Chinese Nationalism

[Xiao Gui]

While I don't have any source off hands, these are pretty common news stories I hope everyone has come accross. If you guys can find me some articles, please post it, and I appoligize for my laziness.

With the economic boom in China, North American medias have often put China in the spot light and talk about China at great detail. I have noticed that there is a strong sense of nationalism in Chinese people and it takes in these forms:
- We are a great country and our economic is booming. Because "we do business better than those stupid foreigner", China can one day surpass Euro and US.
- We are "the better" Chinese people and definitely better than those "useless bag of flash" call Taiwanese. We hate them for there [insert the blank]
- We hate Japanese people, because [insert the blank].

Globe and Mail has documented all three during the two weeks when they were featuring China and Chinese news. Although the reasons/logic behind the nationalism is completely ridiculous, when you have 120omillion people think the same way (and with government controled media), it is their ultimate and objective truth.

There is a Chinese girl in my commitee. Although she usually just sit their quietly, when the topic of China and Taiwan was mentioned, she went wild literally. She "hate" Chinese and Japanese. She called them "stupid pigs" and she would love to personally kill Chen Sui Bien and nuke Taiwan killing everyone and turning Taiwan into a garbage dump. She would do the same thing with Japan too.

Anyway, what do you guys think would be the outcome of these growning nationalism and hatred?
- Xenophobic feelings against the Japanese has taken a violent form. Resturats and bars have signs that says "No Jap and Dog Allowed" and Japanese people are constantly harrassed in China. There was a case in New York where a Chinese man jumped onto the fashion show stage and smear his feces on the Japanese model, and he was later interviewed and said he was proud of what he has done for China. This attidue is similar to the fascism in Germany before WWII.
- Taiwan: well the girl wants to nuke it and turn it into garbage dump. I only hope the 1200 million Chinese don't think the same way. Ironically, a lot of the manufacturing sectors in China are dominated by Taiwanese buinesses.

[Axel1917]

I think that Hitler's actions have shown that nationalism is not a good idea.

This Chinese naitonalism is rooted in the futile attempts to preserve Asian traditionalist beliefs like Xenophobia, Totalitarian parenting methods, mysogany (sp?), etc. These things are rather irrational in much of the world, and now the Chinese "Communist" Party is using these beliefs in order to keep the people brainwashed and "civil." I am not too worried about this nationalism, given that whenever someone from China moves to a Western nation, any traditionalist beliefs tend to be abandoned within the time of a generation or so. MAD will prevent China from invading other nations.

I have debated with such nationalists on other forums, and in short, they are severely lacking in logic. They make all sorts of logical fallacies to "prove" their points, mainly appeal to tradition, and they think that anyone who disagrees with them, opposes such nonsenscial nationalism, etc., is a racist. I have zero tolerance and zero respect for these people.

[Mu Shu]

Chinese Nationalism in general is no worse than American Nationalism which supports an aggresive foreign policy. Extreme American Nationalism has created a sense that the whole world is out to get the US. Therefore many extremists in the US want the UN destroyed or at least greatly weakened. Extreme Chinese Nationalism has similar paranoid features. It believes that many countries, especially the US and Japan are out to get China. It therefore promotes an aggresive foreign policy to counter this.

As international tensions increase, nationalism in all nations will increase. Just look at the US. After 9/11 American Nationalism increase dramatically. Bush cashed in on this Nationalism and was re-elected.
Just look at Iraq. Iraqis were not known to be extremely nationalistic. But the US invasion sparked an immense increase in Iraqi Nationalism. The same will hold true for China. If Taiwan declares independence, Chinese Nationalism will go through the roof.

[barbarosso]

Em.. To love your country is fine, to wish for it's sucess isn't wrong, to see your own country as a great place to be, (wether in be America, China, or Luxmeburg etc) that not bad and can't really cause much harm. (always willing to be told otherwise)

Patorism, i think is a little different (always willing to be told otherwise), when we see our homeland, or anyother country and a fautless nation that is always no the side of justice, I think when we believe thsi too strongly we become blind to the failures of our country, the injustice it cause ete....

A good example would be america. Americans believe Bush is doing the right thing, protecting their country from terrorist, that sometimes they become blind, to the injustice of what America does,
E.g. (1) The land of liberty - everyone is intitiled to a fair trail, yet in Guantanammo bay, men can be locked up for life with out a proper trail at all/
E.g (2) Liberting Iraq form Sadamn Hussen, not necessary for the benifit of the people. The news just board cast yesterday that 1000 american have now been killed in the war of Iraq, yet 1000's of fighter, civilans and children have been killed and not a word said about them?

Sorry only my opinion

[Xiao Gui]

It is interesting how the connection is immediately made about US and I don't disagree, but what do you guys think about the future of China in relation to their xenophobia? Do you think the violence again Japanese will get worse? Do you think they would start war against Taiwan or Japan sometime in the future? How is this xenophobia affects China, positively or negatively?

For example, extreme nationalism makes social control easier as people are proud and work hard for their country, but at the sametime people fail to focus and critique their own status quo and government administration, so sometimes they get screwed at the end...

[Frank]

A good example would be america. Americans believe Bush is doing the right thing, protecting their country from terrorist, that sometimes they become blind, to the injustice of what America does

I hope you're not American, barbarosso, because I feel in the completely opposite way. Bush gives me a headache when I hear him speak. By the way, I'm American, and I agree that it is injustice.

I actually think Bush is doing the worst possible course of action. I'll quote John Kerry himself, "There were two possible courses of action with handling the situation in Irag: the right way and the wrong way; the president took the wrong way." Now, I said we should have done something about the Al Queda, but instead, we, for some reason, attacked Iraq. I don't understand that at all.

But it is good to have pride in your country, and to support its actions. It's a good thing to believe your country is a good place to live. I, unfortunately, don't support its actions against Iraq, and this place isn't exactly the best place to live. Taxes and people without Healthcare and Terror Alerts and unemployed people! We aren't in the best shape right now!

[Shortyafter]

The land of liberty - everyone is intitiled to a fair trail, yet in Guantanammo bay, men can be locked up for life with out a proper trail at all

If you'd like to debate the Patriot Act, then go make a thread for it and I'll be happy to.

Liberting Iraq form Sadamn Hussen, not necessary for the benifit of the people. The news just board cast yesterday that 1000 american have now been killed in the war of Iraq, yet 1000's of fighter, civilans and children have been killed and not a word said about them?

No, not for the people. To fight the War on Terror. See my post in the War on Iraq thread.

[Xiao Gui]

what does all these has to do with Chinese Nationalism?

[Shortyafter]

I'm refuting his examples so he can find some better ones. I won't discuss it anymore in this thread.

[Lu Kang]

I've certainly seen this type of nationalism take form on many chinese people on the internet, though no chinese I know are all that nationalistic (they've been americanized).

I don't think nationalism is that bad, but it can be very bad if you have a bad government, and very good when you have a good government. Right now, the Chinese government is silencing the media except what they want out there and that alone makes this nationalism bad and to a point feel fake. The way they are manipulating the chinese people to love the state and hate the enemies is not a good idea. It reeks of insolationism of the past which if China rises up in a few decades could present it self in one for or another.

The Nationalism seems very "forced in a sense" on the people. Not that the people aren't naturally nationalistic, and certainly many living outside teh coutnry are, but when the government bans all english words from TV as well as making sure that no real western ideals and such get broadcast, comes toa point were the government is forcable shaping it's people, and it's not the one of tolerance and openness that should be arising in the 21st century.