Pragmatists have kept China on a predictable course

Second of two parts

Modern Chinese nationalism was born in the wake of China’s shattering defeat by Britain in the Opium War of 1840-42, which led to the disintegration of imperial China and the loss of national sovereignty as Western powers carved out zones of influence on the mainland. From Sun Yat-sen in the early 20th century to Hu Jintao today, all of China’s leaders have been committed to blotting out China’s humiliation at the hands of imperialists and recapturing the greatness of the past. They have seen China’s decline as “a historical mistake, which they should correct,” as Chinese scholar Yan Xuetong observed.

China’s first nationalists were ethnic nationalists. But after the Qing dynasty’s collapse in 1911, Sun Yat-sen recognized that a more inclusive nationalism would be a wiser course for leaders who hoped to rule not only the Han areas along China’s coast but Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang. Under Sun, the Chinese nation was redefined as a multiethnic political community, with the state as the great object of loyalty. Yet ethnic nationalism remains very much alive on China’s frontiers, a source of great unease in Beijing.

Even as officially sanctioned ethnic nationalism vanished during the early 20th century, a new liberal nationalism was being born among reformers who looked to the West for political and social models. Then, as now, it was a movement chiefly among intellectuals. One of its seminal figures, Liang Qichao, propounded a new liberalism that elevated individual rights but still put the nation first. At a time of national peril, Liang argued, citizens should put the survival of the nation before their personal interests.

Devotion to the nation is also the chief underpinning of the liberal nationalists’ commitment to democracy. They believe that citizens have the right and duty to hold the state accountable for the defense of China’s national interests, and should have the right to vote out political leaders who inadequately defend those interests.

Just as today’s liberal nationalists criticize the Communist regime for violating individual freedoms and failing to stand up to the imperialist powers, so their predecessors criticized the Kuomintang regime of 1928-49. Some allied themselves with the Communist Party. But when Chairman Mao Zedong encouraged many of these nationalists openly to criticize the Communists’ monopoly of political power in 1957, they were brutally purged and some were jailed or sent to labor camps.

Liberal nationalism did not re-emerge until the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping’s call for “thought liberation” and post-Mao reform created new opportunities. Fearful of criticizing the Communist state directly, many liberal nationalists instead blamed China’s “authoritarian culture” for the lack of modernization in China. They called for a rejection of Chinese tradition and an embrace of Western culture and models of development.

Even then, however, their admiration for the West’s success was joined to a view of the West as both hostile and aggressive. And within a few years, mainstream Chinese intellectual discourse had shifted drastically. The liberal nationalists were angered by Western sanctions and rhetoric about human rights violations after Tiananmen Square, and shocked by political scientist Samuel Huntington’s prediction of a “clash of civilizations” in his 1993 Foreign Affairs article and by calls in the West for the containment of China.

The instant popularity in the mid-1990s of the “say no” books, such as “China Can Say No” and “China Still Can Say No,” reflected the change in sentiment. The books’ simple message was that Western nations, particularly the United States, were plotting against China in a new cold war, and that China must stand up to them. But first the Chinese had to say no to themselves, to their lack of nationalist spirit and to their blind worship of the United States.

China’s liberal and state nationalists are united in pursuing their dream of a strong China, but divided over how to achieve that goal. “Nativists” see the subversion of indigenous Chinese virtues by foreign imperialists as the root of China’s weakness, call for a return to Chinese tradition and self-reliance, and take a confrontational stance toward the outside world, as Mao Zedong did during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Anti-traditionalists regard Chinese tradition as the source of the nation’s weakness, and favor the adoption of foreign cultures and models. Although their militant approach to the wider world echoes Chinese nativism, today’s liberal nationalists are anti-traditionalist in their approach to most issues.

The pragmatists who have steered China’s foreign policy since Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s seek to adapt to the changing world, but they have very few commitments to any particular ideological principles, including Marxism. Economic modernization is their overarching objective – because economic prosperity is both a means for the Communist Party to stay in power and the foundation of China’s national aspirations to greatness.

China’s leaders, therefore, have tried to avoid confrontation with the United States and other Western powers, emphasizing peace and development as China’s major international goals. They are assertive in defending China’s national interests, such as reunification with Taiwan, but not anti-foreign.

Though they are increasingly constrained by nationalist sentiment and hampered by the absence of a charismatic leader such as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, the pragmatists have kept China on a predictable course. Talking tough but acting prudently is the pragmatists’ way. As long as they are reasonably secure in Beijing, it will likely continue to be China’s way as well.

Suisheng Zhao is a professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, executive director of the university’s Center for China-U.S. Cooperation, and editor of The Journal of Contemporary China. His most recent book is “A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (2004).” He will be speaking at this year’s Camden Conference, Feb. 24-26. This commentary has been reprinted from the autumn 2005 Wilson Quarterly.