are also significant. Specifically, this article argues that the ambivalence of Hong Kong people's articulation of national identity is closely connected to the uneasiness generated by encounters between China and Hong Kong in recent years: controversies and contentions arising from national education, the transborder flow of population, and the provision of goods and public services for non-locals. In this paper, I shall look at the development of local and national identities in some states of contested equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of a Chinese popularity function may seem surprising, given its authoritarian nature. However, exploring the possibility of indirect popularity functions in nondemocratic systems, we articulate a model of national government support in China. The model argues that sociodemographics, political attitudes, and performance issues mold central government satisfaction. Drawing on a countrywide 2008 public opinion survey, we conclude that regional differences, national trust, and local policy success are of special importance in shaping national government support. The findings, which exhibit theoretical and statistical appeal, lay the groundwork for further investigation of popularity functions in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the Olympic narratives of young, educated urbanites in China to consider the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ role as a “diagnostic event” through which global conflicts and controversies coalesce and national identities are constructed. It illustrates how students and young professionals analyzed the Beijing Olympics to invoke discourses of similarity in the form of Western economic development models and difference in the form of essentialized tropes of Chinese culture to counter global images of China as a threat to international well-being. Exploring theories of mimicry to understand these appeals to similarity as a form of national value, this article also reveals how students and young professionals in China recommended the forms of culture manifest in the Olympics as an expression of difference to question and reformulate hierarchies of global power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rise of stability preservation to dominance in the political order coincided with a highly charged debate over "universal values" and a closely related discussion of a "China Model". This paper analyses the critique of universal values as a "wedge issue" that is used to pre-empt criticism of the party-state by appealing to nationalism and cultural essentialism. Taking freedom as a case. in point of a universal value, it shows that, while, more developed in the West, freedom has an authentic Chinese history with key watersheds in the late Qing reception of popular sovereignty and the ending of the Maoist era. The work of Wang Ruoshui, Qin Hui and Xu Jim display some of the resources liberals now bring to "de-wedging" universal values, not' least freedom. They share a refusal to regard `Western" values as essentially hostile to Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As opposed to Zhang Yimou's ... much-criticized film Hero «...» (2002), which addresses the relationship between culture and political power, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles «...» (2005) asks the question of whether, under the conditions of globalization, any performance between cultures can contain truth value, be authentic, or represent something real. Although a key scene acted by Japanese star Ken Takakura effectively expresses his true despair and thus seems to indicate a positive response, Zhang Yimou persistently inserts into the film queries about the validity of performance across cultural and linguistic borders, and the complex trail of conflicting desires that motivate it. Riding Alone is one example of Zhang's complex filmic investigation into the relationship between culture and political power under the developing conditions of a border-crossing global world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on three influential contemporary Chinese political fantasy novels, this article contextualizes the stories in the complex spectrum of contemporary Chinese political thoughts and interprets them in light of the rivaling tendencies among the Chinese intellectuals since the 1990s, regarding the issues of rising nationalism and political authoritarianism, the possibilities of fascism and federalism, the role of a strong, centralized state, and the relevance of liberal democracy in China. The article calls attention to fiction as an expression of political thought and concerns, and argues that these novels present a pessimistic and chilling view of China's political future, in contrast with the optimistic tone of novels of the same genre in the early 20th century, and also challenge an earlier cult of the Western model of liberal democracy. An earlier Chinese-language version of the paper appeared in the website "Democratic China", http://www.minzhuzhongguo.org 12/8/2010, entitled "Zhengzhi huanxiang xiaoshuo zhong de dangdai Zhongguo sixiang: jiedu Huang Huo, Zhongnanhai zuihou de douzheng, he Shengshi, Zhongguo 2013" [Chinese Political Thought as Reflected in Political Fantasy Novels: Interpreting Yellow Peril, The End of Red Chinese Dynasty, and A Flourishing Age: China, 2013] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how nationalist narratives from Taiwan grappled with incorporating their 'island frontier' into conceptions of a Chinese unitary state. In the post World War II era, after the Chinese Nationalist government-in-exile re-established itself on the island of Taiwan, US-dominated scholarship strategically framed Taiwan as a convenient substitute for the study of China. This framing went hand in hand with the re-sinicization project on the island vigorously pursued by the Nationalists after they took control over the island after the collapse of the Japanese Empire. The Nationalist agenda emphasized the historical connection between the island and mainland China in order to politically create an imagined, and imagining, national community across the Strait. This paper critically investigates how continent-based nationalist narratives have sought to incorporate offshore islands into their unitary framework. It does so by deploying the concepts of geobody, geomancy, geochronology, geosymmetrical analogies, and regional demarcation to explore the geographical ideas on the construction of the postwar national imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising nationalism in 2008 has marked the turning point in China's evolving national identity. This most recent wave of nationalism shows that, as China rises as a great power, the Chinese people's perceptions about their national identity are challenged by a number of issues that need to be addressed. The transformation of the Chinese national identity is influenced by both the Chinese government and the public. The Chinese government plays a leading role in constructing a national identity that complements its cultural diplomacy and serves China's core national interests. Meanwhile. the public also contributes to the forging of the national identity through expressing its views and demands in this regard. It is of great importance for people to understand China's emerging new national identity in dealing with this rising power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the perception of terrorism and questions related to the prevention of terrorism among Chinese college students. The undertaking was focused on students attending Guangzhou University in Guangzhou, China. The author investigates three major points: how the students came to be informed on terrorism, their assessment of terrorist organizations and the United States, and their perceptions of Chinese government foreign policy initiatives designed to respond to international terrorist threats.