Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- PART I Democratic Differences between China and the West
- PART II Analyzing Chinese Anger
- PART III Stabilizing China's Polity
- 6 Nationalism as a Consumer-Oriented Product
- 7 The Current Political Framework in China
- Appendices
- Bibliography
6 - Nationalism as a Consumer-Oriented Product
from PART III - Stabilizing China's Polity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- PART I Democratic Differences between China and the West
- PART II Analyzing Chinese Anger
- PART III Stabilizing China's Polity
- 6 Nationalism as a Consumer-Oriented Product
- 7 The Current Political Framework in China
- Appendices
- Bibliography
Summary
In Chapter 2 I examined the Chinese blogging community as a case of Chinese government encouragement of consumerist culture in order to stimulate nationalism. In this chapter, I focus on one blogging phenomenon in particular, the Anti-CNN website established in the Chinese blogosphere, in order to portray how the Chinese government also regulates nationalism to prevent it from getting out of control. I argue that although party propaganda does not cause the nationalist sentiments of Chinese bloggers, as is the dominant perception in the West, those sentiments are, as suggested recently (Fong 2004; Zhao 2002; Zhou 2005), not free from Chinese state intervention. Drawing on the explanations offered in Part II of this book, together with an analysis of samples collected from the Anti-CNN forum, this chapter argues that instead of using a direct tool such as propaganda, the Chinese government shapes bloggers' nationalist sentiments by encouraging their reliance on consumer culture.
A rational approach to nationalism
The Anti-CNN episode
On 18 March 2008, a 23-year-old male Chinese graduate from Tsinghua University registered the domain name “anti-cnn.com” in response to what he perceived as biased Western coverage of the Tibetan unrest. He followed this with the registration of a series of domain names such as “anti-bbc.com”, “anti-voa.com”, “anti-spiegel.com”, “anti-ntv.com”, and “anti-rtl.com”.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cyber-Nationalism in ChinaChallenging Western media portrayals of internet censorship in China, pp. 99 - 110Publisher: The University of Adelaide PressPrint publication year: 2012