They followed calls by prominent Chinese commentators and other constituencies for Beijing to adopt a tougher approach on territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Beijing in that case employed extraordinary measures including repeated use of security forces, economic sanctions, fishing and oil ventures, administrative fiats, diplomatic warnings, and other intimidating means short of military force in thus far successful efforts to cow Southeast Asian claimants and preclude ASEAN from taking a united stand in the face of China's power.
Foreign commentators are correct that a good deal of the impetus for popular and elite pressure for a tougher Chinese approach on territorial issues rests with the type of nationalism that has been fostered with increased vigor by the Chinese authorities since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of international communism.
The nationalistic discourse emphasizes that since the 19th century China has been treated unjustly and its territory and related sovereign rights have been exploited by other powers; China remains in a protracted process of building power sufficient to protect what China controls and regain disputed territory and rights. On the whole, the nationalistic discourse leads to a sense of 'victimization' by Chinese people and elites, who are seen having greater influence on China's foreign affairs decision making now that the strong-man politics of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping have given way to a collective leadership that is more sensitive to nongovernment elites and popular views.
Image Building in Foreign Affairs
Unfortunately, the emphasis on perceived past and current victimization represents only part of the self-absorbed nationalism fostered by Chinese authorities. As important are the extensive efforts to build an image of China as a righteous actor on the world stage, different from other world powers seen to follow selfish pursuits of national interests.
These efforts have been carried out by the Chinese foreign ministry, various other government, party and military organizations that deal with foreign affairs, ostensibly nongovernment organizations with close ties to Chinese government, party and military offices, and the massive publicity/propaganda apparatus of the Chinese administration. They boost China's international stature while conditioning people in China to think positively about Chinese foreign relations.
Thus, for example, China's foreign policy is said to follow principles in dealing with foreign issues that assure moral positions in Chinese foreign relations; principled and moral positions provide the basis for effective Chinese strategies in world affairs.
Remarkably, such strategies are seen to insure that China does not make mistakes in foreign affairs, an exceptional position reinforced by the fact that the People's Republic of China is portrayed as having avoided publicly acknowledging foreign policy mistakes or apologizing for its actions in world affairs.
Undoubtedly, some Chinese foreign policy officials and specialists know better and may privately disagree with the remarkably righteous image of Chinese foreign relations; but they don't depart from the official orthodoxy which is broadly accepted by elite and public opinion. Whatever criticism elites and public opinion register against Chinese foreign policy tends to focus on China being too timid and not forceful enough in dealing with foreign affronts.
Today, China's image building efforts support a leading role for China in Asian and world affairs, which enjoys broad support from the Chinese people and various constituencies in China; they forecast optimistically that China will follow benign policies emphasizing recent themes stressed by the Chinese administration.
The themes include promoting peace and development abroad, eschewing dominance or hegemonism in dealing with neighbors or others even as China's power grows, and following the purported record of historical Chinese dynasties in not seeking expansionism.
Sacrificing Truth
Such image building in the nationalistic discourse of modern Chinese foreign relations is a lot further from the truth than the victimization depicted in Chinese discourse. China was oppressed by various powers for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In contrast, the evidence of a moral, principled, and benign approach has been the exception rather than the rule in the zig-zags of the often violent foreign relations of the PRC through much of its 60 years. This has been the case particularly in the area surrounding China in Asia, the region that has long been the area of greatest Chinese influence and the area that has received the lion's share of Chinese foreign attention.
Most of China's neighbors have experienced intrusions or invasion by PRC security forces; they and others further away have contended with insurgent armies or armed proxies fully supported by China and targeting them. Such violence and excesses continued after Mao's "revolutionary" rule. Strong Chinese support for the radical Khmer Rouge increased in the later Maoist years and remained high throughout Deng's rule.
During such turmoil, Chinese leaders avowed support for principles and righteousness in foreign affairs, but from the viewpoint of the neighbors and foreign specialists, the principles kept changing and gaps between principles and practice often were very wide.
In the post-Cold War period, China has tried with mediocre results to reassure neighboring leaders who well remember the violence and threatening Chinese practices of the past. China's recent truculent behavior in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea has recalled past Chinese efforts at intimidation and coercion.
Part of the problem in Chinese efforts at reassurance is that Chinese elite and popular opinion shows almost no awareness of past Chinese violence and excesses, and therefore has little appreciation of the reasons behind the suspicion and wariness of many neighboring governments, and of the main outside power in the region, the United States.
Regarding the latter, one other practice seen throughout the history of PRC foreign relations and supported by the strong nationalistic discourse in China has been to register strident opposition to efforts by outside powers to establish and sustain positions of influence and strength around China's periphery. Such moves, not just by the U.S. but also by the Soviet Union in the past and Japan and India up to the present, are repeatedly seen by Chinese authorities as well as supporting elite and public opinions in grossly exaggerated terms of being a threat to China, involving a revival of Cold War 'containment' or other schemes.
Implications
Chinese elite and popular opinion is strongly influenced not only by nationalistic discourse emphasizing China being victimized by other powers. As important, Chinese nationalistic discourse also involves a unique and strong sense of morality and righteousness in foreign affairs.
As a result, Chinese opinion sees whatever problems China faces with neighbors and other concerned powers including the United States over sensitive issues of sovereignty and security as caused by them and certainly not by China.
Thus, it has little patience with the complaints of other claimants and calls for China to compromise on sensitive issues involving sovereignty and security in nearby Asia. As a result, Chinese elites and public opinion push for tougher policies in defense of Chinese interests in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Chinese image building has successfully conditioned Chinese opinion, and this only adds to the difficulty of managing tensions in the seas near China and makes resolving those issues unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC. This article was originally published by Pacific Forum CSIS PacNet here and represents the views of the respective author.
...
...
Diaoyu in Our Heart: The Revealing Contradictions of Chinese Nationalism
The same patriotic feelings that send Chinese to rally for national sovereignty over disputed islands might also explain their surprising and apparently conflicting answers to an online discussion. |
| Protesters carry banners reading "Declare War Against Japan" and "Japan Get Out of Diaoyu Islands" in Beijing. (AP) |
There was another side to the anti-Japanese demonstrations that rocked Chinese cities this weekend, reacting to Japanese activists who had landed on a disputed island chain in the East China Sea. As Chinese protesters asserted their national prestige in ways symbolic and not, their countrymen on social media held a very different discussion on the Diaoyu Islands controversy. These two Chinese reactions, seemingly contradictory, hint at the contours and complexities of Chinese nationalism, and what it means for China both domestically and abroad.
A web user named oncebookstore posted a question on Weibo, China's twitter-style social network: "If your child were born on the Diaoyu Islands, what nationality would you pick for him/her: Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong or the mainland?" (The islands, also known as the Senkakus in Japan, are claimed by China, Taiwan, and Japan.)
It went viral on Sunday, retweeted over 20,000 times in nine hours before censors took it down around midnight. The surprising results would seem to contradict the popular anti-Japanese protests, undercut the government's efforts to stoke patriotism, and may well baffle outside observers: Chinese respondents overwhelmingly picked places other than mainland China.
Around 40 percent answered Taiwan, followed by Hong Kong with about 25 percent, followed by Japan. Mainland China was the least popular option. A formal poll, set up on Weibo after the original post was pulled, returned similar results, with Japan at 20 percent and the mainland at 15.
Chinese will march in the streets to proudly declare their nation's sovereignty over these five rock-like, uninhabited islands, but when it comes to picking which flag could hypothetically adorn their child's passport, China comes last. How could that be? Judging by the surprise and disbelief in the poll's comment section, the result confuses even the Chinese themselves.
Though contradictory at first glance, the sentiment at the anti-Japanese protests and that revealed by the Weibo quiz are perhaps not as inconsistent as they might appear, and could highlight the dual nature of the nationalistic feelings deeply rooted in Chinese society today.
The same Chinese nationalism that drives citizens to stand up for their native land when outside forces challenge it could also sharpen their pain when they observe the depressingly wide gap between China as it is and China as they wish it could be. Some of the Weibo poll respondents suggested that, although they might have grudgingly picked Taiwan or Hong Kong or even Japan for their child's hypothetical nationality, it wounded them not to choose mainland China as they wished they could. Therein lies the common ground between the nationalism of the Diaoyu marches and what you might call the national humility on display in the Weibo poll.
User wang-wei-bin confessed his conflicted feelings after answering the poll in a Weibo message: "Sigh. I picked Taiwan, but in fact I love this country. Just that I feel it doesn't love me."
"The reason I picked Japan is that I don't want to see my son becoming a traitor to his country like me," feiyuchuqing explained. "What terrible statistics," she said of the results to which she had contributed.
"If I had a girl I would perhaps pick Taiwan, and if a boy, Japan, but in any case I would always be waving the Chinese national flag on the rocks of the Diaoyu Islands," another user wrote in a response that had been widely retweeted before disappearing with the original quiz.
"Political slogans aside, as a citizen of the globe, I would rather have the next generation growing up in an place like Taiwan or Japan," said zuzhanggaocangwentai. "I don't want them to have to take poisonous baby formula, sit in brainwashing classes, and love the party that hurts its people."
Weibozhuanping also saw potential social advantage abroad: "If we speak about society instead of politics, Japan has the most fair and humane society. Workers and farmers won't have as hard a time there as they do in China."
"I vote for Taiwan," said yingdedaobie, "because that's where you get to vote."
In fact, web users' responses seemed to be driven more by a deep discontent with the current China than by a veneration for these more developed economies: a large number of participants put their answers as bluntly as "Anywhere but the mainland."
The popularity of the quiz and the heated discussion it engendered also provide a window into the Chinese public's struggle to reconcile the frustrating social realities surrounding them with the lofty patriotic ideals they have long internalized, partly as a natural result of living in one of the world's oldest and most storied societies, and partly through China's public education and mainstream discourse.
These ideals have featured prominently in recent large-scale public protests against perceived foreign aggression: the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, controversy over Japan's tendentious history textbooks, a 2005 dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu Islands, and as a reaction against the international demonstrations against China during the torch relay prior to the 2008 Olympics.
These perceived foreign insults all brought Chinese national rage to a boiling point and monopolized domestic discourse for weeks. This time, however, as the familiar government rhetoric on the islands disputes rolls on, a large portion of the publicseems to be distracted by two sensational episodes of domestic disorder: the hunt for a high-profile and notorious serial killer, and the sentencing of a disgraced party official's wife.
As domestic woes increasingly surface in public discourse here (partly because the rise of social media makes them easier to discuss) and as China sometimes-uneasily engages with the world, Chinese citizens' perceptions of patriotism may be changing.
In an essay titled "Patriotism with Chinese Characteristics," Li Chengpeng, a popular blogger and prominent social critic movingly described this struggle and transformation. Having long been a "typical Chinese patriot," as Li calls himself, he saw his beliefs challenged after witnessing evidence of corruption and government ineptitude during a trip to Sichuan after the 2008 earthquake.
"My definition of patriotism changed," he wrote, "patriotism is not about bullying mothers of children who died in the earthquake, while calling for people to stand up to the foreign bullies of our motherland. ... [It] is about speaking more truth ... about dignity for the Chinese people."
Oncebookstore, the creator of the Weibo quiz, agrees. The owner of an independent bookstore in a southern Chinese province, he told me that his initial hope in asking the uncomfortable question was to make the public aware that "there are more pressing issues than the Diaoyu Islands."
"I hope Chinese people can show as much solidarity as they did in protecting the Diaoyu Islands every time someone is illegally evicted from his house by officials; I hope they can shout like they did to save the pro-China Diaoyu activists every time a Chinese dissident is arrested," he posted on his blog immediately after putting up the quiz.
"Farmlands, houses, and families, they should be the Diaoyu Islands in our heart."
No comments:
Post a Comment