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This article explores how the nationalist, business-centric, elite-led and labour-subsuming logics of development in contemporary China are mirrored in contingent and locally-mediated ways in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In China's present 'de-revolutionary' moment [Wang, 2006], non-elite populations are conceived as labour inputs to be used and moulded in the pursuit of national development through market means. This same developmental ethos, mediated by a plethora of Chinese and non-Chinese actors, underpins the authoritarian tendencies of BRI-branded projects across the world. While authoritarian practices in China have both Leninist and capitalist genealogies and drivers, I argue here that Global China's most tangible and remarkable impacts on international authoritarianism are found in the practices required to secure capital accumulation along the BRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study systematically examines, deconstructs, and maps the quotidian nationalist discourse among Chinese netizens and analyzes their 'liking' behavior on the social media platform, Zhihu, in order to investigate what and how they talk about nationalism. The analysis of the quotidian expression of nationalism marks a shift from the previous practice of relying on high-profile nationalist movements as evidence which may create an incomplete or inaccurate impression that much of Chinese nationalism is virulent and over-zealous. This study finds that Zhihu users are critical nationalists who are competitive but judicious. The existence of levelheaded nationalists in China's online space suggests the limits of strident nationalist contagion and nationalist mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular nationalism increasingly dominates public debate in mainland China. This article examines the impact of this trend on Chinese policymaking by looking at the public consultation procedure for new regulations on foreigners' permanent residency in February 2020. Following an unexpectedly large online outcry of anti-immigrant sentiment in response to the draft regulations, government actors shelved the proposal, which constituted a long-delayed step towards a more comprehensive immigration framework. Drawing on textual analysis, expert interviews, and survey data, the article analyzes elite-public interactions before, during, and after the controversy, asking what factors contributed to this miscalculation of public sentiment, and what the P.R. debate can tell us about the role of public opinion in Chinese policymaking today. It argues that popular nationalists can play a bottom-up politicizing role on previously marginal policy issues such as immigration, surprising and constraining the state. Such politicisation further limits both public and elite policy debate, impairing state information gathering and exacerbating the tension between Chinese policy actors' desire to both control and understand public sentiment. In addition, the permanent residency debate demonstrates the relevance of public opinion to China's non-democratic immigration policymaking, which displays a trajectory of gradual politicisation similar to other early-stage immigrant-reception contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the gender undertone of China's nationalist discourses, especially in familial metaphors of nationalism, and how such an undertone shapes people's understandings of state authority and state‐citizen relations. Conventional nationalist discourse of the 'motherland' evokes the image of an insulted and raped mother as the symbol of national humiliation and calls for actions from patriots (masculinised in the discourse). In recent years, however, we have seen the emergence of a new discourse that depicts the nation‐state as a rich, powerful and masculine 'daddy'. Using discourse analysis and Foucauldian genealogical methods, this article argues that the discursive development has to be analysed against China's historical backgrounds, especially considering new standards of masculinity and femininity in the era of economic reform. Capital is equated to masculinity and righteousness, whereas femininity is shaped by the middle‐class values of consumerism and political disengagement. The 'daddy state' discourse conjures strong paternalistic power from China's economic capacity that can be projected onto challengers of state authority, while also constructing the nationalist public as feminised consumers whose consumerist enjoyment relies on patriarchal state protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For all the popular interest in "wolf warrior diplomacy," scant attention has been paid to the internal logics and mechanics of representative communications, notably the intersection with grassroots cyber-nationalism. Centring the connections between official and unofficial actors, we situate Chinese diplomatic communications within the domestic nationalist cyberspace cultures that demand and nourish the "dare to fight" orientation of formal Chinese diplomacy on the international stage. We argue that there is a synergistic interaction between officials and popular nationalism that creates bottom-up incentives to adopt a "wolf warrior" posture, distinct from simultaneous top-down pressures from the central leadership under Xi Jinping to appropriately represent China's "confident rise." We show through case studies involving MoFA spokesperson and archetypal "wolf warrior" Zhao Lijian, that this interaction extends to sharing unofficial content and ideas in a mutually reinforcing cycle that facilitates a harder edge to diplomatic communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that regime types affect international conflicts. This article explores political parties as a mechanism through which they do so. Political parties operate in fundamentally different ways in democracies vs. non-democracies, which has consequences for foreign policy. Core supporters of a party in a democracy, if they are hawkish, may be more successful at demanding hawkish behavior from their party representatives than would be their counterparts in an autocracy. The study draws on evidence from paired experiments in democratic Japan and non-democratic China to show that supporters of the ruling party in Japan punish their leaders for discouraging nationalist protests, while ruling party insiders in China are less likely to do so. Under some circumstances, then, non-democratic regimes may be better able to rein in peace-threatening displays of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spring 2018 China, indignant popular nationalists demanded that the "spiritually Japanese" activities of a fringe group of young Chinese who figure themselves as Japanese be proscribed. The National People's Congress quickly complied, passing legislation that made it illegal to "beautify the war of invasion." Exploring how and why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded to the demands of popular nationalists, we suggest that authoritarian representation occurs in China even beyond the bounds of everyday apolitical issues like education and healthcare. Indeed, because the CCP relies upon a nationalist claim to legitimate rule, authoritarian legislators may respond to the public on politically sensitive issues like nationalism as well. Journalists and lawyers, furthermore, can play a vital mediating role between elites and masses, facilitating the transmission of the information and expertise needed for authoritarian responsiveness. Implications for our understanding of Chinese nationalism, authoritarian responsiveness and state legitimation in China today are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is home to the world's largest audience for e‐sports, or competitive videogames. While competitive videogames have become popular within a borderless, digital environment, the e‐sports fan base has a decidedly nationalist element to it. This article argues that new forms of digital nationalism are part and parcel of normal discourse within the Chinese competitive videogames environment. Through a case study of one specific competitive videogame, this article shows how nationalist narratives are enacted by the community itself at the grass roots, creating bottom‐up forms of nationalism. Combining digital fieldwork with offline interviews and observations, the study sheds light on new forms of nationalist expression appearing online in China. It focuses in particular on memes and how these serve as micro expressions of nationalism, maintaining and reinforcing nationalist narratives originating within state discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a psychological profile of the nationalists among Chinese students and the role of the U.S. context in facilitating the students' nationalistic tendency. Topics include the author's emphasis on group diversities, some neglected subcommunities of Chinese students in the U.S. and a background on the upsurge of strong nationalist sentiments among overseas Chinese students in 2008. Also included is the author's argument on the development of Chinese students' pro-China attitude.

Early twentieth-century nationalist intellectuals and politicians in China promoted museums as sites for 'awakening' the masses from their pre-national slumber. Museum hagiographers since that time often imply that the new museums were successful in those terms, and that the Chinese people fully supported the modern, usually state-supervised museums and their nationalist goals. However, as this essay shows, by examining the evacuation of the Palace Museum artifacts from Beiping [Beijing] to Sichuan during the War of Resistance with Japan (1937-45), we see that on the contrary, the Chinese people were hardly convinced that antiquities belonged to the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some Chinese cities take part in waves of nationalist protest but not others? Nationalist protest remains an important but understudied topic within the study of contentious politics in China, particularly at the subnational level. Relative to other protests, nationalist mobilization is more clustered in time and geographically widespread, uniting citizens in different cities against a common target. Although the literature has debated the degree of state-led and grassroots influence on Chinese nationalism, we argue that it is important to consider both the propensity of citizens to mobilize and local government fears of instability. Analysing an original dataset of 377 anti-Japanese protests across 208 of 287 Chinese prefectural cities, we find that both state-led patriotism and the availability of collective action resources were positively associated with nationalist protest, particularly “biographically available” populations of students and migrants. In addition, the government's role was not monolithically facilitative. Fears of social unrest shaped the local political opportunity structure, with anti-Japanese protests less likely in cities with larger populations of unemployed college graduates and ethnic minorities and more likely in cities with established leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the Chinese Nationalists’ overseas Chinese policies during the early War of Resistance and the early Cold War. The strategies, organizations and problems of huaqiaomobilization during the Anti-Japanese War set patterns for Cold War anti-Communist efforts. In both struggles, the Nationalists emphasized that they represented China's legitimate government and that support from overseas Chinese was part of a crusade dating back to Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation. As mothers of the revolution,huaqiaowere to remain loyal to Sun's legacy by backing Chiang. Southeast Asia, home to the majority of overseas Chinese, became the focus of Nationalist attention and is the most appropriate arena to examine the vicissitudes of huaqiaopolicies. Obstacles to huaqiaomobilization did not simply result from Japanese, then Communist, machinations. The Nationalists encountered difficulties due to overseas Chinese apathy and disunity. Further, the complex political environment of Southeast Asia, before and after decolonization, stymied mobilization. Nevertheless, after each military defeat, whether at the hands of the Japanese or the Communists, huaqiaosupport became more important, not for the material benefits they offered, but for the legitimacy they conferred. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Empirical evidence concerning the demographics and development of Chinese nationalism is sparse but important for scholarship and policy. Its collection entails methodological challenges in access and reliability. We conducted a field experiment to measure nationalism in incentive-compatible choices among a diverse group of 447 Chinese subjects in a field setting. Our results demonstrate greater nationalism in female, older, less affluent and more rural respondents. We also find support for nationalism in professional and educated individuals. Our results provide qualified support for a middle-class nationalism in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In assessing the military history of the Nationalist period, it is tempting to focus on the major campaigns and conflicts of the period. The Eastern Expeditions are an important yet neglected part of this history and a critical phase in the development of the Nationalist army. This article analyzes the Eastern Expeditions of 1925 in Guangdong province - the campaign against Chen Jiongming's forces in eastern Guangdong in March, the suppression of a revolt of Yunnan and Guangxi forces in June, and the second campaign against Chen Jiongming in October and November - in order to assess their place in the development of the early Nationalist army. It argues that these 1925 campaigns served as a "defining moment" by establishing trends that would characterize the Nationalist military forces in the following decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering how nationalism has flourished in China since the 1990s, it should not come as a surprise that intellectuals there have been vigorously debating its political meaning and significance to the Chinese people. Since the turn of the century nationalist trends have become even stronger and more powerful on account of China's putative rise to great-power status. One way to understand the complexity of nationalist expressions in China today is to explore how official and nonofficial nationalist discourses supplement and affect each other and how they are connected through debates within the intelligentsia. My aim is to question the assumption that nationalism in China is only imposed by the state on society and to suggest that it is also shaped by longstanding and widespread notions of China's proper place in the world as an important and leading country. At the same time, however, I want to outline the two major limitations of some nationalist arguments: one being that they take an essentialist approach to understanding the Chinese nation, and the other being that they remain evasive concerning the undemocratic political condition of much of the current nationalist fervor. Given the murky public space occupied by openly voiced speech and expression, nationalism in China today is neither just a spontaneous outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm nor merely a diversionary plot devised by the Communist Party to maintain its authoritarian regime. It is both of these, and this is substantiated and confirmed by the delicate interaction of the official and nonofficial versions of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the diverse responses among the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore to Chinese nationalist movements in the 1930s. According to sources, this is considered a response to the imposition of high tariffs in China and the enactment of the British Imperial Preference System. However, it has been emphasized that the key towards understanding the development of Chinese bourgeois nationalism is the macro regional and global political-economic contexts.