ABSTRACT
Introduction In recent times, the international aspect of movement, both from and to China, has received much attention from popular media and academic scholarship. The Western press have not only focused on the heightened visibility of, for example, Chinese tourists and students in cities around the world but have also examined the greater political role that China is playing on the global stage. Such media treatment tends, as Gries notes, to construct images of China as either a ‘cuddly panda’ or a ‘menacing dragon’, views which frequently say more about the West than about China (2005: 235). The cuddly-panda image seems indelibly linked to discussions about the potentially large financial profits to be gained from an increasing number of affluent and mobile Chinese, and is evident in excited discussions about the ‘Peking pound’ and so on. In the early part of 2011 when I was completing the final edit to this book, programmes such as The Chinese are Coming (BBC2 2011) were indicative of the growing discourse of fear about China’s movement: the menacing-dragon aspect of the binary image. Within Chinese discussions, the increasingly globalized aspects of life have also become much examined. In common with Western discourses, views have oscillated, though the general view is that a pro-Western outlook has given way to a mood that is more sceptical, or even overtly xenophobic, about the West. It is in the context of such physical, imagined and discursive shifts and movements that this chapter seeks to examine informants’ national and international orientations. In order to do this, it is inevitable that issues such as patriotism, nationalism, national identification, identity are considered. Since these terms carry so much cultural and intellectual baggage, however, this chapter concentrates on describing how informants feel and speak about their own country and others, rather than providing definitions of these terms. Nonetheless, it is vital that some context to this is provided by a consideration of discussions on Chinese nationalism. Nyíri et al. provide a useful way of getting a grasp on the vast and diverse amount of literature written about Chinese nationalism, saying that lines of analysis roughly fall into two distinct groups (2010: 26). A primordialist line of argument (see, for example, Gries 2001; Fong 2004b) tends to focus on the
historical grievances from which anti-Western and anti-Japanese sentiments are seen to emerge. Such discussions often interpret Chinese nationalism as being aggressive in form and aspiring to replace Western dominance, become the preeminent power in East Asia and achieve qiangguomeng (强国梦, ‘the dream of a strong China’). In this way, China would restore its national grandeur and redeem itself from the humiliations of the previous century (bainian guochi, 百 年国耻, century of humiliation). A constructivist line of argument, meanwhile, continues to focus instead on the relationship of Chinese nationalism to the state and other elites that are seen to stimulate and supervise these expressions (Nyíri et al. 2010: 26). In the not-too-distant past, the majority viewpoint seemed to be that Chinese expressions of nationalism were state led, thus propagated as an attempt to maintain legitimacy after discarding communist ideology. According to this way of thinking, images of unthinking, indoctrinated, uncritical and passive national subjects emerged. Academics have, however, questioned the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in stimulating nationalistic sentiments. They argue that previous ways of thinking have overstated both the party’s capability and their moral appeal in shaping and manipulating the minds of those subject to party rhetoric. Xu Wu, for example, has focused on the impact of new communication technologies, stating that ‘the government no longer has a strict monopoly over people’s mouth, mind, and behavior’ (2007: 3). Accordingly, images of youths with global identities (Fong 2004b) and outlooks (Rosen 2009), and notions of filial (Fong 2004b), pragmatic (Rosen 2009), popular (Woronov 2007) and constructive (Bell 2008) nationalism, as well as the idea that young children ‘perform the nation’ (Woronov 2007), have replaced the somewhat simplistic picture of state-indoctrinated citizens. Nonetheless, despite such altered views regarding the cause and nature of nationalist ways of thinking, it still seems that rather two-dimensional views persist, at least in the Western popular imagination. In short, images of angry citizens, especially ‘angry youth’ (fenqing, 愤青), seem to dominate the conceptual space. Such views have, I think, come to dominate because there has been a tendency to examine only those youthful expressions of nationalism that emerged as responses to a series of international events, such as the Taiwan Strait crisis (1996); the Indonesia anti-Chinese riot (1998); the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (1999); the Taiwan presidential election (2000); the US-China spy plane collision (2001); the nationwide anti-Japan demonstrations (2005); or more recently the Western media’s coverage of both the uprisings in Tibet; and the representations and commentary regarding the Olympic Torch relay (2008), with the result that more everyday manifestations have been ignored. This creates a misleading impression, in the same way as it would be inaccurate to make judgments about the state of British-German relations in the build-up to or aftermath of a World Cup football match. Whilst at times in this chapter, I illustrate youthful national subjectivities with reference to, by now, iconic moments, I hope to show national subjectivities within the fabric of everyday ordinary life. Specifically, my discussion examines the nature
of youths’ national subjectivities, focusing on informants’ feelings of ai guo (爱 国, translated as ‘love of one’s country’ [Fong 2004b: 645n3]). I consider not only how national subjectivities are experienced, constructed and negotiated with, but also how they are performed. In my final rewriting of this chapter, I have been significantly aided by the ideas put forward by Nyíri et al. (2010) because I feel they succeeded in breaking away from an established literature that latterly constructed images of the Chinese as headless xenophobes holding views that are simply the result of an uncritical reflection on messages given to them by state elites.
