Nationalism, Education and Identity

Scholarship on nationalism widely agrees that national identity, defined as “the emotionally laden sense of belonging to a distinctive, bounded group, involving both a felt solidarity or oneness with fellow group members and a felt difference from or even antipathy to specified outsiders,” is a powerful form of social membership.Footnote ⁸

Although identities are necessarily fragmented and indeterminate, “national(ist) projects of self-formation” around which identifications may revolve can nonetheless crystallize strongly at times,Footnote ⁹ inciting military conflicts and inspiring individuals to sacrifice their lives in battle or at least to care about the welfare of fellow citizens whom they have never met. These powerful attachments are not based on primordial or natural affinities. Instead, they must be imagined by the individuals living within a given set of borders.Footnote ¹⁰

This act of “imagining” does not happen by itself. It requires “hard, continuous … creative ideological and political labour on the part of intellectuals and nationalist leaderships.”Footnote ¹¹ In a process Louis Althusser has famously termed “interpellation,”Footnote ¹² ideological state apparatuses such as the school address individuals and constitute them as representatives of fixed categories, including those of class, ethnicity and nation.Footnote ¹³ To achieve the continual production of “the people as a national community,”Footnote ¹⁴ state schools may forcefully suppress all differences between individuals or instead relativize these differences and subordinate them to the idea of the nation.Footnote ¹⁵ This is the case not only in regards to ethnic, religious or linguistic differences but also to socio-economic gaps between members of a given national collectivity. Indeed, “class” and “nation” are not necessarily in opposition to each other, since the category of social class often serves as a powerful trope in the continual construction of the nation.Footnote ¹⁶ The attributes of a particular class are frequently extended to the nation, while the measure to which an individual or group fulfils this class criterion ideally governs admissibility to the national community.Footnote ¹⁷

Acknowledging the link between national and class identities is particularly important in the ongoing discussion concerning the state of nationalism in an era of heightened globalization. One of the key issues scholars of nationalism have debated is whether national identities and meanings are currently eroding in favour of global or “post-national” citizenship.Footnote ¹⁸ Alternatively, does the recent worldwide proliferation of ethnic conflict and nationalist sentiment demonstrate the increasing importance of national identities, so that individuals feel simultaneously “part of the world” and “part of their village”?Footnote ¹⁹

The answer to this question largely depends on the social positioning and actual – or perceived – life chances of the individuals in question.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, membership in cosmopolitan networks and culture is crucially conditioned by class position and elite privilege at the “local” level, as “some people are given the freedom and confidence to experience cosmopolitan ‘belonging’.”Footnote ²¹ Conversely, people's felt need to make public claims concerning their membership – and devotion – to the national collective may increase when their overall position within the local social system is non-dominant and relatively deprived, as is the case for instance with lower-income, lower-education groups.Footnote ²² In this article, I consider the usefulness of these theoretical insights in the case of China, a country that in the past four decades or so has experienced both increasing (re)integration within global markets and widening socio-economic gaps as well as a noted revival in popular nationalist sentiment.

Youth Nationalism and the State in 21st-century China

As a political and cultural entity, China stretches back two millennia, yet a majority of scholars agree that the idea of the Chinese “nation” as an “imagined community” did not emerge until the late 19th century when nationalism rose as a response to imperialism and modernity.Footnote ²³ Nationalism was one of the core founding values of the CCP, and it continued to serve as one of the key sources of loyalty to the state after the socialist revolution of 1949. Under Mao Zedong 毛泽东, however, the salience of nationalism was shrouded by an overlay of revolutionary ideology. With the demise of socialism in the post-Mao era, particularly since the 1990s, nationalism arguably remains the one bedrock of political belief shared by many Chinese citizens and enjoys ever-greater prominence in CCP propaganda efforts.Footnote ²⁴

In light of this development, a flood of publications on contemporary Chinese nationalism has appeared since the 1990s. One dominant theme in these publications is the blatant “statism” that arguably sets Chinese nationalism apart from ethnically based nationalist aspirations elsewhere in the world.Footnote ²⁵ Scholars have suggested that this so-called “state-led nationalism” has been employed by the CCP to bolster its legitimacy after the events of 1989, to “shore up against the onset of consumerist decadence and individualism” and to “reinforce social cohesion in the face of rapid social and economic change” and amid widening inequality.Footnote ²⁶

The main vehicle for engineering this ideological state project has been the waging of a coordinated campaign through various media and public sites, as well as through the education system. Despite several rounds of revisions, the new curriculum introduced to Chinese schools since the launching of the PE campaign generally presents the image of a strong state capable of redressing past grievances, resisting current and future foreign intrusions, and wielding a high degree of influence in the international arena, at least on a par with other major powers. While introducing class-neutral notions of citizenship, school textbooks of the 2000s also draw a clear distinction between those who “belong” to the Chinese nation and those who do not. The criteria determining national belonging further derive from an essentializing and homogenizing vision of Chinese culture based on Han traditions and a pseudo-biological construction of nationhood, often represented in PRC textbooks through the idea of the nation as a “family.”Footnote ²⁷

Seeking perhaps to redirect youth protest towards “the foreigner” as an enemy and an external “other,”Footnote ²⁸ contemporary Chinese textbooks also emphasize the need to remember earlier suffering at the hands of the West and Japan in order to prevent the loss of Chinese identity through foreign intrusions. They present the CCP as the faithful guardian of the “glorious legacy of China's ancient civilization” and encourage youth to accept the need for strong government controls over society in order to maintain the country's continuous stability.Footnote ²⁹ Under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, students are taught that in order “to fulfil the China Dream (Zhongguo meng 中国梦)” of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu de weida fuxing 中华民族的伟大复兴),” they must work hard to ensure that China becomes a rich and powerful country.Footnote ³⁰ Notably, with China's rising global clout in the 2000s and the launching of a more assertive foreign policy under Xi Jinping, the current PE campaign places less emphasis on the theme of Chinese “victimhood” (as was the case in the 1990s), and instead underscores China's triumphant transcendence while urging Chinese citizens to exhibit both “pride and agency” in their dealings with the world.Footnote ³¹

Although a majority of scholars agree that nationalism has displaced socialism as the dominant ideology in PRC textbooks and class teachings, the assumption that youth nationalism is therefore a top-down phenomenon or that the youth necessarily receive the PE messages without question has nonetheless been challenged on several grounds. A growing number of studies show that while the PE campaign may have started as a state-driven propaganda effort, the opening up of popular media to market forces in the early 1990s has allowed nationalist discourse to spread beyond official control.Footnote ³² Moreover, popular expressions of nationalist sentiment on the streets and in the virtual public sphere allow individuals to sidestep or modify dominant versions of nationalism and even to convert public opinion into political action.Footnote ³³

Ethnographic studies further document that high school and university students in China's relatively affluent coastal cities may regard the nature of their attachment to the nation as different to the relationship they had been taught at school, calling into question the idea that love for “the Party” (zhengdang 政党) equals love for the nation and the “country” (guojia 国家).Footnote ³⁴ Among these elite urban youth, nationalistic impulses may rise to the fore when it is perceived that China is insulted or threatened, yet individual professional and pragmatic concerns remain paramount.Footnote ³⁵ Arguably, urban young Chinese of the reform era have become eager consumers in the global marketplace and see themselves as members of an “imagined community composed of ambitious, well-educated people worldwide.”Footnote ³⁶

These are valuable observations, yet their applicability to youth of non-urban backgrounds or those of lower class backgrounds in the city remains unclear. Some studies, for instance, characterize China's over-zealous patriotic youth as urban college students.Footnote ³⁷ Others suggest that youth who exhibit ultra-nationalistic attitudes hail from rural backgrounds and are often less educated and less financially prosperous than their urban elite peers.Footnote ³⁸ The latter observation reminds us that unlike elite youth in the city, those who reside in the countryside or second-generation migrant children in urban areas are less able to cultivate global, cosmopolitan lifestyles. Young people from these two groups are also excluded from the new normative figure of national citizenship currently epitomized by urban middle class civilities.Footnote ³⁹ This is the case not only because they are thought to lack the cultural skills or “quality” (suzhi 素质) considered necessary for successful membership in an idealized national collectivity but also because their access to education and urban residence often remains blocked by enduring structural inequalities caused by lingering household registration (hukou 户口) barriers.Footnote ⁴⁰

Several recent studies argue that these structural conditions – and China's growing socio-economic divides more generally – have produced distinct values and attitudes among youth who hail from relatively marginalized sections of society.Footnote ⁴¹ Vanessa Fong's ethnographic work among urban youth of the “post-80s” generation finds, for instance, that city youth from poorer backgrounds tend to define the concept of suzhi in terms of “patriotism, morality, and good citizenship” in contrast to their peers from well-off families, who often associate the concept with a “cosmopolitan” attitude.Footnote ⁴² Meanwhile, a more recent study conducted by Ling Minhua among second-generation migrant youth in Shanghai records a sceptical attitude towards the PE campaign discourse among migrant youth of the “post-90s” generation, and speculates that this stance reflects a sense of alienation from mainstream propaganda because of personal encounters with hukou discrimination in the city.Footnote ⁴³

Building on this previous work, the present study seeks to explore how Han Chinese youth of the post-90s generation choose to construe the national collectivity, while paying particular attention to the role of social and educational background in shaping these choices. Based on the assumption that nationalism is best understood not merely as a product of official discourse but also as a process of continual “imagining” and “performance” on the part of individuals,Footnote ⁴⁴ I examine the rhetorical strategies youth apply in their attempt to position themselves vis-à-vis the nation. I further consider the extent to which students from different socio-economic backgrounds and different types of schools either employ or reject the hegemonic discourse of the PE campaign; their possible motivations in doing so; and the implications of these findings for our understanding of the forces shaping Chinese youth nationalism today.

Methodology and Research Questions

The present article draws on field data collected in 2012–2015 as part of a broader study on education and national identity formation among Han Chinese youth of different social backgrounds. The original study consisted of written surveys as well as in-depth, ethnographic interviews. For the purposes of this article, however, I focus on students’ written responses to open-ended survey questions.

The survey population included 856 senior high school students (aged 16–18; 52 per cent of whom were female and 48 per cent male), attending four schools in the relatively affluent, globalized city of Shanghai and two schools in the rural hinterland province of Henan. The Henan participants (N = 259) were attending two academic-track schools, i.e. schools that prepared students for the University Entrance Examination (gao kao 高考) at the end of Year 12. Notably, however, a majority of Henan students’ parents had attained only nine years, or fewer, of education and worked as either farmers or manual labourers. The two Henan schools were located in a prefectural-level city in the northern part of the province. However, more than 80 per cent of study participants hailed from villages and neighbouring rural townships. Owing to the considerable travel distance between their hometowns and the school, many boarded at school during weekdays, returning to their villages only on weekends and holidays.

Shanghai participants (N = 597) attended schools of two main types: academic and vocational. Like the Henan study participants, students in the Shanghai academic high schools (N = 234) also received preparation for the gao kao. However, their parents had local urban hukou, at least 12 years of education (53 per cent of the mothers and 65 per cent of the fathers attained higher education) and were employed as either white-collar workers, professionals, private entrepreneurs or high-ranking managers in state-owned, privately owned or foreign enterprises.

The remaining Shanghai participants (N = 363) attended two vocational-track schools in the city. Vocational schools are generally considered inferior on the Chinese educational ladder since they are required to admit local urban hukou students who have failed to gain admittance to academic high schools. In Shanghai, however, migrant youth who lack a local urban hukou are exclusively channelled into vocational high schools regardless of their academic abilities.Footnote ⁴⁵ Notably, second-generation migrants without a local urban hukou constituted 40 per cent of the Shanghai vocational school sample. Unlike their peers in the academic high schools, the vocational school respondents did not receive any preparation for the gao kao. Footnote ⁴⁶ Instead, they were offered training in electronics, car repair, cooking, hairdressing and beauty salon work. A majority of these students hailed from families of relatively lower socio-economic backgrounds. Only half had parents who had attained more than nine years of education, and among the remaining half, very few had attained more than 12 years of schooling. A majority of students’ parents were employed in low-paying jobs in the service sector or as manual workers.

As noted in previous studies conducted worldwide, asking direct questions about abstract concepts such as “national identity” or “national belonging” in personal interviews often leads to bewilderment, silences or even outright evasiveness on the part of informants.Footnote ⁴⁷ Conversely, “quasi-automatic replies” to direct survey questions may get researchers closer to respondents’ “raw, pre-thought understandings of the nation.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Following this insight, the written surveys consisted of the following open-ended questions:

Surveys were administered to students during class.Footnote ⁴⁹ Students were nonetheless instructed to freely write down their own associations, thoughts and feelings and were assured of the anonymity of their questionnaires. The response rate to the questions was higher than 95 per cent across the sample, and a majority of students chose to write one or more separate phrases, and in some instances, one or more complete sentences.

Students’ written responses were analysed by drawing on both content and discourse analysis. Content analysis consisted of encoding students’ replies into three main categories: (a) factual statements without any expression of praise or critique; (b) positive statements which offer praise or declare attachment, affection and commitment to the nation-state or its people; and (c) negative statements expressing criticism towards any given aspect of the nation-state and its people. Drawing on discourse analysis, students’ responses were further examined with the aim of locating recurrent themes and common patterns and comparing these themes and patterns across different types of schools and geographic locations. Finally, the analysis mapped links and interactions between these common themes and patterns and the dominant rhetoric of the PE campaign, while paying special attention to the use of stock phrases which also appear in PRC textbooks or official media.

The discussion below presents the main findings of these inquiries while focusing on the following questions. First, to what extent did students’ responses accord with or diverge from the discourse and themes of the PE campaign? Second, were there any significant differences between the type of responses supplied by students in Shanghai and in Henan or between students in the different types of schools (i.e. Shanghai academic schools, Shanghai vocational schools and Henan academic schools)? If so, how can we account for these differences and what do they tell us about the role of social positioning in the construction of youth attitudes towards the nation-state?

“Being Chinese Means Winning for the Country”

In response to the survey questions (“What does ‘China’ make you think of?” “What does it mean to be ‘Chinese’”?), an overwhelming majority (97 per cent) of students in Shanghai and Henan alluded to public issues. About one-third of replies to the first question mentioned, for instance, national state symbols such as the “Five Star Flag” and the “national anthem” or iconic national sites such as “Beijing,” the “Forbidden City” and the “Great Wall.” A smaller share (less than 20 per cent) of replies cited modern historical events such as the “War of Resistance against Japan” and the “100 years of national humiliation,” referring to the period in which China was under invasion by foreign powers from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. An even smaller minority (8 per cent of all responses) mentioned names of public figures. The most common by far was Mao Zedong, followed by the ancient philosophers, Confucius and Mencius. Notably, very few responses (1 per cent of the entire sample) mentioned reform-era political leaders such as Deng Xiaoping 邓小平, Jiang Zemin 江泽民, Hu Jintao 胡锦涛 or Xi Jinping. In fact, there were as many allusions to contemporary popular culture figures as there were to post-1978 leaders.Footnote ⁵⁰

Notably, in response to the question, “What does it mean to be ‘Chinese’?” a large majority of replies (65 per cent of the entire sample) included at least one statement expressing a sense of attachment, affection or commitment to the national collective. Common examples included phrases such as “love for the country” (aiguo 爱国) and the word, “pride/proud” (zihao/zi'ao自豪/自傲), as well as references to China's rapid economic development and recent re-emergence as a world power after a century of “struggle” and “humiliation.” Some respondents opted for more elaborate statements of love and devotion to the country, including the following quotes, for instance:

It could be argued that students chose to make such patriotic statements not necessarily because they upheld these notions, but rather because they assumed these were the “correct” answers to a survey administered in class. That said, it is also worth noting that only a small minority (about 10 per cent) of all survey responses associated China or being Chinese with the CCP. Although “love for the country” and “love for the Party” constituted equally significant parts of the official public script of the PE campaign, very few students chose to speak the lines that were expected of them in regards to the Communist Party. Of the ones who did, Henan students formed a clear majority.

In comparison to Shanghai students, Henan teenagers were also more eager to offer statements conveying a strong sense of togetherness, shared values and a common fate. This sentiment found an expression through explicit declarations of the respondent's own affinity by writing, for instance, “I am Chinese (wo shi Zhongguoren 我是中国人) and I am proud,” as well as by noting qualities such as “unity,” “solidarity” or “the ability of Chinese people to come together in times of natural disasters.” About one-fifth of all responses in Henan also included statements which related being Chinese to treating each other “kindly” like “one big family” (xiang yige da jiating 像一个大家庭). Such phrases resonated with the official rhetoric of the PE campaign and the current contents of students’ textbooks.Footnote ⁵¹ In contrast, only 2 per cent of statements provided by Shanghai students alluded to these qualities as emblematic of either China or being Chinese.

Yet, another observable difference between the responses provided by students in Shanghai and in Henan related to the use of official stock phrases. For example, in reply to the question: “What does ‘China’ make you think of?” more than 70 per cent of Henan responses, but only 10 per cent of replies in Shanghai, included at least one of the following identical idioms: “a world-renowned culture” (xiangyu shijie de youxiu wenhua 享誉世界的优秀文化); “5,000 years of history and culture” (wuqian nian de lishi wenhua 五千年的历史文化); “China's glorious history” (Zhongguo de guangrong lishi 中国的光荣历史).

Further, in response to the question, “What does it mean to be ‘Chinese’?” more than half of Henan students jotted down one of the following stock phrases: “winning for the country” (weiguo zhengguang 为国争光) or “striving for the great rejuvenation of the nation” (shixian weida minzu fuxing 实现伟大民族复兴). Such platitudes were also used by Shanghai students, but to a much lesser extent than in the Henan survey. Most importantly, a comparison of all the Henan responses with those of Shanghai students reveals that Henan youth were in general much more willing to express sentiments of love and devotion to the country in response to the survey questions. More than 90 per cent of replies in Henan included such statements, whereas in Shanghai the rate was considerably lower, standing at only 35 per cent of all replies. There was no considerable difference in this regard between vocational and academic school students in Shanghai.

To summarize, study participants from Shanghai were the least eager to verbally assert their commitment to the national collectivity and the PE campaign. In contrast, students in Henan, an overwhelming majority of whom hailed from rural families of poorer backgrounds, were more willing to declare their dedication to the nation and assert their pride in China's accomplishments. Henan students were also more ready to employ the same stock phrases that appeared in their school textbooks and in the official discourse of the PE campaign. As the next section reveals, the differences between students in the two locations were equally visible when it came to respondents’ willingness to make critical statements concerning the national collectivity. In this regard, however, there were some important distinctions between the sort of detracting remarks offered by students attending vocational and academic schools in the city.

“The Poor Are Poor, the Rich Are Getting Richer”

Shanghai participants were not only less inclined to align themselves with the discourse of patriotism, they were also more willing to make strictly dissenting comments in relation to this discourse. In Shanghai, 36 per cent of student responses in both vocational and academic schools were overtly critical rather than celebratory. While about one-third of Henan students chose to make unfavourable comments as well, a majority of rural participants nonetheless attempted to balance these with a more positive sentiment, by stating, for example:

As illustrated by these examples, and as the overall analysis of Henan responses reveals, one of the main issues rural students tended to fret about was the lack of “morality” and the low level of “integrity” (chengxin 诚信), as well as the perceived problem of “indifference” (lengmo 冷漠) in contemporary Chinese society. Two other grievances, which notably were shared by students in Shanghai, concerned the problem of “heavy academic pressure” and the low “quality” (suzhi) of China's population. The latter issue echoes the mainstream media and government discourse of the past four decades, which (ironically) targets rural and migrant populations as those requiring “quality” improvement. Notably, in the present study, survey participants from both these target groups were as willing to reiterate the issue of “lack of population quality” as the Shanghai youth who hailed from elite backgrounds.

Somewhat surprisingly, considering that students completed the surveys in class, there were also critical statements regarding the party-state in both Shanghai and in Henan. Although admittedly these formed a very small minority of all responses, it is interesting to note the type of complaints raised by students of different backgrounds. Thus, Henan youth and Shanghai vocational students frequently expressed concern at the misconduct of state officials, illustrated in statements such as: “‘China’ makes me think of too much government corruption” (zhengfu de fubai 政府的腐败); “too many corrupt officials” (tanguan 贪官); and “‘being Chinese’ means state officials take bribes and pervert justice” (guanyuan tanzang wangfa 官员贪赃枉法). One vocational school student in Shanghai wrote, somewhat sarcastically, “‘Being Chinese’ means you must be patriotic but have no idea where your taxes go every month or how come local officials have so much money. Where does it all come from?”

Curiously, students from privileged families in Shanghai's academic schools were much less troubled by the problem of government corruption (or at least were less willing to refer to it in their statements). Instead, they were more concerned about issues such as the “lack of freedom of speech” and the country's “weak legal system.” One Shanghai academic student simply wrote, “being ‘Chinese’ means living in a political dictatorship.” Notably, issues of civic rights were rarely mentioned in the Henan responses, and were also mentioned less frequently by Shanghai vocational school students. Vocational school students did not hesitate, however, to make politically biting remarks, such as:

Another issue that Shanghai vocational students grumbled about was the economic situation. This concern was also on the minds of Henan students. Both groups complained about the difficulty of finding a job in a competitive society, the problem of low income and, in Shanghai, the lack of affordable housing. One Shanghai vocational student wrote, “Being ‘Chinese’ means you have worse living conditions than children in other countries,” while a Henan respondent stated, “Being ‘Chinese’ means you need to constantly struggle to get ahead in a materialistic society.” Although Shanghai academic school students, the majority of whom hailed from well-off families, also worried about the “high housing prices” and “intense job competition,” they were far less likely to voice disquiet about economic issues compared to their peers of lower-class backgrounds in the city and in the countryside.

Students from privileged families in Shanghai also did not express worry about the issue of social inequality, a topic that nonetheless recurred in the critical responses of both Henan and vocational school students in Shanghai. This particular concern was expressed by the recurrent phrase: “The large gap between rich and poor” (pin fu chaju da 贫富差距大) or simply by the repeated idiom: “unfairness/inequity” (bu gongping 不公平). Vocational school students in particular expressed a relatively bleak view of the contemporary economy and society. For instance:

Interestingly, students attending academic schools in either Shanghai or Henan did not share this pessimistic tone. While Shanghai youth were generally more willing to offer openly critical statements regarding the “nation” and even the party-state compared to those in Henan, it was the vocational school participants who expressed the strongest sense of resentment. As could be seen in the examples cited above, to these teenagers, the word “China” and the question “What does it mean to be ‘Chinese’?” prompted not only statements of pride, love or devotion to the country but also expressions of embitterment and disassociation with the national collective.

Concluding Remarks

The present study highlights the importance of considering Chinese adolescents’ socio-economic backgrounds, geographic location within the country and type of school when assessing their attitudes towards the nation-state. While the article draws on the analysis of a limited number of survey questions, its findings nonetheless point to the significance of including marginalized populations (and not just the elite urban youth) in empirical studies of youth nationalism in China.

The relatively small sample size and the focus on Henan and on Shanghai – arguably China's most global city and one which may not be representative of other urban locations in the country – may limit the generalizability of this study's findings. Future studies carried out among larger groups of students in additional provinces of different socio-economic levels as well as in medium- and small-sized cities and towns across the country would help to address these limitations.

These caveats notwithstanding, the findings of the current study indicate potential restrictions to the power of the PE campaign to shape Chinese youth mentalities. If it is true that for the CCP, “official discourse and terminology are not merely descriptive; they are also meant to be exemplary and normative, authoritative and binding,”Footnote ⁵⁷ then the reluctance of Shanghai study respondents to employ the terminology of the PE campaign could be construed as an indirect challenge to the party-state's authority. The results of the study further suggest that the combination of educational tracking policies and the inequalities of the hukou system may undermine the willingness of vocational school students and second-generation migrant youth in the city to align themselves with the “nation.” These variances in and of themselves call into question the party-state's current vision of China as a unified national collectivity.