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UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI. We analyse the Chinese state's engagement with UNESCO's education work in the context of shifts in budgetary and political influence within the organisation, and of a growing 'securitisation' of education within China itself. We show how Chinese engagement with UNESCO's educational agenda reflects both domestic political considerations and the 'major country diplomacy' of Xi Jinping, as manifested in the 'Belt and Road Initiative' and intensifying strategic competition with the USA. We conclude by discussing the implications of rising Chinese influence within the organisation for UNESCO's capacity for articulating a coherent and consistently humanistic vision for education.

This study applies CDA and story grammar analysis to investigate how Chinese language textbooks for primary schools foster Chinese national identity through their depiction of Chinese people struggling against foreign invaders. The analysis was conducted on 12 textbooks and the findings were based on stories featuring a range of ages, from children to soldiers and artists, who all displayed patriotic spirit and were willing to risk their lives for China. The textbooks also highlight China's past humiliation, such as the Nanjing Massacre and the loss of territories such as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The authors of those textbooks seek to encourage the students' national identity by promoting a sense of patriotism, sacrifice, vigilance against foreign threats, affirmation for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and putting the interests of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ahead of personal interests. Additionally, students are expected to have a strong sense of territorial sovereignty, recognizing Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan as parts of China. However, the results also show that the portrayal of Chinese national identity is Han-centric, excluding ethnic minorities.

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

Since 1990, a large and dynamic global science system has evolved, based on grass roots collaboration, and resting on the resources, infrastructure and personnel housed by national science systems. Euro-American science systems have become intensively networked in a global duopoly; and many other countries have built national science systems, including a group of large- and middle-sized countries that follow semi-autonomous trajectories based on state investment, intensive national network building, and international engagement, without integrating tightly into the global duopoly. The dual global/national approach pursued by these systems, including China, South Korea, Iran and India, is not always fully understood in papers on science. Nevertheless, China is now the number two science country in the world, the largest producer of papers and number one in parts of STEM physical sciences. The paper investigates the remarkable evolution of China's science funding, output, discipline balance, internationalisation strategy and national and global networking. China has combined global activity and the local/national building of science in positive sum manner, on the ground of the nationally nested science system. The paper also discusses limits of the achievement, noting that while China-US relations have been instrumental in building science, a partial decoupling is occurring and the future is unclear.

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of President Xi Jinping's new regime that seeks to rejuvenate the 'civilisational state' through internationalising HE as soft power; (ii) analysing the implications and complications therein; and (iii) exploring the predicaments and paradoxes as China seeks to construct a Sino-centric world order alongside, if not atop, the Westphalian system. It demonstrates how the internationalisation of HE as soft power with 'Chinese characteristics': finds its legitimacy in a historico-cultural narrative; rides on the tide of the current global norms/practices; builds on national agenda/priorities; and is running into conflict with the West which is pursuing its own similar interests.

This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve this goal, the paper provides an abstraction of 'trichotomisation', which explains the significance of the concepts of globalism, regionalism and nationalism in understanding cross-Strait student mobility, and thus shows its threefold nature. Specifically, it considers the intensification of cross-Strait student mobility in HE and the counter-reaction as a manifestation of globalism, a form of regionalism, and an expression of nationalism.

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

In light of popular nationalism on the rise in China and Japan, this inquiry develops and validates a survey instrument to document university students' motivation to learn Japanese in mainland China and explore how the learning of a foreign language may lead to better cross-cultural understanding. A total number of 398 Chinese learners of Japanese in Chinese universities participated in the survey and 12 of them participated further in post-survey interviews. The results confirm that participants' interest in Japan-related products, employment opportunities, and activities contribute to the motivation to learn the language for cross-cultural understanding and undertake cross-cultural exchanges with Japanese people. The results suggest that increased exposure to Japan-related affairs in the media coverage undermines their desire for intercultural communication and increases the approach for interacting with Japanese people. This means it is necessary for Japanese language educators to engage with Japanese language learners and to address macro contextual processes such as rising tensions between the two countries, negative coverage on China in Japan's media, and negative coverage on Japan in the Chinese media.

This paper explores the ways in which policies for national identity formation and internationalization interact to complement and contradict each other in the context of global higher education. These themes are explored by comparing recent policies in two countries in East Asia, a part of the world currently on the rise in the global hierarchy of higher education (Altbach in "Tert Educ Manag" 10:3-25, 2004; Marginson in "High Educ" 4(1), 2011b). China and Japan are presented as case studies, with a focus on the ways the two countries have pursued both higher education internationalization and nationalist agendas through education more broadly. The paper then turns to a discussion of the factors that might explain these approaches as well as the dilemmas that arise from the interaction of these policy agendas in the context of global higher education. The paper argues that while increasing global competitiveness through HE internationalization may prove beneficial to individual nation-states in the short term, countries in East Asia should consider the potential pitfalls of becoming too singly focused on competitiveness at the expense of mutual understanding and peaceful international relations in the region. Furthermore, the continued push to create uncritical nationalistic citizens threatens to undermine the goals of internationalization and may be detrimental to efforts at HE regional cooperation and integration. The paper concludes with recommendations that the two countries consider the potential benefits of global citizenship education and the expansion of regionally focused study abroad programs to help develop graduates with the global competencies conducive to both national competitiveness and regional cooperation.

The "twisted cyber spy" affair began in 2010, when Google was attacked by Chinese cyber-warriors charged with stealing Google's intellectual property, planting viruses in its computers, and hacking the accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In the ensuing international embroglio, the US mainstream press, corporate leaders, and White House deployed what I call the rhetoric of belligerent humanitarianism to try to shame the Chinese while making a case for global free markets, unfettered speech, and emerging democracy. That rhetorical strategy carries heavy baggage, however, as it tends to insult the international community, exalt neo-liberal capitalism, sound paternalistic, and feel missionary. Belligerent humanitarianism sounds prudent, however, when compared to the rhetorical strategy of the US military-industrial complex, which marshals the rhetoric of warhawk hysteria to escalate threats into crises and political questions into armed inevitabilities. To counter these two rhetorical strategies, this essay argues that China's leaders deploy the rhetoric of traumatized nationalism, wherein they merge a biting sense of imperial victimage, Maoist tropes of heroism, and a new-found sense of market mastery to portray the US as a tottering land of hypocrisy and China as the rising hope for a new world order. The "Twisted Cyber Spy" affair therefore offers a case study of US-Chinese communication in an age of globalization. (Contains 34 notes.)

A unit on China's ethnicities provides students rich opportunities to explore multiple themes in the social studies while helping them to develop a deeper understanding of recent events in western China. Studying China's ethnic minorities encompasses such topics as stereotyping, cultural diversity, the creation of ethnic identities, and key historical and geographic concepts. The rise to dominance of Han Chinese culture within East Asia, the nature of Han/non-Han relations, the emergence of nation-states and nationalism, and the development of ethnic and political identities are major threads in world history. Finally, a study of the modern period presents students with opportunities to examine questions of power, authority, governance, human and civil rights, and international relations. Regardless of which thematic vehicle students use, they should be able to demonstrate an understanding of these key points: (1) Definitions of diversity vary among cultures and change over time; (2) Ethnic identities are not immutable; they result from a variety of forces--self, group, other groups and the state--and are negotiated or evolve over time; (3) The development of the majority Han Chinese identity and its relationship with minority groups has a complex history; (4) The emergence of nationalism is a relatively new development in world history; (5) The roots of the current issues in Tibet and Xinjiang go back to the expansion of the Qing Empire, the emergence of European-style nationalism, and the conflict between "empire" and "nation-state" that began with European expansion; (6) The designation, "nationalities" ("minzu") in China is the result of influence from Soviet social science; and (7) Modern concepts of civil and human rights are understood differently in different settings, both by those engaged in struggles for them and by those accused of repressing them. Helping students to develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the events in western China is not the only reason for spending class time investigating minorities in China. Through a rigorous examination of the Chinese case, students also develop a better understanding of the complexities of ethnic and political identities, questions of sovereignty, and civil and human rights globally, while they develop and hone their skills in critical analysis, persuasion, reading, writing, and action. (Contains 5 notes and 7 online resources.)

How does China signal foreign policy intentions to domestic and international audiences during territorial conflicts? While China can signal its resolve by provoking nationalism at home, doing so may risk appearing threatening to neighbouring countries in the region. We argue that China resolves the dilemma by sending different types of messages to domestic and international audiences. Focusing on China’s maritime conflicts in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, we examine China’s narratives regarding the maritime disputes through the analysis of state-run media. Our findings from text mining and topic analyses of more than 31,000 state media reports from 2002 to 2021 suggest that China signals to the international audience on international cooperation emphasising diplomatic and peaceful resolutions while relatively less so in domestic media. The analyses have implications for how China signals foreign policy intentions amidst rising nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on China's policy response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Pelosi's action triggered a surge of popular nationalist sentiments in China, but the response of the Chinese government was far less tough than what many popular nationalists had expected. The article argues that the Chinese government's policy choice in response to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan did not depend on the demands of popular nationalists, but rather was based on a cost-benefit analysis according to its perceptions. The influence of popular nationalism on the government's foreign policy choices has been exaggerated owing to an overestimation of the government's reliance on nationalism for its regime legitimacy, and an underestimation of the government's control over public opinion and nationalist activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current scholarship on Chinese public perceptions of international affairs tends to highlight the growing hawkishness and nationalistic tendencies in popular public opinion during the Xi Jinping era. Whereas these studies tend to deal with cases and contexts directly involving China, little is known about how the Chinese public responds to geopolitical crises in which China is not a direct participant. Our study attempts to address this gap by examining how Chinese social media commentators narrated and debated Russia's war in Ukraine—a major geopolitical event that has shaped China's interests but thus far has not directly implicated China in the conflict. Our analysis, drawing on online commentaries during the first six months of the Russia-Ukraine war, finds that the dominant narratives are still rooted in China-centric objectives and experiences. These nationalistic sentiments, however, diverge when it comes to advocating for China's positions on this war, ranging from direct support of Russia as part of China's battle against the West, to a cautionary position of learning from Russia's mistakes, to support for Ukraine as rooted in China's own experiences with foreign aggression. All these positions are distinct from the official stance of ambiguity in this conflict, highlighting the possibility of alternative, albeit still nationalistic, perspectives presenting themselves on social media despite strict censorship. This analysis contributes to our understanding of popular expressions on international affairs in the Xi era and, specifically, of the different manifestations of Chinese popular nationalism in contexts outside of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how politics, along with familial and socioeconomic factors, influence the life satisfaction of marriage migrants in Taiwan. We conducted a social survey in Taiwan and offered a multidimensional and dynamic view on adaptation and life satisfaction among them. The results showed that in Taiwan, family relationships and socioeconomic class were significant factors of life satisfaction among mainland Chinese marriage migrants. A high level of social integration was positively related to life satisfaction, while the prejudice faced from neighbors, rather than from the media, was negatively related. Regarding political factors, political disagreement with their Taiwanese partners undermined life satisfaction among spouses from mainland China. However, those who possessed a dual identity (i.e., both Chinese and Taiwanese) and those who viewed mainland China and Taiwan as two separate entities tended to have high levels of life satisfaction. [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]

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]

There is an increasingly popular standpoint that the rise of Taiwanese identity has transformed Cross-Strait relations. The discourses of pro-unification are regarded as the antithesis of pro-independence. Seemingly, the shift from Han Chinese identity to Taiwanese identity has been a rupture in the recent development of Cross-Strait relations. This study sheds light on Wei Yung (Wei Yong, 1936–2004) and his concept of 'multi-system nations' to reassess this standpoint. Wei wanted to assist Taipei in recalibrating Cross-Strait relations in the late 20th century. He initiated the 'multi-system nations' concept to justify Taipei's adoption of dual recognition and parallel (international) participation. Wei used this concept to defend Taiwanese political scientists' collective representation in the International Political Science Association. However, the result was not as he had wished. Although Wei's concept of 'multi-system nations' is outdated and his wishful thinking about China's unification has become a path not taken for both Taipei and Beijing, this study shows that there is in fact common ground between the sympathisers of pro-independence and the advocates of unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of 'patriotic consumer mobilization' to explain how China uses informal boycotts as economic coercion. Patriotic consumer mobilization employs citizens as the unit of action, facilitating manipulability, uncertainty, and plausible deniability. It manages public sentiment for domestic legitimacy and foreign policy goals. Citizens are mobilized via propaganda that underscores national humiliation, frames boycotts as grassroots patriotism, and signals resolve to foreign countries. After outlining conditions for use and a case comparison with Taiwan, we draw on Chinese-language sources to examine Beijing's coercion of South Korea over a missile defense system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, against the backdrop of multiple anti-Japanese protests in China, the rise of Chinese nationalism has been much debated. By taking the 2010 and 2012 Sino–Japanese crises over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands as a case study, the article applies discourse analysis to media articles and interviews to ascertain the Chinese government's propaganda toolbox in shaping the nationalist discourse, as well as to substantiate the defining features of anti-Japanese nationalism. The findings reveal a combination of strategies and techniques that the propaganda apparatus uses, such as the creation of an 'us-versus-them' dichotomy, galvanised inclusiveness, censorship, and 'card-stacking' to mould nationalism. The article substantiates empirically both top-down and bottom-up strains of nationalism, and their interaction through the four key themes of sovereignty, history, mistrust and reactivity. It finds that Japan bridges these strands of Chinese nationalism, but in its absence alternative views of nationalism are articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of international relations, it has long been believed that nationalism generates adverse foreign policy preferences. This article revisits this long-standing assumption by investigating how stimulating nationalistic sentiments shapes mass foreign policy preferences in two contexts, namely when celebrating national achievements and greatness with a focus on the national Self and when invoking negative historical memories in relation to a salient Other. Using a survey experiment conducted in China, which capitalized on visual stimuli drawn from real-world sources to stoke respondents' nationalistic sentiments, this article shows that not all rises of nationalism are the same. Adverse foreign policy preferences, such as a preference for a hawkish approach, an uncompromising attitude, and a dislike for the status quo, emerge when nationalistic sentiments are stoked by invoking negative historical memories but not by celebrating general national achievements and greatness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xinjiang Autonomous Region has been a complex puzzle for Chinese rulers throughout history and its people have been diverse in cultural, religious, and ethnic areas. In addition, geographical features and the existence of a border region challenge China's control on this area. Since 1949, the Uyghur separatists and the independence of East Turkestan as an internal problem. Since early 1990s, China has recognized the international aspects of this dilemma and has been forced to confront its consequences. The new policy affected China's relations with Turkey, which in addition to its historical, linguistic, religious and cultural ties with the Muslim Uighurs, was ideologically inspired by Uighur nationalism as well as a suitable place for Uyghur refugees. So the authors intend to investigate how the Xinjiang situation has affected China-Turkey relations. It seems that the quality and quantity of China-Turkey relations before the 1990s have been affected by the Xinjiang developments, and have been undermined, and the Xinjiang developments after the 1990s have been managed at the expense of the Uighurs by the economic, military and political relations between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese government is fond of invoking the 'hurt feelings of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens' to protest foreign actions and policies. However, this rhetoric might be nothing more than propaganda and attempts to leverage nationalist sentiment. How much do citizens in China actually care about issues completely unrelated to their daily livelihoods? To answer this, the study employs a representative survey to investigate the extent to which rhetoric about 'hurt feelings' is consistent with public opinion on four contemporary socio-political disputes involving the NBA, Marriott International, Mercedes-Benz and the city of Prague. Across the scenarios, we found that the Chinese government did not exaggerate the displeasure of audiences—citizens are aware of the cases, were indeed upset by them and advocated for retaliatory measures that were surprisingly more forceful than those adopted in reality. These emotions were largely driven by nationalistic sentiment rather than personal experiences or encounters, suggesting the success of state propaganda in steering the public opinion toward outcomes favourable to the state. These findings support recent studies highlighting the peculiar case of rising nationalism in China, and have important implications for the impact of public opinion on Chinese policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a contextualised examination of whether Xi Jinping Thought, the latest rendition of Marxism-Leninism that functions as China's ideology, has made China's political system more sustainable. By scrutinising Xi's speeches and writings since he came to power in 2012, we demonstrate that his vision is premised on modifying consultative Leninism, China's post-Deng Xiaoping political framework, with strongman rule. This is intended to revitalise the Chinese Communist Party as a Leninist instrument to deliver comprehensive leadership, upgrade China's economy, Sinicise Marxism, nurture a party-centric nationalism, enhance legitimacy and claim global leadership on the world stage. In the process, he has revived the Maoist mass line to induce people to embrace national goals set by the Party, ultimately to persuade them that China's Leninist party-state is more 'democratic' and better at serving them than any other political system. We found that Xi's measures have enhanced the capacity of China's consultative Leninist state and thus the resilience of the regime in the short term. However, the substitution of collective leadership by strongman rule, and the end of predictable power transition by abolishing a term limit for himself, have undermined institutionalisation and reduced the endurance of the system in the long term. [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]

Chinese diplomacy in the past decades was known for its blandness and the use of long, verbose statements. In recent years, the international community has witnessed the emergence of a new form of Chinese diplomacy. This article provides an interpretation of the "Wolf Warrior Diplomacy" in the geo-historical context of the Chinese Dream, which is advocated by President Xi Jinping of China and considers the psychological domains that produce a new national subject. Focusing on the emotional energy of pride articulated in the so-called 'wolf warriors' are known for their 'aggressive, proactive and high-profile' tactics, those constitute the most essential emotional element in the formation of contemporary Chinese nationalism. Those wolf warrior diplomats, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, have started to use social media platforms to respond aggressively to US slander against China. This article elucidates the emotional politics of pride by comparing the Chinese foreign policies in the eras of Deng Xiaoping, and I conclude that the emerging national subjectivity is a psychic transformation and reinvention of previous nationalist fantasies in the new context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, 43 leading International Relations scholars in the United States signed a public statement in support of an urgent call to preserve the current international order, triggering heated scholarly debates. The idealized form of the liberal international order was criticized by many scholars for its chronic problems, including the contradictions between proclaimed liberal values and illiberal behaviors, the inability to reform its institutional pillars to accommodate the diverse group of emerging powers, and the tensions between the defenders of this order and its challengers. These problems became fully exposed under the external shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic. As the coronavirus spreads globally and disrupts the world's political, economic, and social fabric, several forces that have gained momentum and strength during the last decade are now converging as a formidable force that may reconfigure the post-pandemic international order. This paper addresses three significant challenges to the foundations of the current liberal order: (1) the entrenchment of authoritarianism, characterized by authoritarian resilience, autocratization, and the consolidation of competing authoritarian political-economic models; (2) the exacerbation of nationalism enabled by nationalist and populist politicians; and (3) the intensified competition among major powers. China has played mixed roles in the process of reconfiguring the current order. It challenges the mythologized liberal international order and exposes the contradictions in the dominant Western model, while promoting an alternative hybrid political-economic model. The shock brought by the pandemic has provided ample opportunities for China to extend its networks and expand international space for its model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a recent tendency in the official Chinese discourse on nationalism—the government more actively employs Chinese achievements in science and technology to boost national pride and regime legitimacy. This "techno-turn" focuses on China's construction of megaprojects, its active role in international techno-economic business, and its development of cutting-edge scientific research and technologies. This transition in the official discourse on nationalism contains several rationales along material, policy, and ideological dimensions, and uses sophisticated propaganda tactics. It also faces constraints and challenges—some derived from conflicts with reality, and others derived from internal logical imbalances. The turn marks a new stage in the development of contemporary Chinese nationalism, in which official nationalism absorbs elements from popular nationalism. This ideological transition may influence both Chinese domestic and international politics—it may lead to China's more confident engagement in international affairs, but may also generate uncertainties in relations between China and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2009 China has been Brazil's biggest trade partner, and its important ally. However, the nationalist right that won the 2018 elections has a critical perspective of the country. This paper maps the views on China held by the new Brazilian government, both in terms of the economic arguments (protectionism of industry, fear of Chinese control of infrastructure and natural resources) and political concerns (the desire for a diplomatic rapprochement with the United States and anticommunism hostility towards Beijing). The paper claims that these positions are important for foreign policy decision-making and that they complicate relations with China, but that is also necessary to take into account more moderate views from other groups in the administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism is a prominent theme in China's cultural productions. While many studies research nationalistic representations of wars, revolutions and nation-building processes in Chinese socialist cinema and dramas, this article focuses on a marginal media form: political animations. It examines the patriotic discourses in popular Chinese animated series Year Hare Affair and presents three main findings. First, that the series characters represent personified/animalized nation states, reflecting the animator's perceptions of 'self' and 'other' (and 'friends' or 'enemies'), which are highly consistent with the Chinese authority's stance and policy in foreign affairs. Second, that the animation's key theme of 'dreams of being a powerful nation' explicitly demonstrates nationalist and developmental connotations, showing confirmation and resonation of Xi's China Dream initiative. Third, that the animation also moderately deviates from the mainstream representations and offers re-interpretations of the official patriotic narratives with regard to China's performance in international affairs. The analyses conclude a negotiation dynamic between the (half-) independent political animation and the state's hegemony in China's transformative political communication space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author puts forth an analytical framework called party-state realism for understanding how policy makers in the People's Republic of China approach foreign policy. It has four defining characteristics. In order of importance, they are: putting the interests of the Communist Party at the core of China's national interest calculation; and on this basis adopting an instrumentalist approach; adopting a party-centric nationalism; and adhering to a neoclassical realist assessment of the country's place in the international system and its relative material power in advancing national interest. In this conception, the putting of the Chinese Communist Party's interest at the core of national interest is a constant, not a variable, factor. This does not mean the changing international context and relative national power are irrelevant, just that they take secondary importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Taiwan Strait is heating up, as Mainland Chinese netizens, generals, and politicians increasingly talk about 'forceful' rather than 'peaceful' reunification. While Xi Jinping and Chinese nationalists desperately desire Taiwan's reunification, Trump's isolationist "America First" rhetoric has only encouraged reckless Chinese thinking about forcing reunification, and the Taiwanese remain largely passive, unable to confront an overwhelming threat. Wishful thinking in Beijing, Taipei, and Washington is increasing the odds of miscalculation. The 2020 presidential elections in Taiwan and the United States, and the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, furthermore, bode ill for peace in the Taiwan Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyze the influence of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's nationalist stance on Japan's policy towards China from a neoclassical realist perspective. It is argued that the extent to which Abe's ideological leaning exerted impact on foreign policy making depended on external stimuli, as well as Abe's domestic political interests. Prime Minister Abe generally perceived China as a threat to Japan, and remained assertive towards it, but he also pragmatically displayed flexibility in such areas as history issues, security policy, and territorial dispute. This article analyzes these complex developments in light of the changes in international environment and domestic politics, examining three periods: Abe's first administration (2006–2007); the escalation of diplomatic disputes with China (2012–2014); and gradual rapprochement with China (since 2014). It is concluded that the nationalist beliefs of decision makers affect foreign policy to the greatest extent whenever they are in line with other kinds of variables, such as external pressures and domestic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China's foreign policy and diplomacy within the theoretical framework of geopsychology, which may be defined as the geography-embedded prism of a people's attitudinal and behavioural patterns toward others, rooted in past experiences, historical processes, cultural constructs and societal structures. The article seeks to illuminate those key components that have potentially gone into framing China's geopsychology over the past centuries and its impact on Beijing's foreign policy behaviour. Paradoxically enough, China on the one hand talks of anti-hegemonism but it practices hegemonism while dealing with its own neighbours and peripheries on the other. There are several examples that show China's bellicose postures in affirming its position as an unchallenged regional hegemon, while being psychologically unprepared to tolerate intervention by extra-regional powers, for instance, in the South China and the East China Sea. Fired by nationalism and the historical ambition to rule the roost, China is determined to become a regional hegemon regardless of US attempts to encircle it through the balancing coalitions. Also, China is firm to change the rules of the game in pursuit of advancing and calcifying its core national interests. So far as America is concerned, China has blueprints in place to counter US bullying tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The official China Dream of the Great revival tells a story of China reversing "humiliation" by Western powers and returning to its premodern, rightful place at the center of world affairs. However, since ethnically targeted violence in Ürümqi in 2009, leading thinkers and policy makers ask how they can avoid a "nightmare" of frontier insecurity derailing dreams of international power. This article uses a postcolonial approach to critically analyze tensions between ethnic inclusion and exclusion in visual and textual narratives from a Xinjiang regional exhibition that celebrated the PRC's sixtieth anniversary. It asks who is included and excluded in these visions of China's rise? How does China domestically refract insecurity from experiences of a colonial world order that constructs it as inferior? The event tells a story of the history and future of a powerful rising state but expresses deep insecurities that domestic cultural difference is an obstacle to China's global power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on archival sources in Britain, Singapore, Malaysia, and the United States, this article explores late-colonial anxieties about the influence of Chinese nationalism in Malaya (and especially among students in Chinese-medium schools) in the lead up to self-government in 1957. It demonstrates that the colonial fear of communism in Malaya was not always synonymous with the fear of cultural influence from "new China" and that the "rise of China" in the mid-1950s was viewed as a challenge to colonially sanctioned programs for "Malayanization." More importantly, in exploring some of the ways in which the colonial state mobilized anti-communist cultural workers from Hong Kong to help counter the perceived threat from China, the article argues that more focus should be placed on the role of colonial agency in shaping "Sinophone" cultural expression in Southeast Asia during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese leaders often invoke the feelings of the Chinese people in international disputes. However, most survey research on Chinese public opinion on international affairs has looked at measures of nationalist identity rather than beliefs about foreign policy and evaluations of the government's performance. Five surveys of Chinese citizens, netizens, and elites help illuminate the attitudes that the Chinese government grapples with in managing international security policy. The results suggest that Chinese attitudes are more hawkish than dovish and that younger Chinese, while perhaps not more nationalist in identity, may be more hawkish in their foreign policy beliefs than older generations. Netizens and elites are even more inclined to call on the Chinese government to invest in and rely more on military strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm emphasizes the importance of analyzing the unique complexity of state polity composition to analyze foreign policy behavior. Promotion of sustainable development generates opportunities for enhancing government bargaining leverage in international diplomacy by acquisition of international high-profile leadership roles in supporting global sustainable development in the midst of climate change adaptation. States acquire opportunities to increase their international influence amidst trends in global governance to address these sustainable development challenges. Promoting multilateral treaty framework initiatives and their implementation increases their bargaining leverage. Accelerating national sustainable development reflects awareness globally of economic interdependence. Prior to the Trump administration, the United States and China competed for influence partly by contending for leadership in global initiatives for sustainable development in the post-Cold War era. Indo-Pacific state political responses require the analysis of the nature of these states themselves to adequately comprehend this competition for influence. Nation-states demonstrate significantly different patterns of policy goal behavior than nonnation, multiethnic states. Most Indo-Pacific states are postcolonial, multiethnic states. Atypical Vietnam is much more resistant to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam is a nation-state; consequently, it is more likely to perceive challenges and display nationalist behavior patterns. The Philippines have moved to improve relations with China. Relative predisposition toward nationalistic state behavior is a critical factor shaping Indo-Pacific responses to sustainable development challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the first thing to note about a forum on the subject of 1919 in Asia is how awkwardly the spatial frame of "Asia" maps onto the international history of that moment. To be sure, the postwar international conjuncture, which I have elsewhere called the "Wilsonian Moment," had a revolutionary impact across Asia, perhaps more so than in any other world region outside of Europe. As the three preceding essays in this forum note, that year was a waypoint, and sometimes a launching pad, for a rush of novel or renewed revolutionary discourses, connections, and mobilizations in China, India, and Korea, as it was in other parts of Asia and of the world. These were all propelled by the accumulated material and ideological transformations of the years of war, transformation that imbued the moment with revolutionary potential and gave contemporaries a sense that the international order, its power structures and its norms of legitimacy, were uniquely malleable, amenable to concerted action. Indeed, 1919 was a moment in which the very idea of "Asia"—its spaces, the identities they attached to, and the solidarities that ran across and beyond it—was reimagined in ways that at once stitched it together and rent it apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recent decades, historians of modern East Asia generally considered Asianism to be an imperialistic ideology of militant Japan. Although Japanese expansionists certainly used the term and its concept in this way in the 1930s and 1940s, earlier proponents of Asianism looked upon it as a very real strategy of uniting Asian nations to defend against Western imperialism. Showing that Chinese intellectuals considered different forms of Asianism as viable alternatives in the early days of the Republic of China, this article examines a number of discussions of Asianism immediately following the 1911 Revolution. Concentrating on newspaper articles and speeches by intellectuals Ye Chucang and Sun Yat-sen, I show the international aspirations of the Guomindang elite at this crucial point in the construction of the Chinese nation. Despite the dominance of discourse on the nation state, these intellectuals advocated different Asianist programmes for strategic purposes within the first two years of the Republic, dependent on their very different relationships with Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hua-Yi 華夷 system that spread in East Asia in the form of tribute relationships during the Ming dynasty [1368-1644] began as a system based on China's perceived cultural superiority, but slowly evolved into a system centered on nationalism. Accordingly, the kinship networks embedded in the Hua-Yi system were also continually evolving, breaking down, and reforming in a cycle that repeated itself multiple times. Amid this process, ethnocentrism [ zi minzu zhongxin zhuyi 自民族中心主義] and "interest centralism" [ liyi zhongxin zhuyi 利益中心主義] played key roles in the formation and eventual dissolution of the Hua-Yi system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's most prominent dissident, the late Liu Xiaobo, criticized the Chinese Communist Party's efforts "to promote what he considered a toxic mixture of traditional culture and modern patriotism." He worried more about "a mentality of world domination" characterized by a "thuggish outlook." Quoted in Orville Schell and John Delury's (2013) book Wealth and Power, this statement reveals the culmination of some 150 years of nation-building, which now encapsulates what is probably the strongest and potentially most explosive primordial nationalism in the region since Imperial Japan. This article examines the sources of Chinese nationalism and gauges the extent to which Chinese nationalism contributes to cooperation or confrontation in China's foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a mixed-methods approach, this article surveys and compares how Chinese youth view China’s rise with how their Asian counterparts do. The quantitative analysis uses data from the Asian Student Survey to identify the differences in perception of China’s rise between Chinese and Asian youth. Qualitative interviewing is undertaken to probe and assess the reasons behind the gap. The results show that Chinese youth are more optimistic about political stability and nationalism accompanying China’s rise. Nevertheless, they are open to acknowledge a variety of social problems in the wake of economic growth. With regard to China’s international influence, most Chinese youth have a firm faith in China’s peaceful rise, but they also perceive threats from other countries that are normally ignored in the China threat thesis. Chinese youth tend to attribute the negative evaluations of China among Asian counterparts to external reasons rather than see them as reflections of China’s ‘problematic’ foreign policy. Interview materials show why and how Chinese foreign policy is justified among Chinese young people. They open a door for outsiders to understand Chinese public opinion toward international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]