Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous: The problem of China

National Review, April 30, 2001 by John Derbyshire

The recent crisis in Hainan Island brought Chinese nationalism to the front of our minds. Specialist China-watchers have understood for some time that the events of 1989-not only the student and worker movements that were crushed in Tiananmen Square on June 4 of that year, but also the collapse of Soviet and East European communism-presented China's leaders with a crisis of legitimacy. Those leaders responded by pushing traditional Marxism-Leninism into the background and fortifying China's state ideology with angry, uncompromising assertions of national pride. Ordinary Americans probably woke up to this first in May 1999, following the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Demonstrations broke out in Beijing, and TV viewers in this country saw young Chinese hurling rocks at the U.S. Embassy. Though no such thing could happen in China without the approval of the authorities, it was nonetheless plain that much of the emotion on display was genuine.

In fact, an earlier, quite spontaneous outburst of aggrieved nationalism was stifled by the Chinese authorities. This was in September 1993, when Beijing's bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics was turned down in favor of Sydney. Feelings were especially inflamed on that occasion because, owing to the way the announcement was made, and a poor translation to China's TV audience, viewers' first impression was that Beijing had won the bidding. When the truth dawned, some minutes later, disappointment was intense, and riots in Beijing were averted only by a massive police clampdown. There were, even so, bitter expressions of anger that the world was not treating China with the respect to which she was entitled. It is now widely believed in China that the U.S. deliberately thwarted Beijing's bid for the 2000 Games by manipulations behind the scenes.

Chinese nationalism was not born in 1989, of course. One of Deng Xiaoping's first initiatives, after consolidating his power at the Twelfth Party Congress of 1982, was to launch a movement entitled "Five Emphases, Four Beautifications, Three Loves." The "Three Loves" were for the country, the party, and socialism, in that order. Mao's revolution was, in fact, as much nationalist as communist. This was one reason Stalin-who was quite a learned man in the narrow sphere of Marxist-Leninist theory-looked down on Mao. Orthodox communist dogma was internationalist, and foresaw a worldwide socialist utopia in which national boundaries would be obsolete. Once they saw the advantages of socialism, people everywhere would clamor to join that commonwealth. Until then, national boundaries should, in theory, be respected. The Constitution of the USSR guaranteed the right of secession to every Union republic. This right existed only on paper while the dictatorship lasted, but when Soviet power collapsed, all the republics chose to exercise the right of secession, and they are now independent.

Mao's China was never like that. The non-Chinese nationalities trapped in the People's Republic have their own "autonomous regions," but the "autonomy" is perfectly fictitious, and they have no right to secede under China's Constitution. To the contrary, Article 4 prohibits acts that "instigate the secession" of any minority, and there is perhaps no article more ruthlessly enforced. "Splittism" (fenlie zhuyi) is one of the most serious thought-crimes in the People's Republic, and the accusation that the West seeks to break up China is a staple of the xenophobic polemics now widely published and read in China, with the obvious indulgence of the government. All of China-62 degrees of longitude-is on Beijing time, to the great inconvenience of the western territories. Notwithstanding much mendacious window-dressing about "preserving minority cultures," China's actual policy towards her subject peoples is one of determined Sinification. Every Mongolian, every Tibetan, every Uighur knows that to enjoy anything better than a subsistence living, he must speak, dress, eat, and think Chinese.

"Nationalism" does not really capture the whole of the phenomenon under consideration here. There is a large component of racial pride. I used to belong to a scholarly e-mail group for Chinese scientists and researchers in the U.S. When I ventured some mild remarks about the status of Tibet and Turkestan, I was met with a volley of frankly racial abuse. One respondent addressed me as "England big nose," and another offered sarcastically to kiss my "hairy hand." These are not illiterate rednecks, mind you, but the cream of the Chinese intelligentsia, bearers of advanced degrees from prestigious universities. Another staple of the xenophobic literature now popular in China is the claim that U.S. scientists are working on racially selective biological weapons; and the very respectable British Sinologist Jasper Becker, in his 2000 book The Chinese, claims that the government sponsors research to prove that the Chinese belong to a separate species. One wonders what direction China's own biological- weapons research is taking.