China: It is more than you think

By Jon Jiang

The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) celebration of its centenary has drawn global attention. In the West, the spreading lament is that nationalism, or patriotism, from the Western and Chinese perspectives, respectively, is becoming the de facto official ideology of Beijing and that it is intertwined with the cliched past century of humiliation. Despite decades of economic integration with the rest of the world, China remains China, and that has always been the case.

This humiliation discourse can be traced to Liang Qichao, a writer and activist of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. The discourse was also exploited by the Chinese Nationalist Party, the adversary of the CCP during the Civil War, at the end of the 1920s after the death of Sun Yatsen, who had proposed nationalism as an indispensable component of his "Three Principles of the People" political philosophy. Drawing on, but not limited to the importance of nationalism for Sun, it's no wonder that he is one of the rare historical figures that is well acknowledged by both the mainland and by Taiwan.

As for the Mao era, while it seemed like a period when communism simply took control, this situation was also not totally true. Despite the lip service Mao and the CCP paid to the Soviet Union, their national revolution had little to do with Moscow's brand of communism. "Using the countryside to circulate around cities" shied away from the Marxist orthodox belief that the urban working class should be the key force of socialist revolution.

Wang Fanxi, one of the early CCP leaders, argued that, "Mao built his ideological foundation on the Chinese classics … with the acquired knowledge of Marxism-Leninism… a rough superstructure of foreign style on a solid Chinese foundation."

That said, there were still some Beijing-initiated ideological exports during the Mao era. However, when Deng came to power, these exports stopped, and the ideology evolved into much more of a Chinese product: "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Currently, Xi's "Chinese dream" refers directly to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

As Andrew Mertha, George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University, argues, "The genuine narrative that has emerged under the Xi's era… is also not an ideology but a blunt, albeit historically grounded, nationalist imperative." Kishore Mahbubani, a renowned Singaporean scholar, went even further to contend that the CCP functionally does not represent the Chinese Communist Party, but rather, the Chinese Civilization Party.

Nevertheless, the West is justified to worry about the overheating nationalism in China, because it may bring danger and chaos to the world. Yes, the Taiwan conundrum concerning the party's legitimacy being based on the whole narrative that there is only one legitimate China is a potential flashpoint.

However, except for the question of Taiwan, I doubt that the Chinese version of nationalism may be based purely in ideology, because all of the logic Beijing has mostly sprung from is not simply communism, but its history and culture that Chinese people have glorified and enshrined for thousands of years, and of course, its desire to remain in power.

Historically, China was not a militarily expansionist country, although in the past, the Chinese had many opportunities to do so. In fact, before the twentieth century, China's historical expansion of influence was often full of indifference, self-centeredness and sometimes ignorance toward other "barbarian" nations, primarily aiming at superiority showcased in a peaceful fashion.

More concretely, Martin Jacques, a British journalist, argued that, unlike the U.S., which advocates democracy while enabling and supporting hierarchical relations internationally, China largely remains aloof to the domestic policies of other countries, unless those policies can be construed as being insulting or demeaning to China. More crucially, China has few formal allies, which is stunningly different compared to the U.S. and Soviet Union.

China's Belt and Road Initiative, widely misunderstood in the West, has been executed in a way that is determined by the recipient governments and their related political and economic interests, offering and providing genuine benefits. Unquestionably though, China is not altruistic and wants to ameliorate its influence abroad to gain status and respect, as it has done for millennia, and this is nothing different from other growing powers.

Nationalism is indeed a useful tool for politics, on both sides. For the U.S., since the Obama administration, it might have understood without public admission that its inherently liberal foreign policy, starting from the aftermath of the Cold War, has failed, and that "the end of history" was just a delusion. That situation may be because, at least for now, no specific set of universal values can define what constitutes a good life, and this fact can be particularly highlighted in the Muslin world, where nationalism and realism are almost always more compelling than liberalism.

Otherwise, Obama would not have pivoted to Asia, Trump might not have initiated a trade war against other nations, including some liberal democracies, as well as proposing his "America First" policy, and Biden would not be allying with other Western powers against China, while renegotiating conversations with Russia.

Currently, despite the accusation that China is a "liberal order challenger" or "human rights abuser" of ethnic and political minorities, the concealing rationale may be no more about liberalism and universal values, but about the competition for power ― in other words, a realistic and nationalistic struggle. To this extent, the U.S. is not all that different from China.

So, as the U.S. will not easily let China restore its historical position as a great civilizational leader, China is unwilling to let Taiwan go. When the American and Chinese leaders face irreconcilable conflicts of interest, I only hope they will look into the dark and bottomless chasm and realize, "That it is indeed a very deep hole which we should not fall into."

Jon Jiang is an Australia-based China and Russia analyst, and advisor on business and international affairs. He has published extensively in The South China Morning Post, The Diplomat and The Jamestown Foundation, etc.