Nationalism

Even as Western academics are translating essays by Chinese academics in a bid to understand China better, Wu Guo says that in the field of cultural psychology, the views of the well-educated “middle society“ in China are worth tapping into. Do the trauma of national humiliation and other cultural baggage explain China’s rising nationalism and persistent “grand unification strategy”?

A poll by the Global Times shows that 70% of respondents think that the Chinese government is doing the right thing with wolf-warrior diplomacy. But is this reflective of the general population? Zaobao correspondent Wong Siew Fong speaks to academics for their take.

A celebration of Taiwan’s National Day in Fiji led to a physical altercation between Taiwan and mainland China officials, which in turn has resulted in a fresh escalation of cross-strait hostilities. Zaobao journalist Chuang Hui Liang examines where this might lead.

The US has been trying to delink the CCP from the Chinese people, thinking that this will give them a clear path to defining a tangible enemy. But they have forgotten that Western imperialists were abhorred by the Chinese and any form of neo-imperialism would be anathema to them. The US may have overlooked the uneasy truth that nationalism in China is a firm glue that binds the CCP and the people together.

While Nazism and socialism fall on opposite ends of the spectrum, they are more alike than they seem. Hong Kong commentator Chip Tsao points out that both ideologies began with similar intentions, but took divergent paths to meet their objectives and garnered different reactions from the West.

The recent diplomatic row between China and the US sparked off by the US ordering the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston has ended for now, with the closure of the US consulate in Chengdu. Zaobao correspondent Yang Danxu notes that the spectator “melon-munching crowd” has responded with nationalist sentiments, and the media in China is fanning the flames. Can China-US relations be salvaged?

TCM treatment is said to have played a role in the fight against Covid-19 in China. The Beijing authorities recently sought public views on a set of proposed regulations on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which includes articles that mention punishments for those who “defame and slander” TCM. A furore ensued as the public worried about the expansiveness of the proposed law. Oxford University visiting researcher Hayson Wang thinks hard about what lies at the nub of the issue and what TCM proponents must do to bring TCM practice into the mainstream.

In a wide-ranging email interview with ThinkChina editor Chow Yian Ping, sinologist Wang Gungwu shares his thoughts on how China and the world have changed because of the pandemic. He keenly observes that Chinese leaders have sought greater control over the population in recent years, and the situation will worsen as the pandemic deepens their insecurities. On the international stage, an intense clash of interests among the major powers looks set to keep nations divided. On the micro-level however, he takes heart that a “globalisation from below” is taking place; the fact that the virus knows no borders has brought people closer together, with opportunities for reset.

China has faced reversals of fortune numerous times in history, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. After enjoying decades of upward ascent since its economic reform and opening up, some says China’s fate is about to be reversed again with the coronavirus pandemic, a mammoth disruption that kicked off the 2020s. Lance Gore argues that such massive shock to its political and economic system exposes chinks in its armour but does not necessarily unravel a big country with the world’s most comprehensive industrial structure.