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Imagining the economic nation: Globalisation in China

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George T. Crane
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Department of Political Science, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, 01267, USA

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To cite this article: George T. Crane (1999): Imagining the economic nation: Globalisation in China, New Political Economy,
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 New Political Economy, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1999

Imagining the Economic Nation:

Globalisation in China
GEORGE T. CRANE
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Economic globalisation and economic nationalism are often presented as oppos-

ing forces: transnational capital and commodity flows of increasing size and
speed cascading against relatively discrete national economic jurisdictions.
While writers of various theoretical persuasions argue that the tide of globalisa-
tion is ineluctably eroding the ground of economic sovereignty, others contend
that states may still be able to bend global currents to national purposes.1 In any
event, both sides of this debate seem to accept the idea that globalisation and
economic nationalism are fundamentally at odds, thesis and antithesis. This
shared image arises from a widespread understanding of economic nationalism
as state management of economic activity to serve national goals.
Now, it is near impossible to gainsay this standard instrumentalist interpret-
ation of economic nationalism—political leaders and particularistic interests do
use state power to affect national economic outcomes—but there is another way
to view the intersection of state, nation and economy, one that takes economic
nationalism as a facet of national identity.2 From this perspective, representations
of the economy are part and parcel of specific definitions of a nation, as in
'advanced industrial country' or 'primary stage of socialism'.3 And this econ-
omic aspect of national identity creates an opening for the intermingling of
global and national economic symbolism. To take a brief example, which will
be explicated further below: to say that China is a 'socialist' country simul-
taneously situates the nation in relation to transnational economic forces—
capitalism v. socialism—and in relation to a distinctively Chinese historical
project. China is, at once, a reflection of world-economic forces and a reiteration
of unique cultural experiences. In sum, if we place economic nationalism within
the dynamic of national identification, we may find that it is not as incompatible
with globalisation as is conventionally thought.
This article explores the intertwining of conceptions of the economic nation
and forces of globalisation in four steps. First, the economic aspect of national
identity, what I will here call the 'imagined economy', is briefly discussed.
Second, two general ways in which economic globalisation may influence
articulations of an imagined economy are outlined. Third, public pronounce-
ments of China's national economic identity, as expressed in major speeches by

George Crane, Department of Political Science, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA.

1356-3467/99/020215-18 © 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd 215

 George T. Crane

President Jiang Zemin in 1997, are reviewed. Finally, the imagined Chinese
economy thus presented is analysed for its consistency, or lack thereof, with the
expected effects of globalisation.

The imagined economy

In his widely cited book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson argues that
nations are 'imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet
in the minds of each lives the image of their communion'.4 For Anderson—and
virtually all other major contributors to the literature on nationalism—culture
and politics are the imaginative sinews of the nation, the stuff of communion.
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National identity, it is presumed, is constructed primarily from representations of

ethnicity, race, language, political-historical experience, and the like. What is
missing is any sense that economic life might also be imagined and constitute
an important aspect of national identity. Indeed, Liah Greenfeld rather bluntly
forecloses this possibility when she argues that 'economic reality is not con-
structed in the same sense and to the same extent as political reality'.5 This
suggests that 'economic reality' is exogenous to the nation, it is the hard
facts of material life: how we produce, what we consume, with whom we
trade. While she may be right to argue against more rigid forms of economic
determinism ('economy does not define the nature of society'), she is missing
an alluring alternative: images of economic life can be, and are, used to
inspire a sense of communion. There are, in fact, at least three ways in
which national narratives are rendered in economic terms: economic-
historical experiences of suffering that are made into powerful signs of collective
identity; economic accomplishments that can serve as emblems of shared
glory; and assertions of an organic societal unity rooted in a common economic
life.
Many commentators point out that national identity is shaped, at least in part,
from momentous historical tribulations. Perhaps most important in this regard is
warfare. For many nations, the blood sacrifice of battle, whether it ends in
victory or defeat, is a forge of collective identity. The Sino-Japanese War of
1894-5 confirmed both the Meiji image of a modern Japan and the Chinese
motif of weakness and humiliation. Japan emerged from the fighting as almost
a Great Power, China as a melon to be carved. War is not, however, the only
historical material useful for the construction of national identity. Economic
exploitation and catastrophe figure prominently in many quasi-kinship myths.
For Chinese nationalists of various stripes, communist and non-communist, the
Opium Wars are as much a matter of economic degradation as they are a
moment of military subjugation, a disaster central to the story of modern China.
And this is by no means peculiar to China. Gandhian resistance to the British salt
monopoly remains a salient moment in Indian national memory and the Great
Famine of the mid 19th century is still an important theme in the Irish national
narrative, as is the Great Depression of the 1930s for certain generations of

216
 Globalisation in China

Americans. In short, economic suffering can create a sense that 'we' are one
because we have endured bad times together.
Economic accomplishment can also play into national identity to the extent
that it inspires a sense of common glory. Ernest Renan argues that:
A heroic past, great men, glory ... this is the social capital upon
which one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the
past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed
great deeds together, to perform still more—these are the essential
conditions for being a people.6
Economic achievement—doubling national income in a decade; partaking in a
developmental 'miracle'; becoming the epicentre of global investment—can
function as the 'great deed' performed together. Post-World War II Japanese
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nationalism has relied more heavily than most on the self-respect generated by
reconstruction and development, because military-political expressions of na-
tionhood were rendered impolitic by failed aggression and nuclear victimhood.7
In the boom years of the 1980s Japanese success was interpreted in some
quarters as a manifestation of a unique national character, which has made the
recession of the 1990s something akin to an identity crisis: how can we decline
when we are destined to succeed?8 Chinese political authorities regularly invoke
the glories of 'socialist construction' and the new economic vitality as marks of
national greatness. Indeed, virtually all modern nations envision themselves in
terms of industrial or, now, post-industrial glory. Since at least the time of
Friedrich List, whose belief in Germany's destiny as an industrial power fuelled
his nationalist commitments, only a few national narratives have centred on the
maintenance or recovery of a predominantly agrarian life. Gandhi's vision of
India and Nyerere's African socialism stand out in this regard, but both have
been cast aside in their respective homelands. Maoism, however much it
may have spoken to peasant revolution, was always about creating an
industrial China. Agriculture is certainly an element of national identity,
especially insofar as it venerates the beloved communal territory, but it is, for the
vast majority of nationalist movements, insufficient 'social capital' for a national
idea.9
A third way in which economic images may constitute national identity is the
sense of unity that flows from the myth of a common economy. This point may
seem questionable from the start insofar as economic activity, especially as it
breaks down into patterns of class, divides people as much as it might unite
them. Anderson sees a similar sort of fragility within his more culture-centred
view of the nation: 'it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the
actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always
conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship'.10 The same can be said for the
economy. Whatever the actual experience, narratives of economic life as
something that the community shares are widely asserted. 'We' are united
because we toil together in the same field, even if we are doing different jobs
and earning different wages.
The notion that disparate livelihoods and classes are welded together in a
common economy has a long and variegated intellectual pedigree and powerful
217
 George T. Crane

political sponsors. Ancient Chinese thinkers distinguished between 'root' and

'branch' economic activities and, while this formulation valued agriculture (the
root activities) over manufacturing and commerce, the various economic prac-
tices were understood to be entwined in organic interdependence. In modern
times, perhaps the most influential representation of the natural coherence of
economic practice is that of Adam Smith. For Smith, we all have our niche in
the division of labour, which he conceived of in national terms." 'Division' here
implies positions within a broader community; it is a sign of order, not of
divisiveness. Efficient specialisation and comparative advantage create a certain
symbiosis: we rely upon each other not only for our personal needs but for the
maintenance of economic society. We all have a stake in the economic life that
we share.
In a rather odd way, Marxism simultaneously explodes and reproduces
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Smith's view of the organic economic nation. The capitalist nation is, for
Marxists, so exploitative and so crushingly unequal that its fissiparous tendencies
cannot be held together by the 'false consciousness' of a common economic life.
Workers have no nation. But, once the revolution has occurred and the state
wrested from bourgeois overlords, the image of economic unity returns. We are
all together 'building socialism', we all have our place in this amalgamating
national project (the fleeting moment of Leninist internationalism notwith-
standing). It is a new division of labour, albeit one that looks towards the
eventual dissolution of all such divisions and the dawn of communist freedom,
and anyone who rejects it is not simply a 'class enemy' but a national traitor as
well.
Wherever they are taken from—tradition, liberalism, Marxism—images of
economic unity are championed by political leaders and nationalists interested in
counteracting indigenous economic differences. In Bismarck's Germany, state
managers, worried about potential working-class mobilisation, enacted protec-
tionist trade policies and nascent welfare programmes to bolster the national
loyalties of workers. This 'socialisation of the nation', to use E.H. Carr's term,12
spread throughout the industrialising world, inspired Meiji modernisers in Japan
and ultimately fed the fires of world-wide protectionism in the interwar years.
After 1945 neomercantilism was discredited in the West, because it was seen as
a prime cause of depression and war, but narratives of economic holism were not
abandoned, just recast. In the USA, mass participation in industrial progress and
consumer prosperity are key elements of national identity—the 'American
dream'. In the Soviet Union and China, 'socialist construction' retained a sense
of self-reliance and glorified the national developmental project. In all of these
renditions, solidarity bred of a common economic life was and is a defining
feature of the nation.
Thus, the national economy is imagined—through stories of suffering, glory
and unity—and such images figure prominently in many, indeed virtually all,
modern national identities. Economy is by no means the only, or even always the
most salient, constituent of the nation, but it is certainly worthy of more attention
than it has been afforded in the literature of nationalism and national identity.
Consideration of this facet of the nation thereby raises an intriguing question:
how does globalisation affect the imagined national economy?
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 Globalisation in China

Globalisation and the economic nation

To answer this question, we need a preliminary definition of 'globalisation'. It
is a new old thing: old in that transnational practices have long been central to
the logic of capitalism; new in that they have become, in the latter half of the
twentieth century, more extensive, intensive and powerful. Wolfgang Reinicke
makes a helpful distinction between interdependence and globalisation.13
The former implies a level of transnational economic interconnection that
necessitates macroeconomic adjustment by states, the harmonisation of
economic policies to manage the local effects of global activities. While policies
must change, state structures remain largely intact. Globalisation, reflecting
an even higher level of transnational economic activity—the world-wide
dispersion of production processes, the explosive expansion of financial
capital—is a microeconomic phenomenon; that is, it requires both a change
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in the 'very nature of the organisational structure and strategic behaviour

of individual companies' and, concomitantly, a transformation of state-
society relations. Reinicke is echoing many other writers, from various
theoretical perspectives, who see globalisation as remaking the state, forcing
it to 'privatise' or 'internationalise' or 'downsize' its key economic func-
tions.14
There is a cultural element of globalisation as well. Increased human mi-
gration and communication, enabled by economic and technological change,
create new channels for imagining collectivities. Arjun Appadurai sketches the
complex ways in which culture and nation are refracted and reinvented through
the disjointed social, economic, technological and ideological dimensions of the
contemporary world.15 His key point is the difficulty, perhaps even impossibility,
of maintaining stable, territorially based collective identities in the face of the
simultaneous pressures of global cultural homogenisation and 'heterogenisation'.
It would seem that national myths are weakened from above, as new ideas and
images pour in from other places, and from below, as individuals struggle to
situate themselves meaningfully within the riotous proliferation of cultural
symbols.
Both of these forces, state transformation and sociocultural complexity, have
potential consequences for an imagined economy. Robert Cox presents a
thoroughgoing analysis of the 'internationalisation of the state'. In order to
maintain economic growth within the territory they claim to control, political
leaders have not only to coordinate macroeconomic policies, but, ultimately, to
restructure the state itself. Cox contends that those state offices that are most
involved in international economic policy—ministries of finance, central banks,
etc.—gain in political prominence, while other agencies recede. The combination
of common world-market pressures and increasingly similar internal state
structures leads to 'a process of interstate consensus formation'.16 We do not
have to accept his assertion that the state has become a 'transmission belt from
the global to the national economy' wholesale to see some merit in his point that
a consensus on proper economic policy is fairly widespread.17 He argues that
there is no 'explicit authority structure for the world economy', but that there is
a certain 'governance without government', or what he calls a 'nebuleuse1,
219
 George T. Crane

which shapes 'the discourse within which policies are defined, the terms and
concepts that circumscribe what can be thought and done'.
Cox's argument suggests certain constraints on how the economic facet of
national identity can be conceived. The current Asian financial crisis illustrates
this point. For some time the idea of a distinct Asian capitalism, centring on the
institutions and practices of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, was possible within
the discursive confines of global capital.18 As long as the 'East Asian model' was
understood to be 'market-conforming' and successful in terms of growth, its
rather obvious market-denying elements—a more interventionist state, a less
transparent financial system—were tolerated, even celebrated. The economic
symbolism of the 'tigers' or 'dragons' of Asian capitalism deflected attention
away from the region's divergence from the rising neoliberal global consensus.
Until the fall. Now it seems that few are willing to defend the uniqueness of an
Asian capitalist identity. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, champion of 'Asian
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values', shames his neighbours for their faulty policies and holds high the banner
of IMF thought.19 Mahathir has been silenced in Malaysia and Kim Dae-jung in
Korea is pressing to dismantle the chaebol and welcome foreign investment. The
Asian currency fiasco is more than a financial problem, it is an identity crisis.
The implications for China are clear. Until the regional crisis, China's
'socialist' identity was accepted, with a wink, by global capital because the
reform project appeared to be creating another centre of Asian capitalism in all
but name. The pressures of globalisation are now different. If the East Asian
model has been discredited, if it now falls outside the governing, albeit diffuse,
global consensus, then the discourse of socialism is increasingly problematic.
This is, of course, understood by the ruling coalition, which is careful to speak
of China's economy in terms that reassure world markets. Any attempt to revive
a more stringent language of state socialism will have much greater negative
consequences than at any other moment in the post-Mao era. The political 'left'
would thus appear to be at a distinct rhetorical disadvantage. Globalisation is by
no means the sole determinant of Chinese political-economic debate, but it is
defied only at great cost.
There is a second way in which globalisation might act upon the imagined
economy: sociocultural redefinition. What happens when those sectors of society
that are most comfortably and fluently integrated into global communications
and exchange begin to feel culturally alienated from their poorer, less well
educated co-nationals? This is not meant to imply a full flowering of transna-
tional bourgeois class consciousness, but only to suggest that new networks of
technology, work, travel, electronic interaction and the like can work against
national consciousness and commitment.
Robert Reich offers a provocative illustration of this dynamic.20 In his view,
the US economic elite is made up of 'symbolic analysts'. Designers, managers,
engineers, lawyers and consultants work for the largest transnational corpora-
tions and live in a world of global profit-making strategies. They occupy the top
fifth of the US distribution of income. In essence, Reich is arguing that class
divisions are now defined more by livelihood than by ownership. Those whose
work allows them to take advantage of global opportunities benefit more than
those involved in territorially constrained production and service jobs. Reich
220
 Globalisation in China

sees signs of the tacit secession of the globally adept symbolic analysts from the
broader multiclass national community: they live in separate, gated communities;
they find ways to avoid paying taxes; they opt out of public education; they give
to charities that mostly serve other symbolic analysts. To the extent that the
tastes and practices of" the symbolic analysts coalesce into something like a
shared vernacular culture, their attachment to national narratives could be
weakened.
It seems unlikely that new class divisions will destroy American nationalism
any time soon: the countervailing pressures of political-historical mythology and
mass-marketed popular culture are just too strong. But when we place Reich's
analysis in a different context—a rapidly transforming underdeveloped economy
with an elite that can move within a world-wide cultural diaspora—the poten-
tially divisive effects of sociocultural difference appear to be more powerful. If
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Tu Wei-ming is correct in arguing that the 'periphery' of the Chinese diaspora

has been more successful in redefining Chineseness in a late-modern idiom, then
the 'core' of cultural China, the People's Republic of China (PRC), faces serious
problems in maintaining the credibility of its rendition of Chinese nationalism,
especially in the eyes of the best and brightest symbolic analysts.21 In short,
political leaders in the PRC must be careful how they articulate national identity
and destiny, because if they are too heavy-handed they will not gain the loyalty
of the most creative segments of society, people whom they need to carry out
the modernisation project but who can also comfortably exit to other corners of
the diaspora.
Globalisation thus brings both internal and external pressure to bear on the
imagined economy. If expressions of the economic facet of national identity, as
articulated in stories of common suffering, glory and unity, do not conform to
the diffuse interstate consensus on economic policy and to the views of the
domestic economic-technological elite, then the country will face an increased
probability of a loss of global capital, the 'exit' of symbolic analysts, or both.
This is not to argue that economic symbolism is the only cause of such
outcomes, not that anti-globalist discourse must always lead to recession. It
appears, however, that political leaders have internalised certain global anxieties
and they speak accordingly.

Jiang Zemin's national economic narrative in 1997

In his major speeches in 1997, President Jiang Zemin engaged the theme of
globalisation, without invoking the term itself, as he put forth the official PRC
national narrative.22 Three key events in that year provided Jiang with momen-
tous occasions for telling the national story: Deng Xiaoping's death in February;
the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July; and the 15th Party
Congress in September. The first two were of great historical import, precisely
the kind of moments that call forth public expressions of national identity. We
will examine Jiang's speeches at each event in turn, looking for the ways in
which economic suffering, glory and unity were used to symbolise the nation.
The final section will consider how these images relate to the pressures of
globalisation.
221
 George T. Crane

The eulogy for Deng Xiaoping

Deng's death was a great personal political opportunity for Jiang, a chance to
claim the mantle of Deng's legacy. Thus it was not surprising that, even though
he had initially been sceptical of Deng's 1992 push to speed up reform, Jiang
wholeheartedly embraced the vision of rapid economic transformation. Indeed,
the view of China's economic life articulated by Deng and developed by Zhao
Ziyang has become a central element of official Chinese nationalism. It is a story
that seems to resonate with a substantial portion of the population, as well as
with powerful segments of the party-state apparatus. From time to time in the
past 20 years 'left' critics have attempted to overturn the reformist project with
competing claims of what China is, and ought to be, economically, but these
seem to grow weaker with each passing year. Jiang's eulogy for Deng was an
evocative reassertion of a post-Mao national economic identity that both recog-
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nises certain contemporary realities and promises a glorious future.

Economic suffering is a muted but important sub-theme in Jiang's panegyric.23
Deng's personal political tribulations are foregrounded, both as marks of his
greatness and as a reminder to the nation of the political calamity of the Cultural
Revolution and the Gang of Four. The great economic depredations of 19th
century imperialism are noted only briefly. But economic suffering is power-
fully, albeit indirectly, invoked. One of Deng's chief accomplishments, Jiang
reminds us time and again, is the idea of 'socialism with Chinese characteris-
tics'. This vague formulation proceeds from the humble material circumstances
that currently obtain:
The theory has scientifically grasped the essence of socialism and,
for the first time, provided a systematic and initial answer to a
series of basic questions such as how to build socialism in an
economically and culturally underdeveloped country like China,
and how to consolidate and develop socialism.24
'For the first time' denotes the world-historical significance of China's reform
project, an emblem of national distinction. But more importantly Jiang is saying,
just as Deng and others had before him, that China is 'underdeveloped'. In other
words, China is suffering economically right now. It is presently an 'undevel-
oped socialist country'; it is backward. By facing up to this, Jiang tells us, Deng
was striving to 'make order out of chaos'. This hardly seems the language of a
proud nationalist but it is necessary in light of the lived experiences of most
Chinese people. Nations may be imagined, even invented, but they cannot be
made out of whole cloth; they must plausibly relate to the store of memories and
attitudes in the minds of the nation's people. And for most Chinese economic
life is hard. While reform has certainly created various new opportunities, and
the standard of living for many Chinese has risen, China is still a relatively poor
country overall. Moreover, reform has also brought with it greater uncertainty
about economic outcomes—no more 'iron rice bowl'—and increasing inequality.
What is being purposely forgotten here—and it is not mentioned in any of
Jiang's major speeches of 1997—is the Great Leap Forward. In economic terms,
this caused far greater suffering than the Cultural Revolution, but it is impolitic
222
 Globalisation in China

to make reference to this tragedy because Deng supported the Leap at its outset.
While it is deemed erroneous in revised party history,25 and its victims certainly
remember its misery, the Leap must be elided if Deng is to be made into a
symbol of the new Chinese nation. Thus China can be defined as an 'undevel-
oped socialist country'—a theme that is much more prominent in Jiang's speech
to the 15th Party Congress—but the full depth of the economic adversity so
implied cannot be publicly discussed because political circumstances shape the
ways in which the nation can be articulated.
In any event, recognition of China's current economic hardship is not only
necessary to construct a resonant imagined economy, it is also rhetorically useful
for distinguishing the more positive aspects of the national narrative. The
'reform and opening' required to overcome underdevelopment, the dominant
motif of post-Mao Chinese economic identity, is the 'great deed', to use Renan's
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term, that China is collectively performing now. Reform and opening up, Jiang
declares, infuse the nation with historical prestige; they signify 'a great turn in
the history of the Party and nation'. The reform project is also held up as China's
unique contribution to the world of nations: 'for the first time', socialism is
succeeding in an underdeveloped context; something, Jiang believes, from which
the whole world can learn. Reform is thus presented as something more than
mere pragmatic improvisation: it is the glorious economic life upon which the
new Chinese nation is raised.26
The 'opening up' aspect of reform has a distinctly Listian tone. Although
Friedrich List is perhaps most famous for his protectionist arguments, he does
not wholly reject Adam Smith's free trade ideal.27 His is a tactical protectionism,
buying time until a more powerful entry can be made into the world economy.
List's overriding concern, however, and one that Deng also held dear, is the
expression of national greatness in world-economic practice. In Jiang's words:

Comrade Deng Xiaoping emphasized repeatedly that the current

world is an open one, that China's development is inseparable
from the world and that it is imperative to pursue a policy of
opening to the outside world on the basis of persisting in
self-reliance.28

The linking of openness and self-reliance implies that protectionist policies will
be maintained if necessary. But there is a larger point at work as well: 'China's
development is inseparable from the world'. As the world changes, so then does
the national self, the thing to be protected. Deng, as List before him, believed
that the standard by which any nation is defined is external to the nation, it is
the world at large. China is 'underdeveloped' now only in relation to the leading
regions of the world-economy. Openness is thus more than an instrumental
means to socialist modernisation, which it certainly is. It is also a demonstration
of being in and of the world. If the 'world is an open one', then to be closed is
to be alien, isolated from the world of nations. For xenophobes unable to grasp
this idea, Jiang is reassuring: 'in studying the experience of the outside world,
he never copied the models of foreign countries'. It is not about copying,
however; it is about something much more fundamental. Deng's insistence on
223
 George T. Crane

openness is a call for full nationhood; without it, China would not only be
underdeveloped, it would not be a true nation.
Opening and reform also promise economic unity. Jiang points to increases in
productivity and living standards as the shared benefits of the new economic
nation. He also reminds us how Deng was concerned about poor people in the
'central and western regions'. While this is far from a clarion call to concerted
action against poverty, it is an indication that the disadvantaged are cared for by
the national father, they are part of the family. Most importantly, however, the
achievements of reform and opening, Jiang argues, were critical in overcoming
the uprising of 1989, suggesting that the common economic life unified the
nation at a time of deep political division. Unity, together with glory, is also to
be found in the future. Jiang, in good Marxist teleological fashion, sees China
moving towards a magnificent economic culmination, one in which all will
share. Chinese people are toiling together to 'build our country into a socialist
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and modernised country which is strong, prosperous, democratic, and civilised'.

While this image encompasses more than just the economic realm, it holds out
the promise of wealth and, through socialism, material equality.

Hong Kong handover

This was another extraordinary occasion, a time for national remembrance and
prophecy. Jiang's short official address at the formal handover ceremonies is not
the best example of Chinese nationalist sentiments on this day. He was too polite
to embarrass in any way the historic losers, the British. It was in his speech to
a public gathering later that night that the national narrative was more fully
recounted.29 Suffering was a central theme of these remarks. While a good deal
of the imagery was political, mentioning revolutionary martyrs who heroically
'sacrificed their lives to the liberation of the Chinese people', there was an
economic aspect as well. A lesson of the Opium Wars and other imperialist
humiliations, an important element of Jiang's address, is that China must
modernise economically.30 Also learned from the terrible past is the unfortunate
truth that some from within the nation would destroy it:

A major cause for the backwardness that China suffered after the
industrial revolution in the West was the unwise closed-door
policy adopted by the then feudal rulers who, unaspiring as they
were, forfeited China of its ability to advance with the times and
to resist imperialist aggression, leaving it many records of na-
tional betrayal and humiliation.31

This statement underlines the deep necessity of openness raised in the Deng
eulogy: to be 'unaspiring', to deny China the 'ability to advance with the times',
which here implies industrial progress, is to betray the nation. It also turns
attention inward, to the enemies within who brought suffering to their own
people, but this line of thought is not carried into the history of the PRC, not on
this occasion at least. There were no references here to the Cultural Revolution,
and certainly not to the Great Leap Forward, that might have rattled nervous
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 Globalisation in China

Hong Kongers and ruined the celebration. Once again, political context condi-
tions how the nation can be articulated at any particular moment.
Just as in the speech memorialising Deng, suffering creates the basis for
national glory. In a sense, Hong Kong itself is a sign of both China's economic
shame and its renaissance. Jiang's primary message is that Hong Kong was lost
by imperialist perfidy and domestic treason, but it has been regained through
Chinese modernisation. It is a living example of Chinese people operating at the
most advanced levels of global finance and trade; it is a part of the global
diaspora to which Jiang is speaking. If Hong Kong Chinese can prosper, their kin
can certainly transform China proper into an advanced industrial society. Hong
Kong symbolises everything that reform and opening strives for economically,
though not politically, on the mainland:
Today, the Chinese people have made remarkable achievements
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in their modernisation endeavour. As a result, China now enjoys

a higher international status in the world. It is against this
background and for this very reason that Hong Kong has come
back to China.32
'For this very reason'—the accomplishments of reform and opening—China has
overcome the historical humiliation of colonisation. Only a modernised China
could do this, not a poor and backward China. Although economic transform-
ation can be seen here as instrumental to national reunification, creating the
material power necessary for retaking sacred lost territory, it is something more
as well. 'Status in the world' is what has enabled national reunification. To the
extent that status is something other than power in and of itself, this suggests that
Hong Kong was won back not simply by China's coercive potential, although
this is a contributing factor, but also by the change of Chinese identity. A
'reformed and open' China could do what a 'feudal', or even by implication a
'pre-reform' (dare we say Maoist), China could not.
Hong Kong's retrocession is also a symbol of unity which carries an economic
connotation. Although the 'one country, two systems' formula is premised upon
maintaining a certain regulatory difference, allowing 'capitalism' to thrive in
Hong Kong while 'socialism' is built in the mainland, Hong Kong's economy
does, in Jiang's image, contribute to the material progress of the whole Chinese
nation. He intones the same great national goal as in the earlier speech at Deng's
funeral, a 'prosperous, strong, democratic and civilised modern socialist coun-
try'. Hong Kong, with its more developed prosperity, civility and democracy,
clearly adds to this common project. The obvious problem of this implied
convergence is not mentioned, however: for, if Hong Kong is a vision of China's
future, what happens to socialism?

The 15th Party Congress

Of course, the nature of socialism was a central theme of Jiang's long keynote
address at the National Party Congress.33 This is a much longer, more involved
speech, serving various purposes: a statement of concrete policy goals, an outline
of the party's political work, and yet another remembrance of Deng Xiaoping.
225
 George T. Crane

But it was also a symbolic event, a time to express the official nationalism of the
PRC.
As with the Deng eulogy, economic suffering plays an indirect part in this
oration. The imperialist past is mentioned only briefly to establish the broader
historical context for the contemporary nation. The Eight-Power Allied Force
that occupied Beijing in 1900 is remembered as one of a string of humiliations
that demanded of China two great redemptive tasks: liberation and economic
development. The political and economic projects, Jiang suggests, are of equal
historical import.34 Deng's reform and opening up is thus elevated to the same
level of national significance as Mao Zedong's 1949 revolutionary victory and
Sun Yat-sen's earlier efforts to 'rejuvenate' China.
The indirect theme of suffering as current economic hardship is more fully
developed in these remarks than in either of the other speeches. Zhao Ziyang's
notion of the 'primary stage of socialism' is prominently featured, though
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without attribution to the author. The primary stage rhetoric produces an odd
mixture of humility and pride. It recognises the flaws of China's economy, its
underdevelopment, while at the same time celebrating the historical uniqueness
of this recognition. 'It is the first time in the history of Marxism that the
scientific concept of the primary stage of socialism is specified in a party's
program.'35 Pride does not grow into hubris, however, because of the attention
paid to current weakness. Jiang tempers the grandiloquent national goals of
creating a prosperous and strong country with rather modest hopes for a 'more
or less ideal socialist market economy' that will bring 'a fairly comfortable life'.
He seems to be trying to inspire his national audience, people who are
hard-pressed economically, without flying into unbelievable exaggeration.
The primary stage formulation also sets forth the grand progress of the nation.
While it is premised on a rather humble present, it outlines the 'great deed' of
national economic transformation. It is worth quoting at length:

The primary stage of socialism is a historical stage in which we

shall put an end to underdevelopment and realise socialist mod-
ernisation by and large. It is a stage in which an agricultural
country, where people engaged in agriculture take up a very large
proportion of the population and mainly rely on manual labour,
will gradually turn into an industrial country where non-agricul-
tural people constitute the majority and which embraces modern
agriculture and service trade. It is a stage in which a society with
the natural and semi-natural economy making up a very large
proportion of the whole will gradually turn into one with a fairly
developed market-oriented economy. It is a stage in which a
society with illiterate and semi-literate people making up a very
large proportion of the population and with backward science,
technology, education and culture will turn step by step into one
with fairly developed science, technology, education and culture.
It is a stage in which a society with poverty-stricken people
making up a very large proportion of the population and the
people having a low standard of living will gradually become one

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 Globalisation in China

where the whole people are well-off ... It is a stage in which we

will gradually narrow the gap between our level and the advanced
world standard and bring about a great rejuvenation of the
Chinese nation on the basis of socialism.36

The various dichotomies, which plot the trajectory of national greatness, are
notable. Agriculture is aligned with the natural economy, illiteracy, backward-
ness and poverty, while industry is equated with markets, cultural and scientific
advancement and prosperity.37 'Our level' is currently everything that is undesir-
able, while the 'advanced world standard' is everything the nation strives for.
However muted the rhetoric—'by and large', 'fairly', 'step by step', 'gradu-
ally'—Jiang intends this to be taken as a glorious project that will unite Chinese
people, regardless of their actual economic circumstances. Unity is clearly the
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imagined outcome, common prosperity the promised future. He is hoping, no

doubt, that the restless young men of the 'floating population' will believe
enough of this story to stifle their frustration with unemployment and poverty.
They are the ones caught, quite literally, in the midst of this transition, half-way
between hill-town farm and high-tech factory, and Jiang is anxious to draw them
into the imagined economy.
Jiang was also speaking to the diaspora. His emphasis on high-technology
development, civility, culture and striving for the 'advanced world standard' is
well suited to Chinese symbolic analysts in Hong Kong, Taiwan, California and
New York. Indeed, he makes a direct appeal for the best and brightest Chinese
all over the world to participate in the PRC's great transformation:

Competent people being the most important resource for scientific

and technological progress and economic and social development,
we should institute a whole set of incentive mechanisms favour-
able to the training and use of such people. We should actively
bring in intellectual resources from overseas, and encourage those
studying abroad to return and work or render their service to the
motherland in one way or another.38

This suggests yet another rationale for the open policy: to reverse the brain drain
and encourage global Chinese 'intellectual resources' to serve the 'motherland'.
Openness is a prominent theme of the speech. Jiang not only asserts its necessity,
both as a means to the end of a 'prosperous, strong, democratic and culturally
advanced socialist country' and as a mark of national greatness in itself, but he
urges faster and more extensive opening. He hedges a little with a mention of
self-reliance and a call to 'safeguard the economic security of the country'. But
these appear as afterthoughts, not meant to obstruct the broader goals of
lowering tariffs, opening services to foreign competition, promoting exports,
welcoming foreign trade, protecting intellectual property and generally 'opening
up in all directions, at all levels and in a wide range'. Indeed, at one point he
even suggests that Chinese culture should be 'geared to the needs of modernis-
ation, of the world, and of the future',39 which comes perilously close to

227
 George T. Crane

displacing the conventional Dengist formulation of using global capitalism to

strengthen the Chinese nation with the idea of fundamentally transforming the
nation in the image of global capitalism.40

Globalisation and the imagined Chinese economy

Even if Jiang would reject the explicit subordination of national distinctiveness
to the imperatives of a capitalist world-economy, his renderings of economic
suffering, glory and unity suggest that globalisation works from within the
discourse of national identity as well as from outside the sovereign territory.
The contemporary insertion of the global into the national can be seen in its
opposite: an imagined economy constructed in direct opposition to economic
globalisation. We know what this looks like; we have seen it before in Maoist
anti-imperialist nationalism. After the revolution, capitalism was represented as
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exterior to the authentic nation, it was to be struggled against, with only minimal
tactical exchange and borrowing. National capitalists were suspect and had to
prove their patriotism; foreign capitalists were clearly the enemy. 'Self-reliance'
was the watchword and autarky the goal. China's historic suffering at the hands
of imperialist invaders was remembered as proof of the immutable evil of global
capital, a constant reminder of why China must advance on its own terms. Glory,
for Mao, was to be found not in high-technology forces of production but in
egalitarian relations of production. Agriculture was venerated, even as industry
was coveted. The continuous struggle against capitalism, its most powerful
foreign forms and its insidious domestic 'tails', would bring forth a unique
national unity. Socialism was the antithesis of capitalism and it was socialism
that gave the Chinese nation its historical distinctiveness.
These ideas seem quaint today, but they help mark the difference of the
post-Mao imagined economy. The rejection of Maoist self-reliance has necessi-
tated the domestication of global capitalism. Integration into the world-economy
requires a retelling of the national story so that the embrace of capitalist
practices—market regulation, comparative advantage, profit maximisation—will
seem consistent with the historical unfolding of the nation. Pre-liberation
imperialist assaults, in Jiang's 1997 rendition, are not adduced as reasons for
passionately resisting capitalism now—quite to the contrary. Past victimisation
demonstrates the imperative for high-speed growth through reform and opening
in the present. Moreover, the deleterious effects of imperialism are refracted by
'unaspiring' Chinese traitors and the 'chaos' of the Cultural Revolution (and,
unspokenly, the Great Leap Forward). Even at the moment of triumph over
colonisation in Hong Kong, Jiang invokes the Opium Wars not as an inspiration
for contemporary anti-capitalist resistance, but as a 'rotten' historical experience,
rather distant at that, which highlights the nation's redemption through modern-
isation. Imperialism is made into a reason for accepting global capital. The
encounter with globalisation calls for its own serviceable past, and Jiang rises to
the task.
The national present, too, must be articulated in terms of global capitalism. If
'China's development is inseparable from the world', and the 'world is an open
one', as Jiang stated in his eulogy for Deng, then glory is to be found in open
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 Globalisation in China

worldliness. Hong Kong's success in this regard is to be celebrated, it is a mark

of status and greatness in itself. The 'advanced world standard' is the measure
of the nation; to fail to meet it relegates the people to backwardness, the nation
to obscurity. In all of these utterances, the global is defining the national: it is
not negating the nation but is being taken into the nation and is rhetorically
transforming it from within.
Whence the figurative power of globalisation? In the case of Jiang's China,
the short answer is the global 'nebuleuse' and the domestic/diasporic symbolic
analysts. Of course, a diffuse sense of proper economic policy and the potential
'exit' of the techno-economic elite are just that diffuse and potential. It is
impossible to specify precisely their causal effects. Jiang could be responding to
other perceived pressures—military vulnerability, domestic political factors—
when he puts forth his vision of the Chinese nation. Whatever the case, his
imagined economy is powerfully consistent with the interstate consensus that
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Cox discusses and with the elite worldview that Reich outlines. Indeed, his
presentations are so full of reassuring globalist imagery that it seems virtually
self-evident that he believes he must play to this audience. In some instances he
speaks directly to the diaspora, as in Hong Kong when he calls for an
in-gathering of Chinese 'intellectual resources'. Global financial managers can-
not be far from his mind as he repeatedly and enthusiastically embraces reform
and opening and accepts the world-economy as the standard for national
accomplishment.41
The PRC state is internationalising. The 9th National People's Congress put
forth a plan to streamline the bureaucracy in response to the regional Asian
economic crisis.42 In the revamped 'small government', the old State Planning
Commission, an institutional obstacle to fuller integration into the global
economy, will be downgraded. At the National Party Congress, Jiang stated that
state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will be 'corporatised', downsized and reor-
ganised, further opening the public sector to foreign competition and invest-
ment.43 Even though this plan has been slowed by leadership changes and
worries about mammoth unemployment, it illustrates the general feeling that the
commanding heights can no longer be comprehensively controlled. The SOE
plan also demonstrates the extent to which state managers are orientating policy
towards symbolic analysts. While unemployment is a concern, it is merely a
tactical matter, a question of how best to manage the necessary transition to the
high-technology future.44 Jiang promised that the state would ease dislocations,
but he warned that 'workers should change their ideas about employment and
improve their own quality to meet the new requirements of reform and develop-
ment'.45 Production and service workers must change their ways to survive in the
new global order.
For Jiang, the forces that matter most for the imagined economy are global:
the Asian crisis, competitiveness, technological modernisation. Domestic pres-
sures are mediated by the global; bureaucratic restructuring is needed to avoid
the fate of South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. The loyalties of symbolic
analysts must be courted to ensure fuller integration into the world economy and
unemployment must be tolerated and diffused so as not to endanger the move
toward the 'advanced world standard'.
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 George T. Crane

What all of this suggests is that Carr's notion of the 'socialisation of the
nation' is being eclipsed by what we might call the 'globalisation of the nation'.
For Carr, the political incorporation of the working class required the construc-
tion of a sense of economic citizenship.46 The state had to take responsibility for
minimal welfare in order to ensure the national loyalty of workers. The ensuing
expansion of welfare and protectionist policies 'socialised' the nation. By
contrast, globalisation poses new challenges to state managers, forces that cannot
be addressed by a territorially confined welfarism or socialism. The nation must
be redefined to attract global capital and satisfy domestic techno-elites.
What are the practical implications of the intertwining of economic globalisa-
tion and national identity? Perhaps most important is the transformation of
economic nationalism: it can no longer be conceived of as diametrically opposed
to globalisation because the imagined economy, the thing to be protected, is now
articulated in terms of global capital. Indeed, in Deng's and Jiang's China,
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'economic nationalism' has taken on some rather odd forms: the aggressive
courting of direct foreign investment; the listing of companies on foreign stock
exchanges; and the concerted effort to enter multilateral trade organisations.
These are hardly the actions of a staunchly neomercantilist power. To be sure,
protection of particular sectors and firms is still rife in the PRC, but the
rhetorical ground has been cut out from under a more comprehensive protection-
ist vision. Autarky is simply out of the question. While economic nationalism
has not disappeared, it has transmogrified. There is still a strong impulse to
defend the imagined economy, but this must be accomplished in concert with
global capital.
If globalisation now conditions economic nationalism, then one channel of
chauvinistic militarism may be obstructed. The experience of the interwar years
suggests that aggressive protectionism and other neomercantilist policies con-
tributed to the move towards world war. This seems very unlikely now. The
Asian crisis has not led to increasing regionalisation, decreasing multilateralism
and economic warfare. Chinese leaders have worked hard to maintain the
confidence of world financial markets.47 No-one is effectively challenging the
IMF-led nebuleuse; Mahathir's defection has not inspired a regional following.
In short, the economic crisis is not creating wider political or military tensions
because virtually all the nations in the region, China included, define themselves
in global terms. There may be other forms of more confrontational nationalism,
but economic nationalism is no longer one of them.48

Notes
1. This is a large and growing literature. For a good introduction, see Jan Aart Scholte, 'Global Capitalism
and the State', International Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3 (1997), pp. 427-52.
2. This conceptual turn is detailed in George T. Crane, 'Economic Nationalism: Bringing the Nation Back
In', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1998), pp. 55-75.
3. In a related discussion, Anne Anagnost shows how notions of industrial modernity figure in Chinese
conceptions of 'civilisation' and 'culture' in her chapter, 'Constructions of civility in the age of flexible
accumulation', in: Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern
China (Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 75-97.

230
 Globalisation in China

4. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (Verso,
1991), p. 6. Emphasis in original.
5. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 489.
6. Ernest Renan, 'What is a nation?', in: Homi K. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration (Routledge, 1990),
p. 19.
7. This point is extrapolated from the discussion of the 'Yoshida Doctrine' in Kenneth B. Pyle, The Japanese
Question (AEI Press, 1992), chs 3-5.
8. Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 1992); and Steven Frank &
Murakami Mutsuko, 'Japan adrift', Asiaweek, on-line edition, 17 November 1995.
9. Harry Johnson discusses the desire for industrial nationhood in 'A theoretical model of economic
nationalism in new and developing states', in: Johnson (Ed.), Economic Nationalism in Old and New States
(University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 1-16.
10. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7. Emphasis in original.
11. For a discussion of the interplay of Smith's liberalism and nationalism, see James Mayall, Nationalism and
International Society (Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 5.
12. E.H. Carr, Nationalism and After (Macmillan, 1945), p. 19.
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13. Wolfgang H. Rcinicke, 'Global Public Policy', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6 (1997), pp. 127-38.
14. Robert Cox, Production, Power, and World Order (Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 253-63; and
Richard Rosecrance, 'The Rise of the Virtual State', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 4 (1996), pp. 45-61.
15. Arjun Appadurai, 'Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy', in: Appadurai, Modernity
at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 27-47.
16. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order, p. 254.
17. This and the two subsequent quotations are from Robert Cox, 'Global perestroika', in: Cox, with Timothy
Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 296-313.
18. Fredric C. Deyo (Ed.), The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Cornell University Press,
1987); and Richard Stubbs, 'Asia-Pacific Regionalization and the Global Economy', Asian Survey, Vol.
35, No. 9 (1995), pp. 785-97.
19. Lee Kuan Yew, 'Currency crisis: how and when will Asia recover?', Straits Times, 22 January 1998.
20. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (Knopf, 1992).
21. Tu Wei-ming, 'Cultural China: the periphery as centre', in: Tu (Ed.), The Living Tree: The Changing
Meaning of Being Chinese Today (Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 1-34. For a more general account
of diasporas and globalisation, see Robin Cook, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (University of
Washington Press, 1997), ch. 7.
22. For an argument for why official propaganda is a good source of national imagery, see Walker Connor,
'Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond", Racial and Ethnic Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3
(1993), pp. 373-89.
23. Jiang Zemin, 'Memorial speech at Deng Xiaoping's Memorial Meeting', Beijing Review, 10-16 March
1997, pp. 14-22.
24. Ibid., p. 19.
25. 'It was mainly due to the errors of the Great Leap Forward and of the struggle against "Right opportunism"
... that our economy encountered difficulties between 1959 and 1961, which caused serious losses to our
country and people.' Resolution on CPC History (1949-1981) (Foreign Languages Press, 1981), p. 29.
26. Susan Shirk makes perhaps the most sophisticated argument about the politically pragmatic nature of the
reform movement, summarised by her concept 'particularistic contracting'. See Susan Shirk, The Political
Logic of Economic Reform in China (University of California Press, 1993), p. 16 ff.
27. For an excellent summary of List's thought, see Roman Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism: Karl
Marx versus Friedrich List (Oxford University Press, 1988), chs 8, 9.
28. Jiang, 'Memorial speech at Deng Xiaoping's Memorial Meeting', pp. 20-21.
29. 'Speech by President Jiang Zemin at the Public Gathering to Celebrate Hong Kong's Return (July 1,
1997)', Beijing Review, 21-7 July 1997, pp. 27-30.
30. 'To lift themselves out of poverty and backwardness, a rotten legacy of history, it is imperative for the
emancipated Chinese people to concentrate on economic development and conduct extensive economic,
trade, scientific, technological and cultural exchanges and co-operation with all other countries of the
world to draw upon the fruit of world civilisation.' Ibid., p. 29.
31. Ibid., p. 29.
32. Ibid., p. 28.

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 George T. Crane
33. Jiang Zemin, 'Hold high the great banner of Deng Xiaoping theory for an all-around advancement of the
cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics into the 21st century', Beijing Review, 6-12
October 1997, pp. 10-33.
34. 'The Chinese nation was faced with two great historical tasks: to win national independence and the
people's liberation, and to make the country prosperous and strong and achieve common prosperity for the
people. The former task was set to remove obstacles and create essential prerequisites for the fulfillment
of the latter task.' Ibid., p. 11.
35. Ibid., p. 16.
36. Ibid.
37. Again, there is a strong resonance with List, who argues: 'in a country devoted to mere raw agriculture,
dullness of mind, awkwardness of body, obstinate adherence to old notions, customs, methods, and
processes, want of culture, of prosperity, and of liberty, prevail. The spirit of striving for a steady increase
in mental and bodily acquirements, of emulation, and of liberty, characterise, on the contrary, a State
devoted to manufactures and commerce.' Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy
(Augustus M. Kelley, 1977), p. 197.
38. Jiang, 'Hold high the great banner of Deng Xiaoping theory', p. 22.
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39. Ibid., p. 18.

40. Although his language implies this possibility, he would, no doubt, resist this interpretation. At another
point he alludes to the time-worn ti/yung dichotomy: 'following the principle of keeping our own culture
as the base [ti] and making use [yung] of that of others, we should conduct various exchanges with other
countries'. Ibid., p. 27.
41. 'We must be soberly aware that international competition is becoming increasingly acute, that the
economic, scientific and technological gap between China and the developed countries has brought great
pressure to bear on us, and that we ourselves still have many difficulties.' Ibid., p. 11. Emphasis added.
42. Daniel Kwan, 'Cutback tackles red tape malaise', South China Morning Post, 7 March 1998; and Willy
Wo-Lap Lam, 'Zhu to call for reduced state role', South China Morning Post, 2 March 1998.
43. Jiang, 'Hold high the great banner of Deng Xiaoping theory', pp. 19-20.
44. Mark O'Neil, 'Millions face hardship as Beijing pledges job cuts', South China Morning Post, 6 March
1998.
45. Jiang, 'Hold high the great banner of Deng Xiaoping theory', p. 20.
46. Carr, Nationalism and After, pp. 18-27.
47. 'China "willing to pay price of stable yuan" ', South China Morning Post, 9 March 1998.
48. Geremie Barme shows how popular culture can produce fantasies of revenge against Western imperialism
that could inspire a more aggressive nationalism. See Geremie Barme, 'To screw foreigners is patriotic:
China's avant garde nationalists', in: Jonathan Unger (Ed.), Chinese Nationalism (M.E. Sharpe, 1996), pp.
183-208. Popular culture can work in the opposite direction, however, creating sympathetic portraits of
the USA. See David W. Chen, 'Laughing with the bourgeoisie: a new television show for a new China,
shot in Manhattan, skips the polities', The New York Times, 22 February 1998, p. 29.

232