As China has grown into its current status as a political, economic and military power, its population has undergone an interesting transformation: the people have become fervently nationalistic. No matter what one thinks of the legitimacy of Chinese grievances against the nations in the West, Peter Gries describes the Chinese brand of nationalism as being strong with emotion, strengthened by victim narratives [that are] beginning to influence the making of Chinese foreign policy (Gries, p. 12). The fact that an Internet petition consisting of over 20 million Chinese signatures opposing Japans admission to the Security Council, combined with the huge Chinese protests concerning the use of history books in Japan that mostly ignore the Japanese atrocities in World War II, shows that there is a lot of rage in China that could be tapped and sent in irresponsible directions. There are waves of nationalism that move from the grass-roots to political leadership, and waves that move in the opposite direction. One of the major challenges for the twenty-first century will be finding ways to channel the energies of the worlds most populous nation into positive directions.

There are many perspectives on the potential motivations, and possible outcomes, of Chinese nationalism. There are some that see this movement as a reckless movement driven by Chinas traditional Sino-centrism and contemporary aspirations for great-power status (Zhao, p. 131). Bernstein and Munro conclude, for example, that China is [d]riven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power (Bernstein and Munro, p. 19). This has led the Chinese to demonstrate with particular urgency against the United States, whom it wishes to replace as the dominant power in Asia. One example of this would be the massive demonstrations in front of the U.S. diplomatic missions in China after the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO forces under the command of the U.S. Western diplomats were shocked to find that the Chinese assumed that the bombing had been intentional (Zhao, p. 132). After a U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in April 2001, similar demonstrations broke out, with the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, honored as a martyr of the revolution (Pomfret, p. A1).

James Lilleys 2004 article in Public Affairs and Maria Hsia Changs book Return of the Dragon: Chinas Wounded Nationalism are two examples of anxious observations of the fervent nationalism that has arisen at the end of the twentieth century, which was seen by many Chinese as one of humiliation. However, it would be short-sighted to describe the new Chinese nationalism as nothing more than emotionalism running rampant in the streets and squares of China. After all, the Chinese government has shown considerable skill in managing the public outbursts of its citizens. The idea that Suisheng Zhao has termed pragmatic nationalism refers to the ways in which the Chinese government actually organizes the shows of patriotism. This nationalism, according to Zhao, is a force used to hold the country together during its period of rapid and turbulent transformation into a post-Communist society (Zhao, p. 132). However, the leaders of China want peace and development, and they realize that if Chinese nationalism is perceived as being out of control, the ideals of political stability and economic development would be threatened, as other countries would tend to distance themselves from what they saw as an unstable situation.

Nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon in Chinese culture, particularly given the ancient times in which the Chinese Empire began. The Opium War with Great Britain (1840-1842), however, was a disaster. China was occupied and incorporated into Western empires, and it was only at this point in time that nationalism began to assert itself as part of the culture. In the 160+ years since the end of the Chinese Empire, the dominant theme in Chinese politics has been the removal of the embarrassment that the Chinese had to endure from the imperialists who overtook the country. Even though China has long been out from under the control of the West, this anti-imperialist doctrine has remained a part of political rhetoric. (Zhao, p. 133).

Nationalism in China has taken basically two forms since its inception after the Opium Wars. Ethnic nationalism was prevalent early, but after the Chinese Communist Party defined the country as a multiethnic political community in 1949, after the Kuomintang Dynasty fell, the only Chinese who express this sort of nationalism are the ethnic minorities, such as the Tibetans, Mongols, and Uygurs, who would like to create their own states but are not permitted to (Hunt, p. 63). The second form of nationalism has been liberal nationalism. Rather than promoting ethnic identity, this type of nationalism seeks to improve China as a country, but through social and political reforms. It defines a nation as a group of citizens who have a duty to support and defend the rights of their state in the world of nation-states, but also to pursue individual freedoms (Zhao, p. 133). This group finds itself at odds, quite often, with the Chinese Communist Party, because liberal nationalism emphasizes public participation in the political process, an idea that the Communist Party has definitely not embraced during its time in power, and so both forms of nationalism are emerging from the grass-roots as movements of dissidence against the Chinese government.

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