Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:50:45.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patriotism, Nationalism and China's US Policy: Structures and Consequences of Chinese National Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2011

Peter Hays Gries ,
Qingmin Zhang ,
H. Michael Crowson  and
Huajian Cai
Peter Hays Gries
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma. Email: [email protected] (corresponding author).
Qingmin Zhang
Affiliation:
Beijing University.
H. Michael Crowson
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma.
Huajian Cai
Affiliation:
Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What is the nature of Chinese patriotism and nationalism, how does it differ from American patriotism and nationalism, and what impact do they have on Chinese foreign policy attitudes? To explore the structure and consequences of Chinese national identity, three surveys were conducted in China and the US in the spring and summer of 2009. While patriotism and nationalism were empirically similar in the US, they were highly distinct in China, with patriotism aligning with a benign internationalism and nationalism with a more malign blind patriotism. Chinese patriotism/internationalism, furthermore, had no impact on perceived US threats or US policy preferences, while nationalism did. The role of nationalist historical beliefs in structures of Chinese national identity was also explored, as well as the consequences of historical beliefs for the perception of US military and humiliation threats.

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 205 , March 2011 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See http://www.chinatoday.com/china-news/china.picture.news.htm.

2 See http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2009-10/01/content_1431423.htm.

3 See Kosterman, Rick and Feshbach, Seymour, “Toward a measure of patriotic and nationalistic attitudes,” Political Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1989), pp. 257–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Carlson, Allen, “A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2009), pp. 20–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Fitzgerald, John, “China and the quest for dignity,” National Interest, No. 55 (1999), pp. 47–59Google Scholar.

6 Callahan, William A., “National insecurities: humiliation, salvation, and Chinese nationalism,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 29 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Gries, Peter Hays, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)Google Scholar, p. 48.

8 Barmé, Geremie R., “China's flat earth: history and 8 August 2008,” The China Quarterly, No. 197 (2009), pp. 67–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Garver, John, Foreign Relations of the PRC (New York: Prentice Hall, 1992)Google Scholar; Nathan, Andrew and Ross, Robert, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997)Google Scholar; Yong, Deng, China's Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 Diamant, Neil, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009)Google Scholar.

11 Allen Carlson, “The difficulty of catching a tiger by the toe: a preliminary examination of China's ‘rise’ and the role of national identities in shaping such a trend,” in Institute of International Relations, University, National Chengchi (ed.), Is There a Greater China Identity? Security and Economic Dilemma (Taipei: National Chengchi University, 2007), pp. 145–46Google Scholar.

12 Luhtanen, Rita and Crocker, Jennifer, “A collective self-esteem scale: self-evaluation of one's social identity,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, No. 18 (1992), pp. 302–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Shatz, Robert T., Staub, Ervin and Levine, Howard, “On the varieties of national attachment: blind versus constructive patriotism,” Political Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1999), pp. 151–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Kosterman and Feshbach, “Towards a measure of patriotic and nationalistic attitudes.”

15 Ibid. p. 264.

16 Wu wang guo chi (Never Forget the National Humiliation), history book series (Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1992).

17 Typically, in factor analytic research factors are “rotated” in order to aid in the interpretation of the factors. For more details on rotation, as well as the advantages of using PAF as opposed to PCA, see Russell, Daniel W., “In search of underlying dimensions: the use (and abuse) of factor analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 12 (2002), pp. 1629–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 An Eigenvalue of at least 1 is often used by factor analysts as a criterion for judging how many factors best represent the data.

19 Kaiping, Peng, Ames, Daniel and Knowles, Eric, “Culture and human inference: perspectives from three traditions,” Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

20 An independent samples t-test revealed the difference between the means for the Beijing sample to be both statistically significant and very large, t (160) = 15.14, p < .001.

21 Partial eta-square (ηp2) provides a global index of the size of mean differences. Small and medium effects are represented by values around .01 and .06, respectively. Large effects are represented by values around .14 or greater.

22 We examined the fit of all of our models based on the χ2 test, the χ2/degrees of freedom ratio, the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA). Non-significant χ2 values and χ2/df ratios < 2 or 3 are considered reasonable indicators of close model fit. Conventional cutoffs for close model fit are CFI and TLI values greater than .95 and RMSEA values less than .06. Kline, R. B., Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, 2nd ed. (New York: The Guilford Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Schumacker, R. E. and Lomax, R. G., A Beginner' Guide to Structural Equation Modeling, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004)Google Scholar.

23 Kemmelmeier, Markus and Winter, David G., “Sowing patriotism, but reaping nationalism? Consequences of exposure to the American flag,” Political Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 6 (2008), pp. 859–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Gries, Peter, Zhang, Qingmin, Masui, Yasuki and Lee, Yong Wook, “Historical beliefs and the perception of threat in Northeast Asia: colonialism, the tributary system, and China-Japan-Korea relations in the 21st century,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2009), pp. 245–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 On the role of history in Sino-Japanese relations, see He, Yinan, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Suisheng, Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

27 See Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation.

28 Garver, Foreign Relations of the PRC; Nathan and Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress; Deng Yong, China's Struggle for Status.