ABSTRACT

This chapter explains the key features common to popular nationalist understandings of China's recent past before examining where these accounts diverge from recent historical research and discussing the implications of such differences. Chinese nationalism often conjures up images of potent popular passions, almost singularly focused. Efforts to historicize the development and effects of nationalism and nationalist movements in China focus attention on the elements of agency and add to existing analyses that tend to emphasize structural influences. Greater concern with the historical contours of Chinese nationalism can benefit efforts to examine the nature of and potential changes to Chinese national identity. Grasping the different historical characteristics of Chinese nationalism enables more precise analysis of the constitutive norms, social purposes, relational comparisons, and cognitive models available to both elites and the general populace across the polity over time.