China nationalism on the rise
Recent events in China highlighted the heightened nationalism in China. It is possible that the rise of nationalism stems from a rise in hostility towards China by the US and co.
Regardless of the reason, the intensified nationalism is causing or on track to cause a big problem. Without proper mitigation, the seeds of resentment can sprow into trees that darkens the sky.
Because of my dual lingual nature and I have tightly integrated myself into the cultural fabrics of both societies, I enjoyed privileg insight into the thinking and media circle of both societies. I have seen intense nationalism and borderline fascism from both sides. In the west, especially in western media, any and everything that comes out of China is under tight scrutiny, many facts are twisted and many stories fabricated. I think this comes from either the governments (Australia government funded ASPI thinking tank) or media manipulating (conservatist news outlet). This can also be due to the fact that ‘everyone’s “little” racist’. White majority of the West do not want to see a rich and powerful Asia because that will mean they lose dominance over the world and privileges. I think the most likely reason is the combination of all the above.
The nationalism I experienced in China mainly includes the ones I have seen in Zhihu (a Chinese social media platform). One of the examples is ‘Ru Guan Xue’, where the posters compare America to the Ming Dynasty and China to the early Qing power. It includes the advocacy of either literally invading and overtaking America and all the natural resources or figuratively overtake the US supremacy in the world and as a result drastically improving the wealth and living standard of the Chinese people. If this propaganda is pushed by Chinese government, I think the main reason will be to divert attention from the national problems, including the worsening of Gini index (wealth equality) and the high property price destroying poor family’s dream to own a house. This strategy is called draw a cake to stop hunger. Another example is downvote for any posts that praise the US and upvote for any that praise the CCP (pretty much the mirrored reality as Reddit).
Nationalism is an intricate and delicate topic. Nationalism exists in every country, within every region. It caused the majority of the world’s wars and caused enormous economical loss throughout the world. Fundamentally, the nationalists think of the geopolitical world as a zero sum game, where the winning of one race or country means the destruction of another.
The fearsome nationalism, if not handled properly, will lead to devastating economical or physical war. Nowadays, the containment of China has become a bipartisan effort in US, and similar political environment is brewing in China. The discouraging fact is that there are no collaborations of political factions in the US and China that are collaborating and ridding the influence of nationalism, at least not on the surface.
A country, regardless of its population size and political ideology is always divided. What the embracing globalism and world value section of the US political power can do is to appeal to the same section of Chinese political power to form an alliance. This alliance can strengthen both sections because it is the combined power of two of the strongest nations. This cooperation will dramatically weaken the nationalism and conservatism faction of both countries.
Tiktok is an excellent example of mishandling by the conservatism faction of the US government. TikTok set up servers in the US and hired several thousands of US employees to run the US part of TikTok, Bytedance promised to follow all the US regulations (compared to Facebook threatening to pull out of Europe because it does not want to follow the local regulations). However, it still resulted in Trump’s forced transfer and hard ban on the app. This confirms and reinforces the idea that the US cannot be trusted in China. It also showed that the US would not value the world order it set by itself and give China nationalism more ammunition and power. What the US could have done instead, is to reward the company for following the US laws and exert influence over the country. In term, the company can exert influence over China itself and benefit the liberal force of China.
All the peace and freedom loving people should unite together to tackle this pressing and immense issue which would make sure the world progress in the direction that betters the majority of people. I know the ‘majority’ has bad connotation within the current political correctness environment, but when the minority has such a world view that put their interest in front of everyone else’s and have the fundamental conflict with what everyone want to achieve, then there are no way to mitigate the and find the common ground. People who value the world have to defend ourselves from such warmongers.
Of cause even when the progressive section of US and China can take over the political power in the respective country, there are still problems with the battle over the development space (China want to develop high tech, high value products, which is at odds with US’ position of value chain in the world) and supply of resources. However, creating a fair environment for global competitions has many benefits not only for the people in those countries, but also the whole world’s population.