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Following China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, the country’s immigrant population has quickly increased and diversified, leading to an increase in romantic relationships between foreign and Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the racialization of belonging and citizenship of Chinese nationals born into Chinese-foreign families living in China. Drawing on data gathered through analyzing online debates and media reports, supplemented by interviews and fieldwork observations, the article investigates how discussions about the identity of vloggers, pop stars, and athletes of mixed Chinese-foreign descent shed light on rising Chinese racial nationalism at a time when China has become a destination for international migration and a new frontier for racial knowledge production. We argue that this process is characterized by a tension between China’s emergence as an immigrant society and the hardening boundaries of its national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Eileen Gu attracted considerable attention and sparked numerous discussions on Chinese social media. Using the method of textual analysis, this paper examines the various responses of Chinese women, particularly Chinese feminists, to Eileen's achievements on Chinese social media, framing these responses within recent studies of neoliberalism's undoing of feminism as well as long-standing debates about the relationship between feminism and nationalism. This paper argues that discussions about Eileen on Chinese social media not only illustrate how neoliberalism is absorbed, reworked, and resisted in its transnational circulation but also demonstrate how nationalist narratives can be strategically used by Chinese feminists to validate their feminist positions. It further enriches existing scholarship on neoliberalism with a transnational perspective, reaffirms the importance of contextualizing the relationship between Third World feminism and nationalism, and highlights the significance of uncovering indigenous feminist resources in Third World countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the world, the wearing of medical facemasks has become a hot topic on social media. In China, the relevant discourses are entangled with codes of medical science, national self-esteem and appropriated modernity. These discourses can be dated back to the narrative established by Dr Wu Lien-teh, the great fighter in the Manchurian plagues of 1910–1911 and 1920–1921. This paper reveals that Wu and his colleagues used different strategies when displaying to the Western world their achievements in the anti-plague battle and when proving the effectiveness of the Western medical and hygienic system to Chinese people. Wu and his colleagues used metonymies, analogues and metaphors on or related to medical facemasks to illustrate the possibility of building a modernised nation with sovereignty. Because the construction of a sanitary system in China has always been labelled as a patriotic movement (Rogaski, Ruth. 2004. Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 285–298), the wearing of medical facemasks has constituted an important part of the narrative of nationalism and hygienic modernity. This discourse continues to play a significant role in today's campaign against the coronavirus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how fashion and nationalism were expressed through two iconic dress styles worn by women, the qipao in Taiwan and the terno in the Philippines in the post-WWII era. We consider the positioning of women's bodies in the nation-building project and how sartorial practices reflected expectations around gendered performance in the public and private spheres. Both countries emerged from domination by major powers—Japan and the US—in the post-war era and ruling elites were keen to project an image of nation that was distinctively Asian and modern, while the first ladies of both nations championed their respective styles of national dress. In the Philippines, the terno was a fusion garment adapted over time that reflected the nation's earlier cultural links with Spain, whereas in Taiwan the qipao marked women's bodies as Chinese in the public sphere as Chinese nationalists consolidated their political control over the country. We argue that the relative success and longevity of the terno in the Philippines is due to a lengthy, organic process of internal cultural authentication prior to its take-up by former First Lady Imelda Marcos, as opposed to the top-down imposition of the qipao on Taiwanese women's bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese pre-nationalist, culturalist concepts of world order and of self and other have remained a powerful part of Chinese nationalist conceptualisations of the world, self and other. Here, I analyse Chinese concepts regarding the challenge of including non-Chinese peoples into the Chinese nation-state. Carrying critiques of Levenson's 'culturalism-to-nationalism thesis' forward, I demonstrate how culturalist concepts of the world became merged with nationalist concepts. Nationalist objectives made it necessary to adjust culturalism to new functions. I analyse how culturalism became a handy tool used by nationalist thinkers Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan and Sun Yat-sen to match the general nationalist ideal of a nation's homogeneity with the Chinese nationalist ideal of the Chinese nation-state's multi-ethnic territory. Culturalist arguments helped to undermine the right to build own nation-states for non-Chinese peoples, by putting this right into relation with certain qualities of peoples – culture, history, and population size. The Chinese inner-state 'other', the non-Chinese peoples, have been conceptualised as inferior in every of these qualities to deny them the right to build nation-states and instead legitimate their inclusion into the Chinese nation-state. Nevertheless, non-Chinese peoples will never be full members of the nation-state, but remain in 'exclusive inclusion' like Agamben's homo sacer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of 'war education'. In China, an extensive 'Patriotic Education' campaign and an expanded 'National Defense Education' curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused on urban elite youth, while overlooking the reception of these programs by non-urban, non-elite populations. The present study addresses this issue by examining youth perceptions and experiences of military training courses in urban and rural high schools. Drawing on the analysis of Chinese publications in the 2000s and on data from field interviews with students of different backgrounds, the study finds that youth military training constitutes a contentious program. Although the Chinese government promotes the program as crucial for military strengthening and the fostering of a patriotic spirit, PRC academic and media writers provide alternative rationales for the program, which at times undermine the logic of government articulations. Meanwhile, interviews with youth document divergent attitudes and even resentment towards the program, especially among city youth. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that military-training courses necessarily contribute to the increased 'militarization' of Chinese youth and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the changes and continuities in the construction of Chinese national sport hero(in)es after the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and investigates this development in the context of the reform of Chinese elite sport. Through employing Critical Discourse Analysis to interrogate the Chinese sport hero discourse from government-run media concerning two of the most renowned Chinese national sport hero(in)es, the paper identifies the maintenance, albeit with subtle changes, of the traditional nationalist account concerning the athletic and political qualities of Chinese national sport hero(in)es. Concurrently, there are also new features, which are argued to be the consequence of a shift in the political climate in Chinese sport, in the post-2008 construction of national sport hero. The paper concludes with a discussion, from a Foucauldian perspective, of the relationship between the discourse, knowledge and the power of/over discourse in the construction of Chinese elite athletes as national hero(in)es throughout the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]