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Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper sketches out the mode and influence of the sports culture of martial arts, from Republican China to Southeast Asia's Chinese societies. The Chin Woo Athletic Federation was the first non-governmental sports organization in Republican China after the feudal monarchy. In the 1920s, it began to expand its organizational territory to Southeast Asia, and its development reached its peak in the 1930s. This paper focuses on the spread of Wushu to Southeast Asia against the background of the rise of overseas Chinese nationalism. It interprets how it embodied the Chinese immigrant nationalism, especially contextualizing the conflict between tradition and modernity in the early twentieth century, which is a rarely discussed topic. The results show that the dissemination of Chin Woo organizations was a form of organizational cloning of 'mother' organizations in the mainland. The association between different Chin Woo athletic associations suggests an attempt at cloning the organizations and their practice in the interests of building a form of quintessential Chinese-ness, at the initiative of Chinese business and other community leaders. The physical training and performance of the Chin Woo members was a manifestation of Southeast Asian Chinese immigrant nationalism. Finally, Wushu was a cultural element in the historical identity of Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Chinese newspapers respond to opposing demands by audiences and Propaganda Department authorities about news regarding the United States when competition poses pressure on marketized media to make a profit. To examine the tone of news reporting about the U.S., I rely on a computer-aided text analysis of news stories published in the People's Daily and the Beijing Evening News, comparing the years 1999 and 2003 before and after the rise of commercialized newspapers in the Beijing newspaper market. Results show that the emergence of news competitors may exert pressure on less marketized papers to change news content, resulting in an increase of negative news about the United States. Evidence is provided to show that the rise of negative news is unlikely to result from an intended strategy by Propaganda authorities, actions undertaken by the American government, or journalists' own attitudes. [An appendix to this article is featured as an online supplement at the publisher's Web site.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patriotic campaigns and mass mobilization draw on existing xenophobic attitudes of the public, reinforcing the 'us vs. them' dualism between China and 'the West'. However, patriotic campaigns are not always top-down, state-led, nor are they always primarily driven by political ideology. Patriotic content appeals to a growing nationalist audience who consumes a mixed feeling of perceived victimization at the hand of foreign aggression and the pride arising from being a Chinese citizen. This paper argues that the profitability of patriotic content circulating on social media exacerbated the tension between market-driven grassroots patriotism and state-led patriotic campaigns. The tension grows out of, and is manifested in, the online popular debate around economically driven, grassroots 'patriotic' content that can challenge the state state-led patriotic rhetoric. While the state sometimes strategically co-opts some patriotic contents into its own patriotic narratives, it also delegitimises other undesired ones through labels such as 'high-level black' (gaoji hei) or 'low-level red' (diji hong). These labels were initially used to differentiate meticulously crafted political satire and parody from incompetent, illogical and vulgar propaganda pieces that unintendedly blemish the state's patriotic campaigns, but later evolved into an exercise of power to distance the CCP from undesired patriotic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the challenges and possibilities facing democratic citizenship education in China. It starts by taking on the increasing political repression under Xi's regime and how it is marginalizing or silencing democratic discourses. Then it examines the rising economically-driven populist nationalism in China, and how it complicates the democratic pursuit. Next, the paper looks into the dominant Chinese cultural tradition, Confucianism, its antidemocratic tendencies and alliance with authoritarian forces. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential ways to combat the roadblocks and resistances to democratization. It emphasizes a more nuanced understanding of both China's historical trajectories and present aspirations, seeking possibilities for democratic breakthrough. It also proposes educational and curricular reform, deconstructing official moral education and introducing cultivation in civic virtues, for example, to promote democratic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sino-Australia relations have experienced a rapid deterioration in the past half-decade. From genial ties centred around trade and exchange, the relationship has descended into mutual hostility, prompting the editor of China's Global Times to notoriously liken Australia to a blob of gum on the bottom of a shoe. To explain the deteriorating relationship, scholars have proposed numerous ideas, pointing to factors as wide-ranging as 'Chinese influence', poor diplomacy efforts, and ontological (in)security touched off by neoliberal governmentality. The current paper examines these ideas in a literature review, then synthesises such ideas to provide its own explanation of why things 'went wrong'. It also addresses corollary questions such as why Australia adopted a uniquely assertive China policy, and why this occurred specifically around 2017. We argue that the breakdown in relations can be attributed to the rise of nationalist, sovereignty-oriented movements in the West, and the spillover effect this had on Australian leadership; the profound uncertainty attending the election of Trump and his isolationist tendencies; and the shift to a more rigid, authoritarian approach to foreign affairs under Xi. This perspective adds to the literature by identifying failings on both sides while underscoring significant yet underappreciated global trends, such as nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on Chinese football fans' reactions to the Japanese national team and their fans' behaviour during the World Cup 2022. Despite the historical and contemporary problems that make friendly relations with Japan difficult to achieve, football fans in China largely welcomed the good performance of the Japanese national team. This attitude may be described as 'thin cosmopolitanism' because Chinese fans' major frame of reference was still nationalistic. For them, the impressive performance of the Japanese national team means that Asians and the 'yellow race people' can also play good football. However, the Japanese fans, whose cleaning up of stadia received wide coverage during the World Cup, were criticized by the Chinese fans who interpreted the Japanese fans' action as reinforcing the existing global racial order. The findings of this paper help reveal the limits regarding football's role in contributing to a more cosmopolitan worldview. [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]

Nation-building in modern China at the beginning of the twentieth century had to manage the strain between ethnic nationalism and the claim of a multi-ethnic national identity. This study focuses on how history textbooks defined China and addressed this paradox. Based on the qualitative content analysis of eight popular middle school history textbooks about imperial China, this paper demonstrates how Han nationalism and the multi-ethnic nationality of China evolved in the textbooks. While these two features of national concept contradict each other, the thesis of Hanhua may serve as a bridge between them within the symbolic framework of Chinese nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the Lianhua Film Company, founded in 1930 and active until 1937, communicated its identity and project through its films. These drama films offered an idealized portrait of the movie world and the Chinese society, revealing how the company's members defined their role in a society looking to build a national identity. The paper focuses on three films: Two Stars of the Milky Way (1931) was a cinematographic interpretation of the founding statement of the company and depicts the company's utopia. Lianhua's Symphony (1936), composed of eight shorts, was a patriotic call to resist the Japanese enemy. A Sea of Talents (1937) was produced in the final days of Lianhua, just before the Japanese invasion. It offers a portrait of the artistic world disillusioned and far from patriotic anxieties. These films, analysed here alongside written sources, draw a portrait of the company both as it wanted to be seen and as it actually was. Studying them illuminates the hopes, battles and disillusions of a world of professionals who projected on the screen theirs visions, sometimes conflicting, of a stronger and unified Nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitioning into the post-revolutionary era, China in the 1980s saw a variety of uncertainties. State policies, popular sentiments, and individual psychologies were all in constant fluctuation. Despite these uncertainties, efforts to understand the past and a strong desire for a prosperous future characterized the general spirit, widely reflected in the increasingly active and diversified cultural life of the Chinese people. In 1983, Chinese Central Television (CCTV) held a Spring Festival Gala that was broadcast live nationwide for the first time. As one of the first cultural milestones of the New Era, the gala painted a joyful and harmonious picture of the country amidst various complexities and ambiguities. Studying the organization and content of the 1983 gala, this paper argues that the gala responded to the ongoing historical transition by replacing the previously dominant revolutionary discourse, which stressed class struggle, extreme collectivism, and politicization of daily life, with a nationalist discourse, which aspired for China's integration into a highly modernized world as a prosperous world power. Such replacement was demonstrated in the gala's depiction of the relationship between individuals and the state, memories of revolution, and new connections between traditions and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how missionary educational institutions and Young Men's Christian Association physical education and sport programmes, in conjunction with the nation-building project of the Nationalist government, transformed and modernized physical education and sport in China from 1840 to 1937. The concepts of cultural imperialism and nationalism are central to this study, to understand how the two interacted in the process of the development of modern physical education and sports in China. This paper argues that the cultural imperialism model is ineffective for an understanding of the impact of missionaries on Chinese society and the subsequent transformation and indigenization of physical education and sport in modern China. More precisely, the way in which Chinese nationalism played an active role in resisting, selecting, and reshaping the cultural products (modern physical education and sport) evidences a process that was an active negotiation, rather than a passive consumption, of Western culture. This said, Christian physical education and sport programmes had long-lasting effects on how physical education and sports became the way to define 'modern' bodies as they were incorporated into the wider education programme of modernizing China under the Nationalist government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars tend to overlook the overseas Chinese press as a communicative tool for Chinese nationalism. This paper takes media history as its focal point to demonstrate the contextual influences that shaped the operations of Chinese print media and gave rise to the manifestation of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) identity in Japan. In particular, it emphasises that the mobilisation of the modern Chinese nationalism movement of the time was not the sole determinant of Chinese identity. It was also influenced by the way in which Chinese ethnic boundaries came to be shaped and reshaped in different historical periods through the dynamics between overseas Chinese communities and Japanese society. I use two overseas Chinese publications from different periods to illustrate the impacts of modern Chinese nationalism and the changing social and political context of Japan on the Chinese press. Finally, I present a synthetic narrative to account for the history of the overseas Chinese press in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the assumption that geostrategic and security interests alone are not sufficient to explain China’s foreign policy choices. It argues that ideas about what China’s role as an actor in the increasingly globalised international system should be, and about world order in general, have a deep influence on China’s foreign policy decision-making process. Taking the North Korean issue as a case study, the paper postulates that China is currently engaged in a search for a ‘new’ identity as a global player. China’s actor identity is composed of various partly contradictory role conceptions. National roles derived from China’s internal system structures and its historical past lead to continuity in foreign policy, while the ‘new’ roles resultant from China’s rise to global power require an adaptation of its foreign policy principles. In the case of its relationship with North Korea, China’s foreign policy is oscillating between the two roles of ‘socialist power’ – as thus comrade-in-arms with its socialist neighbour – and ‘responsible great power’, which leads to it being expected to comply with international norms, and thus to condemn North Korea’s nuclear provocations and related actions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes the social crisis of the Covid-19 epidemic and the government responses in China from a performance perspective. It argues that the epidemic outbreak in late December 2019 initiated a highly contested social drama, in which loyalty was tested, political order questioned, and ideological crisis made visible. The numerous netizens and residents drew on a wide-ranging repertoire of discourses, symbols, and narratives to heighten public spectacles of suffering and sympathy, which placed extensive blame on the lies, negligence, and censorship of the government. Nonetheless, within the short span of three months, the conflictive, cacophonous social drama was overshadowed and subsumed by a hegemonic political performance of national victory, unity, and patriotism, framed and channeled by state propaganda, censorship, ritual, and practical policies. Social protests in cyberspace continued in even more dramatic forms. But these it only constituted sporadic performances of resistance, rather than a monumental social drama that challenged the fundamental political order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits China's recent experiences of hosting three international mega-events: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. While maintaining a critical political economic perspective, this paper builds upon the literature of viewing mega-events as societal spectacles and puts forward the proposition that these mega-events in China are promoted to facilitate capital accumulation and ensure socio-political stability for the nation's further accumulation. The rhetoric of a ‘Harmonious Society’ as well as patriotic slogans are used as key languages of spectacles in order to create a sense of unity through the consumption of spectacles, and pacify social and political discontents rising out of economic inequalities, religious and ethnic tensions, and urban–rural divide. The experiences of hosting mega-events, however, have shown that the creation of a ‘unified’, ‘harmonious’ society of spectacle is built on displacing problems rather than solving them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the intersections between state and fashion in China by examining the facilitation of a new fashion identity in a fashion edutainment program produced by national television. It argues that the state-sponsored (re)appraisal of traditional sartorial esthetics from which a decolonized fashion identity is expected to evolve is intimately interweaved with the state's metanarrative of national revival. The study interprets the reversion back to native historical traditions to counter and offer an alternative to Western cultural episteme as an inherently decolonial effort. With an emancipated fashion identity, the state aims to reclaim cultural authorship from the dictates of colonialism and orientalism. The paper examines how sartorial nationalism is given new expressions and highlights the question of authenticity working within state-prescribed parameters. The desire for international recognition however undermines the decoloniality of this undertaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the political and social implications of the rise of “citizen journalism” (CJ) in China, a country where mainstream media are still under tight control while social conflicts are intensifying and nationalistic sentiments are exacerbating. The impact of CJ on mainstream journalism (MJ) and public participation is mostly discussed in respect of Western democratic societies. We know little about CJ and its political and social impact in nondemocratic societies like China. This paper provides an analysis of four case studies of CJ practice in China, which show that the impact of CJ on Chinese mainstream media and society is multifaceted. There is evidence that CJ is used by MJ as a news source as well as an alternative channel for distributing politically sensitive information. Therefore, it can be argued that CJ can work effectively together with MJ to make it more difficult for the Party to control online information flows within the country, even though CJ alone is unlikely to be a driving force in promoting social change in China. Meanwhile, CJ is also establishing itself as a vehicle for the expression of nationalistic sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationships between Olympic strategy, nationalism and legitimacy of the Party-state in China during a decade of reform. The analysis focuses on governmental policy prioritising elite sports and Olympic ambitions in the process of rebuilding the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Drawing on Weber's revised classification of legitimacy, this investigation contextualises sport and nationalism in the context of elite sport policy throughout the shift of political legitimacy in post-Mao China. Data were collected from a range of documents and seven semi-structured interviews. This study concludes that Chinese sporting excellence in the 1980s was closely associated with nationalism and the party's political appeal. Thus, the pragmatic Party leaders of the time contended that performance-based legitimacy was more important and effective than Mao's revolutionary ideology for transforming society in post-Mao China. Accordingly, China issued an Olympic strategy and strengthened its elite sport first policy, in the belief that sporting success in the 1980s would secure the satisfaction of the masses and also justify Deng's pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mandatory use of mother tongue education in Hong Kong after 1997 met strong objections from the local community. While the government put forward a comprehensive educational agenda to justify the implementation of the policy, this paper raises the question of whether the change in language policy was mainly driven by an educational agenda, or whether there were other underlying agendas. To address the question, the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong is reviewed, and the experience of three decolonised Asian countries, Malaysia, Singapore and India, is discussed. The paper suggests that the political agenda has always played an important role in language policy formulation and implementation. In view of the important role that language plays in nation building and social reconstruction, it is inevitable that Chinese medium instruction will become more and more important. How the government will balance the need to strengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people and the need to maintain the international outlook and economic development of Hong Kong will have a major impact on the review of the new medium of instruction policy in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important dimension of contentious politics, online political discourse reveals crucial issues related to ideology, power, and identity in times of political struggle. Drawing on Norman Fairclough's intertextual analysis approach within the paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis in an online discursive context, this study examines the role of intertextuality in the discursive construction of social movements. It does so by analyzing how different social actors employ discursive tools to construct the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in their online commentaries. Focusing on discourse, genre, and style, this study demonstrates how online texts draw from different intertextual resources and how they echo the broader nationalist discourse in China. In addition, this paper also uncovers how the circulation and combination of these intertextual resources in an authoritarian context form specific constructions of the Umbrella Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Minzu’ (nation or nationality) is a term that appeared in China after the Opium Wars. From 1949, the PRC established a two-level national structure with the term ‘minzu’: the Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu) at the top and 56 nationalities (minzu) at the bottom. The PRC also adopted the Soviet model in regard to administration of and policies toward the minority ‘minzu’. In recent years, amid increased tensions and conflicts among China’s ‘nationalities’ (minzu), an ongoing debate among Chinese scholars has been observed. This paper reviews this debate and clarifies some misunderstandings among different viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics brought about a boost of national pride among the Chinese public. However, Chinese national pride was hurt as soon as the international torch relay of the Beijing Olympics received considerable protests in London and Paris against Beijing's policies on Tibet and human rights. After the chaos of the torch relay in Paris, ordinary Chinese used the internet to vent their nationalist anger and disseminate information of how the Beijing Olympic torch relay was sabotaged by pro-Tibet protestors, as oppose to the official media discourse in which the Paris leg was largely constructed as harmonious and peaceful. Based on a discourse analysis of media texts collected from the People's Daily and Tianya Forum, this paper interrogates how both official and online popular media respectively shape Chinese nationalist discourses through representations and discussions of the Paris leg of torch relay. The paper also attempts to discuss the changing power relations between state and popular players in the context of online political communication in China, and critically discusses the extent to which the rise of online popular nationalism can challenge the role of the Chinese state in the production and construction of nationalist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the South Korean scholarship on modern Chinese history since 1945 can be characterized as apolitical with its objectivism, positivism, liberalism, and anti-communist nationalism. This characteristic is a product of not only the Cold War and the military regimes of South Korea but also the political orientation and stance of the senior historians who played an initial and decisive role in determining the goal, direction, and research methods of South Korean studies concerning modern China. The South Korean perspective they promoted usually meant the study of liberal, apolitical topics in Chinese history from a nationalist perspective without any political/ideological influences. The utility of modern Chinese history has mainly lain in helping to construct an anti-socialist, modern Korean nation–state through modernization. South Korean historians of modern China, the paper argues, have not been able to induce a meaningful, broad discussion of critical historical issues in modern China as they might pertain to South Korean society, thus failing to utilize them to help challenge and transform the undemocratic South Korean society and regimes. Hence, the future success of new academic undertakings since the 1990s by South Korean historians will be determined by whether or not they are able to make a radical break from the previous scholarship, in particular, from its objectivism and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the intersection of spiritual renewal and grassroots nationalism within contemporary Chinese Christianity through the case of an emerging group of Christian businessmen who have spearheaded the growth of independent churches in the coastal Wenzhou area, called "boss Christians." Prompted by their success in the new entrepreneurial world, these elite male Christians strive to gain spiritual prestige and moral superiority in the Chinese church by employing a spiritual narrative of their post-Mao economic success and by articulating and spreading a new vision that they call "God's China vision." In active response to the Chinese state's nationalist discourse of modernity, they are convinced that China will rise not only in the economic sphere but also in the spiritual realm and will transform itself from a missionary-receiving country to a missionary-sending one. The paper links this grass-roots project of spiritual nationalism to a redemptive process in which elite Chinese Christians seek to address and overcome victimization and suffering inflicted by secular state modernity. It concludes that post-Mao Christian development has come to be closely connected to national memories and nationalist imagination, countering the party-state's insistence on secular nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of Chinese traditions for the formation of a felt Hong Kong identity and a national identity among students in the personal and social education curriculum before and after reunification with China in 1997. This paper argues that the addition of China elements to the curriculum after reunification contributes to the continuous ambiguous identity of students, which is consistent with the results of various poll surveys about the civic identity of Hong Kong people in a larger context. This is because the personal and social education reform after reunification assumed a simple correlation between the patriotic feelings of students and their knowledge of China. It does not question how the promotion of an intensely unifying ‘cultural identity’ as political commitment is differentiated from the day-to-day ‘cultural experiences’ of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a sequel to China Can Say No, China Is Not Happy is the bestseller of 2009 in China. The book praises China's post-80s generation for their act of patriotism, condemns the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, for exploiting the Chinese and for causing a global economic crisis. It also criticizes the Chinese liberal elite and overseas returnees for being Western-influenced mental slaves and traitors. The authors of the book call for an abandonment of “literary tone”, advocate a tough stand against Western countries, and envision China as the leader of the world through its economic and military power. This paper examines the major themes and belligerent rhetoric employed in the book through an application of Kenneth Burke's rhetorical concepts of identification, terministic screens, and representative anecdotes. The author of this paper contends that such use of rhetoric demonstrates the language habit of China's political discourse in its modern history, escalates blind nationalism, and widens the gap in intercultural understanding between China and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the Tibet question through the looking glass of Taiwan, by considering four dimensions of comparative dynamics between the two cases of Taiwan and the Tibetan government-in-exile (TGIE) in relation to China: territorial, economic, ethnic and cultural. Of the four, the paper argues, Taiwan has high convergence with China in the economic, ethnic and cultural dimensions, and managed divergence in the territorial dimension. The TGIE, on the other hand, has high divergence with China in all four dimensions: territorial dispute, economic incongruence, ethnic estrangement, and cultural gulf. Further, the TGIE is ideologically and sentimentally charged by this divergence and thrives by exploiting it. It therefore should have few incentives to see the lessons of Taiwan applied in resolving the Tibet question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By contextualizing the birth of modern Chinese women's education as well as Kuen Cheng Girls' High School (KCGHS) in the ethno nationalistic movement in pre-independence years, and revisiting the dispute over changing KCGHS into a co-education establishment in the Chinese education movement background in the post-independence era, this paper illustrates the paradox of Chinese ethno nationalism, that took expression in modernization since its inception. The dispute over converting Kuen Cheng also shows how women's education, a product of Chinese ethno nationalism as expressed in modernization and an appeal for equal treatment, has unexpectedly become a drive for democratization, equal treatment and pluralization from within the Chinese education movement in the post-independence era, and thus makes the idea of gender equality not incompatible with ethno nationalism and Chinese education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, the international arena has witnessed two concurrent worldwide trends. One is the gradual prevalence of universalism under the banner of human civilization; the other is the gradual revival of nationalism globally under exactly the same heading. Both trends are evident in China, a country which in the twenty-first century is perceived universally as a rising nation. However, does Chinese nationalism necessarily pose a threat to the world? By examining two debates on the Chinese intellectual response towards Sino-American and Sino-Japanese relations in the early twenty-first century, this paper investigates the status of Chinese nationalism. It questions whether it is a fixed set of ideas embraced by a solid entity, or whether it possesses multiple layers with dual elements contributing to both security and insecurity internationally. The paper argues that three separate nationalist processes are occurring concurrently but independently of each other: the construction of civic nationalist values; the development of an international relations strategy assigning responsible power to China; and the detection of alleged anti-Chinese conspiracies. The effect of the first two would be to encourage regional peace, and they could offset fervent nationalist expression. A somewhat counter-intuitive result of Chinese nationalism might be that it also becomes a stabilizing force within and outside China's borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the emergence of the modern sense of popular music in China, the uses of music in that country have been instrumental in serving political purposes for the state. The modern form of popular music began to enter China through Hong Kong and Taiwan - the two very political locales in which we could observe China's political economy through the reception of their music in mainland China. How the Chinese authorities coped with the production, distribution and consumption of this 'foreign' popular music, is reflective of the swing of the pendulum between relaxation and control, and hence the changing ideologies of the state. Based on the cultural and institutional analysis on a few classical Chinese popular singers since the mid-1980s, this paper illustrates such a transformation. The paper argues that the Chinese authorities have evolved from a dictatorial authority, which chose to control popular music by means of direct bans and censorship, to an active agent, through various strategies, managing and producing a kind of popular music that can be conducive to, and be resonant with, the national ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Hong Kong (HK) school curriculum, especially the general curriculum for civic education and other social subjects, in relation to the political events of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, and the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom (UK) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper will argue that since 1984, the school curriculum of HK has been marked by tensions brought about by political cultures shaped by the UK and the PRC, the bureaucratic mechanisms of which are used to make sure that those curriculum contents that are judged to be politically correct are taught in school. Over the last two decades the school curriculum has been depicted as being shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the transfer of sovereignty. Granted that political and national education forms part of the school culture, the question of how to shape students to be patriotic through the curriculum will continue to be contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the trend and pressure of globalisation, the history curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai have been undergoing reforms in order to better equip the youth for coping with rapid contextual changes. At the same time, there have been attempts to reposition nationalism in the changing contexts. This paper aims to compare and contrast how the forces of nationalism and globalisation affect, and are re-presented in, the contents of the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, with a view to exploring the convergent and divergent trends of development in the two systems (capitalist and socialist) within one country. It is expected that the findings will shed light on the continuities and changes in the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, and explore possible alternatives for the improvement of history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which China's 'Fourth generation' leadership might be inclined to place a greater emphasis on nationalist rhetoric both in China's international relations and in domestic policy. It explores two different views of nationalism, namely state-centred and popular. With the decline in the public impact of official ideology, the Party-state has given tacit recognition to nationalism as one potential source of regime legitimisation. However, this article argues that by placing the Party at the centre of the official discourse the state-centred view of nationalism restricts the extent to which the Party-state can mobilise nationalist symbolism in support of its leadership and makes the Party vulnerable to criticism from more popular conceptions of nationalism. The priority given to developing the economy means China's leaders must downplay popular criticism which can focus on the negative consequences of China's growing interaction with the wider world. Under China's 'Fourth generation' leadership this tension may deepen. China's new leadership are unlikely to resort to 'wrapping themselves in the flag' as some commentators have suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes the controversies in China’s Hong Kong over the non-ethnic representatives to explore the debates on naturalization and the negotiation of nationality. China disallows split loyalties and all non-ethnics must abandon the passport of their original countries in the stringent process of naturalization. Problematically, Hong Kong, a former British colony and a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, has less rigid requirements on citizenship, effectively disregarding a person’s ethnicity. Hong Kong citizenship then gives grounds for non-ethnics to naturalize as Chinese and represent Hong Kong in FIFA tournaments such as the World Cup as holders of Hong Kong SAR passport without an overseas nationality or citizenship. This research takes notes from the interviews with naturalized players and online discussions to explore the arguments favouring or rejecting naturalized representatives in Hong Kong against the background of its complex dynamics with mainland China under the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Asian Studies Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The significance of sport, especially mega sport events, has been widely acknowledged as contributing to the development of nationalism and national identity.1 The use of the National Games by the nationalist government to promote Chinese nationalism and manage national identity in the Republic of China from 1910 to 1948 is examined in this paper. It begins with an interpretation of how Western sport was introduced to China, how China achieved its sovereignty of sport and how sport aided national salvation and nation-building. It examines the birth and the development of Chinese National Games, and the interplays of National Games and nationalism in the context of political and economic perspectives. It concludes that the promotion of National Games met the demands of China's national salvation and the principles of Chinese nationalism such as sovereignty, territorial integrity and patriotic sentiments. The National Games in the Republican China era played a role that was more than that of a sport event but one of shaping Chinese independent nationhood and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed the city's education system for its inability to develop a sense of 'I am Chinese' national identity and vowed to step up 'national education' from preschool. This article explores how 188 young preschool teachers perceived their national identity and viewed the applicability of national education in Hong Kong preschools. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings showed that even though the participants strongly resisted their Chinese identity, they agreed that national education could be introduced in preschools if it would be rendered rational and apolitical. Nevertheless, they suspected that the administration's motive behind national education was political indoctrination. They also noted several pedagogical difficulties. Finally, the implications are discussed against the changing socio-political context, serving as lessons for local and international readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines how Liang Qichao viewed the Italian Risorgimento, with the focus on his reflections on its meanings in the historical contexts of Chinese politics and tradition. It will identify and analyze the many forces and ideas that influenced Liang as he formulated his reflections, especially the timing around the turn of the twentieth century and the discourses of nascent nationalism in Japan where Liang lived in exile. The way Liang created - or recreated - the Italian story demonstrated that the Chinese had finally begun to realize a crucial point about the building of a modern nation. While Britain, the United States, and France were able to build a modern nation by starting from the grass roots and more closely observing Enlightenment ideals, China did not have the luxury or the time to follow the same path. In the age of high imperialism, the weak would simply be weeded out quickly. Without national salvation, there could be no modern nation. National salvation, as exemplified by the Risorgimento, involved maintaining and glorifying the country's own traditions and core values, which would in turn unify different social segments. Liang and his fellow reformers realized the importance of having simultaneously a national cause, a single political party, and a single leader, instead of having to take separate steps toward awakening. Liang's awakening paved the way for the unfolding of the great Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century, led first by the Kuomintang and then by the Communists. Following Liang's track of thinking, they both strived to build - or rebuild - a political centralism. [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]

This paper revisits the debate about foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the context of China's increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in recent years. It argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls to take a confrontational position against the Western powers and to adopt tougher measures in maritime territorial disputes with its neighbors. This strident turn is partially because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion, but more importantly because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism calling for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. Enjoying an inflated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth and military capacities, and terrified of an uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the communist state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the so-called core national interests. These developments have complicated China's diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China's foreign policy. [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]

This paper takes stock of China's evolving presence in the Indian Ocean. It posits that despite various traditional and non-traditional threats, the Indian Ocean is not the foremost concern in China's quest for maritime security. As a result, China's efforts to make foray beyond the Strait of Malacca remain limited. Three patterns in its posturing can be distinguished. First, it seeks to deter India – its main counterweight in South Asia – where it is the weakest, that is along the continental border. Second, it explores ways to reduce its reliance on the long maritime lifelines in the Indian Ocean. Third, it is gradually and modestly increasing its presence in a way that can be described asdiffuse pervasion. There is thus no reason to be overly alarmed. Yet, important uncertainties remain over China's future intentions and the degree to which problems with lesser powers can prompt it to use military means to defend its interests. Future Chinese naval assertiveness in the region will more likely be the outcome of contingency than strategic provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I address the question of how Chinese scholars participate in scientific knowledge production by appropriating Western IR theories, primarily by examining interactions between North American theories that claim universality and China-specific IR efforts. Drawing on post-Mao era publications and books, I discuss how increasingly independent Chinese IR scholars are portraying their country's rising status in international politics and identifying China's national interests, while still emphasizing socialist concepts such as anti-hegemonism. The result is a form of Chinese IR scholarship that combines Western IR language with a worldview that emphasizes a modern China within the context of traditional socialist foreign policy norms. I will argue that Chinese scholarly discussions about IR theory building reflect efforts to present ‘their rising China’ (as individually perceived) in the study, research, and development of IR theory in response to the appearance of modern IR methods that require new definitions and new roles for old socialist forms. In this context, identity concerns are more important than the actual theories being established or appropriated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper builds on research exploring antecedents of organizational commitment in non-Western contexts. Using identity theory as a foundation, we develop a model which posits that the relationship between the strength of one's ‘national’ identity and affective and normative commitment is mediated by justice perceptions. Using a sample of indigenous Hong Kong employees, we found that perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice mediated the relationship between the strength of one's Hong Kong ‘national’ identity and normative commitment; while perceptions of distributive and interactional justice mediated the relationship between the strength of one's Hong Kong ‘national’ identity and affective commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the 2008 China Survey, this paper examines Chinese respondents' feelings toward their country and how such feelings are related to their democratic values. First, it compares Chinese nationalism with that of 35 countries and regions in the 2003 National Identity Survey. Second, it looks at the origins of Chinese nationalism as embedded in the social and political characteristics of individuals. Third, it further examines the impact of nationalism on people's political attitudes. The findings show that nationalism in contemporary China is better predicted by the political and economic characteristics of an individual rather than cultural attributes, and that nationalism serves as a powerful instrument in impeding public demand for democratic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pacifying and mobilizing remote regions like Shaanxi and the greater Northwest was one of the Chinese Nationalist government's key goals during the War of Resistance Against Japan in 1937-45. This paper looks at attempts to mobilize the productive and human resources of Shaanxi by examining the education and military training programs as initialized and promoted by Hu Zhongnan, Chiang Kai-shek's protégé and the power-holder of the region. It argues that central government efforts were reasonably successful as the region was closer to the Nationalist state at the end of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and India. The greatest paradox of PIEs is that a postcolonial impulse—to critically appropriate Western ideas and technologies such as sovereignty, nationalism, and the free market to build the multinational state and combine it with an affirmation of stories of historical greatness and long existing, pre-Westernized, civilizational-national cultures—enables the political entities to consolidate and discipline their borderlands and reduce diverse inhabiting peoples to culturally different but politically subservient subjects. It is predominantly a nationalist politics, and not economic calculability or financial interests, that shapes PIEs’ center-borderlands relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China's securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most appropriate lens through which this can be understood is neither nation-building nor internal colonialism but modern colonialism. It argues that the representation of Uyghurs and Tibetans as sources of insecurity not only legitimizes state violence as a securitizing practice but also serves contemporary Chinese colonial goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]