Talk:Chinese nationalism

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The entire page as it stands (March 2005) is such a mishmash that it virtually says nothing. It should either be deleted or completely rewritten. One reason may be the politicisation of the issue. Since nothing can be said that is not controversial, people end up saying nothing much at all.

For example, the entry on Hong Kong and patriotism makes little sense unless you realise that 'patriotism' is a code word used by the CCP to imply that people who love China should support the Communist party and its version of China. Only if understood this way can any sense at all be made of words like 'patriotism' in a Mainland Chinese context. However, it is very difficult to 'prove' this objectively. Anyone who wrote this would be pounced on people with their own axe to grind. So the section on Hong Kong just sits there incongruously. (Caiqian's move in deleting the section on Hong Kong patriotism removes only the symptom of the problem. The grounds given, that it is allegedly "exaggerated", only proves the point that I have made above, that things are gratuitously included or deleted because of people with an axe to grind).

Another point: although the article is a redirect from 'Sinocentrism', little is written about Sinocentrism as such. Why this omission? Many people would maintain (perhaps wrongly, but the perception itself is important) that China is Sinocentric in its thinking. The old division into China and 'barbarians' is one point in question. (And while we're at it, 'barbarian' is a Greek word. It would be useful to have the Chinese words for 'barbarian', of which there are at least four, one for each direction of the compass.)

In the end, this page tells us very little about Chinese nationalism.

The passage below actually offers a much more coherent view of Chinese nationalism than the current content. But because someone regards it as having 'huge NPOV problems', we are lumbered with the current entry which says virtually nothing.

Bathrobe

  • This is such a mess I don't know where to even begin fixing it. It suffers from huge NPOV problems, and doesn't state which NPOV it argues. I've tried to salvage some of the talk of a north-south split by mentioning Edward Friedman who originated the idea.


While the nationalist ideology that attempts to construct a "greater Chinese nation" encompassing ethnic groups of diverse origin such as Tibetans, Uighurs, Kadais, Mongols, etc. can better be classified as cultural imperialism, it is not separated by sharp contrast from the variety of Chinese nationalism grounded on a giant unified continental centralized state such as the Qing Empire and the People's Republic of China. However, other variants of Chinese nationalism, less concerned with the giant continental state, more oriented towards a common racial, traditional cultural affinity of Chinese-speaking groups, tend to be less aware of the need of a modern, cosmopolitan national culture accomodating originally non-Chinese ethnic groups. As a result, Chinese nationalism often sends mixed messages to its recipients.

Actually, these two main variants of Chinese nationalism owe their common origin in the national consciousness of the Chinese Civilization at least since the beginning of the time-honored Chinese literary tradition. It was very early on when the socially and materially advanced agrarian cultures near the Yellow River valley developed a racial notion of us (Hua-Xia, people of grandeur and finess) vs. them ("barbarians" almost always unspecific). This socio-materially defined racialism proves to be more resilient than the more specific tribalism as observed in the Hebrew, Islamic, Hellenic, Iranian and Indic civilizations. In mid-Tang Dynasty after successive coups by Sogdian and Turk military commanders, the Chinese ruling class embarked on an effort to cultivate a more inward-looking and "southward-looking" Chinese identity, resulting in the drastic difference between the proud Eurasian "Silk Road" culture of pre- and early Tang period and the helplessly passive, homogenous culture of the Song empire (which coexisted with Northern cultures with Sinitic forms and values, but did not identify with the ethnic Chinese). After the cosmopolitan Mongol Yuan Empire, the Ming ruling class, formed of southerners and elites of the former northern states, rigorously cleansed Chinese society of heterogenous elements and forged a monolithic ethnic identity based on a unified Chinese state.

The Mongol Yuan, though a politically unified state, did not culturally unify North China (called "Khitay") and the South (disparagingly called "Manzi", or southern savages), which actually inherited the homogenous Chinese heritage of late Tang and Song. The Mongols actually brought in a large number of Muslim and Christian Central Asians and are themselves attracted to the Islamic religion in droves (arguably, the Yuan Mongols, not Tang or Song Persians, were ancestors of most modern Huis). The decadent and disunified Mongols in late Yuan period gave southern Chinese peasants a chance to conquer the Khitay north and the Manzi south. But centries of Northern military preeminance occupied the minds of the new victors. Beijing, rather than Nanjing, remains the epicenter of a greater Sinitic sphere, and Mongolia, with taiga-steppes powers yet to emerge, such as the Oirats (Kalmyks) and the Jurchens (Manchus), remained a threat. It was the third emperor of Ming, Zhu Di, that had the vision to move his capital from Nanjing to Beijing, repositioning his role as an "emperor-cum-garrison", refreshing united China's ascendant dynamics (as in Tang, which had the northern capital of Chang'an). The ethnocide of Uighur, Mongol, Khitan and Jurchen elements started in Zhu Di's reign, which prohibited the public use of non-Chinese languages. In a few generations, northern China became ethnically homogenous, though with much Mongol-Uighur customs persisting in its culture into our day. One important diversifying factor became entrenched: Islam. The Ming and Qing Empires, though occasionally at odds with organized Muslim dissent and uprisings, generally did not bother eradicating the monotheistic religion the same way they did Christian churches. By the time of the founding of the People's Republic, Muslim Hui populations found themselves firmly attached to the land of China, speaking no other languages than their local Chinese dialects, having centuries of intermarriage with the non-Muslim Chinese, having Chinese names(though some with Sinicized Muslim surnames such as "Ma" for Mahmoud) and hardly aware of their existence as a separate ethnic group. Hui as a "nationality" was only officially constructed by the Communist government as part of its minority policies. The Ming Empire also delinearated its boundaries with its neighbors and discouraged the overseas adventures of Chinese merchants (perhaps as a policy to maintain the distant, but hegemonic image of China as the only supreme imperial state on earth).

It was the Ming Empire that initiated the practice of isolation and internal development, to be emulated by Tokugawa Japan and Yee Choson Korea. The Qing ruling class, though of Manchu-Mongol origin, only continued China's existence as a culturally homogenous centralized state, with only tokens of imported elements and ethnic division such as Tibetan Buddhism and caste ascriptions for Mongols and Manchus.

It can be safe to say that the Chinese people and culture in its current form, crystalized during the Ming and Qing Empires, and was only disrupted by several decades of semi-colonialism, warlordism and Japanese invasion (which actually galvanized Chinese nationalistic sentiments), and reemerged under a centralized state that claims legitimacy and legacies from the Ming and Qing Empires. The Republic of China of Taiwan, though established after 1949 by a regime that strongly identified with Ming legacies, now sees its Chinese identity challenged by localization, Americanization, pan-East-Asian identity and sheer political manipulations.

As observed by civilization theorists like Oswald Spengler, Chinese culture is very ossified and centralized. Its strong inclination towards stability often overrides cases for change and diversity. However, the Chinese civilization also retains a strong consciousness of its own pragmatic and material well-being. In the past decade Chinese society (this includes the societies of Taiwan, Singapore and Chinese diaspora world-wide) as a relatively united organism, managed to modernize in terms of technology, social order and outlook to a greater degree than most Muslim societies, African societies and South Asian Subcontinental societies, but less so than Japan and arguably Russia, Eastern Europe, South America, Korea and Turkey.

It has become apparent that, with the advent of globalization, certain forces of desinicization will manifest themselves without the constraint of geographical unity of the Chinese civilization and facilitated by new information technologies. Cantonese-speaking, Taiwanese and peripheral PRC, originally non-Chinese cultures are gaining their niche in the cybernetic world and will possibly steer further away from a unified Chinese community depending on their assets of resources and creativity.


Problem with this statement.

In practice since the Nationalist Revolution led by Sun Yat-Sen, Chinese nationalism asserts that the bulk of the population whose languages belong to the Sinitic linguistic family, despite their differences in terms of geography, customs and social organizations, should view themselves as a monolithic "Han" nationality and dominate a unified nation state that derive its legitimacy and boundaries from one of the great empires that unified the sphere of the Sinitic, Confucian civilization between 221 BC and 1911 AD, which may include large regions inhabited by populations whose languages, religions, customs and histories are distinctive from the so-called "Han people".

The current official version of Chinese nationalism asserts no such thing and in fact argues that this is Han Chauvanism.

An expansionist extension of this nationalism of the modern, unified state even advocates the assimilation of ethnic groups dominated by the Han state to assimilate culturally into the "culturally advanced" Han state and become in name as well as in fact members of the "Zhonghua Nationality".

Again it needs to me at least mentioned that this goes against the official construction of Chinese nationalism, which has a rather large amount of Russian influence.

Overseas, Chinese nationalism often takes on another meaning: the recognition of commonalities among individuals and groups who, or whose ancestors belong(ed) to Sinitic and Confucian cultures now defined as "Han".

Actually it doesn't. Singaporeans and advocates of Taiwan independence are anti-nationalist even despite the fact that they recognize cultural links.

Roadrunner: uncritically presenting the position of "current version of chinese nationalism" is itself POV. We can definitely use some NPOV criticism, such as those from Dru Gladney. Fengguang

I agree that presenting the official position of Chinese nationalism is NPOV, that's what I didn't include it in the article. What I was planning on doing was to park the text on talk and the move it in bit by bit with counterpoints.

Lets say: Singaporeans have their own version of Sinitic ethnocentrism that is distinctive from the "nationalism" of the two Chinese states.(as all ethnic-nationalist overseas "Tangren" or "Huaren" do)

But this isn't an article on ethnocentricism, it's an article on nationalism, and no one that I know argues that Singapore is part of the Chinese nationalist goals. Second it's not true that all "huaren" engage in ethnocentrism. Second generation American-born Chinese generally don't.

NPOV: please define "Chinese" using Chinese terms "Han", "Zhonghua", "Hua", "Zhongguo", "Huaxia", "Rujia wenhua" etc.

I can't because there is no consistent definition. Different people will use different definitions, and even the same person will use the different defintions over at different times. As an encyclopedia, what we need to do is to try to exaplain this situation.

Please identify specific variants of Chinese nationalism that merit capital case "Nationalism".

All of them do. Any ideology that claims to be Chinese nationalist needs to be included.

Fengguang

Besides, Gladney provided ample example exposing the racist basis of Sun Yat-sen's Race-Nation-Civilization-State theory, which continues to serve as the basis of subsequent definition of what it means being "Chinese", surprisingly with little modification.

Right, and the fact that Sun Yat-Sen's pre-1911 definition was fundamentally racist was what I included in the article. My objection wasn't including that information. My objection was the fact that this isn't the *only* variant of Chinese nationalism wasn't included.

1979 is observed to be a turning point in ethnic relations in the People's Republic, where officially defined "nationalities" began to assert themselves as influential actors in a liberalizing society.

Hong Kong and Taiwan(this is in spite of the official doctrines of the Guomin Dang), being liberal societies themselves, throughout modern times provided contexts of evolving dialectics among Sinitic groups. Some of which challenge the concept of a monolithic Han Nation.

I've included information on Taiwan. Also one has to make a distinction betwen liberal, Chinese nationalist, and Han assimilationist. I've seen groups of people who have all sorts of different combinations of the above.

Added lots of stuff. Please check for balance and NPOV.

龙 四人帮万岁毛主席万岁

四人帮万岁 毛主席万岁

Translates to: Long live the Gang of Four! Long live Chairman Mao!" -&#35918&#30505sv

Someone added an essay which has lots of great stuff but which is not in encyclopedia form. I deleted all of the stuff that has to do with India and I'm going to go through and change the "I think"'s to something that is more encyclopediaic.

I'm glad that someone mentioned Joseph Levenson. The other two names that should go in there are Joh Fairbanks and Lucian Pye.

Personally, I think that most of Joseph Levenson's and Fairbank's conclusions are silly, but they are both extremely important and they seemed a lot less silly when I looked at the state of the field before they came around....

-- Roadrunner

Removed a lot of text. It was obviously taken from some academic paper, but there is no statement of copyright. Can the original author state where the copyright status, it had a lot of interesting stuff.

[edit] Missing info & mixing overseas Chinese with the PRC versus ROC matter (structure)

I think it should be possible to read each article without reading all relating articles. The article is definitely not clear about Taiwan/ROC and RPC and the claims the both have made to be the legitimate government of both the RPC and ROC territories.

And it is confusing that Chinese nationalism related to overseas Chinese is mixed with the PRC versus ROC matter. I'm afraid I'm not going to reorganize this as I have already to many articles on my "To Be Reorganized" list :-D . But I tried to fix a few things that weren't that much effort to make the article a little more logical.--. Laudaka

Taiwan is still a province, not a "former province". Calling it an independent country is POV. How can Taiwan be an "independent republic out of the current PRC"? It has never been part of the PRC. The statement implies that a new republic is to replace the ROC. Of course it won't replace the PRC!
It is also better if we refer to the two sides as "Taiwan and Mainland China" rather than "the ROC and PRC" because aside from what each side controls, their overalapping legal claims are controversial. The acronyms should only be used when we speak of their governments. --Jiang 01:47, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

i think somebody should replace the picture with a better one, like some student protests or whatnot. I don't think a picture of a serious nutcase reflects good light on chinese nationalism :) Wareware 01:13, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

agreed. we should also locate some pre-1920s revolutionary posters (presumably in the PD). i couldn't find any by doing an internet search in english. someone can probably do better in chinese. --Jiang 03:23, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I replaced the pic with a scene of protest from the May Fourth Movement. I think it's pretty fitting because you can't mention chinese nationalism without mentioning the former. I can't find any pre-1920s posters from the net, but I think I've seen those in books. Wareware 06:27, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] i don't know what this article is talking about

hi, i spent some time reading this article. i still don't know wtf anybody is talking about. is it because i'm stupid, and this article discusses philosophical ideas beyond my grasp? or is it because the article is poorly written. my past experience in wikipedia leads me to believe it can be either one.

Correction: i think this article is thinly veiled racism, but authors are trying to hide that by using obfuscatory writing. if that is the case one should state it outright like in black nationalism. don't be afraid to do that, Carmichael has done it before, and there were very few assassinations attempts on his life i believe.

Joe21983813 06:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pictures and irrelevant info

Please, stop adding pointless information and dubious pictures of a weird looking man in chinese clothing with a pistol in one hand and puyi's picture in another. They add nothing to the article and have little to do with Chinese nationalism. A coupla guys having a costume party is nowhere metnionable in this article. The article already says that the notion of being chinese has transformed from Han-only to all five major groups (han, man, mongol, hui, tibet) and finally to the current fifty some nationalities that the PRC recognizes. So please stop reverting and adding ugly links and pictures, okay? BlueShirts 08:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

    • Han Nationalism/Culturalism is Chinese nationalism, it is not irrelevant. And you describe the picture as "weird looking man in chinese clothing", this show that you have strong bias view on this topic, your point of view is hardly neutral.赵里昱 08:16, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
      • A bunch of guys getting together getting dressed up is not Chinese nationalism. If you want to advertise your brand of chinese nationalism, go sign up for a geocities page and write whatever you want. Wearing han clothing is totally irrelevant to chinese nationalism. BlueShirts 08:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
        • National costume is have strong relation to nationalistic feeling, I would say only sencond to language and writing. It separate you from a crowd just by a taking a glimpse.赵里昱 08:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
          • Say that on a geocities page. You're just advertising some fringe movement that's practically non-existant on a scale that's even mentionable in an encyclopedia entry, understand? BlueShirts 08:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
            • Now it is on encyclopedia entry, isn't it , if you just having disagreement on this, why even bother to delete the * Anti-Manchuism on "further reading" section as well? This show that you obviously having political motive, in other words, not neutral enough.赵里昱 08:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no evidence to suggest the movement to restore Hanfu has any significance whatsoever beyond a small group of friends to have it included in wikipedia. see Wikipedia:What_wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_propaganda_machine

Furthermore, the follow text is POV and does not add any significant content to the article: "Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan/Sun Wen), the founder of Chinese republic who overthrew the Manchu Empire which ruled over all of China from 1644 to 1911 proclaimed as such when he launch his rebellion against the tyrannical Qing Dynasty which was ruled by non-Chinese Manchurian: "In order to restore our national independence, we must first restore the Chinese nation. In order to restore the Chinese nation, we must drive the barbarian Manchus back to the Changbai Mountains. In order to get rid of the barbarians, we must first overthrow the present tyrannical, dictatorial, ugly, and corrupt Qing government. Fellow countrymen, a revolution is the only means to overthrow the Qing government!"" The article already states, "In the late 19th century, Chinese nationalism identified Han with Chinese and argued for the overthrow of the Manchus who were considered outside the realm of the Chinese nation. This led to many rebellions by Han Chinese. After the 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, the official definition of "Chinese" was expanded to include non-Han ethnicities, although many historians argue that this was due mainly to the realization that a narrow definition of "Chinese" would result in a loss of Chinese territory, and that the Manchus were too sinicized to be considered an outside group." --Jiang 11:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "since all ethnic minorities are entitled to claim Chinese Nationalism."

"since all ethnic minorities are entitled to claim Chinese Nationalism."

Including the Navajo and the Basques? Readin (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
You make a good point - that sentence is ridiculous. Yunfeng (talk) 16:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Something's fishy with this article...

I find some of the information in this article to be quite odd. My attention to this was drawn by the Hunan Independence (or whatever it was called) secton. It is written in an odd style, and makes peculiar and highly "rosy-eyed" statements about history and its participents (particularly Mao Zedong), and only one outside reference to a chinese website. This leads me to suspect that this section, if not the entire article may have been written or edited with the intention of presenting Chinese internal nationalist propaganda as truth to non-chinese. Few would argue that the information inside China regarding its history is of an objective nature, and I have no reservations in stating that it is highly inaccurate if not an outright fabrication. I would like to see this section, if not the article in its entirety rewritten with a more objective view of history and using sources far more likely to be objective.203.153.203.159 (talk) 05:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)