!!!!!!!!!!The Role of Nationalism in Sino-American Relations

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Gene Giannotta University of Illinois Springfield !!!

Working Draft Latest Revision: 16 April 2011 !!

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Introduction There have been few concerns, practically and scholarly, in 21st century global affairs

more salient than the evolving role of the People’s Republic of China. Behind Deng Xiaoping’s

reforms of the late 1970s, the erstwhile communist economy has given way to a freer market

system and the ensuing economic resurgence has established the PRC as a dominant force on the

world stage. But this economic liberalization has not been attended by an increase in political

liberalism. Human rights concerns have continued to produce tepid if not hostile reactions from

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Western democracies. While nominally communist, the state has had to seek new sources of

legitimacy because of this embrace of markets and thus require tightened political control and

centralization.

It is this very dichotomy that should provoke concern among observers and participants

of world politics. As the more open economy remains a point of pride, and the central pillar of

the PRC’s rise, the political leaders will be motivated to seek new avenues for maintaining their

dominance and avoiding the decay of political authoritarianism that has crippled other

governments attempting to encourage market competition. While the state is surely still a major

factor in economic policy, it is no secret that it has also decentralized to a great degree, certainly

for an ostensibly communist country. The trick for leadership is thus continuing to avoid

decentralization politically while promoting it economically. Kellee Tsai has shown that informal

mechanisms arising in the wake of “fiscal federalism” have at once strengthened local financial

authorities and also motivated central leaders to ensure loyalty by appointing local officials

whose devotion to the center is not in dispute (2004). And while liberalization has succeeded, it

has also required a shift in policy predicated on the need to “rally the masses’ patriotic passions

to ‘build socialism with Chinese characteristics’” (Callahan 2010, 35). These trends draw a clear

distinction with Milton Friedman’s classic argument that free market capitalism is inherently tied

to political freedoms (2002), and bring this conventional wisdom into question. Recent events

have shown that there is indeed a growing contingent of elites in the PRC that are eager to

promote a nationalist posture, as evidenced by heightened militarization and employing more

inflammatory rhetoric with regard to regional political issues and the continuing American

involvement in the area.

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My argument is that Chinese nationalism, and a closely connected rise in militarism, play

an increasingly relevant role in the relationship between the United States and the People’s

Republic of China. As their own economic future looks ever-brighter, the PRC elite have been

and may continue to be more belligerent in terms of rhetoric and military policy, preferring to

speak to the growing and self-perpetuated nationalist fervor in their country as a means of

tightening the power of the Communist regime despite greater economic liberalism. The “rising

power” frame may lead elites in the increasingly confident state (here the PRC) to take the

opposite tack and address their deficiency - military strength - by provoking the existing

hegemon and pursuing rhetorical and policy goals that demand greater military nationalism. In

this way, the political elites can at least make public attempts to address the perceived grave

deficiencies in national greatness.

This paper will be a first cut at examining this issue of nationalism in modern U.S.-China

relations, from the Chinese perspective. I proceed by first reviewing the literature on Chinese

nationalism and military modernization, paying particular attention to the identity and

philosophical foundations, and their relation to the trend in militarization. I will conclude with a

discussion of the ways these forces and recent policy decisions could impact U.S.-China

relations going forward, in particular the ways that these sentiments motivate elite discourse.

!Nationalism as Humiliation

China’s history has provided a strong basis for nationalism as a political tool, going back

almost a century to the end of the imperial dynasty. The heritage of ancient civilization is often

juxtaposed with the decline and exploitation of Chinese society over the course of “the century

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of national humiliation” from 1842 until the victory of the Communists in 1949 (Callahan 2006,

180). The early decades of the twentieth century saw the country referred to as “the sick man of

Asia” (Callahan 2010, 6-8). Callahan notes that this “theme of national humiliation” was used by

“Chiang Kai-shek in the 1920s and the PRC in the 1990s as a response to address popular

criticism” (2010, 25). Calling China a “mobilization state that both encourages and feeds off of

the positive productive power of popular feelings and mass action,” he describes the concept of

national humiliation as, at once, a mass sentiment and a tool of the state - a latent emotional

thread that regimes dating to the pre-Communist days have attempted to arouse on cue for their

benefit (2010, 25). Understanding this mindset is thus a key to contextualizing Chinese

nationalism. This section will look at the historical record underlying the Century of National

Humiliation, discuss the ways in which this sentiment has been used by Chinese leaders, and the

recent developments in this theme of national shame as a mobilizing force.

The Century of National Humiliation

The national humiliation theme is most often activated as a reminder of the subjugation

of China to external forces from the end of the Opium War in 1842 until the final victory of the

Communist Party over the Kuomintang in 1949. Beginning with the British in the early 1840s,

who “pried open the Chines empire to Western capitalism,” the country endured (in its view) a

constant siege from external forces, both Western and more local, in the case of Japan (Callahan

2008, 180). Following an easy victory, the British were emboldened to see China as a pushover

state, and in 1856, when a French missionary was executed by the Chinese, there was another

reason to pursue such an aggressive course (Ford 2010, 131). In the midst of the Taiping

Rebellion of 1850-1864, the Qing regime once again proved unable to battle back Western

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forces, and, this time, the treaty that revised the British-Chinese relationship in 1858 pushed the

limits of “equality” between the two - with direct appointment of ambassadors and relief of the

kowtow custom being two particular examples of ways it affronted Chinese dignity (Ford 2010,

132). Given the Chinese view of these outsiders as “barbarians” (Callahan 2010; Ford 2010), it is

not surprising that these events were psychologically difficult to digest. Over the course of two

decades, the Chinese empire found itself forced to acknowledge at least equality (in the

Europeans’ eyes) with other countries and their governments, if not subservience (in the Chinese

eyes).

Indeed, as Ford argues, the movement by Europeans to demand “symbolic concessions

from China to modern notions of coequal sovereignty and diplomatic reciprocity” escalated so

that the country “was not permitted to stop at mere formal equality…she was compelled to

accept what was increasingly clearly a position of outright inferiority” (2010, 153). Further

deepening the crisis for China’s self-respect was the loss of its regional influence. In the late

nineteenth century, diplomatic struggle and war over Korea’s status led to its loss as a dependent,

“the crowning blow” in a wider phenomenon that saw the evaporation of “symbolic tokens of

submission” that were critical to Chinese self-image (Ford 2010, 164). Eventually, foreign

intervention in Chinese affairs led to the collapse of the weakened Qing dynasty in 1911

(Callahan 2006, 188), but the ensuing Republican era had its own humiliations.

Rather than European antagonism, these resulted from Japanese aggression. First, during

World War I, popular unrest followed the government’s accession to Japan’s “21 Demands,”

spurring the public to create National Humiliation Societies and declare of May 9th as National

Humiliation Day (Callahan 2006, 188). The Kuomintang made it official in 1927, but included

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twenty-six different observations throughout the year to recognize the myriad humiliations

suffered by the Chinese people since 1915 (Callahan 2006, 188). However, by 1940, this gave

way to “War of Resistance commemoration day” (July 7), which recognized the invasion of

China by Japan, yet another humiliation (Callahan 2006, 190). In the last decade, localities have

declared their own commemorations on dates signifying such grievances: Shenyang has

recognized the loss of Manchuria to Japan on September 18 while Nanjing uses December 13 to

recognize the Nanjing Massacre (Callahan 2006, 190).

Humiliation as a Unifying Force

After the Tiananmen protests in 1989 and the harshly negative light cast onto the

Communist regime by its crackdown in response, Deng Xiaoping decided that the “country’s

unruly youth needed to be taught how to be proper, patriotic Chinese” and so reinstated the

reliance on humiliation as a unifying concept for the population, through a strong national

education policy (Callahan 2010, 195). This recognition of history as a tool of the state and the

ensuing education campaign recalls Mao Zedong: “Make the past serve the present, and make

foreign things serve China” (Callahan 2010, 31). Indeed, this policy of nationalist indoctrination

was borne out of Deng’s belief that Tiananmen was itself a function of the “catastrophic failure

of the CCP propaganda system” (Callahan 2010, 32). The Party needed to restore this sense of

history so the people would understand how the country had suffered past shame and required

the regime to protect them from future provocations, which it could best do through building a

common national image to draw mutual shame from, and provoke aspirations of greatness.

This education campaign not only reinforces the humiliation theme, but does so in a way

that presents the PRC and Communist regime as necessary and critical to China’s continued

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ascendance in the world order. Callahan argues that Tiananmen “presented a security crisis” to

leadership, but rather than a traditional national security problem, it struck at the “ideological

security, regime security, and cultural security” of the Party (2010, 35). Hence, it was a deeper,

more existential crisis. Reversing this worrisome trend was necessary to maintain Communist

dominance. Realizing the necessity of military support, Deng and the leadership responded to

instances of insubordination from some quarters of the Peoples’ Liberation Army in the 1989

crisis with stronger assertion of Party control over the military, and application of this wider

education policy to the PLA, intending to firmly instill a sense of subservience to the Party’s will

(Shambaugh 2002, 11-31).

But what began as an official revitalization of an old-school propaganda policy has turned

into a more deeply-ingrained cultural stigma that finds expression throughout society and not

solely by official means. Callahan provides several examples of cultural reflections of this

concept of national humiliation and points to it being part of an apparently bipolar national self-

image that at once honors a glorious ancient Chinese civilization and modern advances by the

Communist regime, while also despairing over the encroachment on the past glory by the

Western “barbarians” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and finding great fault and

personal slight in more contemporary “humiliations” (Callahan 2010).

National Humiliation Defeated...and Celebrated

This prevalence of “national humiliation” has waxed and waned in the Chinese culture

and political environment. China has at various times “defeated” this specter of national shame -

Mao Zedong, inaugurating the Communist era in 1949, and Jiang Zemin, in 2001, both declared

it overcome - but it has persisted, waiting for new provocations to spur Chinese anger, or the

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Chinese leadership’s desire to spur Chinese anger (Callahan 2010, 198). In 1999, only a few

years before Jiang’s declaration, America’s accidental bombing of the PRC’s Belgrade embassy

was seen as a new humiliation, while protests over the Olympic Torch Relay in the run-up to the

2008 Summer Games in Beijing were seen through the same prism (Callahan 2010, 198-99).

The Beijing Olympics, in fact, offer a case study in the use of imagery to sell nationalism.

Callahan argues that the event serves as an example of the reliance on “soft power” in its rising

power foreign policy (2010, 3). He says that “hosting the Summer Olympics has been a central

goal of Beijing’s foreign policy for the past twenty years, if not for the past century” (2010, 3).

What can often be seen (to cynical Westerners, in any case) as a mere spectacle, an

agglomeration of many tertiary athletic events with little mass appeal, and an excuse for global

genuflection at the altar of peace and harmony in theory if not practice, was a crucial aspect of

the PRC’s rise on the world stage. To the PRC leaders, it was a way to express both to internal

and external audiences how far the country had come; it was, in short, an exercise in cultural

warfare. And, as alluded to above, events surrounding the Olympic spectacle became tied into

the larger theme of confronting a past of national humiliation:

Xenophobic reactions to March 2008’s unrest in Tibet during the Olympic Torch

Relay’s “Journey of Harmony” are indicative of broader trends of China’s

“harmonious society.” Rather than wondering why Tibetans would protest

Beijing’s rule, many Han Chinese around the world rallied against the “bias” of

Westerners, who they felt had unfairly criticized their homeland. The Tibetan

unrest was thus transformed from being a serious domestic issue of racial politics,

into an international issue of pride and humiliation that pits China against the

West (Callahan 2010, 9).

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National humiliation has even taken on an official character, since the establishment of

National Defense Education Day in 2001, which has been informally referred to as “National

Humiliation Day.” In fact, the official theme in 2004 was “Never forget national humiliation,

strengthen our national defense” (Callahan 2006, 179-80). Foreign affairs are seen from this

perspective. Humiliation is not simply an unfortunate, oft-recalled mark of the past - it is an

ongoing attack on Chinese identity by those outside the state. While it is not a surprise that an

authoritarian regime uses such a victimhood theme to drum up domestic support, it can be jarring

to some degree, as the PRC’s interconnectedness with the rest of the globe and America in

particular, has seemed to “normalize” outsiders’ perceptions of it.

Being aware of the concept of “national humiliation,” however, raises important points

and sheds critical light on a particular aspect of the U.S.-China dynamic that is in danger of

being ignored if one looks at the relationship solely through a rational, reductionist lens.

Regardless of what is in the “rational” interest of both states, if the populace of one is motivated

by a deeply-ingrained sense of persistent humiliation, at a national level, that is perpetuated by

barbaric western forces that have as their goal the subjugation of China, then it seems

conceivable that one misunderstanding could have far-reaching and deadly consequences. A

populace of over a billion souls taught from their earliest years that China was once a great

civilization, and is rising again, but was once humiliated by the outside world, not least of which

the United States and other western powers, and is now at constant danger of new humiliations

by these same powers, now jealous of China’s latest rise to great power status, is clearly a

powder keg waiting to be lit by one seemingly minor provocation.

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China’s own involvement in other country’s affairs could be considered humiliations for

those nations, but these examples are glossed over or altogether ignored in the official

remembrance of China’s past - a past full of glory undone by the unjust and barbaric intrusion of

Westerners and non-Chinese interlocutors. China is thus a perpetual victim, a mindset made ever

more salient and pronounced by the fact that it had once been a glorious civilization and has

made strides toward reclaiming such status - strides constantly checked, in this humiliation-

oriented mindset, by jealous and ruthless barbarians. Borne out of a propaganda need, this

mindset seems to have been socialized into the Chinese psyche, and so could have profound

ramifications in U.S.-China relations, even if at the moment these policies seem subtle or just an

artifact of a threatened regime struggling to hold onto power. Discounting this nationalist

identity, and the influence it could have on elite decisions, could have dangerous consequences.

!!

Virtue & Order in Chinese World Views Ancient Chinese philosophical views of global relations are important because they

remain in the public consciousness, and so like the concept of national humiliation, can serve to

undergird the way that individual Chinese, mass opinion, and elite decision-makers view the

world and act in relation to other states, such as the U.S. In particular, Confucian philosophy can

interact with a humiliation theme to develop a victim mentality that drives support for the

Communist regime at home and antipathy towards external forces. There is at once a sense of

moral righteousness, hegemonic destiny, and ingrained paranoia that seems to run through

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Chinese thought and understandings of the world. I will attempt to tie this strands together and

discuss their relevance to PRC policy toward the U.S.

Imperial History & Confucianism

It is important to understand the foundations of these sentiments, and while I’ve already

discussed some relevant points in China’s history, a brief discussion of philosophical outlooks is

required to further deepen this understanding. Confucianism, the dominant strain of Chinese

philosophy, was part of “an intellectual tide…that saw harmonious order as being possible only

in an inexorable centralization, which would eliminate warfare by subjecting all to a single, just

sovereign” (Ford 2010, 3). Ford argues that a “monist” perspective is thus the foundation of

Chinese “strategic history” - it is not solely the result of open competition, but destiny that

requires the eventual rule of a hegemon (2010, 21). One can see how such a worldview could

interact dangerously with an active humiliationist indoctrination campaign.

However, Confucian thought itself, seeing order as a natural outgrowth of individual

devotion to ethical and virtuous behavior (Ford 2010, 30-34), does not seem inherently

dangerous. But the implications for politics and international relations could be a far different

story. In this context, hegemony is not simply destiny, but tied to the virtue of the ruler: a leader

devoted to the self-perfection and ethical values promoted by Confucianism will be necessarily

great and deserving of his dominant role in governance (Ford 2010, 34-37). And the concept of

unity under hegemony is a key component, which Ford describes as such: “Just as there can be

only one father in the family, to whom all others owe a profound filial piety, so can there be only

one real sovereign in the world,” and any other power structure “is necessarily

provisional” (2010, 38). Confucian primacy of ethics and unity thus motivates competition for

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the ultimate and desirable goal of seeing the world joined by one, benevolent and great ruler.

Rather than being simple proscriptions for the aspiring leader, Confucianism provides

justification for centralization of authority and hegemonic competition. In the context of national

humiliation as a psychological theme and regime tool, it also provides a foundation from which

to assert one’s own virtuous destiny as an epic struggle against outsiders who lack virtue and

work to prevent the benevolent rulers from achieving their rightful primacy. Despite Mao

Zedong’s apparent “anti-Confucianism,” this philosophical outlook and moralist attitude seems

to still thread its way through his own thought and Chinese culture during the revolutionary

period (Ford 2010, 190-91). And it is no surprise that the Communist regime may seek to

legitimate itself by appealing to such concepts through promotion of Chinese self-perception as

the rightful and virtuous hegemon, under assault at every turn. In fact, the concept of “Tianxia, or

“All Under Heaven,” can serve such ends. Pointing to Zhao Tingyang’s The Tianxia System,

Callahan argues that “the Tianxia system is part of China’s assertion of normative soft power, but

in a way that complements China’s hard power of economic and military strength. In other

words, Tianxia is not a post-hegemonic ideal, so much as a proposal for a new hegemony” (2008,

758). This sort of narrative appears to allow nationalist sentiment to complement the Marxist

belief in global and universal socialist revolution. While not a perfect match, it fits into the now-

accepted narrative of Deng Xiaoping’s necessary reforms and the continued relevance of the

Communist Party to defend and perpetuate the revolutionary sentiment that underlies its

legitimacy.

!Chinese Military Nationalism

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These nationalist forces have contributed to reform of the People’s Liberation Army over

the past two decades. The Tiananmen protests raised fears over an inadequate and disloyal

military failing to suppress future popular uprisings (Shambaugh 2002, 22). Since 1989, there

have been “subterranean discussions” about drawing a sharper distinction between civilian and

party, especially in strengthening the military as a national institution rather than as one

subservient to the Party, but as Shambaugh notes, such talk has been criticized as “bourgeois”

and seems anathema to the CCP and its rule” (2002, 14). But even so, there has been a growing

distinction between “civilian” government and the military. Shambaugh says that the

“interlocking directorate” that saw military and Party leaders with service records in both

institutions has since “been completely broken by generational succession,” and, writing in 2002,

noted that “not a single senior party leader today has had a single day of military experience, and

only two senior PLA officers in the High Command have any significant experience in high-level

politics” (2002, 12-13).

This change in the dynamics between the ostensibly civilian Party government and the

military has led to the mentioned internal discussion of the relationship between the two, but also

in efforts to strengthen Party control. As noted above, talk of greater professionalization as

realized through stricter separation between the two institutions has been stifled as treasonous,

while leaders have played up the PLA’s role as the defender and enforcer of the Party’s

revolutionary will. There are two distinct threads in recent civil-military relations in the PRC that

deserve to be raised in any discussion of Chinese nationalism. First is the manner in which

Chinese militarization has been the result of a reactionary impulse related to the perceived

hegemonic activities of the United States. Second is the way in which the pursuit of an aircraft

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carrier and increased naval power has been a particular direction of these impulses and the

military nationalist drive.

Responding to the Hegemon

American military interventions over the past twenty years, beginning in 1991’s Gulf War

and most recently in the “War on Terror,” have helped along the militarization push and

nationalist motivations underlying it. Shambaugh notes that the First Gulf War revealed a stark

gap between American technical superiority and the Chinese military’s own backwardness, and

this “revolution in military affairs” provoked PRC leaders to respond with their own military

buildup (Shambaugh 2002, 1-3). Further uses of force by the United States reinforced this feeling

of inferiority, and set against the backdrop of the ongoing national education campaign, one can

see how the political environment at the turn of the century and into the twenty-first has resulted

in a military nationalist fervor in the polity at large and the elites more particularly. Fear of

external threat and internal strife, “national humiliation,” and the pursuit of national glory

(rightfully China’s destiny) thus combine to make militarization an obvious policy choice.

Indeed, American foreign policy of the past decade, while ostensibly a result of the Al

Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, has also had the unfortunate effect of playing into this

nationalist frame of victimization. The military presence in the middle east, as well as the

heightened attention paid to the situation on the Korean peninsula, has made Chinese leaders

wary of an increased role in Asian affairs by the dominant global hegemon (Shambaugh 2002,

297-300). This has interacted with built-in cultural assumptions discussed earlier, but also allows

the leadership to drum up this sentiment through propaganda based on American foreign policy

and military excursions. It is one thing to say that the U.S. is “out to get us” and force China to

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submit to its will; it is an entirely different thing to do so with examples of American invasions

and rhetoric readily available and pertaining to other regional actors.

The accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by the U.S. in 1999 was one

such example, prompting the PRC to break off a period of friendly military exchanges between

the two states for over a year following (Shambaugh 2002, 334). But even more germane to the

topic of military modernization is the fact that the NATO involvement in Serbia proved another

example of the high-tech nature of modern warfare, which allowed the allied forces to attack

from a distance and saw no troops on their side lost (Sharbaugh 2002, 6). In similar ways, the

U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001 continued to show the

PLA how modern warfare had changed and “added a great sense of urgency to the PLA’s

modernization program” (Shambaugh 2002, 330).

The “National Dream” of an Aircraft Carrier

Robert Ross has recently argued that “recent developments in Chinese politics and

defense policy suggest” such a move, “beginning with the construction of a power-projection nay

centered on an aircraft carrier” (2009, 46). We’ve already seen how nationalist reactions to the

“revolution in military affairs” have provoked a move toward modernization in general. But

there has also been a move to modernize its Navy, to the point of achieving regional maritime

dominance. Reality is that the U.S. currently has a position of naval strength in the region, and

along with the theme of military modernization and nationalism as a response to American

hegemony, this has provided much rhetorical fodder for Chinese elites to drum up support for a

naval modernization movement, with the centerpiece being the aforementioned carrier. Ross says

there is “widespread popular demand” for the carrier to be built, owing to the nationalist fervor

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and the fact that both the carrier and “large blue-water navy” are “traditional symbols of great

power status” (2009, 60). In fact, this sentiment “has spread to the provinces and to all sectors of

Chinese society, including to universities, government think tanks, industrial circles, the political

elite, and the general public” (Ross 2009, 61).

Reality probably inhibits this goal, since it seems that the PRC does not have the

capability to actually build their own, and so far as observers know, the wider organizational and

technical structure that would be required is currently unavailable and would require a much

larger-scale effort than seems feasible (Shambaugh 2002, 271). But research into the possibility

was first approved by President Jiang Zemin in the 1990s and, in 2007, it was announced “that

China possessed the capability to build an aircraft carrier,” with further announcements by

various officials over the next year pointing to the intent to do so (Ross 2009, 61). However, this

could be part of the greater nationalist rhetorical strategy. Since military nationalism has become

a dominant theme, and the demand for an aircraft carrier has apparently become entrenched in

the public mind, it could just be an example of the elites playing to this sentiment. The aircraft

carrier could, therefore, just be an easy symbol to use for the larger nationalist theme, and indeed

its nature as emblematic of “great power status” fits into the humiliation idea as well. As a

response to hegemonic impulses from without and the internal desire to rise, talking up the

carrier could be a good political strategy. But, Ross notes that many within China believe that

this very environment makes “the decision to construct an aircraft carrier is irreversible” and that

President Hu Jintao will announce such a plan before he leaves office in 2012 (2009, 65).

Ultimately, the idea of an aircraft carrier as a national goal is part of the broader military

nationalism that has been ascendant in elite discourse over recent decades. The concept of naval

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modernization plays into the fear of the U.S. hegemon dominating its region and the resultant

desire to head off future humiliations, while the carrier itself provides a useful symbol for this

effort, and by extension, the nationalist sentiment more broadly speaking. All in all, while this

dream may not be attained anytime soon, it serves a useful purpose in the wider nationalist trend,

reinforcing conceptions of Chinese inadequacy and victimhood, and instilling a more substantive

purpose for which to aspire. And while their remains a “wide gulf” between Chinese and Western

military capabilities, Cheung notes that there has been “significant progress in achieving

technological breakthroughs and narrowing this gap over the last decade” (2009, 29-30).

!Lessons for the Future

Mark Beissenger’s landmark study of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which provided

an in-depth view of how the once-unconscionable became universally recognized as inevitable.

Tracing the process by delineating the many variables and events, Beissinger illustrated the way

complex, interconnected systems can become undone by seemingly minor events building upon

one another until the entire edifice itself unravels (2002). The consequences might be unforeseen

and unintended, but they arise from structural context and individual choices and can nonetheless

be seen through this more holistic lens. Such an understanding of the ways political processes

work can help us better grasp more than just the fates of large multinational governments. In fact,

it would be prudent to remember the lessons Beissinger relates when attempting to tie together

the various strands I’ve laid out here. The many variables at play in Chinese domestic politics

makes one wonder how stable the state really is, even if it does seem quite so at the moment.

Susan Shirk (2007) has pointed to these domestic factors, and the ways in which nationalism has

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become a more fundamental and transformative, and perhaps unmanageable, feature in an

authoritarian yet capitalist state whose ruling Party requires new foundations for legitimacy. 1

Recent events have shown just how close the two countries can come to blows. Just in the

last month, as I write this from the vantage point of December 2010, the world has seen rows

over allegations of “currency manipulation” by both American and Chinese officials toward the

other, as well as a dangerous flare-up in the Korean peninsula that saw the PRC reluctant to calm

tensions. Earlier, I discussed how the Korean situation plays into the idea of national humiliation

and Chinese worldviews - the idea of an American-friendly presence on its border being

anathema to many Chinese nationalists, and potentially the latest in a long line of “humiliations”

inflicted on the rising China by the western barbarians. For elites indoctrinated into the

humiliation narrative, it would not be surprising to see how such provocations could lead to

greater military tension, if not a rupture into actual armed conflict. Tied together with the

recently flared economic tensions, one can see how the Chinese leaders could see the walls

closing in on them. Whether this is objectively justified or not is irrelevant if it leads them and

the Chinese public to a more aggressive and ultimately violent posture. Intuitively, this view of

the external world as inherently and perpetually hostile can reasonably lead to irrational and

potentially deadly behavior. In the case of a country with over a billion souls and nuclear arms,

one could understand how this situation could quickly spiral out of control and result in dire

consequences.

Such a possibility is exacerbated by the confluence of decisions on the part of state

leaders to actively promote a nationalist culture, internal political and external security events

Also see interview on this subject, with Harry Kreisler in the University of California’s “Conversations with 1

History series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgIqfqrMrQU

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which have reinforced this decision, and the economic liberalization that saps legitimacy from

the Communist Party’s rule. The arguments that appear in the literature, and my own in this

paper, can be boiled down to this interaction, which over time have built on the foundation set

forth in my earlier discussion of philosophical and historical forces to create a situation that

incentivizes elite decisions that reinforce and recommit the state and public to increasingly

nationalist frames and motivations.

While the general forces and historical narrative discussed above provide a basis from

which this nationalist movement can be derived, there has been a clear and conscious shift in this

direction over the course of the past two decades. Provoked by the dual threats posed by the fall

of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen protests in 1989 in the PRC to tighten their control,

manifested in an education campaign that centered on nationalism, and the “humiliation” theme

in particular. Set against the backdrop of the ongoing tumult and disintegration of the Soviet

regime to the west, the PRC was understandably shaken by what seemed to be, and has been

described by Beissinger (2002), as a “tide” against the Communist leadership and toward more

localized nationalist governance. Cognizant of China’s own history of nationalist uprisings, in

particular those that toppled the Qing and KMT regimes preceding the Communist ascendance,

PRC elites have worked assiduously to centralize authority and mobilize a nationalist sentiment

that works to their advantage. Deng Xiaoping’s decision to strike hard at the 1989 protesters and

backers within the government and military, and follow with a stridently nationalist education

initiative, is evidence that this fear played a role in elite decision-making with regard to

immediate policy and long-term survival prospects.

Giannotta ! 20

Over time, this nationalist sentiment became indoctrinated in the polity, to the point

where more than two decades following Tiananmen and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the

Communist leadership is still motivated above all by a desire to reinforce their own legitimacy

and mobilize nationalist anger outward, toward external threats posed by Westerners and

“barbarians” who are actively conspiring to subvert and reverse the Communist revolution. The

irony, of course, is that China itself has opened up economically to such a degree that one could

arguably say the PRC has itself undermined the revolution. Reviewing the references to Deng on

the Communist Party’s Web site, for example, shows a clear effort to praise his reforms as a

means of maintaining the original motives of the revolution - not as an explicit move toward

liberalism and capitalism. Deng did not open China to capitalism - he returned the people to the

proper course of the revolution, after they had lost their way in misguided policies of the Cultural

Revolution (ostensibly a result of Mao Zedong losing his own way in his later years). Due to 2

external events, internal turmoil, and the leadership’s own liberalization decisions, the Party

required then and continues to require a new basis for its legitimacy as the ultimate power in

Chinese affairs.

Nationalism has become that basis. Built on a sense of destiny and revolutionary zeal for

Chinese and Communist success, this nationalist sentiment is reinforced by a pervasive sense

that the rest of the world is actively conspiring against China’s interests. Regardless of whether

the leadership has, in fact, lived up to its peaceful rhetoric, it continues to frame a good deal of

its policy as emanating from a desire to go its own way without undue conflict. Yet, many

See the Communist Party’s English-language Web site, particularly the biography of Deng at http://2

english.cpc.people.com.cn/66485/66495/66496/4533662.html, for more on how the CPC sells reform as necessary to the continuance of the revolution.

Giannotta ! 21

external events are framed as unwarranted provocations. American military interventions over

the past two decade, for example, have been consistently described in terms of hegemonic

aggression, and threatening to China’s own ability to rise peacefully and unperturbed

(Shambaugh 2002, 297-300). China has no interest in bothering anyone, just maintaining its own

successful growth and trajectory toward strength in its own right. But even minor occurrences

around the world, and especially within its own region, become evidence that others are “out to

get” China. The rest of the world is unjustly provoking China. This can be out of a state’s jealous

fear of losing its own hegemonic power, as in the case of the United States, or out of a desire to

establish themselves as a hegemonic power in their own right, as in the case of India in the 1990s

(Shambaugh 2002, 306). If only the rest of the world would let China ascend peacefully, there

would be no problems. But, alas, it never does, and so the Communist Party continually

reinforces its own position and reminds the Chinese people why they require it.

This trend is necessary in order to preserve the status quo in a world that is increasingly

globalized economically. It is somewhat ironic that the government is at once stoking the fires of

economic liberalism while fanning the flames of xenophobic nationalism. Even though it

necessitates greater interconnectivity with the external world, the Communist regime fears the

democratic embers this might spark - and so it must continuously stimulate the seemingly

dichotomous beliefs of national greatness and national humiliation. Since economic nationalism

is not a prudent nor, one would expect, popular option, military nationalism becomes one

obvious course. Indeed, over the past two decades, the Chinese government has been pursuing a

modernization plan for the People’s Liberation Army. Shambaugh points to the First Gulf War

and subsequent American interventions in the 1990s as instilling in the PLA and Party leaders a

Giannotta ! 22

sense of lagging behind in a “revolution in military affairs,” which saw U.S. effectiveness tied to

weapons systems far more advanced than what sat in their own armaments (2002). While Deng

was promoting a national education drive based on the concept of “humiliation,” elites

themselves were feeling the sting of shame over the inadequacy of their own military forces.

This shame was also tinged with fear, given the internal problems arising with Tiananmen and

the way that local uprisings seemed to topple the Soviet union republics and the central Soviet

authority. The PLA was not just meant to defend the homeland from external threats - it was also

the ultimate police force, tasked with protecting the revolution from internal chaos as well. And

so, the ability of the military to suppress any kind of rebellious stirrings of the sort seen in

Tiananmen and across Eastern Europe was called into question. In order to defend against both

possible internal threats and the external threat of the newly unipolar world, dominated by an

aggressive hegemon with highly-advanced military technologies, the PRC leadership thus

decided to pursue this modernization effort.

Nationalism & State Policy

The U.S.-China relationship is thus clearly driven in large part by the domestic forces at

work in both countries. In broad strokes, I have provided an overview of some of the key ways in

which nationalism has affected and continues to drive Chinese foreign and security policy. While

the foregoing has been focused on China, there are certainly similar forces at work in the

American case, especially in the midst of an economic downturn and the ease with which

politicians can scapegoat China for its connection to the U.S. economy. Whether the fact of

increased Chinese production of goods consumed by Americans, and thus the specter of

outsourcing and manufacturing job loss, or the fact that the PRC holds a significant amount of

Giannotta ! 23

U.S. debt, there is certainly some legitimate cause for concern on their side of the relationship, as

well.

But while American elites may raise the issue of China to score political points, Page and

Xie have found that the public they ostensibly represent hold far more moderate positions, to the

point of resigning themselves to the rise of the dragon and the decline of the United States

(2010). Perhaps the prosecution of the seemingly unending war on terror combined with

domestic political and economic considerations has made Americans wary of further military

entanglements. But the fact remains that concerns exist and the precedent for demagoguery

stands ready for emulation by future generations. In this way, perhaps the United States will take

a page from the PRC leaders and strike up their own national humiliation theme to ward off a

real or imagined decline and the attendant national angst.

Domestic considerations can clearly make a difference in the way international

relationships play out. Christensen’s study of early PRC-American relations from 1947-1958

uses a “mobilization model” that sees states making decisions based on their own ability to

mobilize their public to action (1996). He describes the key intervening variable in the causal

chain as the “political hurdles to mobilization” - high indicates a more difficult time in

mobilizing resources to respond to a foreign-based provocation (Christensen 1996, 13). While

the state, in this model, is a unified actor (15), the dynamics within the PRC, especially the

evolving tensions between the Communist Party leadership and military, make the inner

workings a key political process that needs to be understood better in order to develop a proper

model for Chinese policy decisions. The civil- or party-military relationship, as well as the role

of nationalism both as a policy tool and a psychological force, likely serve as the foundations of

Giannotta ! 24

elite decisions. In this way, the structural considerations of the Chinese and global systems

interact with the idiosyncrasies and choices of individuals. One can then reasonably wonder how

future elites, thoroughly socialized through their national humiliation-based education and the

militarist environment in which they grew up, will react to even minor provocations. The

seemingly widespread nationalist fervor thus could be a useful replacement for the communist

ideology that is ostensibly the Party’s raison d’être, but in the process it could also provoke inner

turmoil

A deeper understanding of the belief systems underlying elite decision-making, in general

and in the Chinese case in particular, would certainly aid in discerning the ways in which the

Sino-American relationship will play out over the coming years and decades. Herrmann and

Keller (2004) found that “ideational factors,” such as the dispositions held by an individual, play

key roles in the decisions of strategy type (engagement, containment, use of force). In particular

they found that the way one saw the global trade system “has become an important new

ideational fault-line among American elites” in the years since the Cold War ended, saying that it

“is in fact a better predictor of decisions to use force than is military assertiveness” (2004, 576).

But does this generalize to other states and eras? And, in particular, to China? If free traders are

more likely to favor engagement, as Herrmann and Keller find, how will the dichotomy between

the liberalized economy and centralized political authority affect the belief systems of the elites

involved in decision-making? Herrmann and Keller’s study is focused on American policy, but

applying its lessons to Chinese elites could be productive, albeit difficult (the original study

utilized a survey of American elites, and one could imagine such a research design might be

difficult or lack validity in the Chinese case). Given the findings of Page and Xie, however, one

Giannotta ! 25

could reasonably expect that American policy will remain moderate at best, barring a shock to

the system. So long as the public seems to have accepted China’s rise and elites seem more

predisposed to the free market and globalizing forces, there does not seem to be reason or

incentive to take an overtly nationalist or aggressive posture vis-a-vis China.

Another recent study quite germane to this issue is one in which Herrmann, Isernia, and

Segatti found that, rather than attachment to the nation, “the real problems are chauvinism and

culturalism” (2009, 752). Nationalism itself is thus not the problem, but its confluence with other

attributes that promote the idea of an aggressive and superior nation. In the case of the PRC,

then, it is not the nationalist sentiment itself that is worrisome, but the context in which it has

increasingly occurred - through the mentioned frames of mutual, historical humiliation inflicted

upon China and the military modernization and reforms. In the United States, the apparent

wariness toward aggressive national postures might make this less of a threat, even if economic

nationalism becomes a more salient pursuit. And given recent observations that assessments of

each country by the other’s journalistic, intellectual, and analytical elites have been increasingly

negative (Shambaugh 2003, 237), this dynamic and its potential ramifications deserve further

study.

!Conclusion

This paper has provided a first cut at the issue of nationalism in the Sino-American

relationship. The importance of the “national humiliation” theme, historically and in recent

Chinese education policies, serves as a foundation for the general national character - at once

hopeful of a glorious destiny and wary of a perceived constant assault on that destiny by foreign

Giannotta ! 26

barbarians. At the same time, Chinese world views, as understood through the imperial history

and Confucian conception of order, marry a hegemonic ideal of order with a belief in virtuous

leadership. Virtuous leaders simply rise to the top, and create a necessary order to the world.

These nationalist ideas of humiliation and order can thus interact to promote leaders seen as

virtuous and benevolent against the evil of the outsider world, creating an epic narrative for the

Communist Party leadership to exploit, and supported by this longstanding Chinese

philosophical and psychological backdrop. The push toward military modernization, and the

symbolic pursuit of an aircraft carrier is one way (perhaps the most dangerous way) in which this

nationalism has manifested itself in a substantive policy area.

Robert Art has argued China’s success means that its “leaders will be less willing to

pursue a foreign policy of accommodation…and the strategy of peaceful rise, which has served

China so well, will increasingly come into conflict with an assertive Chinese nationalism” (2010,

391). Christiansen echoes this by saying while neither the United States nor the PRC has material

reason to start a conflict, the complex inner dynamics inherent to Chinese nationalism means that

even indirect provocations or policies with altogether different intentions could have disastrously

counterproductive consequences (2006, 125-6). The nationalist trend has thus served to bolster

Communist legitimacy in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms over thirty years ago and while

the rest of the world resigns itself to China’s strong economic rise, this movement could be a key

to its foreign policy and position on the global stage going forward, making unintended

consequences a critical concern of the contemporary Sino-American relationship.

!!

Giannotta ! 27

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