Since the Chinese were officially plugged into the virtual community in 1994, the usage of the internet in the country has developed at an incredible rate. By the end of 2008, there were approximately 298 million netizens in China, a number which surpasses that of the U.S. and ranks China the highest user in the world. The rapid development of the online Chinese community has not only boosted the information flow among citizens across the territory, but has also created a new form of social interaction between the state, the media, various professionals and intellectuals, as well as China's ordinary citizens. Although the subject of this book is online Chinese nationalism, which to a certain extent is seen as a pro-regime phenomenon, the emergence of an online civil society in China intrinsically provides some form of supervision of state power-perhaps even a check on it. The fact that the party-state has made use of this social interaction, while at the same time remaining worried about the negative impact of the same netizens, is a fundamental characteristic of the nature of the relationship between the state and the internet community. Many questions arise when considering the internet and Chinese nationalism. Which are the most important internet sites carrying online discussion of nationalism related to the author's particular area of study? What are the differences between online nationalism and the conventional form of nationalism, and why do these differences exist? Has nationalist online expression influenced actual foreign policy making? Has nationalist online expression influenced discourse in the mainstream mass media in China? Have there been any counter reactions towards online nationalism? Where do they come from? Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations seeks to address these questions.

Chinese nationalism is powered by a narrative of China's century of shame and humiliation in the hands of imperialist powers and calls for the Chinese government to redeem the past humiliations and take back all "lost territories." The continuing surge of Chinese nationalism in the early 21st century therefore has fed a roiling sense of anxiety in many political capitals about whether a virulent nationalism has emerged to make China’s rise anything but peaceful. This book addresses this anxiety by examining the domestic sources and foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the early 21st century. It is divided into three parts. Part I is an overview of the scholarly debate about if the rise of Chinese nationalism has driven China’s foreign policy in a more irrational and inflexible direction in the first one and half decades of the 21st century. Part II analyzes the construction of Chinese nationalism by a variety of domestic forces, including the communist state, the angry youth (fen qing), liberal intellectuals, and ethnic groups. Part III explores whether Chinese nationalism is affirmative, assertive, or aggressive through the case studies of China’s maritime territorial disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea, the border controversy over the ancient Koguryo with Korea, and the cross-Taiwan Strait relations. This book was based on articles published in the Journal of Contemporary China.

Wang follows the Chinese Communist Party's ideological re-education of the public through the exploitation of China's humiliating modern history, tracking the CCP's use of history education to glorify the party, re-establish its legitimacy, consolidate national identity, and justify one-party rule in the post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War era.

This book examines the changing role of nationalism in China in the light of the immense political and economic changes there during the 1990s. It analyses recent debates between the nationalists (New Left) and liberals in China and examines the roles played by state-sponsored and populist nationalism in China's foreign relations with the West in general and the USA in particular. The issues of Taiwanese nationalism and Tibet and Xinjiang separatism are discussed, with a focus on the questions of the impact of globalisation on national integration or fragmentation and the relationship between democracy and national integration - should democracy precede national integration or could democracy be realised only after national integration, or are democracy and national integration mutually exclusive objectives? The book also examines the roles played by the People's Liberation Army and fiscal system in China in promoting Chinese nationalism and national integration.

This thesis conducts detailed content and data analysis to explore the influences of online Chinese nationalism on Chinese society and politics in the post-Olympic China. It can be divided into three parts. First, it highlights that the year 2008 is a crucial landmark of the studies of online nationalism in China. Second, it argues the profound influences of online nationalism on Chinese society in two layers: how it shapes the online nationalistic public, and how it affects Chinese politics. Public-wise, two major features are pointed out, which are voluntariness and collective aggressiveness. Politics-wise, Online Chinese nationalism presents its influence in two ways. On one hand, online Chinese nationalism has cast conspicuous impacts on Chinese foreign relations and policymaking: they are complementary to each other in some cases, while online nationalism can be a dilemma faced the Communist Party. On the other hand, the thesis argues that the dissidents who express their criticism under the protection of nationalism have a certain degree of potential of formalizing a digital civil society in China, but its inherited limits could prevent it from functioning properly.

Chinese Cyber Nationalism offers the first comprehensive examination of the social and ideological movement that mixes Confucian cultural traditions and advanced media technology. Over the past decade, the Internet has increasingly become a communication center, organizational platform, and channel of execution by which Chinese nationalistic causes have been promoted throughout the world. Dr. Xu Wu chronicles the movement's evolutionary path through five distinct developing phases that cover the span of twelve years. Through the use of online surveys and in-depth interviews with foreign policy makers, nationalist webmasters, and leading intellectuals in China, this book analyzes the characteristics and political implications of the movement. Xu presents a unique framework for scholars to understand China's modernization and historic return onto the world stage. Chinese Cyber Nationalism is a important addition to the study of political communication and China's foreign policy.

Various domestic factors impact upon China's foreign policy making, such as bureaucracy, academics, media and public opinion. This stimulating book examines their increasing influence and focuses in particular on China's policy towards the United States, exploring whether there has been an emergence of societal factors, independent of the Communist Party, that have begun to exert influence over the policy process. It also debates questions such as how it will affect the ability of the Chinese government to frame and implement its policy towards the US, and whether it has generated institutional arrangements in China for cooperation on issues such as trade, human rights and Taiwan. The book provides a better understanding of the role of societal forces in China's foreign policy making process.