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Chinese National Identity
in the Age
of Globalisation
Edited by
Lu Zhouxiang
Chinese National Identity in the Age
of Globalisation
Lu Zhouxiang
Editor
Chinese National
Identity in the Age
of Globalisation
Editor
Lu Zhouxiang
Maynooth University
Maynooth, Ireland
ISBN 978-981-15-4537-5 ISBN 978-981-15-4538-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4538-2
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Acknowledgments
First of all I wish to thank Sara Crowley-Vigneau, Senior Commissioning

Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for her enthusiasm and support for this
project, and I want to thank Connie Li, Senior Editorial Assistant at
Palgrave Macmillan for her diligent work in preparing the manuscript for
publication.
I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for
their valuable comments and feedback for this project. I am apprecia-
tive and grateful to all the contributors to this volume for their time and
effort in preparing excellent chapters and sharing their knowledge. My
sincere thanks also go to Martin Shiels and Aelred Doyle who helped in
proofreading and providing editorial feedback on the manuscript.
v
About This Book
Written by a team of international scholars from China, Germany,

Ireland, New Zealand and the UK, this book provides interdisciplinary
studies on the construction and transformation of Chinese National
Identity in the Age of Globalisation. It addresses a wide range of issues
central to national identity in the context of Chinese culture, politics,
economy and society, and explores a diverse set of topics including the
formation of an embryonic form of national identity in the late Qing era,
the influence of popular culture on national identity, globalisation and
national identity, the interaction and discourse between ethnic identity
and national identity, and identity construction among overseas Chinese.
It highlights the latest developments in the field and offers a distinctive
contribution to our knowledge and understanding of national identity.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: Constructing and Negotiating

Chineseness in the Age of Globalisation 1
Lu Zhouxiang
2 Yellow Peril or Yellow Revival? Ethnicity, Race and

Nation in Late Qing Chinese Utopianism (1902–1911) 21
Guangyi Li
3 Shaolin, Wuxia Novels, Kung Fu Movies and National

Identity 61
Lu Zhouxiang
4 Social Network Service Platforms and China’s Cyber

Nationalism in the Web 2.0 Age 85
Nini Pan
5 Fostered Idols and Chinese Identity 113

Ning Jiang
6 Chinese National Identity and National Image

in the Age of Globalisation 137
Peter Herrmann
ix
x CONTENTS
7 A New Chinese National Identity: The Role

of Nationalism in Chinese Foreign Policy 161
Niall Duggan
8 Identity Narratives in China and the EU’s Economic

Diplomacy: Comparing the BRI and the EU
Connectivity Strategy for Asia 183
Constantin Holzer
9 Nationhood and Ethnicity at the Frontiers: A Study

of Hmong Identity in Western Hunan 203
Lijing Peng
10 ‘The People Are God’ Third World Internationalism

and Chinese Muslims in the Making of the National
Identity in the 1950s 227
Zhiguang Yin
11 From ‘Small’ to ‘Big’ Nationalism: National Identity

Among China’s Hui Minority in the Twenty-First
Century 261
Dean Phelan
12 The Complexity of Nationalism and National

Identity in Twenty-First Century Xinjiang 285
David O’Brien
13 Leveraging Mega-Events to Embrace Chinese National

Identity: The Politics of Hong Kong’s Participation
in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the Shanghai 2010
World Expo 309
Marcus P. Chu
14 The Evolution and Recognition of Self-identity

in Food and Foodways of the Overseas Chinese 333
Yu Cao
CONTENTS xi
15 Temples and Huiguan: Negotiating Chineseness

in Ho Chi Minh City 361
Zhifang Song
16 National Identity, Religious Identity and Their Impacts

on Subjective Well-Being—A Case Study on Chinese
Catholics in Ireland 387
Yinya Liu
17 Identity Reconstruction of Chinese Migrant Women

in Ireland 415
Jun Ni
Index 435
Notes on Contributors
Yu Cao is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Migration and Ethnic

Studies of Sun Yat-sen University, China. He received his Ph.D. in
History from Jinan University in 2015, and finished his postdoctoral
research at the Anthropology Department of Sun Yat-sen University in
2018. His research interest is the food and foodways of Chinese domes-
tic and international migrants. He has conducted studies on chilli pep-
pers all around China in recent years, and wrote a book A History of the
Chilli Pepper in China (Beijing United Publishing Co. Ltd., 2019).
Marcus P. Chu obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Auckland.
He is currently an Assistant Professor and the Associate Program
Director of the M.A. in International Affairs in the Department of
Political Science at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has published
extensively on the history and politics of sporting mega-events in the
Greater China region. His most recent book is Politics of Mega-Events
in China’s Hong Kong and Macao (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He also
serves as a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of
the History of Sport and the Asian Journal of Sports History and Culture.
Niall Duggan is a Lecturer in the Department of Government and
Politics at University College Cork, Ireland, where he teaches interna-
tional relations, international political economy and Asian politics. He
received his Ph.D. from the School of Asian Studies and the Department
of Government and Politics at University College Cork. He also holds
a B.Sc. in Government and Public Policy from University College Cork
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
and an M.A. in East and Southeast Asian Studies from Lund University.
From 2013 to 2015 he was the Acting Chair of Modern Chinese Society
and Economy at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. He has also
been a lecturer at the Institute of East Asian Politics, Ruhr Universität
Bochum and the Department of Chinese Studies at Maynooth
University. His main research focuses is emerging economies in global
governance, international relations (IR) of the Global South, and
China’s foreign and security policies, with a special focus on Sino-African
and Sino-EU relations.
Peter Herrmann is a social philosopher with an academic background
in sociology, political science, economics and jurisprudence. Affiliated
with the world of teaching and research, he is chasing the answer to the
Faustian question ‘what holds the world together at its core’ (concrete
links between economics and jurisprudence). His recent positions range
from the Max-Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy to the
Faculty of Economics and Sociology at the University of Łódź. Currently
he is Research Fellow at the Law School of Central South University,
Changsha, China. His recent publications include, Right to Stay—Right
to Move (Vienna: Vienna Academic Press, 2019) and Is There Still Any
Value in It? Revisiting Value and Valuation in a Globalising Digital
World (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019).
Constantin Holzer graduated with a Ph.D. in Economics from Renmin
University of China before starting his career in University College
Cork, Ireland as a Lecturer in Chinese Business. His research focuses on
Chinese entrepreneurship and innovation cooperation between China
and the EU, as well as the dynamics of state–society relations in China
under its economic reform process. Before his appointment at Central
South University he worked as a trainee in the ‘Science, Technology and
Environment’ section of the European Union Delegation to Beijing,
and was awarded a Marietta-Blau Research Fellowship from the Austrian
Ministry of Science, Research and Economy for his research on business
ethics in China. Constantin has coordinated Horizon 2020 proposal
submissions under the EU-China Flagship Cooperation in the areas of
Sustainable Urbanisation and Food Safety, and has been funded with
coordinator grants by Enterprise Ireland and UCC.
Ning Jiang is an applied linguist who specialises in Chinese linguistics,
psycholinguistics and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. A graduate
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
of Shanghai University (TCFL) and East China Normal University

(Applied Psychology), she has completed a Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics
and a Master’s in Education at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She
now works as an assistant professor in Chinese Studies and Linguistics
at Trinity College Dublin. Her recent research work at Trinity College
explored acquisition strategies in learning Chinese characters. Her
research interest to date is interdisciplinary, with a focus on Chinese
studies in culture (e.g. Chinese diaspora, and cultural issues in media),
translation studies (between English and Chinese) and linguistics (e.g.
psycholinguistics, second language acquisition and semantics).
Guangyi Li is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture at
the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at
Chongqing University, China. His main research interests are modern
Chinese literature, Chinese intellectual history, science fiction literature
and culture and utopian fiction and thought. His recent publications
include the edited volumes, Zhongguo kehuan wenxue zai chufa (Chinese
Science Fiction: A New Start, 2016) and, with Chen Qi, Santi de
X zhong dufa (Diverse Ways of Reading Three-Body, 2017).
Yinya Liu is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Maynooth University,
Ireland. She received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in
Philosophy from Sun Yat-Sen University, and obtained her Ph.D.
in Philosophy at Maynooth University in 2011. She worked in the
Department of Philosophy at Maynooth University, the Department of
Chinese Studies at Dublin City University and the International Strategic
Collaboration Programme (ISCP-China) before joining the School of
Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Maynooth University
in 2015. She has published research articles and book chapters on phi-
losophy, religion, culture and media. Her research interests are Chinese
philosophy, comparative philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy
in literature and Chinese Buddhism.
Jun Ni completed her Ph.D. at the University of Lyon 3, France.
The title of her Ph.D. dissertation is Chinese language acquisition and
cross-cultural adaptation of Irish university students studying-abroad
in China. Her main research interests are Chinese language pedagogy,
intercultural studies and migration studies. Jun Ni has been lecturing
in Chinese language and culture in Ireland since 2003, first at Trinity
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
College Dublin, then at Dublin City University; and, since 2008,

at Technological University Dublin. She designed the online Smart
Learning Chinese Programme funded by Enterprise Ireland. Jun Ni is
also a committee member of the Irish Society for Chinese Language
Teaching and Learning and a member of the European Association for
Chinese Studies (EACS).
David O’Brien is a Lecturer at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB),
Germany. Based in the Faculty of East Asian Studies, he researches the
relationship between politics and identity in China with a particular focus
on ethnic identity in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. His eth-
nographic approach is based on many years of fieldwork in the region.
He is the co-author of The Politics of Everyday China (with Neil Collins)
recently published by Manchester University Press. His most recent jour-
nal articles have appeared in China Quarterly and Asian Ethnicity. Before
joining RUB, he worked for six years as an Assistant Professor at the
University of Nottingham where he was based at their China campus. He
received his Ph.D. in 2013 from University College Cork.
Nini Pan is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication
at East China Normal University, China. She obtained her B.A. in
International Politics and Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from Peking
University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Waseda University,
Japan. Before joining East China Normal University in 2019, she was an
Associate Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities
and Social Sciences at Chongqing University, China. Her main research
interests are Chinese politics, Japanese politics, history of political theory,
environmental politics, and media politics.
Lijing Peng received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Maynooth
University in 2014. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the
Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. Lijing has pub-
lished prolifically in top-ranking anthropology journals and other liter-
ary/history journals, including Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Social
Anthropology and Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Review.
She has also published translation works in literature and anthropology,
including a translation of selected poems by Paul Muldoon and Michael
Longley (Northern Literature and Art Press Co. Ltd, 2016).
Dean Phelan obtained his Ph.D. in Geography from Maynooth
University Social Science Institute (MUSSI). His research interests lie at
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii
the intersection of critical geopolitics, cultural geography and Chinese

studies. Specifically, he is interested in identity politics, emotional geog-
raphies, processes of minoritisation, gender and ethnic studies and con-
ceptualisations of place. Set within the context of the Global War on
Terror, his current research explores the myriad ways in which the lives,
everyday geographies and ethno-religious identities of Beijing’s Hui
population are shaped by both national and international politics, and
how these identities are performed through the group’s distinctive food
cultures.
Zhifang Song is Lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Social
and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He
holds a B.A. from Hebei Normal University, an M.A. from Beijing
Foreign Studies University and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern
California. Before joining the University of Canterbury, Zhifang held a
postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California. He
also taught anthropology at the University of Southern California and
California State University. Zhifang’s research interests include kinship
and family (especially changes under the conditions of modernity and
postmodernity), visual anthropology, societies in China and East Asia,
economic development and rural ecology, religion and modernity and
globalisation and the transnational flow of people and ideas.
Zhiguang Yin is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK.
His research interest lies mainly in the area of Chinese modern intellec-
tual and legal history, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of
international relations, and contemporary Sino-Middle Eastern relations,
with a strong interest in understanding the formation of our modern
‘world-view’. His current research project investigates Chinese foreign
relations with Third World countries, especially the Middle Eastern,
countries during the 1950s and 1960s. It intends to understand how a
Chinese internationalist vision was articulated through its interactions
with Third World states and how it was responded to by them. It also
aims to show that the Chinese interpretation of the ‘three worlds thesis’
(sange shijie lilun) is associated with China’s own revolutionary experi-
ence and the Chinese Communist Party’s understanding of the ‘national
question’, which differs significantly from both the Soviet reading of the
same term and the American narrative of ‘national self-determination’
coined by Woodrow Wilson.
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Lu Zhouxiang is Lecturer in Chinese Studies within the School of

Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Maynooth University,
Ireland. His research interests are nationalism, national identity, mod-
ern Chinese history, Chinese martial arts and China’s sport policy and
practice, and he has published extensively in these areas. His recent pub-
lications include A History of Shaolin: Buddhism, Kung Fu and Identity
(Routledge, 2019) and Politics and Identity in Chinese Martial Arts
(Routledge, 2018).
Abbreviations
AFC Asian Football Confederation

AIIB Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank
AUM Anxiety/Uncertainty Management
BIE Bureau International des Expositions
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CAI Comprehensive Agreement on Investment
CCCYL Central Committee of the Communist Youth League
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CCYL Chinese Communist Youth League
CEPA Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement
CIAPC Chinese Islamic Association Preparation Committee
CPV Communist Party of Vietnam
EEA European Economic Area
EU The European Union
EU NAVFOR European Union Naval Force
FGI First Generation Immigrants
FIFA International Federation of Association Football
IAC Islamic Association of China
IBC Irish-Born Chinese
IOC International Olympic Committee
MENA Middle Eastern and North African
NMW National Minimum Wage
NPC National People’s Congress
PRC People’s Republic of China
ROC Republic of China
SAR Special Administrative Region
xix
xx ABBREVIATIONS
SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

SCT Self-Categorisation Theory
SIT Social Identity Theory
SWB Subjective Well-Being
UAR United Arab Republic
XUAR Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Number of reports on TFBoys in Chinese mainstream media 121

Fig. 5.2 Number of micro-blogs with the theme of TFBoys
and China, August 2013 to June 2017 123
Fig. 5.3 Number of micro-blogs with the theme of TFBoys
and China, August 2017 to June 2018 124
Fig. 5.4 Findings of this study 127
Fig. 9.1 Location of West Hunan (yellow) within Hunan Province
of China (Drawn by Wikipedia User Croquant in December
2007 using various sources, mainly: Hunan Province
administrative regions GIS data: 1:1M, County level, 1990
Hunan Counties map from www.hua2.com. Please refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangxi_Tujia_and_Miao_
Autonomous_Prefecture#/media/File:Location_of_Xiangxi_
Prefecture_within_Hunan_(China).png; under Creative
Commons License, CC BY 3.0, accessed October 8, 2019.) 205
xxi
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Daily routine of Jackson Yee 120

Table 5.2 Support during the TFBoys’ sixth anniversary concert 126
Table 8.1 Comparing national identity narratives in China and the EU 188
Table 8.2 Comparison of the official representations of the BRI and
the Connectivity Strategy for Asia 190
Table 17.1 Profiles of research participants 420
Table 17.2 Facilitators and barriers to cross-cultural adaptation identi-
fied in this study 422
xxiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Constructing and Negotiating

Chineseness in the Age of Globalisation
Lu Zhouxiang
China’s rise has become an increasingly discussed and debated topic over
the past three decades. The country’s fast-growing economic, cultural
and political influence has made it an important player in this new era of
globalisation. Since the twentieth century, Western scholars from a range
of disciplines have studied the history, culture, politics and economy of
China from diverse perspectives. In recent years, Chinese national iden-
tity has become a popular topic in Western academia, and an increasing
number of English publications have emerged. Most published works
discuss the issue from historical and political perspectives. Some focus
on the formation and construction of a national identity among the
Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when China
was transforming from a culturally bound empire into a modern nation
state.1 Some study the development of the transformation of Chinese
national identity in the twentieth century in the context of the Second
World War, the Chinese Civil War, the communist revolution, the Cold
War and China’s reform and opening up.2 Others analyse the relation-
ships between ethnicity, religion and national identity, and highlight
L. Zhouxiang (*)
Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
e-mail: zhouxiang.lu@mu.ie
© The Author(s) 2020 1

L. Zhouxiang (ed.), Chinese National Identity in the Age
of Globalisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4538-2_1
2 L. ZHOUXIANG
ethno-nationalist conflict among various ethnic groups in China.3 In

addition, an increasing number of scholars have started to explore the
issue from a cultural perspective by examining the role of literature,
opera, films, sport, television shows, the Internet and so on in the con-
struction of Chinese national identity.4 Due to the increase in Chinese
migration to foreign countries in the past decades, researchers have also
begun to investigate the identity construction of Chinese migrants and
diaspora.5
In response to the growing interest from academia, this book intends
to provide a comprehensive overview of the construction and transfor-
mation of Chinese national identity in the age of globalisation. Written
by a team of international scholars from China, Germany, Ireland, New
Zealand and the UK, it explores a diverse set of topics and addresses a
wide range of issues central to Chinese national identity in the context of
culture, economy, politics and society.
The Construction and Transformation of Chinese

National Identity
The concepts of nation state, national identity and nationalism emerged
in Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and since
then have become a mighty political force that has had great global
influence over the last two centuries.6 For the Chinese, national identity
and nationalism are new ideas imported from the West. The renowned
Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang (1895–1976) has argued that ancient
China developed into a ‘Tianxia’7 (meaning the world, literally ‘under
heaven’) instead of a country or nation state. The prominent Chinese
social scientist Li Shenzhi (1923–2003) has pointed out that in ancient
China, the term ‘Guojia’ (country) meant the government and that
‘Tianxia’ meant the culture so that ‘Tianxiaism’ equals ‘Culturalism’.8
The core of this cultural entity is Confucianism and the major concept
of Tianxiaism was the idea that China was the only true civilisation in the
world and its cultural superiority remained unchallenged. There was no
concept of or need for nation state and nationalism in a world that lacked
cultural or interstate competition.9 As Liang Qichao (1873–1929), a
leading reformist and philosopher who inspired Chinese scholars with his
enlightened essays, observed in 1899:
1 INTRODUCTION: CONSTRUCTING AND NEGOTIATING CHINESENESS … 3
We do love our country. It is the absence of the concept of ‘country’

that caused a lack of patriotism. China gained unification and sovereignty
in ancient times; other small nations and countries near China were not
strong enough to challenge China’s dominance, and were regarded as
Manyi [barbarians] rather than neighbouring countries. That’s why the
Chinese use ‘Tianxia’ instead of ‘country’ to describe their territory. As the
notion of ‘country’ was ambiguous, patriotism and nationalism failed to
come into being.10
Tianxiaism is based on the concept of unification which is attributed

to China’s unique climate, geography and ideology. First, appropriate
amounts of rainfall and fertile farmlands made the Zhongyuan (middle
China) into East Asia’s most populated, affluent and developed region,
one that was based on an agricultural economy. Second, surrounded
by high plateaus, deserts, mountains and the Pacific Ocean, China was
physically separated from the West and developed into an ‘isolated
world’ that lived off its own resources. There were only two pathways
to the outside world: the desert in the northwest and the sea in the
east, both were blocked unless a potential major trade partner existed
at their terminal.11 This isolation lasted for thousands of years until
the industrial revolution made it possible for European countries’ mer-
chant fleets and battleships to reach China’s east coast in the late Ming
dynasty (1368–1644). Third, Confucianism contributed to the prev-
alence of ‘Tianxiaism’ and eroded awareness of ethnic differences. As
China’s leading historian and philosopher Qian Mu (1895–1990) has
argued, ‘in China, the notion of country or nation was absorbed into
the notion of Tianxia. People considered the country or nation a cul-
tural entity’.12 At the core of this cultural entity is Confucianism. From
the rise of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), China
was governed according to Confucian principles. ‘Politicians and social
elites showed their loyalty to principles that defined a manner of rule and
the social hierarchy based on Confucianism instead of a particular king,
regime or nation’.13 In short, the world was Confucianism’s Tianxia, a
world based on Confucian ideology, social norms and manner of rule.
Townsend argues, ‘The history of modern China is one in which
nationalism replaces Culturalism/Tianxiaism as the dominant Chinese
view of their identity and place in the world’.14 It was not until the
mid-nineteenth century that the Celestial Empire began to realise that
4 L. ZHOUXIANG
it was no longer a dominant power in the world. China’s defeat in the

two Opium Wars (1840–1842 and 1856–1860) forced the Qing court
to re-evaluate the foreign powers and redefine the meaning of Tianxia.
Zhao Suisheng asserts that the rise of Chinese nationalism was inter-
twined with the intellectual search for answers as to why China had suf-
fered defeat in the Opium Wars.15 Imperialist aggression and colonial
expansion from Western powers made late Qing enlightenment think-
ers believe that national salvation could only be achieved when people
showed their loyalty to a modern nation state instead of submitting to
an emperor or a culture-bound regime. Liang Qichao argued that it was
nationalism that had made Europe strong.16 He believed that a lack of
collectivism was one of the most significant reasons for China’s failure
and that the ideas of nation state and nationalism that had come from
the West could be applied to enhance social cohesion and make China
powerful. Liang stated in 1901, ‘Facing the danger of being invaded and
occupied by foreign powers, we must cultivate and promote nationalism
to defend [China]. This is the most urgent issue for China’.17 According
to Liang, the traditional idea of ‘Tianxia’ should be replaced by ‘country’
and the only way to save China was to establish a modern nation state.18
In order to achieve this goal, the concepts of nation state and national-
ism were introduced to the broader public by the country’s intellectuals
and revolutionists.
Guangyi Li’s opening chapter on ‘Yellow Peril or Yellow Revival:
Ethnicity, Race and Nation in Late Qing Chinese Utopianism (1902–
1911)’ delves into late Qing enlightenment thinkers’ utopian thought
from the perspective of race and nation, and offers some insights on the
formation of an embryonic form of modern Chinese national identity in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter begins with
an analysis of the origin and development of modern racism, especially the
concept of the ‘yellow’ race and racial discrimination and discourse against
the people thus categorised. It then points out that for China, a coun-
try where yellow has been a symbol of greatness, nobility and royalty for
thousands of years, Western racial discourse such as ‘yellow peril’, surpris-
ingly, became a catalyst for racism and nationalism. A considerable number
of Chinese intellectuals regarded the xenophobic fear of the ‘yellow’ race
in the West as recognition of their own potential from which they derived
a utopian prospect for China and the Chinese. The author highlights that
there are interesting divergences between these utopias, reflecting very
dissimilar aims and hopes relevant to the world order.
By the late nineteenth century, with its defeat in the Sino-Japanese

War (1894–1895), China had been brought to its knees by imperialist
and colonial powers, triggering a strong anti-foreign sentiment. With the
accumulation of the resentment caused by the Qing government’s ina-
bility to defend against foreign aggressions, the growing ethnic nation-
alism among the Han Chinese sparked uprisings. From the late 1890s,
an anti-Manchu movement organised by Han nationalists and led by Sun
Yat-sen (1866–1925) plotted to overthrow the Manchu’s Qing dynasty,
and nationalism was utilised to propagandise revolutionary ideas. The
Qing government was overthrown in the 1911 Revolution. A modern
nation state, which the country’s enlightenment thinkers, politicians,
nationalists and revolutionaries believed was the only way forward for the
Chinese nation, eventually took shape.19 The nationalists moved to the
second stage of the revolution: building up a multi-ethnic nation state
capable of withstanding imperialist aggression. During the early years of
the Republic of China (ROC), against the background of the two World
Wars and in response to imperialist aggression, anti-imperialism, milita-
rism and Social Darwinism prevailed in China, giving rise to a nation-
alism that focused on national unity and national survival. Fuelled by
nationalism, the first half of the twentieth century saw the transforma-
tion of the modern Chinese nation state, bringing it from its infancy to
maturity.
Anderson developed the concept of an ‘imagined political com-
munity’ to define a nation. He believed that a nation is a socially con-
structed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves
as part of that group, and print media facilitates the construction of
national identity.20 Lu Zhouxiang’s chapter on ‘Shaolin, Wuxia Novels,
Kung Fu Movies and National Identity’ investigates how print media
plays its part in nation building and identity construction in China in the
twentieth century. It points out that wuxia novels and kung fu mov-
ies functioned as important vehicles for the maintenance and reinven-
tion of nationhood. They served two purposes: retrieving traditional
Chinese culture and constructing a modern Chinese national identity.
As the cradle of Chan Buddhism and a centre of Chinese martial arts,
Shaolin was regarded as a symbol of indigenous virtue and strength and
therefore became a popular theme in novels and movies. Chinese nov-
elists and movie producers consciously or unconsciously used legendary
Shaolin heroes and Shaolin kung fu to invent a cultural identity, and thus
aided the construction of a collective modern national identity among
6 L. ZHOUXIANG
the Chinese. These wuxia novels and movies in turn helped Shaolin lay a
rhetorical claim to Chinese identity.
While Zhouxiang’s chapter focuses on the role of traditional media
in fostering and expressing Chinese national identity and nationalism
in the twentieth century, Nini Pan’s chapter on ‘Social Network Service
Platforms and China’s Cyber Nationalism in the Web 2.0 Age’, on the
other hand, explores how new media serves the building of national-
ism in the twenty-first century. The author examines how China’s ide-
ological institutions have created a new cyber style that entails actively
participating in daily interaction with netizens, and argues that this
approach has changed the ecology of cyber nationalism. As one example,
the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League (CCCYL) has
been rather prominent for its strategy of using and strengthening cyber
nationalism. The League’s online operators adapt their nationalist mobi-
lisation to cyber trends through popularising publicity, participating in
discussion on topical news, making and sharing animation videos and so
on. Meanwhile, a new type of nationalist emotion among netizens has
provided ready-made resources. In practice, young staff in the CCCYL
who are also skilled cyber surfers have risen in the ranks through learn-
ing from the political communication experiences of developed democra-
cies and integrating nationalist networks among young professionals and
activists.
Ning Jiang’s chapter on ‘Fostered Idols and Chinese Identity’ entails
a case study based on the newly emerging Chinese representative fos-
tered idols, offering a unique approach to understanding the influence
of media and popular culture on identity construction in contemporary
China. By using statistical methods and cultural theories of national-
ism, Jiang identifies how the TFBoys, a pop group composed of these
idols, serve as a bridge to remind their fans and the public of traditional
Chinese heritage and modern mainstream Chinese culture, and, finally,
have strengthened their fans’ Chinese identity.
Alter asserts that national consciousness and national identity emerge
when people feel ‘that they belong primarily to the nation, and when-
ever affective attachment and loyalty to that nation override all other
attachments and loyalties’.21 In the age of globalisation, loyalty to the
nation has been increasingly influenced by consumerism, individualism,
internationalism, globalism and presentism. Peter Herrmann’s chapter
on ‘Chinese National Identity and National Image’ presents some theo-
retical and methodological considerations on this ‘loyalty’ matter against
the background of the rise of China in the increasingly globalising world.

Herrmann observes that while globalisation is a recurrent topic in aca-
demic and political debates, and also one prevailing in many people’s
minds (either as threat or mitigation), many facets are still underex-
plored. The present interest focuses on the most fundamental question:
do we need—and can we find—a new reference point for eliciting
nationality and identity? The underlying reasoning has to be seen in
the far-reaching shortcomings of those methodological foundations of
social science that emerged in the wake of the Western Enlightenment—
namely, individualism, nationalism, solutionism and presentism, or,
less academically, in the idea that it is I, who wants everything, and
who wants it now, instantaneously—and what is also good for society.
Recognising that such methodological paradigms are also guiding pol-
itics, we have to acknowledge that those methodological foundations
are bound to a historically specific context. This can be expressed in a
reversed way, proposing that time (we may call it historical progress)
and geographical reference (referring to shifts of globalisation) suggest
the necessity of changing the methodological reference—proposed as
prospects for today’s world are methodological globalism, collectivism,
noospherism and sustainabilitism. What does that mean for national
identity? This chapter examines if and in which way the new position,
which China is likely going to occupy in this globalising world, may be
one that can only persist by overcoming a national focus. That would
translate into a paradoxical notion of national identity where to be ‘truly
Chinese’ would translate into striving for a global understanding of
citizenship.
The relationships between national identity, globalisation and interna-
tional integration are further discussed by Niall Duggan in his chapter on
‘A New Chinese National Identity: The Role of Nationalism in Chinese
Foreign Policy’. Duggan analyses two case studies of the effects of
China’s new nationalism on Chinese foreign policy: Sino-Japanese rela-
tions during the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands disputes of 2013–2019
(reactive case) and Sino-Malian relations during Chinese peacekeeping
missions in 2013 (proactive case). He observes that under the leadership
of Xi Jinping, the PRC has moved to a more proactive foreign policy.
While the Chinese economy’s increased importance within global pro-
duction has given China a greater influence on the world stage, a more
proactive Chinese foreign policy has its roots in the rise of a new Chinese
nationalism, which emerged from the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen
8 L. ZHOUXIANG
Square protests. In policy formation, Chinese nationalism is a factor that

warrants greater consideration for Chinese foreign policymakers than it
had elicited prior to Xi Jinping’s administration.
Duggan’s research is complemented by Constantin Holzer’s chapter
on ‘Identity Narratives in China and the EU’s Economic Diplomacy:
Comparing the BRI and the EU Connectivity Strategy for Asia’. Holzer
argues that the basic understanding of external economic engagement
in China and the EU is heavily marked by the respective actors’ iden-
tity narratives—that is, ‘national rejuvenation’ and national interest in the
case of China, and ‘reconciliation’ and the support for rules-based mul-
tilateralism in the case of the EU. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
and the EU Connectivity Strategy represent China and the EU’s respec-
tive flagship initiatives of economic diplomacy in the twenty-first century
and offer two separate blueprints for shaping the future of shared eco-
nomic prosperity on the Eurasian continent. While China and the EU
pursue similar objectives, it is more the political question of how to guar-
antee a ‘level playing field’ and ‘shared benefits’ that cause uncertainty
and tension between them. Examining China and the EU’s identity nar-
ratives is a useful method to learn more about the ideas and purposes
behind the BRI and the EU Connectivity Strategy, and can be essential
for avoiding misunderstandings, as well as for opening up ways of coop-
eration between them.
The Paradox of ‘Big Nationalism’ and ‘Small

Nationalism’
Weber believes that political community and political action are ‘the
primary inspiration and basis for the “belief in common ethnicity”,
which in turn always rests on a sense of common origins. This belief in
common descent, along with shared customs, underlies the notions of
both ethnicity and “nation”’.22 He stated: ‘a community of sentiment
which would adequately manifest itself in a state of its own; hence, a
nation is a community which normally tends to produce a state of its
own’.23 When the ideas of ‘nation’, ‘nation state’ and ‘nationalism’ were
introduced to China in the late nineteenth century, Chinese scholars
and revolutionists noticed that nationalism could unite the Han major-
ity under the banner of patriotism to overthrow the Manchu regime
and resist foreign aggression, but it could also bond individual ethnic
minority groups together and might lead to ethnic conflict within China,
thus posing a major threat to political stability and national unity.24 The
leading enlightenment thinker Liang Qichao therefore developed the
theory of ‘Big Nationalism’ and ‘Small Nationalism’ to cope with this
complex issue. According to this theory, every ethnic group in China,
such as the Han, the Zhuang, the Miao, the Manchus, the Mongols,
the Tibetans, the Uyghur and the Hui, had its own ‘Small Nationalism’,
while ‘Big Nationalism’ united all ethnic groups together to stand
against foreign powers, namely the Western colonial powers and imperial
Japan.25
Soon after the establishment of the ROC in 1912, state leaders,
nationalists and intellectuals promoted the idea of ‘Big Nationalism’,
hoping to create and reinforce a sense of national unity among all eth-
nic groups in China. At the inauguration of the president of the ROC
held in Nanjing on 1 January 1912, Sun Yat-sen, Provisional President
of the ROC, stated, ‘The foundation of the country is people; the ter-
ritories of the Han, Manchus, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans should be
integrated into one country. The Han, Manchus, Mongols, Hui and
Tibetans should be integrated into one people. This is called the unifi-
cation of the Chinese nation’.26 He also emphasised equality among all
the ethnic groups in China; ‘The people in the Republic of China are
equal and should not be distinguished by race, class or religion’.27 In the
following years, the idea of ‘Five Races under One Union’, which meant
that the five major ethnic groups in China (Han, Manchus, Mongols,
Hui and Tibetans) would unite under the Republic, was advocated by
the government.28
Stalin defined a nation as ‘a historically evolved, stable community
of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up mani-
fested in a community of culture’.29 While the ROC government actively
promoted ‘Big Nationalism’, China’s ethnic minorities’ unique cultures,
languages and religions helped them build their own national identity.
‘Small Nationalism’ was growing among major ethnic groups, notably
the Uyghur, the Tibetans and the Mongols, and eventually gave birth to
the Uyghur independence movement in 1933 and led to the establish-
ment of the Mongolian People’s Republic in 1945.30 After the establish-
ment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Communists
adopted the ROC’s ethnic policy, which was based on the idea of ‘Five
Races under One Union’. At the same time, Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) leaders intended to develop a new relationship among all ethnic
10 L. ZHOUXIANG
groups in China. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) was

established under the State Council to develop and implement the coun-
try’s ethnic policies, supervise the regional ethnic autonomy systems and
protect the rights and interests of all the ethnic minority groups.31 By
1965, five autonomous regions—Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Guangxi,
Ningxia and Tibet—had been established, and by 1979 the State offi-
cially recognised 56 ethnicities/nationalities in China. Over the past
decades, continuous efforts have been made by the State and the SEAC
to cultivate ‘Big Nationalism’ among all ethnic groups. The goals are to
promote interethnic friendship, eliminate possible ethnic conflict and
consolidate national unity. The second section of this book focuses on
the interaction and discourse between ethnic identity and national iden-
tity in China in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and explores
the paradox of ‘Big Nationalism’ and ‘Small Nationalism’ from various
perspectives.
Lijing Peng’s chapter on ‘Nationhood and Ethnicity at the Frontiers:
A Study of Hmong Identity in Western Hunan’ investigates the char-
acteristics of multi-polar nationhood and pre-modern ethnicity in the
local history of western Hunan in late imperial China. It also stud-
ies their impact on the development of nationalism in western Hunan
in the Republican period (1912–1949). The nature of and the changes
in Chinese nationhood are examined through analysing the relationship
between indigenous communities (mainly the Hmong ethnic group) and
the central imperial government. The author observes that local intellec-
tual and military elites entered central governmental institutions through
civil and military service examinations, or through serving in the national
army. Successive imperial regimes advanced the integration of local com-
munities by incorporating local deities into the national pantheon and
sponsoring local gazetteer publication projects. Through state rituals and
official documentation at an empire-wide level, a national identity was
gradually formed and shaped. Multi-polar ethnic identities emerged as a
result of negotiating with the central government over issues concerning
land use, taxation and the quotas of civil service examination degrees.
These pre-modern forms of nationhood and ethnicity served as an
important foundation and a source of continuous influence in the con-
struction of national identity in western Hunan in the final years of the
Chinese empire and the following Republican period.
Zhiguang Yin’s chapter on ‘“The People are God” Third World
Internationalism and Chinese Muslims in the Making of the National
Identity in the 1950s’ studies the role of Islam, particularly the

participation of Chinese Muslim scholars, in the nation building of the
PRC. It also looks at the political narrative of the CCP on Islam in the
context of the Chinese revolution. Yin argues that anti-imperialism
and socialist construction were the two primary political goals allow-
ing people to be politically engaged and consequently creating a com-
mon ground for recognition. Hence, religion was considered as merely
another form of ideology which needed to be incorporated into the
political mission leading towards human liberation. The international-
ist support of the anti-colonial struggles in the Arab World also played
a crucial role in the formation of the national recognition in the 1950s.
The reports on the Chinese political support of the Arab world presented
the Arab people as a unitary people with their revolutionary spirit rooted
in Islamic religious tradition and inspired by their recent history of being
oppressed by colonialism.
Dean Phelan’s chapter on ‘National Identity Among China’s Hui
Minority in the Twenty-First Century’ explores the theoretical devel-
opment of Chinese nationalism, focusing on the contributions of Liang
Qichao’s ‘Big’ and ‘Small’ nationalism to current conceptualisations. The
author examines current ethnic policies affecting minorities in China,
and demonstrates the lived realities of China’s twofold nationality policy,
looking at how national identity is performed by ethnically Hui people
in Beijing through their food cultures. Phelan points out that the PRC
has been relatively successful in promoting ethnic unity among its diverse
population, despite facing the challenges presented by globalisation.
Discourses of the PRC as being composed of 56 distinct yet equal eth-
nicities are vital to Chinese national identities and policies and have been
a cornerstone of Chinese nationalism since its inception. Liang Qichao’s
‘Big’ and ‘Small’ nationalisms have been particularly important to the
development of current policies; whereby ‘Small’ nationalism exists
among individual ethnic groups, while ‘Big’ nationalism unites all ethnic-
ities together within the nation state. This twofold approach to nation-
alism has had an impact on the ethno-nationalist identities of minority
peoples in China, including the Hui.
Anderson stated, ‘the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal
comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over
the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to
kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings’.32 Although major
ethnic minority groups such as the Hui, Manchu, Zhuang, Yi and Miao
12 L. ZHOUXIANG
have maintained a harmonious relationship with the Han majority under

the umbrella of ‘Big Nationalism’, entering the twenty-first century,
the rising ‘Small Nationalism’ among the Tibetans and the Uyghur has
led to the growth of anti-Han sentiment and resulted in tension, con-
flicts and violence in Xinjiang and Tibet. Major riots broke out in Lhasa
(2008) and Urumqi (2009) resulting in hundreds of deaths and thou-
sands of injuries. Fuelled by nationalism and Pan-Turkism, and influ-
enced by the Islamic State movement, Uygur separatists and extremists
launched violent attacks in Xinjiang’s Kashgar (2011), Yecheng (2012),
Urumuqi (2014) and other parts of China, including Beijing (2013),
Kunming (2014) and Guangzhou (2015), killing innocent people on the
streets and causing terror among the civilian population. In response, the
Chinese government tightened its control over Xinjiang and took intense
security measures in the region to prevent further conflicts. However,
ethnic tension in the region is far from resolved.
David O’Brien’s chapter on ‘The Complexity of Nationalism and
National Identity in Twenty-First Century Xinjiang’ explores questions
of nationalism and national identity in Xinjiang and offers some insights
on recent conflicts and the escalating tension in the region. O’Brien
points out that the Chinese government grossly simplifies the intricacies
of history and exacerbates the tension in the region by failing to engage
with the experiences and perceptions of its citizens. He then examines
the effects recent conflicts between the Uyghur and the Han popula-
tion in Xinjiang have had on ideas of the nation and senses of belonging
among people from both ethnic groups. O’Brien also analyses the mul-
tiplicity of nationalist discourses in Xinjiang, both in terms of state con-
structed narratives of Chinese national identity, which emphasises ethnic
unity and material progress, and with the lived experiences of people in a
region struggling with deep divisions.
Hong Kong, the former British colony, is another region that saw
increasing tension and conflicts brought about by the growing ‘Small
Nationalism’. Marcus P. Chu’s chapter on ‘Leveraging Mega-Events
to Embrace Chinese National Identity: The Politics of Hong Kong’s
Participation in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the Shanghai 2010
World Expo’ explains how the Chinese authorities, after the sovereignty
transfer in 1997, successively assigned Hong Kong to host the 2008
Summer Olympics equestrian competitions and invited Hong Kong
professionals to take part in the organisation of the 2010 World Expo.
All efforts were made to facilitate communication and integration, and
to cultivate ‘Big Nationalism’ among the Hong Kong people. The

chapter also investigates the reasons for the decline of the Hong Kong
public’s allegiance to Beijing and the rise of the local youngsters’ unwill-
ingness to identify themselves as Chinese after the celebrations of the
two mega-events were over.
The Negotiation of Chineseness

Among Overseas Chinese
Globalisation is ‘the moment of mass migration, multiculturalism, and
cosmopolitanism’.33 It stretches social, political, cultural and economic
activities across regions and continents, and ‘intensifies our dependence
on each other, as flows of trade, investment, finance, migration, and cul-
ture increase’.34 The interchange of views, ideas, cultures, religions and
beliefs is one of the most important aspects of globalisation.35 This pro-
cess is aided by international migration that generates transcontinental or
interregional flows and networks of activity and interaction. The last sec-
tion of this book looks at the impact of globalisation on national identity
through case studies on identity construction among overseas Chinese.
Deutsch asserts that national identity is based on a ‘state of mind
which gives “national” messages, memories and images a preferred sta-
tus in social communication and a greater weight in the making of deci-
sions’.36 People may devote greater attention to messages which ‘carry
specific symbols of nationality, or which originate from a specific national
source, or which are couched in a specific national code of language or
culture’.37 Food and foodways are unique codes of Chinese culture.
Overseas Chinese are the carriers of these national codes outside China.
Yu Cao’s chapter on ‘The Evolution and Recognition of Self-identity
in Food and Foodways of the Overseas Chinese’ takes the evolution of
Nyonya food and American–Chinese food as examples to analyse the
stages of self-identity of overseas Chinese food culture according to
the concepts of assimilation, isolation and integration of cultural inclu-
sion theory. The author points out that the generation of self-identity
depends on the confirmation of boundaries. Overseas Chinese are sur-
rounded by the environment of different cultures and have a clear sense
of self-identity. The establishment of self-identity through food and
foodways is a result of the overseas Chinese historical experience, living
situation, cross-cultural experience and self-identity. Within the different
developments of the overseas Chinese foods and mainland Chinese food,
14 L. ZHOUXIANG
there is a common ground for Chinese food culture—it is a cultural

matrix that covers all the food varieties of Chinese communities living
all over the globe. It is not defined by specific food or ingredients, but
a set of variables complying with the Chinese philosophy of food. This
self-identity gave Chinese food an inclusive feature.
Temples and huiguan (guild halls) are two other important codes of
Chinese culture and identity. Based on data from fieldwork in Vietnam,
Zhifang Song’s chapter on ‘Chinese Temples and Huiguan: Negotiating
Chineseness in Ho Chi Minh City’ studies how the Vietnamese Chinese
and the Vietnamese government interact and negotiate in subtle ways
concerning the functions and roles of Chinese temples and huiguan, as
well as how Chineseness is to be framed within Vietnameseness. The
research shows that after the fall of Saigon in 1975, tensions between
Vietnam and China, former allies against the United States, gradually
built up and eventually escalated to open military confrontations. The
Chinese in Vietnam became victims of this international tension. Seeing
the Chinese in Vietnam as potential agents of China, the Vietnamese
government took measures to erase the Chineseness of the Chinese, if
not the Chinese themselves. This did not change until the late 1980s
when the need to improve its relationship with China made it neces-
sary for the Vietnamese government to ease its antagonistic and repres-
sive policies towards the Chinese. But at the same time, the government
did not want to see among the Chinese a resurgent allegiance towards
China. Thus, a redefinition of Chineseness has become an impor-
tant issue. Chinese temples and huiguan, which used to be the core of
Chinese culture, have become important battlegrounds for this redefini-
tion of Chineseness.
While Chinese migrants in Vietnam tried hard to keep their tradition
by promoting temples and huiguan, some overseas Chinese in other
parts of the world have embraced foreign religion and negotiated their
Chinese identity in different ways. Yinya Liu’s chapter on ‘National iden-
tity, Religious Identity and Their Impacts on Subjective Well-Being: A
Case Study on Chinese Catholics in Ireland’ explores the nature of and
relationships between national identity, religious identity and subjective
well-being for Chinese Catholics in contemporary Ireland. By analys-
ing a survey of the impacts of religious beliefs and practice, lifestyle and
social networks and the sense of belonging among Chinese Catholics in
Ireland, the research reveals that there is a special tension between tra-
ditional Chinese values and Catholic beliefs, which presents a unique
opportunity for Chinese migrants to establish their identity in Irish

society. National identity, religious identity and subjective well-being
have significant positive correlations with Chinese migrants’ perception
of their sense of belonging and their understanding of happiness.
Renan has argued, ‘a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things,
which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle.
One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in com-
mon of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent,
the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the herit-
age that one has received in an undivided form’.38 Jun Ni’s chapter on
‘Identity Reconstruction of Chinese Migrant Women in Ireland’ demon-
strates overseas Chinese’s strong will to value and preserve their culture
and identity. Using a thematic analysis approach, the author conducted
twelve in-depth qualitative interviews and carried out a qualitative study
on the cross-cultural adaptation process and identity reconstruction of
Chinese migrant women in Ireland. The research identifies facilitators of
and barriers to the cross-cultural adaptation and reveals that, on the one
hand, the interviewees want to maintain their Chinese cultural identity
and heritage; at the same time, they are committed to developing rela-
tionships with Irish mainstream society. Ni highlights that most Chinese
women take pride in their culture and values and this pride results in
higher levels of self-esteem. They aim to bring their own culture to the
attention of Irish people and enjoy playing the role of an intercultural
ambassador.
To conclude, this book offers interdisciplinary studies on the
topic and highlights the latest developments in the field. It provides a
distinctive contribution to our knowledge and understanding of national
identity. We hope that the topics and views in this book will further stim-
ulate research and debate on the development and transformation of
Chinese national identity in the age of globalisation.
Notes
1. Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim, eds., China’s Quest for National
Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); R. Keith Schoppa,
Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).
2. Edward Friedman, National Identity and Democratic Prospects in
Socialist China (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995); Christopher Hughes,
16 L. ZHOUXIANG
Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in

International Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997); Yongnian Zheng,
Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and
International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
Guoqi Xu, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National
Identity and Internationalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011); Schoppa, Revolution and Its Past; Dittmer, and Kim,
China’s Quest for National Identity; Baogang He, Nationalism, National
Identity and Democratization in China (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
3. Arabinda Acharya, Rohan Gunaratna, and Wang Pengxin, Ethnic Identity
and National Conflict in China (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010);
Enze Han, Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity
in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
4. Wenshan Jia, The Remaking of the Chinese Character and Identity in the
21st Century: The Chinese Face Practices (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger,
2001); Francoise Mengin, ed., Cyber China: Reshaping National
Identities in the Age of Information (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004);
Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern
Chinese Identity, 1895–1937 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,
2005); Daphne P. Lei, Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity Across
the Pacific (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Klaus Muhlhahn and
Clemens von Haselberg, eds., Chinese Identities on Screen (Münster: LIT
Verlag, 2012); Yue Wang, Who You Want We Are? When Chinese Media
Facing Western Audience—China Daily’s Construction of the National
Identity (Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2012); Lauren Gorfinke,
Chinese Television and National Identity Construction: The Cultural
Politics of Music-Entertainment Programmes (Abingdon: Routledge,
2017); Liu Li and Fan Hong, The National Games and National Identity
in China: A History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
5. Yuanfang Shen and Penny Edwards, eds., Beyond China: Migrating
Identities (Canberra: Australian National University, 2002); Shuang Liu,
Identity, Hybridity and Cultural Home: Chinese Migrants and Diaspora
in Multicultural Societies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
6. Peter Alter, Nationalism (London: Edward Arnold, 1994), 1.
7. Tianxia 天下.
8. Shenzhi Li, “Quanqiu hua yu Zhongguo wenhua” [Globalization and
Chinese Culture], Meiguo Yanjiu [American Studies] 8, no. 4 (1994):
127–135.
9. James Harrison, Modern Chinese Nationalism (New York: Hunter College
of the City of New York, Research Institute on Modern Asia, 1969), 2.
10. Qichao Liang, “Aiguo lun” [On Patriotism], in Liang Qichao quanji
[Liang Qichao’s Collection], vol. 1. (Beijing: Beijing chuban she, 1997),
270.
11. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (London:

Penguin, 1995).
12. Cited in Qiang Wang and Xiaoguang Bao, Zhongguo chuantong wenhua
jingshen [The Spirit of Traditional Chinese Culture] (Beijing: Kunlun
chuban she, 2004), 16.
13. Harrison, Modern Chinese Nationalism, 2.
14. James Townsend, “Chinese Nationalism,” The Australian Journal of
Chinese Affairs 27, no. 1 (1992): 97–130, 97.
15. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern
Chinese Nationalism (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004).
16. Qichao Liang, Xinmin shuo [New Citizens] (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou
Guji Press, 1998).
17. Qichao Liang, Liang Qichao quanji [Liang Qichao’s Collection], vols.
1–10 (Beijing: Beijing Press, 1999), 324.
18. Xueling Zhang, Wan Qing zhishi fenzi minzu zhuyi sixiang yanjiu
[Nationalism and Chinese Scholars in the Late Qing Era] (Hefei: Hefei
University of Technology, 2013).
19. The term ‘enlightenment’ is used here to refer to an ideology that seeks
to cultivate a sense of scientific and civic duty, to encourage people to
form the habit of being hard-working and industrious, and to promote
national unity and the national spirit.
20. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 44.
21. Alter, Nationalism, 9.
22. Anthony D. Smith, “Nationalism and Classical Social Theory,” The British
Journal of Sociology 34, no. 1 (1983): 19–38, 32.
23. Cited in: Smith, “Nationalism and Classical Social Theory,” 32.
24. Lu Zhouxiang and Fan Hong, “From Celestial Empire to Nation State:
Sport and the Origins of Chinese Nationalism (1840–1927),” The
International Journal of the History of Sport 27, no. 3 (2010): 479–504.
25. Liang, Liang Qichao’s Collection, 1069.
26. Yat-sen Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji [Sun Yat-sen’s Collection], vol. 2
(Beijing: China Book Press, 1981), 2; Zhiyong Zhai, “Sun Yat-sen’s
‘Declaration of the Provisional President of China’ and the Qing Emperor’s
‘Xunwei Zhaoshu’,” Global Law Review 33, no. 5 (2011): 64–66.
27. Zhao, A Nation State by Construction, 68.
28. Guodong Li, Minguo shiqi de minzu wenti yu minguo zhengfu de minzu
zhengce yanjiu [Ethnic Issues and the Government’s Ethnic Policy in the
Republic of China Era] (Beijing: Minzu Press, 2009).
29. Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1947), 15.
18 L. ZHOUXIANG
30. Yuzheng Zhao, Xinjiang tunken [Land Reclamation in Xinjiang]

(Urumchi: Xinjiang People’s Press, 1991); Xiaoyuan Liu, Reins of
Liberation: An Entangled History of Mongolian Independence, Chinese
Territoriality, and Great Power Hegemony, 1911–1950 (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2006).
31. Binghao Jin, Xin Zhongguo minzu zhengce 60 nian [New China’s Ethnic
Policy in the Past 60 Years] (Beijing: Minzu University of China Press,
2009).
32. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7.
33. Imre Szeman, “Culture and Globalization, or, The Humanities in Ruins,”
CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 2 (2003): 91–115, 94.
34. David Held, Anthony G. McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan
Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), 484.
35. Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan and Gérard Stoudmann, “Definitions of
Globalization: A Comprehensive Overview and a Proposed Definition”
(Geneva: Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2006).
38. Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi
K. Bhabha (Abingdon: Routledge, 1990), 19.
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CHAPTER 2
Yellow Peril or Yellow Revival? Ethnicity,

Race and Nation in Late Qing Chinese
Utopianism (1902–1911)
Guangyi Li
Introduction
Narrative utopias, the ‘imaginary communities’, have been known
to play a vital role in the formation of nation-states, the ‘imagined
communities’, since the former ‘provided one of the first spaces for
working out the particular shapes and boundaries of the latter’.1 This was
indeed the case in late Qing China, where utopian writing, notably in
the form of novels, created a conceptual space in which the ‘cycle of his-
torical reciprocity of nationalism and racism’ can be seen in full view.2
However, the ‘imaginary communities’ were not necessarily confined
to nation-states. Rather, there was an increasing trend at the turn of the
twentieth century—an era of nation-state formation, and also of world
integration—to reflect upon the world order and envision a global uto-
pia.3 Cherishing the ideal of tianxia and echoing the zeitgeist, Chinese
G. Li (*)
Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities
and Social Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
e-mail: liguangyi@cqu.edu.cn
© The Author(s) 2020 21

L. Zhouxiang (ed.), Chinese National Identity in the Age
of Globalisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4538-2_2
22 G. LI
utopians embarked on exploring how to ensure humankind’s universal

welfare.
It is therefore inviting to view the conflicting and competing views of
ethnicity, race and nation—human categories that constitute the world—
in late Qing thought through a specific lens: utopianism. Similar dis-
cussions are available in Phillip E. Wegner’s Imaginary Communities:
Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernities and De Witt
Douglas Kilgore’s Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia
in Space. The former explored the entanglement of utopia and nation
haunting modernity from Thomas More’s time to the present day. The
latter describes how American technological utopianism responded to
the rising civil rights movement, imagining the new frontier of space
as a colony to preserve or challenge current racial and gender hier-
archies. Both books are mostly based upon British-American utopia-
nism, in which the vision of world order is not the major concern. In
contrast, portraying a new world was no less important than envision-
ing China’s own future for late Qing utopians. In their mushrooming
utopian visions, people discussed passionately how to construct an ideal
world order and what role China should play in this process. Their dis-
cussions helped in the formation of modern China and foreshadowed
China’s international participation, which has been unfolding from that
time to the present day. In this chapter, I will first trace the developmen-
tal trajectory of the ‘yellow race’ concept, as it initiated the thinking and
debates about race in late Qing China and figured prominently in utopia-
nism. This section will be followed by an analysis of the ‘yellow peril’, an
intriguing topic in utopian writing for it aroused fervent discussions and
gave rise to diverse imaginations of a world order. In the third part, Kang
Youwei’s scheme of racial assimilation, because of its impressive singulari-
ties, illustrative of utopian universalism, will be carefully examined.
The Yellow Race: Western Origin

and East Asian Reception
Although racialised thinking can be dated back to the very early stages of
human civilisation, the concept of the yellow race is a European inven-
tion that only became well-known in China in the nineteenth century.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, early missionaries and trav-
ellers often regarded the Chinese and Japanese as whites.4 However,
2 YELLOW PERIL OR YELLOW REVIVAL? ETHNICITY, RACE AND NATION … 23
such a white tag for East Asians was less descriptive than evaluative.
For Europeans in the early modern age, white, in combination with
Christianity and civilised, constituted European identity. East Asians
were white because, according to some legends, they were Christians, or
their minds were open to Christianity. Therefore, when close encounters
frustrated missionary enthusiasm, the illusion of white Asians dissipated.
Despite the diversity of skin colour observed and recorded in many doc-
uments, Asians in European accounts became invariably yellow.5 The
reason why Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, chose luri-
dus (pale yellow, deathly, ghastly, etc.) as his derogatory label for Asians
remain unclear, but his denomination influenced a variety of scientific
researches in the field of taxonomy, anatomy and anthropology that
eventually established the yellow race as an ‘objective’ category.6
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the yellow race became
increasingly unwelcome in the West. Disdain for them developed into
hostility and fear that brought forth the spectre of the yellow peril and
other delusions of threat.7 At this time, colonial conquest—military,
economic and to a lesser extent cultural—of China and its vassal states
were, in general, successful, in spite of their continuing resistance. For
the Westerners at home, the persistence and diligence under miserable
conditions of overseas Chinese labourers (especially in Australia and
North America) caused great anxieties among local communities of esca-
lating competition. Moreover, cultural differences, low education and
family concerns prevented Chinese migrants from becoming integrated
into local society. Resentment and grievances against the Chinese evolved
into explicit racial discrimination, persecution and exclusion, as exempli-
fied by the Chinese Exclusion Act enacted in 1882 by the United States.8
Japanese emigrants in the United States were confronted with similar
problems. At the turn of century, for Westerners who worried about
the threat of the yellow race, a number of historical events sounded
new alarms: the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 aroused attention to Japan’s
ambition and elicited Kaiser Wilhelm II’s notorious drawing, The Yellow
Peril; The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 demonstrated the populous China’s
staggering potential for resistance and revolution; and Japan’s pyr-
rhic victory over Russia in 1905 was even celebrated by some people in
China, as well as other colonies and semi-colonies, as the yellows’ monu-
mental triumph over the whites.9
Interestingly, the two major alleged origins of the yellow peril,
China and Japan, had readily accepted Western racial classifications,
24 G. LI
even though they differed considerably in how they responded to their

respective position in such a scheme.10 In Meiji Japan, especially after
the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, opposition to being classified as the
yellow race was remarkable, the major reason being the unwillingness to
be lumped together with the Chinese, whom many Japanese intellectuals
strove to distance themselves from. Aside from the victor’s contempt for
the defeated, the expectation to ‘depart from Asia’ and become identi-
fied as the same as the powerful and civilised Westerners also accounted
for the Japanese dismissal of being yellow. Noteworthy arguments in
this regard included: Takekoshi Yosaburo’s denigration of Chinese his-
tory and race; Oyabe Zen’ichiro and Kimura Takataro’s theories about
the Japanese race’s occidental origin; and Taguchi Ukichi’s contention
that Japanese, specifically the upper class, because of their fair skin, fine
appearance and linguistic affinities with ancient Europeans, were in
fact Aryans.11 The reluctance to be yellow pertained as well to Japan’s
increasing awareness of the discourse of the yellow peril in the West.
During the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made a well-concerted effort
to diminish the fear of the yellow race’s rise by maintaining a domestic
‘golden silence’ on irritating ideas about the yellow threat, on the one
hand, and by launching a diplomatic campaign to clarify Japan’s inten-
tions and pacify uneasy Westerners, on the other hand.12 This refutation
of the yellow peril and any hint of pan-yellow coalition lasted into the
Taisho period.
However, the years after Japan’s historic victory also witnessed the rise
of Japan’s identity as part of the yellow race. In fact, ever since the early
Meiji years, many Japanese, notably those well-versed in Confucianism,
viewed China as a country of the same language and same race with
which Japan could ally in resisting Western invasion. Despite the decline
of China’s reputation, a significant number of intellectuals and pol-
iticians, including Takayama Chogyū and Ōkuma Shigenobu, still pro-
posed a Sino-Japanese alliance.13 They chose not to challenge Western
racial theories, but rather to internalise such a Western gaze and develop
a yellow and Asian identity accordingly, often expressed in the form of
pan-Asianism. Nevertheless, their central concern was still nationalis-
tic, for almost every Japanese pan-Asianist proudly identified Japanese
as the most superior among the Asian peoples. Straddling the Western
coloniser and the Chinese colonised, Japan adopted a distinct strategy,
distancing itself from other Asian peoples in a hierarchical racial order
within its emerging colonial empire, while claiming to take on the
2 YELLOW PERIL OR YELLOW REVIVAL? ETHNICITY, RACE AND NATION … 25
‘civilising mission’ of educating, enlightening and embracing the yellow

race so as to lead them in the fight against the whites for an ‘Asia for
the Asiatics’.14 For Japan, how to establish itself and achieve recognition
in the shadow of an overwhelming Other (first China, then the West)
remained its predominant concern.
In contrast, the Chinese basked in their yellow identity from when
they were first exposed to Western racial taxonomy. In China, the Yellow
River was considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation, yellow earth was
the mythical material Goddess Nüwa used to create the human race and
the colour yellow had been a monopoly of the royal house since the
Tang dynasty. For late Qing Chinese, yellow as an ethnonym was noth-
ing but appropriate.15 Without any difficulty, they adopted the four- or
five-part racial scheme to classify people on earth, albeit arguing that the
yellow race was as civilised and noble as, if not better than, the whites.
Meanwhile, many Chinese intellectuals of the day displayed blatant bias
against the black, brown and red races. For them, these dark races looked
terribly ugly and stupid, and their enslavement and eventual extinction
only attested to their racial inferiority. The yellow race, they warned,
would suffer the same fate if necessary efforts were not made to ward
off the white invaders.16 Such discrimination against other races was
clearly inspired by Western racism17; however, it can also be traced back
to Chinese traditions—regional stereotypes, Sino-centric worldviews
characterised by superiority over exotic barbarians, and notions of social
hierarchy that linked white complexions with nobility and blackness with
the lower classes, if not with slaves.18 Racism was substantially challenged
only when Chinese intellectuals began to appreciate other oppressed
people’s unrelenting struggle, and to seek alliance in anti-imperialism.19
For the rise of racial consciousness in China, social Darwinism was
a critical impetus. Through Yan Fu’s translation of Thomas Huxley’s
Evolution and Ethics, Chinese intellectuals were exposed to Darwinism.
Remarkable in their understanding of the principles of evolution was
their strong belief in these rules’ universal efficiency. ‘Living things com-
pete, nature selects and the fittest survives’ was commonly believed to
be the fundamental rule that governs nature and human society alike. As
an intellectual vogue, social Darwinism provided a systematic interpreta-
tive framework for worldwide colonial conquests, portraying interracial
competition, however inhuman it was, as inevitable and to a large extent
justifiable.20 The spread of social Darwinism fuelled the aforementioned
bias against the vanquished races, which was a mixture of contempt and
26 G. LI
compassion, and to a far greater degree a panic about the yellow race and
China’s imminent doom. Chinese intellectuals therefore devoted them-
selves to saving their wretched race, as manifested in the 1898 tenet of
Baoguo Hui (Society for Protecting the Country), ‘save our country, save
our race, save our religion’.21
The looming menace to ‘our race’ provided a rationale for social
reform, and the concept of the yellow race, more importantly, offered an
opportunity to work China into a nation-state. As the label for a simpli-
fied and distorted oriental Other, the yellow race, to its creators’ surprise,
endowed this Other with a certain homogeneity necessary for the for-
mation of a nation. What the Chinese had to do was to r e-conceptualise
themselves by discovering, imagining and recounting their own racial
origin and development, in a manner conducive to raising their con-
sciousness and exciting their will to unite and fight. But what on earth
was ‘our race’? Crucial divergences emerged. The revolutionaries, rep-
resented by Sun Yat-sen, Zhang Taiyan and their Tongmenghui (United
League) comrades, called for a revolution featuring an anti-Manchu rac-
ism that would restore the Han race’s exclusive governance and even
occupation of China proper; while the moderate reformers, including
Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Yang Du and their followers, along with
Manchu sympathisers, strove to maintain a multi-ethnic China and
revive the country through practising constitutional monarchy. For the
former, it was rather easy to clearly define the Han race as a nation by
revealing their origin, memorialising their ancestor Huang Di (the
Yellow Emperor), celebrating their glorious history, extolling the Han
heroes and condemning the hanjian (traitors to the Han race).22 It is
worth noting that Terrien de Lacouperie’s theory about the Chinese
race’s Western origin lent allegedly scientific, and thus powerful, sup-
port to their assertions about the racial distinctiveness and superiority of
the Han.23 The moderate reformers found an exclusively Han republic
unacceptable. To oppose Han racism and nationalism, some reform-
ers contended that the Han and the Manchu shared the same origin
and ancestors, and were therefore racially homogenous; and that the
two ethnic groups should unite against Western invasion.24 But in such
arguments, the common racial identity of the Han and the Manchu,
if defined as the yellow race, was either ambiguous or insufficient for
building a nation. As was well known, the people pigeonholed as yel-
low included ethnic groups that spread across so many geographical and
political boundaries that making them a single nation was impossible.25
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hang head,
vandal
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Hang head, vandal
Author: Mark Clifton
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release date: November 21, 2023 [eBook #72192]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company,

1962
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HANG HEAD,

VANDAL ***
HANG HEAD, VANDAL!
By MARK CLIFTON
Illustrated by FINLAY
Arrogantly, they set out to destroy a planet for

the good of Man—Man who is stuffed with straw
where his heart and mind and soul should be.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Amazing Stories April 1962
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On our abandoned Martian landing field there hangs a man's
discarded spacesuit, suspended from the desensitized prongs of a
Come-to-me tower. It is stuffed with straw filched, no doubt, from
packing cases which brought out so many more delicate, sensitive,
precision instruments than we take back.
None knows which of our departing crew hanged the spacesuit there,
nor exactly what he meant in the act. A scarecrow to frighten all
others away?
More likely a mere Kilroy-was-here symbol; defacing initials
irresistably carved in a priceless, ancient work of art, saying, "I am too
shoddy a specimen to create anything of worth, but I can deface. And
this proves I, too, have been."
Or was it symbolic suicide; a sense of guilt so overpowering that man
has hanged himself in effigy upon the scene of his crime?
Captain Leyton saw it there on the morning of final departure; saw it,
and felt a sudden flush of his usual stern discipline surge within him;
all but formed the harsh command to take that thing down at once:
Find the one who hanged it there: Bring him to me!
The anger—the command. Died together. Unspoken.
Something in the pose of the stuffed effigy hanging there must have
got down through to the diminishing person inside the ever thickening
rind of a commander. The forlorn sadness, the dejection; and yes, he
too must have felt the shame, the guilt, which overwhelmed us all.
Whether the helmet had fallen forward of its own weight because the
vandal had been careless in stuffing it with too little straw to hold its
head erect—vandals being characteristically futile even in their
vandalism—or whether, instead of supposed vandal, this was the
talent of a consummate artist moulding steel and rubber, plastic and
straw into an expression of how we all felt: no matter, the result was
there.
The Captain did not command the effigy be taken down. No others
offered, nor asked if that might be his wish—not even the ubiquitous
Ensign perpetually bucking for approval.
So on an abandoned Martian landing field there hangs a discarded
spacesuit—the image of man stuffed with straw; with straw where
heart, and mind, and soul was intended to be.
At the time it seemed a most logical solution to an almost impossible

problem.
Dr. VanDam summed it up in his memorable speech before the
United Nations. If he were visually conscious of the vault of face blurs
in the hushed assembly, this lesser sight did not obscure his stronger
vision of the greater vaulted mass of shining stars in black of space.
He may not even have been conscious of political realities which ever
obscure man's dreams. First, what he said would be weighed by each
delegate in terms of personal advantage to be gained for his own
status. Second, his words must be weighed again in terms of national
interest. Third, what advantage could be squeezed out for their racial-
religious-color bloc? At the fourth level of consideration, what
advantage to the small nation bloc over the large; or how would it
enhance the special privileges of the large over the small? Down at
the fifth level, could it preserve the status quo, changing nothing so
that those in power could remain in power, while, at the same time,
giving the illusion of progress to confound the ever clamoring
liberals? At the deep sixth level, if one ever got down that far, one
might give a small fleeting thought to what might be good for
mankind.
If Dr. VanDam even knew that such political realities must ever take
precedence over the dreams of science, he gave no sign of it. It was
as if all his thought was upon the glory of the stars and the dream of
man reaching out to them. It was with the goal of reaching the stars in
mind that he spoke.
"We must sum up the problem," he was saying. "It is simply this.
There is a limit to how far we can theorize in science without testing
those theories to see if they will work. Sooner or later the theorist
must submit himself into the hands of the engineer whose acid test of
worth is simply this: 'Does it work?'
"We have always known that the Roman candles we are using for our
timid little space flights can take us only to the nearest planets; for
there is that inexorable ratio of time to initial thrust; that unless thrust
continues and continues the Mayfly lifetime of man will expire many
times over before we could reach the nearest star. Nor will our limited
resources fuel ion engines, and we must learn how to replenish with
space dust gathered along the way.
"To have continuous velocity we must have continuous nuclear
power. To have continuous nuclear power, we must have more
nuclear tests. Now we believe we know how to take not special ores
but ordinary matter, of any kind, and convert it into nuclear power. We
believe we can control this. We have this in theory. But the engineer
has not tested it with his question, 'Does it work?'
"We cannot make these tests on Earth. For what if it does not work?
We dare not use the Moon. Its lighter gravity makes it too valuable a
piece of real estate in terms of future star journeys. It will be our busy
landing stage; we dare not contaminate it nor risk destroying it.
"We have reached stalemate. On Earth and Moon we can go on no
farther without testing. On Earth and Moon we dare not test. Some
other testing area must be found.
"Our explorers have brought us conclusive proof that Mars is a dead

world. A useless world in terms of life. Useless, too, as a source of
minerals, for our little Roman candles can carry no commercial
payload. A useless world for colonization, with air too tenuous for
human lungs and water too scarce for growing food. Humans must be
housed in sealed chambers, or constantly wear spacesuits. From all
practical points of view, a worthless world.
"But invaluable to science. For there, without destroying anything of
value to man, we can put our theories to test. We believe we can start
a nuclear reaction in ordinary rock and dirt, and keep it under control
to produce a continuous flow of power. We believe we can keep it
from running wild out of control.
"If the innumerable tests we must run do contaminate the planet, or
even destroy it slowly, our gain in knowledge will be greater than the
loss of this worthless real estate."
There was a stir in the Assembly; something between a gasp of
horror and admiration at the audacity of man's sacrificing a whole
planet to his knowledge. They had not known we were so far along
the way.
And then, on second thought, a settling back in satisfaction. It
seemed a simple solution to an impossible problem. To take not only
VanDam's tests away from Earth, but all nuclear testing of every kind!
To quell the fears and still the clamoring of the humanists who would
rather see man stagnate in ignorance than risk the future to learn. At
every level of political reality this might turn to advantage. If there
were any who still thought in such terms, it might even be good for
mankind generally!
"I am not mystic minded," VanDam continued when the rustle and
murmur had diminished. "But the convenience of this particular
planet, located precisely where it is, far enough away that we must
have made great progress in science to reach it, and close enough to
be ready when we need it for further progress; this seems almost
mystical in its coincidence."
(That for the ones who would have to go through the usual motions of
obtaining Higher Power approval for doing what they fully intended
doing all along.)
"My question: Shall the nations of Earth agree upon our use of this so
convenient, and otherwise worthless, ready-at-hand stage placed
right where we need it—waiting for us down through all the ages until
we should be ready to make use of it?"
Their ultimate response was favorable.

Dr. VanDam did not mention, and being only politicians unable to see
beyond the next vote or appointment they did not ask:
True, we do have a theory of how to start and continue the slow burn
nuclear conversion of ordinary rock and dirt to energy. What we do
not have, as yet, is a way to stop it.
We think that eventually future man will probably find a way to stop
the process. We think slow burn will not speed up and run out of
control to consume an entire planet before we have found a way to
stop it. We think that future science may even find a way to
decontaminate the planet. We hope these things.
But we know that the science of nucleonics will be stillborn and
stunted to grow no farther unless we go on testing. We convince
ourselves that even if an entire planet is consumed, it is a worthless
planet anyway, and will be worth it.
Yet there was the usual small minority who questioned our right to
destroy one of the planets of the solar system. There is always such
a minority, and as always, the rest of the world, intent on turning what
it intended to do anyway into the Right-Thing-To-Do, was able to
shout them down.
Anyway, the consequences were for future man to face. Or so we
thought.
I say we, because I was one of the members of Project Slow-Burn.
Not that I'm the hero. There wasn't any hero. Mistaken or not, it was
conceived this wasn't one of those television spectaculars cooked up
to convert science into public emotionalism. There was no country-
wide search for special photogenic hero-types to front the project.
The reporters, true to their writing tradition of trying to reduce even
the most profound scientific achievement to the lowest common
denominator of sloppy sentimentalism or avid sensationalism, tried to
heroize Dr. VanDam as head of the science side of the project. But he
wasn't having any.
"Don't you think, gentlemen," he answered them with acid scorn, "It is
about time the public grew up enough to support the search for
knowledge because we need it, rather than because they'd like to go
to bed with some handsome, brainless kook you've built up into a
hero?"
This response was not likely to further the cause of journalism.
They tried to lionize Captain Leyton, as head of the transport side of
it; but his remarks were even more unprintable.
They never got down far enough through the echelons of status to
reach me. I was Chief of Communications, which is just another way
of saying I was a television repair man with headaches. Not that it
would have done them any good.
There isn't one thing about me that fits the sentimental notions of
what a hero should be. I'm not even a colorful character. If I'm expert
in my job it's only because I learned early what any lazy man with an
ounce of brains also learns—that life goes easier for the expert than
for the ignorant. Which is not exactly the hero attitude the public likes
to hear, but true all the same.
I did have an advantage which qualifies me to tell this tale.
Supervision, nowadays, sits on its duff in an office surrounded by

television monitors showing them every phase of their
responsibilities, and punches buttons when some guy tries to goof-off
or starts lousing up the operation.
Somebody has to maintain the system and check the same monitors.
I saw everything of importance that happened.
That's the only way I come into the yarn at all. I didn't start out a hero
type. I didn't turn into one. I just watched what happened; and I got
sick at my stomach along with everybody else. And now I slink away,
sick and ashamed, and not understanding even that, along with the
rest. Not heroes—no—none of us.
From the first this was intended and conducted as a genuine scientific
project, a group effort, with each man's ego subdued and blended in
to serve the needs of the whole. No special heroes emerging to show
up the rest of the dopes. None of the usual stuff of romantic fiction
was supposed to happen—those unusual dangers, horrible
accidents, sudden frightful emergencies so dear to the little sadistic
hearts of readers and viewers.
So far as I know, nobody beat up anybody with their fists, nor gunned
them down; which is the usual, almost the only, fictional way yet
found among the humanists for coping with life problems.
We assembled the mastership on the Moon base from parts which
were Roman candled up, a few pieces at a time, from too heavily
gravitied Earth.
The yelps of pain from taxpayers reached almost as high. It was one
thing to wash the hands of the vexing problem of nuclear testing by
wanting it shifted out to Mars. It was something else to pay for having
it.
Against the Moon's lighter gravity we eventually were space-borne
with no more than the usual fight between power thrust and inertia,
both physical and psychological.
Without touching that precious reserve of fuel which we hoped would
bring us back again, we were able to build up enough speed that it
took us only a month to reach Mars. No point in showing, because
nobody would care, how the two dozen of us were cramped in the
tiny spaces left by the equipment and instruments we had to carry.
Construction and maintenance had done their job properly, and, for
once, inspection had actually done its job, too. We were able to
reverse properly at the right time, and soft cushion powered our way
down into a Martian plain eastward of a low range of hills.
Surely everybody has watched the documentaries long enough to
have some idea about the incredibly hostile surface of Mars; the too
thin air, which lets some stars shine through even in daytime; the
waterless desert; the extremes of temperature; the desolation....
Ah, the desolation! The terrifying desolation!
Moon surface is bad enough; but at least there is the great ball of
Earth, seeming so near in that airless world that one has the illusion
of being able to reach out and almost touch it, touch home, know
home is still there, imagine he can almost see it.
"See that little tip of land there on the east coast of the North
American continent? That's where I live!"
"Yeah," somebody answers. "And who is that guy walking through
your front door without knocking while you're away?"
Sometimes it seems that close.
On Mars, Earth is just another bright spot in the black night sky; so far
away that the first reaction is one of terrible despair, the overpowering
conviction that in all that vast hostility a man will nevermore see
home; nor know again the balmy twilight of soft, moist summer; nor
feel the arms of love.
Explorers had not lied. Nothing, anywhere, could be more worthless
to man than the planet Mars. Worthless, except for the unique
purpose which had brought us there.
We dug in beneath the surface.
Now surely, again, everyone has seen enough of the documentaries
that it is unnecessary to show us digging out our living quarters and
laboratories beneath that merciless plain. We used the displaced
powdered rock to form a crude cement, not long lasting but adequate
for the time we would be there. With it, we surfaced over our living
area. This was not so much to provide a landing field, since most of
our journeying would be in individual jet powered spacesuits; but to
help insure against any leakage of air if our inner seals cracked.
To help seal out the killing radiation we intended to let loose—that,
too.
We erected Come-to-me towers at each elevator which would lower
spacesuited men to lower levels where they could go through locks to
reach their quarters. One Come-to-me tower for each half dozen
men, tuned to the power source of their suits, to bring each man
safely back, as truly as a homing pigeon, to guarantee against
becoming lost on that hostile planet; and, in emergency, should one
arise, to see that no panic mob ganged up at one lock and died
waiting there for entrance to safety while other locks remained idle—
the human way of doing things under stress.
We had to finish all that in the first few weeks before any nuclear
tests could be started. Anybody whose notions of science are derived
from white-frocked actors in television commercials hasn't the
vaguest idea of how much back breaking physical work at the
common labor level a genuine scientist has to do.
There was some emotional relief once we had dug in and sealed out
the awful desolation of an uncaring universe. (This is the hardest part
of reconciling oneself to the science attitude. More comforting to
believe even that the universe is hostile than to admit that it simply
doesn't care about man, one way or another.) In our sealed quarters
we might briefly imagine ourselves working in an air conditioned
laboratory back home.
It helped. It certainly helped.
Not that I seemed to find time for more than exhausted sleeping
there. To see what would be going on at the various field sites where
tests were to be run meant the cameras had to be installed at those
spots. In spite of the purported rigid tests for expedition personnel,
my two assistants must have been somebody's nephews. Somehow
each installation seemed to require I be there.
Be there, and usually without some little piece of equipment which
would have helped so much, but which had been deleted from the
lists we submitted by clerks who were more concerned with making a
big showing on how much weight they could eliminate than in helping
us.
Somehow we managed.
But I have made a little list of guys I'm going to ferret out and poke in
the nose once I get back to Earth. Maybe those Hollywood producers
who think the only way to solve a problem is to beat up somebody or
gun him down have something, after all. Right on top of that list, in big
bold letters, is the spacesuit designer who thinks a man can handle
the incredibly fine parts of miniaturized electronic equipment with
those crude instruments they give us to screw into the arm ends of
spacesuits.
Somehow we managed. Somehow, out of chaos, order came.
Somehow tests got made. Sometimes the theories worked;
sometimes, more often, there was only the human sigh, the gulp, the
shrug, and back to the drawing board.
Big surprise at the end of the first three months. A supply ship landed.
Mostly food and some champagne, yet! Stuff the folks back home
thought they'd like to have if they were out there. Even some pin-up
pictures, as if we weren't already having enough trouble without being
reminded. But none of the equipment we'd radioed for in case the
taxpayers could forego a drink and a cigarette apiece to raise money
for sending it. The public couldn't understand our need for equipment,
so they didn't send any. Miracles aren't supposed to need any
equipment or effort; they just come into being because people want
them.
The packages of home baked cookies were welcome enough after
our diet of hydroponic algae, but I'd still rather have had a handful of
miniature transistors.
Some of the guys said they'd have been willing to substitute their
cookies for an equal weight of big, buxom blonde; but that's
something the cookie bakers probably preferred not to think about.
The little three man crew of the supply ship, as they were taking off
for their return journey, promised they'd tell 'em what we really wanted
when they got back, but I doubt the message ever got broadcast over
the home and family television sets. Anyway, scientists are supposed
to be cold, unfeeling, inhuman creatures who wander around looking
noble, wise, and above it all.
In the beginning I'd thought that once I got the heavy work of
installation completed, I could do a little wandering around looking
wise and noble, myself. No such luck. I'd no more than get set up to
show one experiment than it was over; and I'd have to dismantle,
move, and set up for another. We'd thought the lighter gravity of
Mars, thirty-eight percent, would make the labor easy. But somehow
there was still lifting, tugging, pulling, hauling, cursing.
But then, nobody wants to hear how the scientist has to work to get
his miracle. The whole essence is the illusion that miracles can be
had without work, that all one needs is to wish.
All right. So we'll get to the miracle.
Now we were finally ready to get down to the real test, the main
reason for our coming out to Mars—Project Slow-Burn.
VanDam chose a little pocket at the center of that little cluster of hills
to our West—that little cluster of hills everybody has seen in the
pictures radioed back to Earth.
We didn't know it at the time, but that little cluster of hills was causing
quite an uproar among archeologists back home. No archeologist had
been included in the expedition, and now they were beating their
breasts that from the pictures those hills looked mighty artificial to
them. There was too much of a hint that the hills might once have
been pyramids, they said; incredibly ancient, perhaps weathered
down eons ago when the planet was younger, before it had lost so
much of its atmosphere, but maybe still containing something
beneath them.
We didn't hear the uproar, of course. Administration deemed it
unnecessary for us to bother our pretty little heads about such
nonsense. In fact the uproar never got outside the academic cloister
to reach the public at all. Administration should have listened. But
then, when does man listen to what might interfere with his plans to
spoil something?
We got all set to go in that little pocket at the center of the hills. The
spot was ideal for us because the hill elevations gave us opportunity
to place our cameras on their top to focus down into the crater we
hoped would appear.
A whole ring of cameras was demanded; as if the physicists shared
too much of the public's attitude, and all I needed to produce enough
equipment was to wish for it. But by stripping the stuff from virtually
every other project, I managed to balance the demands of the Slow-
Burn crew against the outraged screams of the side issue scientists.
VanDam's theories worked.
At first it took the instruments to detect that there was any activity; but
gradually, even crude human eyes could see there was a hole
beginning to appear, deepen and spread—progressively.
It was out of my line, but the general idea seemed to be that only one
molecular layer at a time was affected, and that it, in turn, activated
the next beneath and to the side while its own electrons and protons
gave up their final energy.
The experiment did not work perfectly. The process should have been
complete. There should have been no by-product of smoke and fire,
no sign to human eyes of anything happening except a slowly
deepening and spreading hole in the ground.
Instead there was some waste of improperly consumed molecules,
resulting in an increasingly heavy, fire-laced smoke which arose
sluggishly in the thin air, borne aloft only by its heat, funneling briefly
while it gave up that heat; then to settle down and contaminate
everything it touched.
To compound my troubles, of course.
The physicists were griping their guts out because I didn't have the
proper infra-red equipment to penetrate the smoke; and somehow I
wasn't smart enough to snap my fingers and—abracadabra—
produce. Those damned cookie packages instead of equipment!
Those damned clerks who had decided what we wouldn't need. My
little list was getting longer.
Still, I guess I was able to get a feeble little snap from my fingers. I
did manage to convert some stuff, never intended for that purpose,
into infra-red penetration. We managed to see down into that smoke-
and fire-filled crater.
To see enough.
It was the middle of a morning (somebody who still cared claimed it
would be a Tuesday back home) some three basic weeks after
beginning the experiment. The hole was now some thirty feet across
and equally deep, growing faster than VanDam's figures predicted it
should, but still not running wild and out of control. Even if it had
been, we couldn't have stopped it. We didn't know how.
I was trying to work out a little cleaner fix on the South wall of the
crater when that wall disappeared like the side of a soap bubble. My
focus was sharp enough to see.
To see down and into that huge, vaulted room. To see the living
Martians in that room shrivel, blacken, writhe and die. To see some
priceless, alien works of art writhe and blacken and curl; some burst
into flame; some shatter unto dust.
That was when the scientists, sitting there watching their monitors
with horror-stricken eyes, felt jubilation replaced with terrible guilt.
I, too. For naturally I was watching the master monitors to see that
the equipment kept working. I saw it all.
I saw those miniature people, yes people, whole and beautiful, in one
brief instant blacken, writhe and die.
Out of the billions of gross people on Earth, once in a generation a
tiny midget is born and matures to adult of such perfection in
proportion and surpassing beauty that the huge, coarse, normal
person can only stare and marvel—and remember the delicate
perfection of that miniature being, with nostalgic yearning for the rest
of his life.
From such, perhaps, comes the legends common to all peoples in all
ages, of the fairies. Or, eons ago, was there traffic between Earth and
Mars? Or even original colonization from Mars to Earth, finally
mutating into giants? They were people, miniatures of ourselves.
I saw them there. Perhaps not more than a dozen in that room. But in
other rooms? Perhaps in a lacework of underground rooms? A whole
civilization which, like ourselves on Mars, had gone underground,
sealed themselves in against the thinning atmosphere, the dying
planet?

Chinese National Identity in The Age of Globalisation 1St Ed Edition Lu Zhouxiang Full Chapter

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Chinese National Identity in The Age of Globalisation 1St Ed Edition Lu Zhouxiang Full Chapter

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Chinese National Identity in the Age of

Globalisation 1st ed. Edition Lu

ISBN 978-981-15-4537-5 ISBN 978-981-15-4538-2 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: Contributor: dim_dok/Alamy Stock Photo

First of all I wish to thank Sara Crowley-Vigneau, Senior Commissioning

Written by a team of international scholars from China, Germany,

1 Introduction: Constructing and Negotiating

2 Yellow Peril or Yellow Revival? Ethnicity, Race and

3 Shaolin, Wuxia Novels, Kung Fu Movies and National

4 Social Network Service Platforms and China’s Cyber

5 Fostered Idols and Chinese Identity 113

6 Chinese National Identity and National Image

7 A New Chinese National Identity: The Role

8 Identity Narratives in China and the EU’s Economic

9 Nationhood and Ethnicity at the Frontiers: A Study

10 ‘The People Are God’ Third World Internationalism

11 From ‘Small’ to ‘Big’ Nationalism: National Identity

12 The Complexity of Nationalism and National

13 Leveraging Mega-Events to Embrace Chinese National

14 The Evolution and Recognition of Self-identity

15 Temples and Huiguan: Negotiating Chineseness

16 National Identity, Religious Identity and Their Impacts

17 Identity Reconstruction of Chinese Migrant Women

Yu Cao is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Migration and Ethnic

of Shanghai University (TCFL) and East China Normal University

College Dublin, then at Dublin City University; and, since 2008,

the intersection of critical geopolitics, cultural geography and Chinese

Lu Zhouxiang is Lecturer in Chinese Studies within the School of

AFC Asian Football Confederation

SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Fig. 5.1 Number of reports on TFBoys in Chinese mainstream media 121

Table 5.1 Daily routine of Jackson Yee 120

Introduction: Constructing and Negotiating

© The Author(s) 2020 1

ethno-nationalist conflict among various ethnic groups in China.3 In

The Construction and Transformation of Chinese

We do love our country. It is the absence of the concept of ‘country’

Tianxiaism is based on the concept of unification which is attributed

it was no longer a dominant power in the world. China’s defeat in the

By the late nineteenth century, with its defeat in the Sino-Japanese

the background of the rise of China in the increasingly globalising world.

Square protests. In policy formation, Chinese nationalism is a factor that

The Paradox of ‘Big Nationalism’ and ‘Small

groups in China. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) was

Identity in the 1950s’ studies the role of Islam, particularly the

have maintained a harmonious relationship with the Han majority under

to cultivate ‘Big Nationalism’ among the Hong Kong people. The

The Negotiation of Chineseness

there is a common ground for Chinese food culture—it is a cultural

opportunity for Chinese migrants to establish their identity in Irish

Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in

11. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (London:

30. Yuzheng Zhao, Xinjiang tunken [Land Reclamation in Xinjiang]

Han, Enze. Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in

Yellow Peril or Yellow Revival? Ethnicity,

© The Author(s) 2020 21

utopians embarked on exploring how to ensure humankind’s universal

The Yellow Race: Western Origin

even though they differed considerably in how they responded to their

‘civilising mission’ of educating, enlightening and embracing the yellow

Title: Hang head, vandal

Author: Mark Clifton

AFC Asian Football Confederation

SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

The Construction and Transformation of Chinese

The Negotiation of Chineseness

11. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (London:

30. Yuzheng Zhao, Xinjiang tunken [Land Reclamation in Xinjiang]