10 - Nationalities, Nationalism, and Globalization: The Case of China

Summary

Nationalism and globalism are two mutually contradictory terms and incompatible goals. To emphasize one is to demean the other. Yet ironically enough, they also represent two phenomena coexisting in the contemporary world. Indeed, most countries have been consciously striving for the realization of both objectives and simultaneously. This is perhaps precisely the new dilemma or paradox confronting us at the turn of the century. Indeed, in an age of high technology and instant communication, which recognizes no national borders, nationalism loses much of its original appeal and value. In a world of ever-growing volume of international flow of both people and goods, and in view of the towering size of multinational corporations and the accelerating rate of privatization of world assets, national consciousness has also become practically irrelevant. But this is also a time when neither God nor Karl Marx inspires much awe or generates any appeal to the human world, when global competition for resources and markets become increasingly tense and ugly, and when uneven economic development has widened, rather than narrowed, the gap between the advanced and the backward nations, rendering many nations increasingly vulnerable and insecure. As a result, national identity, national awareness, and national dignity also appears to gain new currency, both for the power-hungry or security-conscious politicians and for the ideal-thirsty or economically deprived masses of the common people.

The case of China is a unique one for a number of reasons. First, as a nation, China has been in existence perhaps longer than any other country in the world. Yet nationalism in its territorial and political sense is a new phenomenon emerging only in the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, owing to the absence of a common religion and a rigid class structure, the Chinese nation has always been a loose community bound more by a common way of life than by any Messianic appeal. In fact, both “China” and “Chinese” are vague terms, the former referring more to a geographical area and a cultural phenomenon than to a territorial state, and the latter also more to a cultural than to a political group. Moreover, Chinese perspectives on “nation” and “state” have always had global connotations.