VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING

COUNTRIES

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF NATIONALISM IN

HANDLING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC: A
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF VIETNAM AND THE US

Supervisor: Phùng Hà Thanh, Ph.D

Student: Nguyễn Thị Hà Anh
Course: QH2017.E1.SPCLC

Supervisor’s Signature

Ha Noi, 2020

1
 I. Background of the study
“We are all nationalists now” (Farage, 2020)
During the last five years, as I observe what is going on in global
politics, the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit, the success of Donald Trump and
his “America First” platform and other figures such as Brazil President Jair
Bolsonaro, I could see the rising dominance of nationalism, which is usually
associated with populism and rightwing politics. The success of these so-called
exclusionary nationalist parties and individuals is barely the consequence of
nationalism (Beiber, 2020). Populist strategies are often adopted by these
political actors, who claim to represent the majority against a foreign elite or use
corruption and other themes to gain success. Their rise to power and electoral
success has shifted the agenda and, as a result, changed what public discourse is
considered socially acceptable. Anti-migrant and anti-Muslim themes found in
exclusionary nationalist discourses in Myanmar, India, and the USA have
increased in potency. The rise of far-right parties helps circulate exclusionary
nationalist ideas and make hatred and biases against a specific group and the
politics of blame socially accepted in numerous countries. The potency of
exclusionary nationalism together with populism causes a highly divisive and
polarizing political landscape for it dismisses the legitimacy of alternative
political positions (Beiber, 2020). Thus, the discourse of nationalism is
commonly associated with negative connotations.
The nationalistic discourse has grown even more in potency due to an
unprecedented event in 2020. COVID-19 was officially viewed as a pandemic,
announced by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World
Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. The global pandemic is said to
fuel nationalism and usher in a more polarized world as a consequence of the
state’s responses (Legrain, Allen et al., 2020). This could be because as people
search for and look to help from their communities, the importance of citizenship
has been accentuated. Other factors that potentially accentuate nationalism
include the closure of borders, evacuation of citizens by foreign ministries, the
difficulties in travelling, and most importantly, the fear experienced by many
people.
Nationalism has presented itself in various forms during the COVID-19.
It is no surprise that during the pandemic, exclusionary nationalism discourse has
grown in potency. Some populists and autocrats have blamed certain minorities

2
and migrants and other so-called “outsiders” for the spread of the pandemic. A
prominent example is when the Trump administration has termed the virus as
Chinese virus to link the pandemic to China and conveniently externalize
responsibility for the outbreak (Rogers, Jakes, and Swanson, 2020). Such implicit
and explicit link between COVID-19 and the Other has not necessarily been
shown against only those of Chinese origins or Asians but other groups. For
example, Muslims have been blamed for spreading the disease in the US
(OHCHR, 2020). The danger underlying such notions of disease is that it
dehumanizes people belonging to a racial or ethnic group and perpetuates an
organic understanding of the nation that equates nations with living bodies. It
provides justification for normalizing their nonhuman status and their murder
once they are looked at as parasites or diseases. This has further demonized
nationalism and constructed the context in which it is usually practiced.
Nationalist strategies as a response to COVID-19 also adopt wartime
language, which can be found in various countries, most commonly the USA, the
UK and Vietnam. In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II delivered a speech in which she
said “we will meet again”, resembling a Second World War song. Meanwhile, in
the US, Trump has tried to paint himself as a “wartime president” against an
invisible but constructed, indiscriminate enemy and even went the furthest in
adopting the rhetoric of a commander in chief during wartime. He pointed to the
crisis the virus has brought onto economic well-being, and the pandemic would
necessitate a response unseen ever since World War II. “Now it's our time. We
must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come
through together. It's the invisible enemy. That's always the toughest enemy, the
invisible enemy,” noted Trump (Politico, 2020). The rationale behind the
compelling wartime imagery is that it identifies a particular enemy, the pandemic
or the virus and a strategy such as “flatten the curve” or “save the economy”.
From the frontline warriors who are health care professionals and doctors, to
home-front (people keeping social distancing rules and isolating at home) and the
traitors (those who go against the norms now), such imaginings emphasize the
urgency of drastic decisions such as closure of borders and imposition of travel
bans and provoke among citizens a sense of duty and obligation to serve the
nation in need. The war metaphors to combat the global pandemic are not unique
to the Trump administration but also prevails in Vietnam as well. In Vietnam,
patterns of nationalist discourse, combined with wartime metaphors, are
ubiquitous throughout media reports that link between victorious wars in the past
and the battle against the pandemic. The term “Dai doan ket dan toc” (great

3
national solidarity), which was first used in the early 2000s, nearly 20 years after
the Doi Moi (reform) (Vu, 2014), is now used time and again in media reports to
evoke a wartime spirit, together with catch phrases such as “Fight the pandemic
like fight the invaders” (VNCDC, 2020) and “national pride in our concerted
efforts against the pandemic” (Tra, 2020). It speaks to the lived experience of the
previous generations who endured the pain of two catastrophic wars against
France and the US and to the youngsters --- the prevailing beliefs that the country
has thousands of years of “building and protecting the nation” perpetuated by the
modern education system (in which I have grown up) as what partly contributes
to our national identity and national pride.
Both nationalistic discourses in Vietnam and the US adopt wartime
language as a strategy; however, the nature of nationalism displayed by the two
governments is fundamentally different. The center of nationalist discourses
under Trump administration during the pandemic has been the weaponization and
politicization of the virus to circulate divisive propaganda against China and to
deflect responsibilities for the failure in halting the spread of the virus, which
dehumanizes particular ethnic groups in the process. The act of scapegoating and
deflecting blames to create a political cover by the Trump’s administration may
have greatly hindered the process of containing the virus in the US. In contrast,
the nationalist discourses in Vietnam have emphasized solidarity, unification and
inclusiveness. Such inclusiveness is not shown towards people with Vietnamese
nationality exclusively but also foreigners residing in Vietnam. A prominent
example is the case of Stephen Cameron, a 42-year-old British pilot, who has
recovered from COVID-19 and remained healthy when traveling in Vietnam.
The propaganda circulated by mainstream and national communication channels
entails not only the fight against the European invaders in Vietnam in 20th
centuries but also the stories of nation-forming myths, most commonly, Lac
Long Quan and Au Co as the term “comrade” has a connotation of “shared
origin” that stems from this stories. Demographically speaking, Vietnam is
ethnically diverse as there are 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. Hence, what we are
looking at is a more “inclusive nationalism” that expands the comradeship to
transcend ethnic boundaries. Unlike what is displayed by the Trump
administration, the rhetoric of blame is foreign to Vietnamese propaganda during
the pandemic; instead, the humanitarian approach in that the comradeship is
shown towards fellow human beings regardless of race or ethnicity is adopted.
This has perhaps defined the success of containing the pandemic in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, in the US, the pandemic seems to be unstoppable with no signs of

4
“flattening the curve”. Statistics shown that Vietnam has successfully managed to
contain the pandemic with a total of 1134 confirmed cases and 35 deaths seven
months after COVID-19 was officially recognized as a global pandemic by the
WHO, while in the US, the number of cases does not seem to show any halt with
more than 8 million confirmed cases and 220,000 casualties reported
(Worldmeter).
The contrastive cases of nationalism in handling the pandemic in
Vietnam and the US, therefore, invite us to understand and shed light on the
discourse of nationalism and its various practices throughout different historical
contexts. Nationalism, at its worst, is said to be the culprit of the First World War
when Adolf Hitler used nationalism to justify his rhetoric of expansionism and
ethnic cleansing. Hitler’s nationalism was expressed through giving the Germans
“Lebensraum” (habitat) by reuniting Greater Germany (including Belarus,
Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the Caucasus region, the Baltics, Finland, and all of
European Russia). In modern times, exclusionary nationalism, combined with
populism, is highly divisive and polarizing as in the case of Trump in the US or
Bharatiya Janata Party in India. The recent events such as Brexit or the
“America first” platform by Trump have demonized the concept “nationalism.”
The Vietnamese COVID-19 nationalistic strategies, however, remind of what
Benedict Anderson notes about nationalism in his landmark study, Imagined
Communities. Unlike other scholars who view nationalism as a political
ideology, Anderson (1983) argues nationalism is not confined to a political
ideology; rather, it should be understood by aligning it with the large cultural
systems that preceded it. It is an essential source of identity and more
importantly, meaning and justification for the arbitrariness of human life. It is
“the magic of nationalism that turns chance into destiny”, said Anderson (1983).
As such, it provides a framework for both unity and division (Woods, Schertzer
et al., 2020). On the one hand, nationalism can arouse the national spirit that
people are willing to die for their fellow comrades; however, by the same token,
it can invoke hatred and violence since otherness is the element based on which
nations often construct themselves. The former idea has resonated with what is
going on in Vietnam. The use of nationalist discourse in Vietnam in response to
COVID-19 shows that instead of demonizing nationalism and confining it to
populism and expansionism, it is possible to look at nationalism as capable of
creating an altruistic, solidary and inclusive environment.
Nationalism, despite its recent negative connotations, at its best, means
love for one’s nation. Nation, although built on the idea of otherness that

5
potentially engenders enemies in the process, is not an idea that narrows
understanding of and empathy for other human beings; instead, it is capable of
doing the opposite. Nationalism can expand the space in which people care for
and connect to each other and help people to embrace a sense of solidarity with
other humans outside the limiting structures of the family, the clan, and the tribe.
Nationalism allows people to identify with complete strangers, share their
concerns, and feel sympathy and responsibilities for their well-being; all of which
helps to create strong identities that go beyond their physical local surroundings.
The negativity shown against nationalism among European countries for the
havoc nationalism wreaked on as a result of the two World Wars or for its
association with far-right populism and key figures such as Donald Trump and
Jair Bolsonaro might have some justifications; yet, to think of nationalism only
as a political ideology and a destructive force or a dangerous lense would not do
justice since in fact, there is a possible altruistic side to nationalism.

Problem statement
This thesis aims at examining the complexities of nationalism and how
the discourses of nationalism have varied through different times in the history of
Vietnam and the US, particularly in the time of COVID-19. The success of
nationalism in handling the pandemic in Vietnam and its failure in the US form
two contrastive faces of nationalism, through which I will argue that nationalism,
which has been vilified for its link to populism, exclusionary ideas, ethnic
cleansing and expansionism, is also capable of engendering a monolithic group
of citizens that can tolerate differences and express concern and sympathy for
different ethnic groups that transcend the limiting structures of family, clan and
tribe as well as ethnic boundaries.

Theoretical perspective and mode of inquiry

This thesis is a textual analysis. Through purposive selection of previous
scholarly research into nationalism, I will construct the history of nationalism in
Vietnam and in the US prior to COVID-19 Media reports and releases by
governments, representatives of governments and people contributing to the
discourse of nationalism in both countries are examined to shed light on how
nationalist discourses have been practiced during COVID-19. In doing so, I am
viewing COVID-19 as an insightful event that allows for a better understanding
about the complexities of nationalism and nationalist discourses.
Significance of the study

6
 In the context of globalization, as transnational connections are being
extended and intensified, this persistence of nationalism should be acknowledged
and respected instead of being dismissed as obsolete. Advancing globalism while
underestimating the values of nationalistic practices has created conditions for
the rise of exclusionary versions of nationalism. This study contributes to better
understanding of the complexities of nationalism in the hope to mitigate the
effects of extreme positions towards nationalism. While many articles, both
popular and scholarly, have addressed the issue of nationalism in COVID-19
related discourses in Vietnam and the US, the present study is the first one to
trace the history of nationalism in both countries and to place these two particular
contexts of nationalism in a contrastive perspective.
Organization of the study
In chapter 2, I will discuss key concepts and related ideas.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

1. Nation and nationalism
Whether nationalisms precedes the idea of nations or nations generate the
ideas related to nationalism, one cannot discuss nationalism without considering
what nation means. Gellner (1983), for example, argues that "nationalism
engenders nations," while Mellor (1989) states that "every nation has its
nationalism." Although nations are defined differently among nationalist writers
such as John Armstrong (), Carlton Hayes (), Benedict Anderson (1983), Parekh
(1995), there are common characteristics broadly agreed upon. Firstly, the nation
was a homogeneous cultural unit, portrayed by distinct language, social practices,
customs, virtues, modes of interpersonal relationships, rituals, myths and legends,
a common system of meanings, a pool of tacit understanding and sympathies and
so forth. These provide a foundation for generating a distinct “identity” and
“individuality” that distinguishes one nation from others. Secondly, the nation
provides its citizens with a specific identity, shapes their personality and attaches
meanings to their lives. The nation exists in and through the people and
transcends its members; hence, the members can say they belong to a specific
nation. Thirdly, territory is the nation’s political representation. The nation’s
border is seen as definite and no nation has imagined itself as coterminous with
the world, even for the most messianic nationalists (Anderson, 1983).

7
Sovereignty over its territory means that the nation is the only legitimate
authority within those borders. The nation and its territory are inherently linked
and invasion of territory means an intrusion into the nation’s physical integrity.
The ties of blood, intermarriage, kinship and common descent are denominators
that unite members of a nation, and together they create an “imagined
community” whose members would never meet and have any actual relation with
each other but still manage to cultivate a “deep, horizontal comradeship”. In that
sense, the nation is viewed as an extended family with its members sharing the
same ethnic or cultural “stock” and are bound by deep ties of solidarity. Their
predecessors are called their “forefather” or “ancestors” whose “inheritance” or
“patrimony” they need to preserve. Not all scholars agree on such biological
language; however, most view the nation as a tightly-knit spiritual family. For the
aforementioned characteristics, a shared understanding of identity and origin and
a strong sense of collective belonging are fostered among members of a nation.
Together, they form a homogeneous and cohesive “we” that refer to all the
members and differentiate who does and does not belong to them.

The changing significance of territory prior to and in modern days plays

a role in understanding the formation of identity of the nation’s members. In pre-
modern polities, territory played a marginal role in the life of the community
since the factor which helps mark off one community from others is the way of
life such as in the case of traditional Hindu societies under the Roman Empire
and Medieval Europe (Parekh, 1995). However, territory now enjoys
unprecedented political and ontological importance as it is the physical material
that forms that state and clearly distinguishes one nation from others. The state
has jurisdiction over its territorial unit and is given the authority from the people
to exercise the power over those who reside in it. The territorial identity is greatly
valued by modern states. Although each member of the nation has manifold
identities and affiliations and belongs to various social groups, the territorial
identity is viewed as “overarching and dominant”. If the nation is at war, all
other ties are suspended to make way for territorial identity. In other words,

8
human relations and activities are territorialized and totalized by the state.
“Britain is not where the British live, rather the British are those who live in
Britain” (Parekh, 1995) is another way of looking at the role of territory in
shaping one’s identity. This means that nations can integrate new members and
accommodate immigrants into the country through a process of “naturalization”.
In other words, getting integrated into a nation demands a price, which includes
giving up their old ways of life and fully accepting its culture since differences in
custom and belief present themselves as a challenge to the nationhood of the
country. When a Muslim girl was determined to wear her hijab, the traditional
Muslim head-dress, the French state felt deeply threatened. Her inquiry is a
critical political gesture, symbolically resists the nation’s solidarity and cohesive
history of the past two centuries, and puts the dominant definition of French
national identity at risk.
The most basic loose use of the term “nation” is interchanging “nation”
and other concepts such as “ethnic group” and “ethnicity”. While a nation can
evolve from ethnic groups, a nation is more than an ethnic group in the respect
that a nation believes in its right to territorial control, which Richmond (1987)
terms as “territorial referent”. More importantly, nations do not require an ethnic
identity base (Barrington, 1997); therefore, “shared cultural features” as
mentioned earlier should not be mixed with “shared ethnic identity”. In fact,
nations are generally multiethnic in their make-up (Barrington, 1997).
In the case of Vietnam, the Stalinist view of nation and how it is formed
was prevailing in politics among Communists and scholars studying History in
Vietnam from the 1930s to 1960s, which defines the nation as “a historically
constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common
language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a
common culture.” This view shares the characteristics mentioned earlier. Another
view of the origin of the nation is to attach it to the socio-economic frameworks
of the society, proposed by Karl Marx, another core figure whose doctrine
strongly defined the course of Communist national liberation in Vietnam.
“Nations are an inevitable product, an inevitable form, in the bourgeois epoch of

9
social development” (Marx, 2011). Unlike other scholars who view nation from
cultural, territorial or language dimensions and reject the idea that nation is an
organic phenomenon, Marx sees nation as an inevitable product of social
development and perceives it from a social relations angle. He argues the
working class could not be formed and grow without “constituting itself within
the nation”, and without being “national”. However, the growth of capitalism
gradually breaks down national barriers and replaces class antagonisms for
national antagonism. In his view, therefore, “the workingmen have no country”
and “united action” by the workers is one of the first conditions for the
“emancipation of the proletariat”, which are irreconcilable with the bourgeoisie.
Such views of class struggles and class contradictions greatly influenced the
course of nationalism in Vietnam in the 20th century.
Nationalism
The definition of nationalism has various dimensions to it, with Bieber
(2020a, 10) defining it as ‘a malleable and narrow’ ideology that places values on
membership in a nation more than belonging to other groups, and emphasizes
political representation by the nation and for the nation, which provides the
rationale for self-determination in world politics. However, nationalism is not
confined to a political ideology. It is an essential source of identity and more
importantly, meaning and justification for the arbitrariness of human life. When
religion lost its significance and political role after the Enlightenment,
nationalism gradually became the factor giving meaning to people’s struggling
for improvement and even deaths. As such, it provides a framework for both
unity and division (Woods, Schertzer et al., 2020). On the one hand, nationalism
can arouse the national spirit that people are willing to die for their fellow
comrades; however, by the same token, it can invoke hatred and violence since
“us” and “the other” is part of what contributes to how people identify
themselves.
History is essential to nationalism as nationalism involves demarcating
the boundaries of the nation in space (territory) and time (history) and builds a
coherent historical grand narrative. History is, in some ways, organised public

10
memory; thus, nationalism presupposes a culture in which memory enjoys great
significance or “epistemological dignity” (). The academic discipline of History
became a key tool for nations to define the deep bonds that connect their people
by selectively choosing what to remember and to forget; that is, what to include
in and erase from narratives of national identity (Anderson, 1983). It is hardly
surprising that nationalists would want to trace the history and inceptions of the
nation, define it in time and space, and emphasize its uniqueness or individuality.
Nationalism is therefore said to be “forged, even fabricated, by cultural
engineers, who design symbols, mythologies, rituals, and histories specifically to
meet modern mass needs” (Smith, 2000). Within this framework, the state plays
a significant role in the production of nationalist rhetoric, which attempts to
evoke images, narratives, and interpretations to construct or signify the belief in
the individual that he/she belongs to a particular social and political community.
This can be achieved via several strategies. Positive qualities of one’s own group
is emphasized by the state as a way to enhance the individual’s pride of and
attachment to the country. In this case, the state functions as the protagonist that
encourages citizens to support the state. Alternatively, the state can deepen hatred
against outsiders to enhance within-group cohesion, which can be found in
colonial nationalist discourse in Asian against Ẻuropean expansion in 20th
century. In this case, the focus is on the negative qualities and actions of the
enemy (Bui, 2016).

As for the genesis of nationationalism, it is often said that nationalism

was first invented in Europe and then spread to the rest of the world. This might
be because nationalist ideas were first developed in Europe and then several
non-Western leaders were strongly influenced by them. However, non-Western
countries’ nationalist discourse is not just derivative and heteronomous (Parekh,
1995). Some countries but not all used the language of nationalism and their
nationalist discourse had an extremely complex structure (Parekh 1989a; Karpat,
1982). They may utilize some European ideas, but also indigenize and combine
them with those derived from their own traditions and cultures. Once their fight
for independence reaches a new state, the earlier discourse is irrelevant and then

11
has to be reconstituted. The colonial nationalist discourse, therefore, is said to be
multistranded, partially autonomous and partially heteronomous, multilayered,
eclectic and provisional; and post-independence nationalist discourse can be even
more divergent.

2. The course of nationalism in Vietnam (1860s - 2000s)

The following account of nationalism in Vietnam is chronological and

follows significant historical events in Vietnam. Vietnam was one of many
countries to incur the effects and consequences of nineteenth century Western
imperialism. I made an attempt in outlining the trajectory of nationalism in
Vietnam via researching academic discussions and debates which have
investigated into the question of the genesis and the core of nationalism in
Vietnam prior to and during the French colonization (1858-1930), the secular
state of Vietnam (1954-1965) after the Geneva Accords in 1954, and then post-
colonial and post-reform nationalisms since 1980s. Certain patterns witnessed
throughout a number of research are fictive kinship (Hung King) created by the
use of ethno-symbolism, the integration of communist doctrines, post-colonial
cultural restructuring and a new wave of anti-China nationalism in contemporary
Vietnam. Each and every so-called “forms” of nationalisms in Vietnam have
arisen together with socio-economic and socio-cultural transformations in the last
century.

2.1 The incubation of Vietnam nationalism

There are different views on the emergence of Vietnamese nationalism.

Nationalistic spirit in Vietnam is believed by Johnston (1973) and Vu (1966) to
have emerged during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the
twentieth century, which was not a phenomenon confined to Vietnam only.
Nationalism is, first of all, a modern product (Anderson, 1983), and nationalism
in the East was a product of cultural contact with the West (Johnston, 1973). This
collision of ideas was primarily due to Western imperialism. As a reaction to
imperialism and exploitation, local states seeked to establish their independence

12
from Western occupation. Western rulers aimed at accumulation of wealth and
therefore, defied the social, economic, and political reforms the local people
sought to. Colonizers’ motive was to maintain the status quo and attempted to
suppress any reforms against their oppression; however, such suppression further
intensified the desires of the people for independence. The colonizers ended up
giving the people a common enemy, resulting in their mobilizing and uniting for
a common cause. "Such a struggle, with a common origin, a common aim and
likewise a common adversary, unites the peoples of Asia … in the fellowship of
a common destiny” (Kohn, 1929).

However, for some native Vietnamese scholars, nationalism in Vietnam

was born out of the desire to assert Vietnam’s independence against the constant
invasion from the neighboring country, China, which means nationalism in
Vietnam dated back prior to French colonization. Vietnam polities acted as a
vassal or tributary state to Chinese regime diplomatically for centuries; however,
it aspired to maintain its sovereignty. Before local scholars’ understanding of the
concept “nation”' expanded via exposure to Western thoughts in the 1900s, there
was an ambiguous but also omnipresent idea that a clear distinction between
Vietnam and China existed. Domination and assimilation strategies imposed by
China's monarchical regime unquestionably influenced Vietnamese cultural
identity; however, the Vietnamese line of cultural distinctiveness was preserved
in its language, way of living, rituals, social customs and peoples’ narratives (Lu,
1998). Such resistance against cultural invasion was the source of nationalistic
spirit that fueled innumerable revolutionary movements in Vietnam’s history. Of
these Vietnamese rebellions, two would have ramifications on the growth of
Vietnamese nationalism. The first was the story of the Trung sisters in 40-42 A.D
or so-called Vietnamese elephant-riding warriors (Marr, 1971). It began as a
protest over the murder of the husband of one of the sisters by a Chinese official,
and then it progressed into a violent quasi-general insurrection. Defeated by the
Chinese, the Trung sisters chose suicide instead of surrender to enemies. Future
Vietnamese revolutionaries saw them as the nation's first national heroes and
would try to emulate such spirit into total commitment in the struggle for

13
independence. The second rebellion took place during the tenth century when the
decline of the powerful T'ang dynasty of China coincided with a growing
political strength of Vietnam. In 939, a revolt led by Ngo Quyen successfully
crushed Chinese domination. China agreed to recognize Vietnamese de facto
independence while retaining over Vietnam as a nominal suzerainty. This
relationship was to exist until there were brief interruptions in 1884.

Nevertheless, despite Vietnam’s revolutionary movements against the

relentless invasion from the Northerners, there was no alternative political
framework for Vietnam besides the available progressive administrative
paradigm from China. At the same time, the Chinese superimposed the system of
Confucianism on the Vietnamese in an attempt to sinicize the Vietnamese. The
Vietnamese, Confucian mandarinate adopted a developed legal and
administrative system from the Chinese as well as a philosophical and religious
doctrine. Notably, Confucianism was born out of the need to stabilize society; it
emphasizes "duties to their family and to their community and taught them about
the social hierarchy in which each man had to know his place and to behave
accordingly" (Lam, 2020).

The adoption of Confucianism into Vietnamese political and education

systems had a profound impact on Vietnamese thinkers before the 1900s. The
Chinese political system is operated by an educated bureaucracy which was
called the mandarinate. To become a mandarin, one had to pass a difficult battery
of examinations administered by the government and based on the Confucian
classics. Confucianism greatly shaped how scholars viewed the origin of Viet
people in Vietnam. Under the cultural discourse of fictive kinship, Han
genealogies (from Than Nong to the Hung Kings) were constructed by Confucian
scholars in the fifteenth century in the first historical work on Vietnam history
“The annals of Đại Việt” (Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư) by Ngo Si Lien This was an
invented tradition and bloodline in the efforts of the Vietnamese court to connect
with politics in China. Notably, Ngo Si Lien (1947) uses the paired concepts of
“Our Việt’s Talented People” and “Han people” in his book in an effort to mark

14
off between the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Han lineage of Dai Viet is shown
as belows; Lac Long Quan means “The Dragon”, while Au Co means “The
Fairy”. Lạc Long Quân was a dragon king, living under the sea. Au Co was a
fairy, living on a mountain. They got married and gave birth to Hung Vuong,
who is now considered the national ancestor, and the Vietnamese people claim to
be the race of Dragon and Fairy. They believed that they had blood ties with an
ancestor who had existed for centuries. The fact that Lac Long Quan and Au Co,
who are viewed as the ancestors of the Vietnamese, were added to the grand
narrative of Vietnam means that the sense of Vietnam nationalism only came into
being when the monarchical system was firmly established (Lu, 1998).

Table 1: Han lineage in Đại Việt (Nguyen, 1479; Ngo, 1435) from Tran (2020)

In the early twentieth century, after 2000 years under Confucianism,

Vietnamese scholars were exposed to Western ideas. Westerners saw the world
as divided between nations; each of which had its own history and culture. As
reformist intellectuals such as Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh came to
realize this, they sought to change the way in which people in their land thought.
In doing this, they created a shared discourse which is easily recognizable in their

15
writings and which through their use of neologisms is very distinct from earlier
writings. In particular, these reformist intellectuals started to make use of such
new terms as ‘nation’ (quốc gia), ‘fatherland’ (tổ quốc), and ‘compatriots’ (đồng
bào), words that had been coined by Japanese reformers in the second half of the
nineteenth century to translate Western terms that did not exist in Japanese (or
Chinese or Vietnamese) at that time. They noted that Western nations—‘nation’
(quốc gia) being a new concept at this time for Vietnamese, although the term
that was used to express it had long existed—taught students about their own
nation, whereas students in what they termed ‘our nation’ or ‘our kingdom’,
studied the ‘Northern Kingdom’ or ‘China’. This marked a major intellectual
transformation. For instance, what had long simply been ‘history’ now became
‘Chinese history’. Phan Bội Châu in Việt Nam quốc sử khảo (1909) called the
Vietnamese “people of our country” in opposition to “European people” and
“Japanese people”. In a second example, historiographies of the Nguyễn dynasty
(1802–1945) self-identify those who speak the Vietnamese language and write
literary Sinitic as “Han people”, whereas the Chinese of the time were called
“Qing people”, and those Chinese who fled to and lived in Vietnam called “Ming
people” (Choi 2004, 136–38). The shift of terminology use is a statement of
ideological change. This is the product of a process of cultural exposure or
epistemological mutation, which may also be the result of a forced political push.
The unseen coordinators behind these surface disturbances are various
ideologies, political discourses, and anonymous agents.

Under these ideological changes, native intellectuals both retained the

idea of Confucian kinship and acquired new ideologies to form a fictive kinship
through the symbol of the patriarchal Hùng Kings. When exposed to fields of
scientific colonialism, the concept of ideological fictive kinship continued to
flourish in the intellectual contexts of racism, Social Darwinism, and colonialism,
and became part of the native intellectuals’ concept of “nation”. They used the
fictive kinship and nationalism ideology in combination with other ideas
(Marxism) to serve the ends of anti-colonialism, anti-feudalism and national
independence.

16
References

Allen, J., Burns, N., Garrett, L., Haass, R. N., Ikenberry, G. J., Mahbubani, K.,
Menon, S., Niblett, R., Nye, J. S., O'Neil, S.K., & Schake, K. (2020). How
the World Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic. (2020, March 20).
Foreign Policy. https:// foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/20/world-order-after-
coronavirus-pandemic/

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. [S.l.]: Verso.

Bieber, F. (2020a). Debating Nationalism: The global spread of nations.

Bieber, F. (2020). Global nationalism in times of the covid-19 pandemic. Nationalities

Papers, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.35

CNN (2020). “Photo Shows ‘Corona’ Crossed Out and Replaced with ‘Chinese’
in Trump’s Briefing Notes.” March 19, 2020.
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-03-19-20-
intl-hnk/h_21c623966aa148dbeed242 de4e94943e. (Accessed October 13,
2020.)

Jeung, R. (2020) Incidents of Coronavirus Discrimination. Report for A3PCON

and CAA. http://www. asianpacificpolicyandplanningcouncil.org/wp-
content/uploads/Stop_AAPI_Hate_Weekly_Report_4_3_20.pdf.
(Accessed October 9, 2020.)

Legrain, P. (2020). The coronavirus is killing globalization as we know it

Foreign Policy. March 12, online: https://
foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-killing-globalization-
nationalism-protectionism-trump/

OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights)
(2020). “COVID-19 Fears Should Not Be Exploited to Attack and

17
 Exclude Minorities – UN Expert.” March 30, 2020.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/ DisplayNews.aspx?
NewsID=25757&LangID=E. (Accessed October 12, 2020.)

OPRYSKO, C., & LUTHI, S. (2020). Trump labels himself ‘a wartime president’
combating coronavirus. Retrieved 15 October 2020, from
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/18/trump-administration-self-
swab-coronavirus-tests-135590

Prasad, A. (2020). The organization of ideological discourse in times of

unexpected crisis: Explaining how COVID-19 is exploited by populist
leaders. Leadership, 16(3), 294-302. doi: 10.1177/1742715020926783

Van, T. (2020). “Tự hào Việt Nam” đồng lòng khống chế đại dịch Covid-19
thành công. Retrieved 27 October 2020, from
https://thanhtra.com.vn/toan-canh-ncov/tu-hao-viet-nam-dong-long-
khong-che-dai-dich-covid-19-thanh-cong-167287.html

VNCDC (2020). Thủ tướng: Chống dịch như chống giặc!. (2020). Retrieved 15
October 2020, from http://vncdc.gov.vn/vi/phong-chong-dich-benh-viem-
phoi-cap-ncov/8584/thu-tuong-chong-dich-nhu-chong-giac

Vu, T. (2014). The Party v. the People: Anti-China Nationalism in Contemporary

Vietnam. Journal Of Vietnamese Studies, 9(4).

Woods, E., Schertzer, R., Greenfeld, L., Hughes, C., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2020).
COVID-19, nationalism, and the politics of crisis: A scholarly exchange.
Nations And Nationalism. doi: 10.1111/nana.12644

18