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China is often considered as motivated by a desire to challenge the international status quo, a challenge the West is trying to mitigate. Social constructivists account for this challenge via a norm of nationalistic assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy; a norm constructed in the synergetic relationship between China's Communist Party and its nationalist movement. However, this work argues that Chinese foreign policy is motivated, in part, by nationalist pressure arising from an antagonistically symbiotic relationship between the Communist Party and China's nationalist movement. This understanding is significant as it indicates that western policies are paradoxically factoring in the emergence of a challenger China. © 2023 Victoria University of Wellington and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking document analysis as its method, this paper examines the Tibetans' response to the Chinese state nationalism. Due to the fear of political secession, the Chinese government has stayed silent about the Tibetans' right to self‐determination and subjected regional ethnic autonomy to the centralised political system. The Chinese authorities continue to dismiss the Tibetans' nationalist struggles as an imported foreign design and warn the international community not to sympathise with the Dalai Lama and his supporters. Amidst an adverse national and international political environment, the Tibetans have managed to sustain their nationalist wishes and obtain substantive international attention. Taking this background into account, this paper explores how the Tibetans have succeeded to resist China's state nationalism and position themselves as a champion of inclusion, justice, and minority rights. It argues that the Tibetans recognise the Chinese government's fear of secession and utilise that fear to forward their nationalist aspirations. The Tibetans shift their demand from independence to autonomy and highlight their own desire for recognition as a distinct community within the Chinese state. This strategy has helped them to claim that they are against the violations of autonomy but not against the Chinese state's territorial norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars note that since the early 1990s, the CCP has been invoking Chinese nationalism to rescue the party's declining ideological legitimacy. Probing China's political indoctrination (thought work), this article makes two contributions to such conventional consensus. First, empirically it argues that the rise of nationalism in the 1990s was not altogether new. Instead, from the early 1980s, the CCP had been switching to "patriotism." Second, this article argues that the communist regime's transition to nationalism was hesitant. It was an interactive process whereby multiple layers of the society and elite, confused alike, worked together to explore whether and how to embrace nationalism. The nation‐building also bore the imprint of the revolutionary and state‐socialist past. This article suggests that though the nation‐state has become the dominant political format of the world, as a pattern it fuses with a society's traditions, preconditions, and internal struggles. Such fusions made nation‐building in the non‐Western world unseparated from quasi‐national legacies such as revolution and socialism and could yield consequences other than capitalism and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Chinese nationalism? Is nationalism the most effective framework for understanding how people in China are making sense of the world today? These are among the questions raised by Allen Carlson in his 2009 article 'A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism', which developed a provocative critique of decades of scholarship. Acknowledging the insights of Carlton's questions while disagreeing with his proposed conceptual shift towards national identity construction, I propose a further shift towards national identity deconstruction. In doing so, I combine the political insights of Hong Kong nationalists with the theoretical insights of deconstruction. This shift redirects the study of Chinese nationalism away from an abstract conceptualisation of nationalism to a more precise definition of the phenomena under study, as well as moving the debate on potential impacts away from international relations to consideration of the complex dynamics of China's ethnic politics. New definitions of both nationalism and minzu (of minzu zhuyi) are developed, reconceptualising the phenomena heretofore known as 'Chinese nationalism' as external symptoms of underlying tensions between conflicting identity narratives. In conclusion, the practical implications of this reconceptualisation are considered, exploring potential future paths for the People's Republic of China. [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]

This article focuses on Finnish national identities because they expressed the shared experiences of newly established Finnish communities, and they were crucial in constructing a new nation. It also explores created images of the Finnish and Finland, as well as community construction in Republican China, especially after Finland gained independence in 1917. Another aim is to examine those Finnish political, cultural and economic activities that supported their identity construction in China. The specific emphasis will be on analysing the largest and sometimes cross‐functioning Finnish groups in China: the governmental officials and the commercial community. By using qualitative methods, namely, discourse analysis and historical analysis, this study shows how the Finnish community created alternative, sometimes imaginative and frequently anti‐imperialist national identities in the new Republican China. Indeed, by signing the Treaty Principles of Reciprocity and Equal Treatment, it was agreed that Finland and China 'shall enjoy same rights, privileges, favours, immunities and exemptions which [might] be accorded to similar foreign agents in accordance with the principles of international law'. This article argues that Finnish aspirations were positively regarded by many Chinese, and they respected this quite unique national connection with Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this research is to explore whether the location of a citizen's residence is an important source of explanation for nationalistic attitudes in China. Methods: Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults and a multidimensional approach to nationalism, analyses include bivariate correlation and multiple regression. Results: Significant support is found for 12 of 16 hypotheses linking "location variables" to specific types of nationalistic attitudes, even when modeling with a substantial set of controls. The hypothesis‐supporting evidence touches on three of the four dimensions of nationalism covered here. Conclusion: In regard to the development of nationalistic attitudes in China, location matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses the socialisation experiences of young Chinese from two different education backgrounds and media environment. Through a survey on the attitudes of students from Macau and mainland China towards nationalism‐related news events using a survey, this study has revealed that their education social background and media‐use patterns have a greater impact on students' attitudes towards political events (military parade and Occupy Central) than cultural events (Tu Youyou's Nobel Prize and championship of women's volleyball team), and the differences of their attitudes vary depending on the events in question. Moreover, mainland students are more nationalistic and supportive of the official mainland media's discourse on sovereignty issues, but more sceptical of its sources on events of conflicts between Chinese ethnicities. The findings of this study have revealed how wider media exposure impacts the attitudes of individuals; additionally, it responds to the debates on whether people are more inclined to recognise their existing common identities or influenced by the political regimes constructed by the elites; most importantly, it tests the socialising experiences of nationalism among young Chinese from different educational and media backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most English studies of Chinese Christianity recognise the significance of early independent church movements led by indigenous leaders, few have looked in detail at the pioneering example of Yu Guozhen and his China Jesus Independent Church. Indeed, what motivated the early efforts of Chinese Protestants to form independent churches? As probably the first leader of independent churches to achieve national impact, Yu exhibited a clear commitment to harmonising Christianity with the Chinese state, which he deemed as the basis of guaranteeing religious rights. Though it would adopt various forms in the years to come, such synthesis of Christian nationalism has proved to be a recurring theme in the indigenisation of Chinese Christianity in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism today interacts in complicated ways with advanced information and communication systems, regularly leading to unanticipated consequences. Popular online nationalism in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a case in point: In the PRC, digital nationalism has become a central feature of political discourse and decision‐making, at times powerfully shaping the state's policy efforts. This article explores a missing puzzle piece in how state‐led and popular nationalism interact in Chinese politics: the role that advanced information and communication technologies play in such processes. This is a question that is not only relevant to scholars of China but also to anyone interested in the role that digital media and communication play in the formation and spread of contemporary nationalism. How do interactions in complex sociotechnical systems affect nationalism today? To answer this question, the article analyses and traces interaction and feedback loops in Chinese digital environments during Sino‐Japanese disputes over the East China Sea. It shows how the interactions between humans, organisations and technologies create unexpected variations in outcome that resonate through China's internet and create the conditions from which digital nationalism can powerfully emerge to shape legitimation and policy‐making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fighting the COVID‐19 pandemic requires large numbers of citizens to adopt disease‐preventive practices. We contend that national identification can mobilize and motivate people to engage in preventive behaviors to protect the collective, which in return would heighten national identification further. To test these reciprocal links, we conducted studies in two countries with diverse national tactics toward curbing the pandemic: (1) a two‐wave longitudinal survey in China (Study 1, N = 1200), where a national goal to fight COVID‐19 was clearly set, and (2) a five‐wave longitudinal survey in the United States (Study 2, N = 1001), where the national leader, President Trump, rejected the severity of COVID‐19 in its early stage. Results revealed that national identification was associated with an increase in disease‐preventive behaviors in both countries in general. However, higher national identification was associated with greater trust in Trump's administration among politically conservative American participants, which then was associated with slower adoption of preventive behaviors. The reciprocal effect of disease‐preventive behaviors on national identification was observed only in China. Overall, our findings suggest that although national identification may serve as a protective factor in curbing the pandemic, this beneficial effect was reduced in some political contexts. HighlightsPolicymakers should note that national identity serves as a protective factor in curbing the COVID‐19 pandemic. Narratives that highlight the collective agency of people would be useful in promoting disease‐preventive actions as long as they are also endorsed by national leaders.National leaders should provide clear and consistent recommendations in promoting disease‐preventive actions.Practitioners and policymakers should be aware of how the communication strategies they use would be affected by society's political contexts. Mobilizing disease‐preventive actions through a patriotic frame might not be useful when national leaders did not unambiguously promote disease prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outside of the dominant frame depicting World War II as a showdown between the Allied and Axis powers, the war also represented a critical juncture in the global battle between empire and nation. In Asia, the war allowed a "semi‐colonial" China to successfully reclaim its sovereignty from both its allies and enemies and compelled the Dutch to forfeit colonial rule in Indonesia and its prestige as a regional power. Moving beyond conventional dichotomies and great‐power bias, this paper analyses two portentous wartime controversies between China and the Netherlands, whose common goals as allies did not prevent clashes over diametrically opposed national pursuits. In exposing the conflicting nature of their respective nationalisms, these disputes elucidate the interplay of war, nationalism, and imperialism in East Asia as well as China's changing place in the emergent post‐war regional and global orders. The Dutch refusal to accept these shifting realities and underlying notions of national self‐determination presaged the traumatic trajectory of Indonesia's decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been proven that language is a symbol of culture and politics. This study investigates the cohort effect of Hong Kong's handover on the language spoken in adulthood based on the 2006 and 2011 Hong Kong population censuses. We find that Mandarin is more likely to be used by Hong Kong natives who were exposed to the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 during their school‐age years, especially the generation that were exposed during their primary‐school years. This cohort insisted on speaking Mandarin, even when the political environment changed from 2006 to 2011. Our evidence reveals that the political change that occurs during one's school‐age years has a long‐term impact on an individual's behaviour in adulthood. Further discussion indicates that exposure to political change such as regime transfer during school‐age years impacts an individual's national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Socioeconomics of Nationalism in China: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" by Fan attempts to explain Chinese nationalism using a utilitarian economic model. The author argues that nationalism is more pronounced in the modern world when people's incomes are above a certain threshold. However, the reviewer finds this approach too grand and believes that rational choice theory fails to adequately explain social and historical problems. The book also overlooks the role of propaganda in constructing nationalist narratives. While some of the author's conclusions may be valid, the reviewer disagrees with the book's basic approach and instead recommends a more evidence-based and sociological analysis. [Extracted from the article]