Guoguang Wu

From Post-imperial to Late Communist Nationalism: historical change in Chinese nationalism from May Fourth to the 1990s

Abstract This article compares Chinese nationalism of the 1990s with the historic beginning of modern Chinese nationalism in the 1910s and argues that they are two different nationalisms. While the post-imperial May Fourth nationalism of the 1910s arose in a poor and backward China to seek wealth and power for the nation, the 1990s saw the resurgence of nationalism rooted in Chinas late communist authoritarian prosperity. Following a Weberian framework to examine nationalisms connections with material interests, political power and cultural orientations, the paper finds that the Chinese nationalism of the 1990s reversed all the radical features of early 20th century developmental and cosmopolitan nationalism, as it defended the Chinese model of development, endorsed political authoritarianism, and sought sources of legitimacy and identity in traditional Chinese culture.

Identity, Sovereignty, and Economic Penetration: Beijing's responses to offshore Chinese democracies

Investigating how the PRC responds to democratization in Taiwan and Hong Kong, this paper argues that the Chinese Communist leadership has mainly developed three strategies in managing the complicated crises, including Beijings own legitimacy crisis and the integration crisis of the Chinese nation, caused by the rise of offshore Chinese democracies. These strategies are: identity politics, sovereignty politics, and economic penetration. With ‘identity politics’, Beijing identifies ‘identification with the Communist leadership’ as the sole Chinese national identification, and utilizes the nationalistic passions of mainland and even overseas Chinese people against democrats in Taiwan and Hong Kong, by labeling the latter as ‘separatists’ or ‘national traitors’. Further, Beijing defines ‘sovereignty’ in a way in which the ‘central’ government monopolizes all possessions of the nation, and excludes ‘peoples sovereignty’ from the politics of national reunification or the ‘one country, two systems’ model actualization. While appealing to both ‘soft power’ based in ‘patriotic nationalism’ and ‘hard power’ embedded in national sovereignty, however, the Chinese regime also mobilizes business resources and opportunities provided by Chinas growing economic power and Chinas dominance in Greater Chian economic integration for its political purposes of curbing offshore Chinese democracies.

Passions, politics, and politicians: Beijing between Taipei and Washington

It is widely believed that China is rigid in diplomacy concerning state sovereignty and national reunification, and the Taiwan issue is certainly prominent of such kind on which leaders in Beijing cannot make concessions but only struggle to gain in managing Sino-American relations. With the examination of the origins of then Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s eight-points proposal that guided PRC’s Taiwan policy in the past decade, this article suggests that domestic political legitimacy of an individual leader is a vital factor that affects Chinese foreign policy in general and Beijing’s stance on sovereignty in particular. As this case has shown, this logic often works in the way that soften Chinese leaders’ attitudes toward Taipei and Washington in the ‘new’ new world order because, without democratic institutions, Chinese leaders are weak in terms of internal legitimacy. The diplomatic reputation they gain from Washington can substantially help them in this regard.

Hong Kong's political influence over China: institutional, informative, and interactive dynamics of sovereignty

Abstract This article explores how Hong Kong has exercised political influence on China since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, and tries to comprehend such seemingly impossible influences by reinterpreting the concept of sovereignty. It argues that the British Hong Kong existed as a ‘reference society’ for Chinas modernization and helped to change Chinese perceptions of capitalism. As this resulted in Chinese recognition of the legitimacy of Hong Kongs colonial institutions, which were featured with political legacies of civic freedom and the rule of law, it also reveals the institutional dimension of sovereignty. Secondly, the information flow from Hong Kong to China reflects a communicative (in contrast to coercive) nature of sovereignty, which highlights Hong Kongs central position in the Chinese world of information. Thirdly, Hong Kongs ongoing democratization challenges Chinese authoritarianism through societal interactions that are beyond state control. Conceptually, in this article, state sovereignty is argued as being something fluid and constantly reshaped in everyday practice with institutional, informative, and interactive dynamics; practically, it attempts to find some remaining ‘silver lining’ to the growing authoritarian Chinese clouds above Hong Kong as reversing the logic of examining external factors in democratization.