Below is the winner of the RIAP Emerging Voices Project – an initiative aimed at uncovering new and emerging thought leaders in the Asia-Pacific region. The project, undertaken in conjunction with Business Asia magazine, asked for essay submissions from 18-25 year old citizens of any Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member country on the topic of generational change in Asia.

Taming China’s Nationalist Tiger
By Denis McMahon
Sydney, Australia

The recent transition from third generation to fourth generation of Chinese leaders has left pundits scrambling for some clue as to what changes this might mean for the future of both China and the Communist Party.
The emerging consensus is that the CCP Standing Committee is sufficiently filled with Jiang proteges that the reformist agenda of the current leadership – and more specifically, the influence of Jiang himself – is assured for the foreseeable future. The real issue is the sustainability such an agenda (defined by its commitment to structural economic reform and only nominal political reform), considering the mounting social tensions being generated by the reforms and the Party’s attempts to preserve its own relevance.
The authority of the CCP as the legitimate Government of China has been slowly eroding since Deng Xiaoping first introduced his reform program in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.
This erosion has been two fold: the devolution of power to local levels of government has facilitated the weakening of the centralised state structure, and state initiated markets reforms have undermined the ideological foundations of the State. Such a weakening has given rise to inevitable challenges to CCP authority from outside the party. With the exception of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, few of these challenges have captured the imagination of the broader community or given way to popular movements of dissent.

Challenges to rule
However, this is not to say that the CCP right to rule remains unchallenged. On the contrary, the twin supports of CCP ideological legitimacy – development (the promise of prosperity) and nationalism – are directly threatened by current trends.
The first is the exclusion of certain groups from China’s prosperity, and the growing disillusionment of those who feel betrayed by the failure of the iron rice bowl. Mass unemployment, unpaid pensions and wages, and the latent corruption of local government and business officials are giving rise to worker militancy. As yet this remains unorganised and largely focused on local issues. Whether it remains so will depend on the Government’s ability to ensure job creation and the more equitable distribution of the benefits of reform. The second threat is the potential for nationalist sentiment to not only develop beyond State control, but to also be directed against the State. The threat from nationalism is arguably the greater of the two, as the State is in a weaker position to combat it.
A generation of post-Tiananmen high school and university students have been weaned on a diet of “political education” that has emphasised patriotism as a substitute ideology for socialism. Similarly, the party has come to base its legitimacy on its historical status as defender of Chinese pride and identity. However, the nationalist discourse is fast slipping beyond the control of a Government that is ill positioned to refute ultra-nationalists or defend a foreign policy necessarily shaped by the nuances of international relations.

Nationalism
To understand the unique role that nationalism plays in contemporary Chinese society, it is necessary to appreciate its historical development.
Modern Chinese nationalism only arose towards the end of the nineteenth century at a time when China’s sense of it own identity was being challenged by imperialist Western powers. Unlike in Europe, where expanding power fuelled nationalist sentiment in the ascendant nation-states, modern Chinese nationalism was born at a time of national weakness and developed in response to foreign oppression.
Subsequently, the unique nature of Chinese nationalism has been defined by two key qualities. Firstly, that a restoration of Chinese power and dignity is dependent on catching up with the West. And secondly, the necessity for China to become strong again is fuelled by a desire to rights those wrongs committed against China and to protect the Chinese people from ever suffering such indignity again. So arose the paradox whereby China aspired to emulate Western strength and power by adopting its political institutions, economic modes of production and scientific techniques, whilst also founding much of its new identity on anti-foreigner sentiment.

Mao’s influence
Nationalism has always been an important aspect of the CCP’s authority as the legitimate government of China. Mao’s generation of leaders burnished their nationalist credentials in the war against the Japanese, establishing themselves as anti-imperialist defenders of China’s territorial – and spiritual – integrity.
However, whilst nationalism – in the form of anti-imperialism – played an important role in shaping Chinese identity under Mao, it was not essential to Mao’s legitimacy as leader. On the contrary, the state was defined by the socialist revolution and by Marxist Leninist-Mao Zedong thought, of which Mao was the embodiment.
The introduction of Deng XiaoPing’s reforms marked the death of Maoist socialism. In its place, the Government has fostered an alternative ideology to shape economic policy: “development”, or the pragmatic accumulation of wealth and the reduction of poverty. In such a way the mandate of the CCP has shifted from promoting the socialist revolution to facilitating an ever-increasing improvement in the material well being of Chinese citizens. Such a philosophy, based exclusively on economic matters, has proved an insufficient substitute for the all-encompassing ideology of socialism and the quasi-spiritual devotion to Mao.
Moreover, in the wake of socialism, development demanded an altruistic motivation beyond the mere pursuit of profit. Nationalism successfully filled this void and fitted easily with Deng’s status as a revolutionary and participant of the Long March. However, Deng’s nationalism was different from that of Mao: whilst Mao was anti-imperialist, Deng’s Open Door policy required greater tolerance of foreigners. In this way historical concepts of Chinese civilisation and past greatness were employed to support the drive to prosperity. It was also a tool to foster social cohesion and ensure cooperation. Development was essential in catching up with the rest of the world – development was a nationalist objective in itself.

Evolution
Post-Tiananmen nationalism evolved yet again. As noted earlier, the Government’s response to the protests was to intensify political education on campus with the aim of filling the ideological void left by socialism with nationalism – at the expense of democracy.
However, Tiananmen also strengthened the hand of anti-Westernisation conservatives in the party. Subsequently, the form of nationalism that was promoted was more militant than in the past. China’s modern relations with the West came to be seen by many as a continuation of the pre-1949 humiliations inflicted on China.

No credentials
Such a shift proved convenient for the third generation of leaders who, having been too young to fight either the Japanese or the KMT, lacked the nationalist credentials of either Mao or Deng.
By standing up for China’s interests against modern foreign aggressors, they could lay claim to the mantle of Deng and Mao and justify their right to rule. Moreover, the third generation of leaders have been most in need of playing the nationalist card as they have pursued the most extensive dismantling of the socialist state apparatus. Whilst the early reforms facilitated the world’s most extensive reduction in poverty, more recent reforms have been less than equitable in their distribution of benefit. Hence, by standing strong against foreign aggressors and supporting popular Chinese anger – much as it did in 1998 when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and Beijing students were reportedly bussed in to protest in front of the US embassy – the Party has both established itself as the defender of China, and provided a welcome distraction from the short comings of the reform process.

Information diffusion
However, although providing short term legitimacy, fostering such nationalism is not conducive towards developing a functioning – and necessarily nuanced foreign policy.
In past years, the Government could pursue such a policy by controlling the media. In this way, the Government could pursue economic concerns (namely the securing of Japanese loans) when dealing with the Japanese over the issues of sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands, without fear of being hamstrung by domestic nationalism.
However, with the profusion of the internet and increased freedom of certain domestic media outlets, particularly in the south, the Government can no longer so readily control the diffusion of information. Having ridden the nationalist tiger so shamelessly in the past, the Party’s nationalist credentials are now routinely questioned by new and young elite who regard the Party’s response to perceived humiliations as being insufficient.

More criticism
The response to the American spy plane incident early last year is an important example of how not only nationalist sentiment is being directed against the Government, but how such sentiment can manifest itself beyond the scope of Government the control.
The spy plane incident saw the internet used as chief means of criticism of the Government. Student anger was directed at a Government that was perceived as not doing enough to stand up to the invasive and bullying behaviour of the US. This anger was all the worse for students having been denied the right to protest against the US outside of their campuses as was the case after the 1999 Belgrade bombing. The significance of the spy plane response is that such vehement nationalism actively working against Government policy presents a genuine challenge to Government authority. However, the question arises as to what type of challenge it presents and what ramifications it might have for China in the medium term.
One school of thought is that popular dissent has taken the guise of nationalism because that is the only guise under which it is allowed to operate. It is argued that since the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy activists, criticism of the Government (either direct or implied) is only permissible under the auspices of nationalist discourse. This is not to say that nationalist dissent is a lurking pro-democracy movement. On the contrary, the political education reforms in the education system seem to have denied the development of a democracy movement in the medium term. Such pressure may cause the Government to change direction in one of two key ways.

More influence
Firstly, ultra-nationalist forces within the Government may become increasingly influential, particularly if it becomes necessary for the leaders to prove their nationalist credentials to legitimise their position. As China becomes stronger, both economically and militarily, pressure will build to right the wrongs forced upon China over the past century. Alternately, the build up of dissent may lead the Government to pursue political liberalisations as a means of diffuse the tension.
These two outcomes are not necessarily mutually exclusive – a more democratic China will only be less militant if current nationalism is little more than a guise for a repressed desire for political freedoms and frustration at the Government.

Trapped
The CCP has trapped itself into a post-ideological authoritarian system of government. A period of post-socialism was ushered in by Deng who tried to sustain the Government’s legitimacy on the promise of development and a nationalism premised on the legacy of China’s past greatness.
The third generation of leaders are without an ideological justification for their position. Although the economy is still growing strongly, the benefits of reform are not being felt uniformly throughout society. Moreover, the Government has lost control of the nationalist tiger they have created.
In 1949 Chairman Mao declared that China had stood up. 53 years on China seems to be engaged in an ongoing struggle to achieve a status in the international community with which it is comfortable. And in the meantime, that disparity is likely to give rise to a conflict between a Party trying to maintain good economic relations, and a nationalist elite frustrated by what they perceive as national weakness.