Language and Identity: Chinese Nation-Building, Localization and
Individualization
By
Yunjing Feng
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts and Culture
In
Graduate School of Humanities
Comparative Cultural Analysis
University of Amsterdam
Instructor: David Duindam
15 June 2015 Feng 2
Table of Contents
Abstract ...... 3
Introduction ...... 4
Chapter One: Chinese Language Policy and Mono-Nation-Building ...... 15
1.1 Language and Nation ...... 15
1.2 Putonghua Promotion and Chinese Mono-Nation-Building ...... 21
1.3 Relationship Between Putonghua and Regional Languages ...... 30
Chapter Two: Hong Kong Identity and Chineseness ...... 39
2.1 Introduction ...... 39
2.2 The Formation of Hong Kong Identity...... 41
2.3 Hong Kong Identity and Chinese Identity ...... 50
Chapter Three: Chinese Individualization and the Rise of Regionalism ...... 57
3.1 Introduction ...... 57
3.2 The Rise of Chinese Individualization ...... 61
3.3 Nostalgia and Regionalism ...... 72
Conclusion ...... 83
Work Cited ...... 89
Feng 3
Abstract
In the context of globalization, Chinese nation-building, localization and individualization are three prominent trends that supplement each other and introduce a new mechanism for different groups to interact. This thesis will mainly focus on the interrelationship between these three processes and examine how language facilitates the construction of cultural identity of different groups. We will first discuss how Chinese nation-building promotes its national language to achieve national unity. Later on, we will probe into the relationship between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity in order to reveal the correlation between localization and nation-building. In the end, we will analyze the rise of Chinese individualization through our analysis of its “Chineseness” and “newness”; what is more, we will link the process of individualization with the rise of regionalism.
Key Words: Nation-building; Localization; Individualization; China; Identity; Language
Feng 4
Introduction
Globalization, which introduces a new mechanism for global interaction, generates three tendencies simultaneously: nation-building, localization and individualization. First of all, global migration along with the increasing social mobility interrogate the fixed physical boundary of territories and lead to a trend of deterritorization. Although “nation” is not a novel and recent concept, the idea of nation (the ideology of nationalism) is a modern product.
In the epoch of globalization, frequent transnational migrations intensify the contacts between different nations and give rise to national awareness, which enables people to imagine their nation as an unique group. Nation-states engage in a process of nation-building in order to reconstruct the boundary of national identity and reconnect its citizens based on an imaginary social bond. While globalization breaks the monopoly of the state and accelerates the process of decentralization, local groups develop into another rising force that both competes against and negotiates with nation-states. Globalization allows for the rise of local groups on the one hand but meanwhile blurs the line between different regional groups. Consequently, people’s cultural identity becomes fragmented and hybridized. To repair a sense of anxiety, local groups adopt a binary approach to construct an unique regional identity by highlighting its difference from others. In that sense, localization can be seen as another struggle for self-affirmation, not at a national scale but in a regional level. The third trend of individualization evolves from the process of modernization that redefines the relation Feng 5 between individuals and the state. Modernization, which brings about the division of labor, the privation of economy, the mobilization of the population and the ubiquity of social media, liberates individuals from their previous social confinements and raises their awareness of
“self” as a subject rather than an object in society. This new status of individuals marks the rise of individualization.
The social-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai points out that with the advent of globalization, nation-states face a “crisis” which renders their legitimacy insecure (20).
According to Appadurai, nation is a system that “appears poorly equipped to deal with the interlinked diasporas of people and images that mark the here and now ”(19). He summarizes two major factors that disturb the boundary of nation: one is transnational migration which accelerates border-crossing activities, and the other is mass mediation that links producers with audiences across national boundaries and produces several “diasporic public spheres”
(Appadurai 22). If the geographical border fails to distinguish one nation from another, then imagination offers an alternative to redefine the notion of nation. Benedict Anderson, an
American scholar specializing in international studies and political science, proposes a theory of “imagined community” to address this crisis of nation. According to him, nation is “an imagined political community imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson
15). As he explains, the word “imagined” indicates that members within their community do not know most of their fellows (Anderson 15) while the term “community” means that the Feng 6 nation is conceived as a kind of comradeship and fraternity (Anderson 16). Under his theory, nation is no longer a spatial concept, but rather an “idea” of nation facilitated by people’s
“doubleness of reading” (Anderson 37). This collective reading process creates a shared experience among people from different regions and thereby strengthens their identification with “strangers”. Since the rise of national consciousness is closely related to the crisis of nation, it is reasonable to perceive the idea of nation as a product of globalization.
In the context of globalization, China addresses this “crisis of nation” through a process of nation-building. Its nation-building mainly strives for two goals: one is to promote the state’s new image worldwide to differentiate from other nations; the other is to unite the nation by constructing an inclusive national identity. The emergence of the “Chineseness” discourse illustrates the strategy of Chinese nation-building to promote its self-defined national image in the global stage and counteract the hegemony of the West. Rey Chow, a cultural critic specializing in post-colonial theory, suggests that the previous notion of
“Chinese” emerges as a cultural supplement to the western practices (4). “There remains in the West, against the current facade of welcoming the non-Western others into putatively interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchanges, a continual tendency to stigmatize and ghettoize non-Western culture precisely by way of ethnic, national labels” (Chow 4). The notion of “Chinese”, according to Chow, is a label imposed and promoted by the West, which remains “untheorized and taken for granted” (7). However, the new concept of “Chineseness” Feng 7 put forwarded by Chinese intellectuals, reflects the nation’s struggle for self-determination.
Guohua Zeng points out in his Ph. D thesis that the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing
Olympic Games serves the purpose of Chinese nation-building to change its old image into a modern one (50). This national strategy to articulate a new “Chineseness”, as Zeng argues, promotes a subject with equal standing with the west, but meanwhile its
“to-be-looked-at-ness” feature implies a powerful gaze of the west (51). His statement reveals the paradox of “Chineseness” as a national strategy: on the one hand, it aims at building a new national identity as “Greater China” that challenges its previous stereotypes and displays its inclusiveness; on the other hand, it fails to cut off its connection with the west, just as it can neither avoid the influence of global interaction nor become self-sufficient.
The chief objective of Chinese nation-building is to construct an unified nation.
Chinese linguistic professor Minglang Zhou points out that China adopts the model of mono-nation-building to integrate different national elements into an inclusive Chinese national identity (“Linguistic Diversity” 6). In theory, this model allows for the coexistence of national identity and regional identity, but in practice it promotes the ideology of “one nation with one national identity” which renders regional identity subordinated to the national identity. One of the methods to construct “one national identity” is to unify the language within the whole nation. Chinese language policy plays a crucial role in facilitating the formation of national identity. The language planning in China promotes Putonghua as the Feng 8 national standard language, which as a result unifies the nation’s linguistic environment and stimulates intergroup exchanges.
In the first chapter of this thesis, we will mainly examine how Chinese mono-nation-building achieves national unity through the implementation of its language policy. The major issue centers on how Putonghua is used to unite the nation and build an inclusive national identity. It is noteworthy that Chinese mono-nation-building is not an assimilating process but promotes both diversity and uniformity. In this chapter, we will first examine the notion of nation to reveal the discourse of Chinese nation-building in the global context. Later on, we will focus on how Chinese language policy standardizes and popularizes the use of Putonghua to fulfill national uniformity and integration. In the end, we are going to analyze the relationship between Putonghua and regional languages in China to reveal the results of Chinese mono-nation-building.
In addition to nation-building, globalization also leads to another trend of localization.
Appadurai situates locality in the context of globalization and views it as relational and contextual rather than spatial (178). He proposes three dimensions of the construction of locality: (1) the efforts of modern nation-state to define neighborhoods under the sign of its forms of allegiance; (2) the disjunction between territory, subjectivity and social movement;
(3) the steady erosion of relation between spatial and virtual neighborhoods, due to the force of media mediation (Appadurai 189). According to Appadurai, the formation of locality is not Feng 9 only a local matter, but also an important issue for nation-states to seek legitimacy from a regional level. Judging from these three dimension, the effects of globalization—including the disconnection of physical sites and population movements, the intertwining relation between “neighborhoods”— gives rise to localization which restores the uniqueness of local groups and reconnects people to an “imagined community”. As Appadurai puts it, locality is a product of globalization. In the discourse of localization, both the global-local and nation-local relations are crucial issues. Most related literature perceives localization as a resistance to the force of globalization and nation-building. As the human geography professor Tim Oakes points out, many scholars perceive the local as a space for resistance to both “modernist abstraction of nation-state” and “placeless globalism of transnational capital”
(670). However, he contends that this approach ignores the role of the state in regulating transnational flows which the local should not reject but rather align with it (Oakes 671).
Most importantly, Oakes redefines the relationship between nation and the local not as a contradiction but as a reciprocal interaction. He states that while local elites promote the national discourse “Chineseness” to connect localities to a broader network of power (Oakes
669), nation states, fragmented by social movement, also seek for a localized identity (Oakes
670). His idea hints on the compatibility between nation-building and localization, and hence stresses the correlation between national identity and local identity. Feng 10
With this relational concept of locality in mind, we will focus on the formation of
Hong Kong identity in the second chapter to investigate the dynamic interactions between nation-building and localization. Hong Kong is a site where three forces (global, national and local) compete against and reconcile with each other. Due to its colonial history and the ambivalent relationship with mainland China, Hong Kong’s identity is characterized by its ambiguity since it is constituted by a complex mixture of post-colonial identity, Chinese identity and its local identity. Chinese professor Anthony Fung, who works in the field of
Hong Kong identity, concludes that Hong Kong identity is “hybridized between the local and national identity” (“Postcolonial Hong Kong Identity” 399). While Hong Kong people distinguish themselves from both the British and the Chinese, they are confronted with an identity dilemma where their “in-between” status lacks authenticity and legitimacy. To address its identity anxiety, Hong Kong constructs an unique local identity and endows it with distinct value by distinguishing itself from mainland Chinese. With regard to Hong
Kong’s ambiguous identity, the second chapter will focus on the central issue of how local identity both diverges from and intersects with national identity. It is commonly believed that the construction of Hong Kong identity is local resistance against encroachment of globalization and nation-building. For instance, Fung points out in his another article that the articulation of Hong Kong identity is a collective resistance to its assimilation into the national culture (“What Makes the Local” 592). He clarifies that this resistance is not merely Feng 11 about building a defensive mechanism against the dominant institutions, but also a re-definition of Hong Kong identity (Fung, “What Makes the Local” 594). In contrast, other opinions contend that it is possible to achieve an integration between Hong Kong identity and
Chinese identity during the process of localization. Based on the Common In-group Identity
Model, the paper “Out-Group Value Incongruence and Intergroup Attitude” indicates that the more Hong Kong Chinese subgroup identifies with the super-ordinate Chinese group, the more it acknowledges its common identity (Chinese identity) with other subgroups (Mainland
Chinese) and the more likely it is to achieves positive intergroup attitude (Guan et al. 383). In this logic, the integration between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity is achievable as long as subgroups develop a strong identification with the superordinate group.
The question of whether the formation of Hong Kong identity is local resistance or an integration into Chinese identity has much to do with our understanding of the relationship between two groups. The dominant discourse in mainland China regards it as a correlation between the subgroup and the superordinate group, while people in Hong Kong prefer to consider it as an intergroup relation where two categories situate in an equal position. To reflect these arguments above, our second chapter will specifically focus on a Hong Kong film Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996) to disentangle the complex relationship between
Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity. This film depicts the stories between two mainlanders who migrate from mainland to Hong Kong and then to New York. Their Feng 12 changing identities indicate how Hong Kong identity is constructed through its comparison with others and how it is included within the category of Chinese identity. The film points out both the contradiction and connection between national identity and local identity. To illustrate this nation-local interaction, we will first inquire into the formation of an exclusive
Hong Kong identity that is developed through intergroup comparison. In the second part, we will discuss the way localization reacts to nation-building by examining the extent to which
Hong Kong identity diverges from and overlaps with Chinese identity.
Globalization not only facilitates the development of localization, but also gives rise to individualization, which represents another form of resistance and self-determination from an individual level. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck shows that individualization is not an invention of the twentieth century but the “triple individualization”, as he suggests, evolves from a recent process of modernization (127). He proposes three aspects of this modern individualization: (1) disembedding or removal from historically prescribed social forms (the “liberating dimension”); (2) the loss of traditional security (the “disenchantment dimension”); (3) re-embedding as a new type of social commitment (the “reintegration dimension”) (128). His analysis largely focuses on the institutional changes in the individual-society relation, which release individuals from the traditional social bond and meanwhile reconnect them to institutions. Referring to Beck’s individualization theory,
Yunxiang Yan, a Chinese socio-cultural anthropology professor, puts forward the concept of Feng 13
“partial individualization” to demonstrate the specificity of Chinese individualization (509).
Yan borrows the concept of “duality of self” from a noted Chinese scholar Qichao Liang to demonstrate that Chinese individualization is characterized by its combination of the collectivist and individualist culture. According to him, individuals in China obtain two selves: a “small self” which emphasizes their personal desire and a “greater self” that prioritizes the common good and subjugates the smaller one (494). This division points out the two-sided effect of Chinese individualization: on the one hand, individuals release themselves from previous social ties and become the self-conscious and independent citizens; on the other hand, they are assigned with new responsibility to participate in public affairs and to pursue the collective dream of modernity. In view of these arguments above, the third chapter will first elaborate on the characteristics of Chinese individualization by dealing with the following questions: what define the “Chineseness” of this individualization? What kind of “new” features does Chinese individualization embrace? My key argument is that the most distinctive feature of Chinese individualization lies in its continuity between collectivism and individualism. To further expand this argument, I will introduce the Protecting Cantonese
Movement in 2010 in Guangzhou as a general context and mainly deal with the rise of
Chinese individualization embodied in this movement. In the second part of this chapter, I will discuss how this individual movement develop into a regional campaign. I will look into an online video work named Rap Guangzhou produced by an university student in Feng 14
Guangzhou. The video mainly reveals local people’s concern about the destruction in the old city and the disappearance of Cantonese in local society. We will examine how Rap
Guangzhou uses a nostalgia theme to strengthen people’s local awareness and encourage local individuals to counteract the force of nation-building and city-planning.
Feng 15
Chapter One: Chinese Language Policy and Mono-Nation-Building
1.1 Language and Nation
Language is not merely a tool for communication, but it also facilitates the process of nation-building. In China, due to its complex linguistic situation, it is fundamentally significant to build an united nation that accommodates diverse language groups. China’s linguistic environment is characterized by its multiplicity and diversity. Among all the 56 ethnic groups in China, including the majority Han ethnic and other 55 minorities, only 3 ethnic groups (Han, Hui and Manchu) speak Chinese whereas the rest use their own languages. According to the Oxford handbook Language Policy and Ideology: Greater
China, Chinese regional languages are divided into seven groups: Putonghua (Mandarin),
Yue (Cantonese), Min, Hakka, Wu, Xiang and Gan (Zhang 1). To consolidate its national unity, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) adopts a national common language to unify the linguistic environment and promote domestic exchange. As a result, Putonghua was officially adopted as the common speech for the nation in 1956. Longsheng Guo, a Chinese linguistic scholar from the Institute of Applied Linguistics of the PRC State Language Commission, offers a definition of Putonghua: “To have Beijing speech as its standard pronunciation, the northern Chinese dialect as its base dialect, and modern Chinese literary classic written in vernacular Chinese as its grammatical norm” (46). From this description, we learn that Feng 16
Putonghua, based on the northern dialect, is not the mother tongue for many regional groups, but is promoted as a common speech for all groups in order to unify the whole nation.
Recent studies of Chinese language policy show a growing interest in the connection between Putonghua promotion and Chinese nation-building. Most of the literature focuses on how the normalization and popularization of Putonghua enables the state to build an unified nation. For example, the Oxford handbook points out that in order to build a stronger and united nation, Chinese language reform was initiated in the early period when China was defeated by foreign powers during the Opium War (1840-1842, 1856-1860) and the first
Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) (Zhang 2). When it came to the first half of the twentieth century, efforts to standardize the phonetic symbols and simplify Chinese characters mainly served the purpose of unifying the language nationwide (Zhang 2). After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, language reforms aimed at building an unified and modern Chinese state
(Zhang 3). As the handbook concludes, Putonghua functions as a “sociopolitical tool for nation-building” (Zhang 4). Another publication also suggests that the language policy in
Chinese history is a strategy for the state to “regulate the power from the center” (Zhou and
Ross 2). It mentions that early in the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) the “bloody” language planning took place, where the government adopted xiaozhuan as the official script whilst abolished all the other written forms in order to unify the newly-established nation (Zhou and
Ross 2). Similarly, the article “Nation-Building, Collective Identity, and Language Choices” Feng 17 states that language policy is not adopted for its own sake but for other purposes, for instance the establishment of a modern nation (Safran and Liu 270).
All these studies focus on the political function of national language that serves the interests of the state to consolidate its legitimacy and unify the country. However, I would argue that language is not only a tool for state-building but also a strategy for nation-building, since it facilitates the psychological process of developing a national identity. Walker Connor, a professor of political science best known for his work on nationalism, points out a distinction between nation and state, where he defines the former as a “self-differentiating ethnic group” whereas the latter as “one the major political divisions of the globe” (25). It remains arguable whether ethnicity can be a decisive factor to define a nation, but I agree with Connor in his division. Since the boundary between nation and state is highly blurred in the context of China, people often conflate nation-building with state-building. Under such circumstance, it is necessary for us to draw a line between these two notions in order to understand both the political and psychological function of language in constructing a national identity.
Before we address the issue of nation-building, we need to first answer this question: what is nation? Nation, in a traditional sense, is often defined by its territorial or political borders. However, with the advent of globalization and modernization, transnational activities intensify social mobility and thereby call into question the fixed physical boundary Feng 18 of nation. Under such circumstance, the notion of nation requires further redefinition and clarification. Anderson’s idea of “imagined” nation goes beyond the confinement of kinship and spatial division while underscores the cognitive dimension of nation. Since his notion is closely linked to people’s psychological awareness, it implies a connection between the formation of nation and the construction of a national identity. Arjun Appadurai further develops Anderson’s idea of print capitalism into electronic capitalism and takes the global interaction into account. He highlights that electronic mass mediation and transnational mobilization break the monopoly of nation-state over the projection of modernization (10) and leads to the “crisis” of nation-state (19). In Appadurai’s description, nation-states are
“units in a complex interactive system”, which are unlikely to be the “long-term arbiters of the relationship between globality and modernity” (19). Appadurai attributes the crisis of nation to its inability deal with the “interlinked diaspora of people and images that mark the here and now” (19). Based on these discussions, I conclude that the frequent transnational interactions and the increasing social mobility question the stable border of nation and hence give rise to the discourse of “imagined nation”.
Concerned with the dilemma of nation, Connor proposes a concept of
“ethnonationalism” which links ethnicity closely with nationalism. He regards nation as a larger ethnic group where national consciousness and popular sovereignty serve as two preconditions to achieve national self-determination. Connor combines the theories of Feng 19
Anderson and Appadurai. First of all, his term “ethnonationalism” indicates that the ethnic kinship, as the basis of nation, is not restricted to the actual bond between people, but more as an emotional attachment to an ethnic group where people share the “myth of common descent” (Connor 25). This echoes Anderson’s notion of nation as a subjective group identification. Secondly, Connor also takes into account Appadurai’s concept of “modernity at large”. He points out that although modernization fails to explain why the idea of nation evolves, it does provides evidence of when it was formed. Anthony Smith, a British ethnographer considered as a founder of nationalism studies, further elaborates on Connor’s argument. He adds that modernization increases the “intensity” of ethnic group interactions to the point where their frequent contacts become a threat to group identity and propel people to participate in national politics to address this situation (Smith 58). All these scholars owe the rise of national awareness to the development of modernization and globalization. Appadurai explains why the idea of nation arises in the global age but does not clarify what exactly it is.
Connor’s definition seems to be more comprehensive but his perspective is still limited to ethnicity. Smith, in consideration of the limitation of current studies of nation, tries to fill in the gap. He points out that the problem of Connor lies in his dependence on the psychological aspects of nation without showing enough attention to the real kinship (63). Smith argues that the subjective components, such as people’s common memories and emotional attachment to homeland, do not suffice to define the complex notion of nation (63). He proposes two more Feng 20 components to supplement Connor’s definition of nation: one is the symbolic elements, such as memories, codes and values, which are indispensable for the nation to maintain its distinctiveness (Smith 64); the other is institutional elements, including education, customs and rituals, which act as “long-term vehicles for reproduction of the distinctive heritage”
(Smith 65). I agree with Smith in that the combination of actual kinship and imaginary social tie offers a more comprehensive understanding of the discourse of nation. In view of all the definitions above, I would like to propose two perspectives to examine nation-building, namely the institutional and psychological dimensions. In this chapter, we will first analyze both dimensions by examining two central questions: how does Chinese language policy lend institutional support to the promotion of Putonghua and fulfill the goal of building an united nation? How does the spread of Putonghua contribute to the formation of an inclusive national identity? I would elaborate on my key point that Chinese nation-building is not limited to a process of state-building which aims at consolidating the state control and constructing an unified nation, but it also involves a psychological process of promoting its national identity worldwide. In the second part, we will discuss the relationship between
Putonghua and regional languages, as a way to reveal how Chinese mono-nation-building controls the degree of regional diversity on the one hand and gives rise to localization on the other hand.
Feng 21
1.2 Putonghua Promotion and Chinese Mono-Nation-Building
It is commonly believed that Chinese nation-building aims at maintaining national unity and pursuing modernization. However, this idea confuses the process of state-building, which serves the interests of Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the process of nation-building.
With regard to this misunderstanding, I suggest that the overriding goal for Chinese nation-building is not simply to build a politically united and powerful state, but also to reconstruct a national identity. This new identity is not restricted to the geographical boundary of the nation, but instead it refers to a larger imagined community known as
“Greater China”, which includes overseas groups outside the border of mainland China, such as diaspora Chinese and people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. In other words, Chinese nation-building is not limited to the construction of a nation per se, but also aims at promoting a more inclusive national identity worldwide.
In the current context of China, the construction of its national identity can be seen as a process of mono-nation-building. Minglang Zhou points out a shift in Chinese nation-building model from multi-nation-building to mono-nation-building. According to
Zhou, the PRC adopted the Soviet Union’s “multinational state building” model in the 1950s which offered regional autonomy to the 55 minority nationalities and guaranteed them the freedom to use their oral and written languages (“Linguistic Diversity” 5). Though this policy seems to be the optimal solution to achieve national unity, it is based on the precondition that Feng 22 all the minority languages should be the “satellite” of Han language (Putonghua or Mandarin)
(Zhou, “Linguistic Diversity” 5). In other words, minority groups are supposed to give top priority to the construction of a unified nation and put their demand for regional development to a secondary position. However, as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the PRC gradually replaced its former multi-state-building model with a new model of “one nation with diversity”. Another article of Zhou mentions that if the previous “accommodationism” policy tolerates the pluralism of minorities’ linguistics, then this mono-nation-building model tends to integrate forcefully the minorities into the majority and prohibit linguistic pluralism
(“Language Policy” 9). Since embracing multilingualism would undermine the “monopoly of the ‘national’ language” (Safran and Liu 280), the mono-nation-building model promotes the ideology of monolingualism as a way to secure the primacy and hegemony of the national speech. As Putonghua develops into the only legitimate national language, it maintains its dominance over other languages in China. The monopoly of Putonghua is not only a product of the mono-nation-building model, but in return it also provides necessary conditions for the construction of a mono-nation.
To achieve national unity, the standardization of language is one of the methods to build an unitary state. Chinese mono-nation-building adopts various institutional measures—including the implementation of language laws, the establishment of linguistic norms, and the official promotion of Putonghua in the public sphere—in order to unify and Feng 23 standardize the nation’s language. Scholars Minglang Zhou and Heidi Ross sum up three major goals of Chinese language policy: (1) to spread Putonghua until it become the national common speech; (2) to promote the standard Romanization for Chinese, known as Hanyu
Pinyin; (3) to simplify Chinese characters (19). These goals point out three aspects of language standardization process, including the normalization of the spoken speech, phonetic spellings and written forms. In the early language reforms, a preliminary plan to standardize all these linguistic components began to take shape. For example, the system of Phonetic
Symbols was approved by the Ministry of Education in 1918 and was further revised in 1930.
Besides, the first roman-alphabet-based system was formed in 1928. After several years of heated discussions, Beijing dialect was chosen to form the basis of the spoken national language. The language policy after 1949 provided a more systematic institutional framework of language standardization. To improve national literacy, a comprehensive list of 2236 simplified characters was published and meanwhile the Scheme for Phonetic Alphabet of
Chinese was also approved in 1964. As the linguistics professor John Rohsenow points out, this systematic list now becomes the standard for all newspapers, periodicals and modern language books throughout mainland China (Rohsenow 22). The written forms of the national language also became systematized when the Second Scheme of Simplified Chinese
Character was promulgated in 1977. Furthermore, the execution of Law of the People’s
Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language in 2001 marked a Feng 24 significant progress in language legislation, since it largely widened the scope of Putonghua use, from TV broadcasting to education.
All these efforts to standardize the national language correspond to the ideology of
“one nation with one national language”: they solely focus on the standardization of
Putonghua, based on an assumption that Putonghua is the only sources for language norms which every Chinese should conform to. By providing the same codes and linguistic standards for all speakers, Chinese language policy largely increases the degree of similarity between different groups. The sociocultural anthropology professor Andrew Kipnis uses the term “commonality” to describe the double effect of Putonghua promotion: “Sharing a language and opportunities for communication allows for argumentation as much as agreement . . . even argument can be said to produce commonality” (733). Though the spread of common language does not guarantee national harmony, it does facilitate domestic exchange by promoting “commonality” among diverse groups. As Anderson suggests, print languages form the basis of national consciousness since they create unified fields of communication (46). The same logic applies to the standardization of Putonghua. The unification of written and spoken languages allows for trans-regional interaction and gives rise to the idea of nation. That is to say while more people conform to the common linguistic norms, they are able to identify with “others” and imagine those “strangers” as part of their group given that they all use the same language system. Feng 25
Chinese mono-nation-building model not only produces the same standard for different speakers, but also unifies the nation’s linguistic environment, which further legitimizes Putonghua’s monopoly and increases the accessibility of Putonghua to a larger population. As mentioned before, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard
Spoken and Written Chinese Language sets a milestone for Chinese language planning, since it greatly widens the range of Putonghua application. According to its Article 10, schools and other educational organizations should use Putonghua and the standardized Chinese characters as the basic language and scripts in education. In the field of mass media,
Putonghua shall be adopted as the standard language for radio and television broadcasting, as
Article 12 states. Moreover, Article 14 specifies the situations where the national language and scripts should be used:
(1) spoken and written language for broadcasting, films and TV programs;
(2) written language for the facilities in public places;
(3) written language in signboards and advertisements;
(4) names of enterprises and other institutions; and Feng 26
(5) packaging and specifications of commodities marketed in the country.1
Here we can see that the use of Putonghua is not limited to education instruction, but also applies to diverse domains of public life, including broadcasting, publication, commercial advertising and public services. The extensive application of this standard language in public sphere mainly leads to two results. First of all, the popularization of
Putonghua allow various speakers nationwide to communicate in the same language.
Secondly, the spread of the common language norms creates an unified language environment which makes Putonghua more available and comprehensible to a large group.
As more people, whether literate or illiterate, gain access to the national language, their language barrier is greatly reduced. While the unified linguistic environment gives rise to intergroup exchange and hence national integration, the unification of the nation become achievable. As the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests, the process of state formation creates conditions for the construction of a unified linguistic market which is dominated by the official language (45). He points out that the standardized language is a “normative product” (Bourdieu 46) which is suitable for transmission and can be easily decoded by any receivers (Bourdieu 48). Here, Bourdieu regards the standardization of official language as a product of state-building. I would like to add that the proliferation of Putonghua can also
1 See Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language in the PRC government’s website. np.11 Dec. 2007. np.Web. 14 Jun. 2015.
When Putonghua develops into the most widely-used language in society, it becomes a necessity for people to master this common language for pragmatic reasons. The dominance of Putonghua allows it to become the most popular tool for social interaction and hence increases the social demands for its use. Putonghua not only derives political power from the legal system, but also enjoys a high economic value in the labor market. The 2001 law puts forward the Putonghua Proficiency Test for governmental employees and specifies its examination criterion. As a result, teachers from primary, secondary schools and colleges, radio and television broadcasters and hosts, along with professional actors are all required to pass this language test in order to gain access to job opportunities (Zhang 4). By linking the use of Putonghua with labor market, this law endows Putonghua with economic value.
However, it also reduces Putonghua to a certain competence that can be possessed by people.
The Canadian linguistic anthropologist Monica Heller points out that global economy results in the commodification of language and identity, which renders language as a measurable skill (474). I agree with this metaphor, for it points out how the official discourse assigns significance to languages. It is important to note that Putonghua is not inherently superior to Feng 28 any other languages. It is the mono-nation-building that adds external values to its national language and makes Putonghua more “prestigious” than other languages. Because of its
“superior” status and practical values, Putonghua becomes an useful skill for people to pursue personal development. By regarding Putonghua competence as an access to career opportunities, Chinese language policy further enhances the use value of Putonghua and greatly amplifies the social demand for Putonghua learning. People’s voluntary learning process supplements the implementation of language laws and enlarges the scope of
Putonghua use. In the long run, as Putonghua expands its dominance from the official discourse to the private sphere, it becomes well integrated into people’s daily lives and develops into an indispensable personal competence.
Mono-nation-building not only involves institutional measures, such as the implementation of language laws, but also has a psychological impact on the construction of a national identity, which Anthony Smith refers to as “symbolic components” (Smith 64). It has been clear that Chinese mono-nation-building generates the ideology of “one nation with one language”. As this ideology ensures the monopoly of its national language, Putonghua develops into the only legitimate and the most authentic representation of Chinese identity.
Differently put, the mono-nation-building model with its monolingualism ideology strengthens the association between Putonghua and the national identity. In that case,
Putonghua is not only a communication tool for people who live in China; most importantly, Feng 29 it also connotes a Chinese identity which links to overseas Chinese communities. The promotion of Putonghua in Singapore offers a telling example in terms of how the language ideology “one culture with one language” is applied to unite diaspora Chinese.
According to the Singapore’s census of population in 2010, among 5.2 million of
Singapore citizens, 74% of them are Chinese while 30% are Malays and 9% are of Indian ethnic origin. While English remains to be Singapore’s lingua franca, Mandarin (Putonghua) is the second popular language in local society due to the dominance of Chinese group.
Sherman Tan, a Ph.D. graduate from the Australian National University, points out an interesting phenomenon that similar to mainland China, Singapore also promotes Mandarin
(Putonghua) officially whereas discourages the use of other Chinese “dialects”. What intrigues me most is not what lead to the unequal status between Putonghua and Chinese dialects in Singapore, but the reasons why Putonghua instead of other languages is chosen to unite Chinese group. According to Tan, the “Speak Mandarin Campaign” launched by
Singapore policymakers in 1979 sought to “devalue the non-Mandarin Chinese language” whereas exclusively promote Mandarin (341). He points out that while the official discourse in Singapore depicts Mandarin as a language of “high economic advantage”, the citizens’ online discourse resists the governmental eradication of dialects and calls for more recognition of their regional languages (S. Tan 341). Tan argues that both discourses correspond to the ideology of “one culture-one language” which perceives language as a Feng 30
“possessable commodity” with specific use values (345) and view it as an indicator of speaker’s identity (348). The fact that Singapore government prioritizes Putonghua over other
Chinese languages not only indicates Putonghua’s prestigious status and higher economic value, but also reveals the prevalence of the language ideology of “one nation with one national identity” in Singapore. While promoting Putonghua within its Chinese community, the Singapore government conforms to the idea that Putonghua is the only legitimate common language for every Chinese and it better represents Chinese identity than regional dialects do. The similarity between the language policy in China and that in Singapore points out their common ideology of “one nation/culture, one language”, which stresses the primacy of Putonghua and promotes it as a symbol of Chinese identity. By examining the promotion of Putonghua outside the boundary of China, I intend to point out that Putonghua not only serves the state’s purpose of building one united nation, but also facilitates the construction of
Chinese identity on a worldwide scale. The idea that Putonghua forms a national identity reveals the psychological dimension of Chinese mono-nation-building, which is in line with
Anderson’s theory of “imagined nation” and Smith’s notion of “symbolic components”.
1.3 Relationship Between Putonghua and Regional Languages
Chinese mono-nation-building cannot be simply defined as a process of homogenization or assimilation. Instead, national diversity and uniformity go hand in hand under this model. Feng 31
While analyzing Chinese nation-building, Andrew Kipnis refers to it as a process of constructing “commonality”, which implies “neither uniformity nor the production of a political or social consensus” but further “diversification” (733). Based on a dialectic perspective, Kipnis suggests that the normalization of Chinese education and the unification of language lead to both homogenization and individualization, and allow for the coexistence of argumentation and agreement (733). To buttress his argument, Kipnis uses the example of riots in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009 to emphasize that the expanding literacy and the use of Putonghua are sources of “resistance” rather than “integration” (733).To challenge the conventional perception that Chinese nation-building is a homogenizing process, Kipnis highlights the mutual development of commonality and diversity under Chinese nation-building model. However, I would argue that for Chinese nation-building, the goal to maintain language uniformity is still more salient than its need to encourage diversity.
To disentangle the complexity of Chinese nation-building, I would like to focus on the dynamic relationship between the national language and minority languages as a way to reveal how the pendulum of Chinese language policy swings between linguistic pluralism and monolingualism in different phases. Chinese nation-building and its language policy vary its priorities based on the changing demands of society. In the article “The Politics of Bilingual
Education in the People’s Republic of China Since 1949”, Minglang Zhou divides Chinese minorities policy into three stages: first pluralistic stage (1949-1957), the Feng 32
Chinese-monopolistic stage (1958-1977) and the second pluralistic stage (1978-present)
(147). According to Zhou, the first stage took place after the failure of minorities policy in the previous Republic era (1911-1949) and the success of the Soviet Union accommodationism model (147). That period was characterized by its “accommodationist policy” which recognized the equality of all ethnic groups as well as the autonomy for minorities (149).
When the battle between capitalism and communism became imminent, this
“accommodationism” gave way to “integrationism”, which accelerated the assimilation of minorities into Han ethnic majority “as a short-cut to mutual integration” (150). After
Chinese Communist Party changed its main task to economic development in 1978, the pluralist approach in minorities policy became more prevalent (152). Consequently, plenty of language legislation was issued to ensure the right of minorities to use their own language in schools in their regions (152). Judging from the development of Chinese minorities policies, we can see that major task of Chinese language planning lingers between diversity and uniformity which take turns to assume a dominant role in different phases. Despite their divergent goals, these language policies in three stages all recognize the primacy of Han majority and Putonghua. It means that even though minorities enjoy different degrees of rights and autonomy, they do not share the same status with Han majority. The same is true with their languages. Here, I would conclude that diversity does exist under Chinese Feng 33 mono-nation-building model but it lies in a secondary position, since the fulfillment of national unity precedes the promotion of regional diversity.
The coexistence of diversity and uniformity is possible under Chinese mono-nation-building model, precisely because the management of heterogeneity and diversity is carefully controlled. Since the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the
Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language in 2001 plays a significant role in Chinese language planning, I would adopt it as an example again. It is regarded as the first law to specify the public situations where dialects can be applied (Zhang 4). However, I argue that its emphasis on the use of regional languages is far from adequate, compared with the overwhelming promotion of Putonghua. According to its Article 16, only four occasions for the use of dialects are mentioned:
(1) When State functionaries really need to use them in the performance of
official duties;
(2) Where they are used in broadcasting with the approval of the broadcasting
and television administration under the State Council or of the broadcasting
and television department at the provincial level;
(3) Where they are needed in traditional operas, films and TV programs and
other forms of art; Feng 34
(4) Where their use is really required in the publishing, teaching and research.2
Although Article 16, as the only article (out of 28 Articles) that explicitly mentions the use of dialects, has legalized the use of dialects, regional groups can only exercise their linguistic rights in a few “necessary” situations. Since the term “necessary” is ambiguous, it renders the actual practice problematic due to a lack of clearly-defined conditions for dialect use. Besides, this word implies a prohibition on the use of dialects in other “unnecessary” occasions. These restrictions and unclear conditions reveal the government’s insufficient recognition of regional languages. In that sense, the limited practice of language diversity is neither a guarantee for the fulfillment of minorities’ rights, nor a complete realization of multilingualism. However, I would add that this restricted diversity is a necessary compromise since it reconciles the contradiction between disintegration and integration. Also, its incompleteness is a prerequisite for the maintenance of national unity. In other words,
Chinese mono-nation-building promotes diversity as another way to facilitate national integration, but meanwhile it puts this practice of diversity under strict control in order to avoid potential threats brought by the excessive amount of social heterogeneity. This partial diversity not only allows for the coexistence of national uniformity and multiplicity, but also points out that under Chinese mono-nation-building model, the goal for language unification
2 See the PRC government’s website for the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and
Written Chinese Language.
Chinese mono-nation-building model leads to an asymmetrical power relationship between Putonghua and other regional languages. As I would argue, it is not the promotion of
Putonghua but the ideology of “one nation with one national language” that leads to the polarization of languages and threatens the status of the less dominant languages. Specifically speaking, this language ideology, known as monolingualism that evolves from the mono-nation-building model, refuses to accommodate the practice of multilingualism and thus exacerbates language inequality. Minglang Zhou defines multilingualism as a language order where the chosen language gains full access to various resources whereas other languages only have partial access (“Linguistic Diversity” 4). This idea is also applicable to
Chinese monolingual environment where the national language receives much legitimate power whilst others are less recognized. The prestige and superiority of Putonghua are not its inherent qualities, but they are added later and legitimized by language policies. The book
Language Reform in China: Documents and Commentary points out that Peking dialect, instead of other vernaculars, is selected to be the standard speech, because it used to be the official language in Ming and Qing dynasty, the national language in Republic era (still used in Taiwan) and the common speech in Communist China (Seybolt and Chiang 25). Due to Feng 36 this historical context, policymakers consider it easier and more convenient to adopt
Putonghua as the national language, since it has been the official language for a long time.
Although their criteria for selecting a national language is problematic, their language choice reveals how Putonghua is endowed with legal force and social value through a series of institutional practices. As Bourdieu suggests, official language, in contrast with dialects, benefits from institutional conditions which are necessary for its imposition and the reinforcement of its dominance (45). He also points out that the relation between school system and labor market is “decisive in devaluating dialects and establishing a new hierarchy” (Bourdieu 49). The implementation of monolingualism provides necessary institutional supports for the promotion of Putonghua, which in long term undermines the status of dialects and retains the monopoly of Putonghua.
As the prevalence of monolingualism produces a new language hierarchy, it further oppresses the use of regional languages and renders them in a more disadvantageous situation.
This can be exemplified by the undermined status of Cantonese. Despite its dominance in
Southeast China and overseas Cantonese communities, Cantonese lacks enough recognition and necessary institutional support. According to the article “The Status of Cantonese in the
Education Policy of Hong Kong”, Cantonese shares the official status with Putonghua “only in name but not in spirit”, since “neither the promotion nor the funding approaches on
Cantonese match its legal status” (Lee and Leung 1). Even though Cantonese is the mother Feng 37 tongue for the locals in Guangdong Province, it is not taught as a subject in schools but only used as a medium of instruction in a limited number of courses, such as Chinese Literacy.
Even in Hong Kong where schools enjoy more autonomy of choosing their teaching languages, Cantonese is only involved in the aspects of listening and speaking, but not applicable to the sections of reading and writing (Lee and Leung 8). In addition to language education, the promotion of Cantonese in other fields of society remains at a low level. The
Standing Committee on Language Education and Research in Hong Kong organizes different activities to encourage the use of Cantonese in TV, radio programs and schools, such as setting up a Proper Cantonese Pronunciation Day Camp (Lee and Leung 8). However, its promotion of Cantonese is only limited to the standardization of its pronunciation. Besides, the absence of Cantonese writing system and the shortage of systematic linguistics and grammar training reveal a discrepancy between local people’s demand for the use of
Cantonese in daily lives and the unrecognized status of Cantonese in formal occasions. In that sense, the previously dominant status of Cantonese is severely disrupted, not only due to the large-scaled promotion of Putonghua, but mainly because the prevailing ideology of monolingualism tends to maintain the purity and monopoly of the national language whilst discourages the use of other languages.
However, the withdrawal of regional languages from the official discourse does not imply that they are in the danger of annihilation. Instead, regional languages can still thrive in Feng 38 civic space where there is less direct governmental intervention. Sociolinguistics professor
Xuesong Gao indicates that the commercial and entertaining values of regional languages promote their application, for instance the use of Cantonese in television broadcasting (11).
The flourish of Canto-pop in Hong Kong best illustrates the revival of local culture as well as rise of regional languages. Professor Wai-chung Ho who specializes in sociology of music points out that the localization of Hong Kong popular music reveals a struggle for the building of local culture and the pursuit of a sense of authenticity (146). Since the 1970s,
Canto-pop started to thrive in diverse cultural domains, which can be demonstrated by its prevalence in the local radio programs, the burgeoning of Canto-pop music awards and the blossoming of Cantonese concert business in Hong Kong (Ho 147). In face of the rise of
Mandarin culture, Hong Kong’s promotion of Cantonese culture is not only a resistance to the hegemony of this national culture, but also a strategy to reconstruct its local image on the global stage. Tim Oakes suggests that efforts to build local culture reveal the goal of regionalism to access a broader political and economic power (Ho 4). In that case, localization does not contradict with the development of nation-building, but on the contrary absorbs political and cultural resources from it.
Feng 39
Chapter Two: Hong Kong Identity and Chineseness
2.1 Introduction
Hong Kong identity dilemma results from a combined process of colonization, nationalization and globalization. The construction of a self-defined Hong Kong identity can be seen as a process of localization that protects local identity from encroachment and reaffirms the uniqueness of local culture. Ever since 1842, when the British government took over Hong Kong from China in the First Opium War, Hong Kong people’s identity anxiety had emerged. Sarah Y.T. Mak, a Ph.D. graduate from the Politics Department in University of California, suggests that the British colonial government carried out a “laissez-faire and non-interventionist policy” (Mak 22), which allowed Hong Kong people to break loose from their colonial identity. However, without a national identity, Hong Kong identity still lacked legitimacy. The year 1997, when Hong Kong was handed over from the British colonist to the PRC government, marked a significant change in Hong Kong’s regime, which indicated an uncertain future and exacerbated Hong Kong’s identity crisis. While Chinese mono-nation-building reinforced its centralized regime to unify the nation, Hong Kong people were worried that they would lose their previous freedom and rights under the control of the authoritarian PRC government. The Tiananmen massacre in 1989 in Beijing led to a violent suppression of the pro-democracy protests and intensified the conflict between the authoritarian regime in mainland China and the democratic society in Hong Kong. Hong Feng 40
Kong’s ambivalence towards mainland China and its fear for an uncertain future increased people’s identity anxiety. Besides, globalization, which accelerates social mobility and generates a trend of deterritorialization, calls the geographical identity into question. In the context of global migration, the physical boundary of Hong Kong identity was constantly interrogated and disrupted by a large influx of migrants. There were mainly two migration waves in Hong Kong in the last century: one took place in the 1980s, after the Tiananmen
Square incident in 1989, which witnessed a large number of mainland people left for Hong
Kong mainly to avoid political prosecution; the other one was before Hong Kong’s change of sovereignty in 1997, where many Hong Kong citizens migrated to other countries, such as
Canada, Australia and the United States. The frequent trans-bordered migration continued to challenge the stability of Hong Kong identity. Facing this identity dilemma, Hong Kong constructs its own local identity that differentiates itself from the national identities, namely
British identity and Chinese identity. The formation of Hong Kong identity can be regarded as a regional struggle to fulfill self-affirmation and pursue local uniqueness.
In the previous chapter, we have discussed that the conflict between Putonghua and
Cantonese is not merely a language issue, but it also reveals a deeper tension between nation-building and the development of localization. To further shed light on the nation-local relationship, I will focus on a Hong Kong film Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996) and examine both the tension and connection between Chinese identity and Hong Kong identity. Feng 41
This chapter will address two essential questions as follows: what distinguish Hong Kong identity from the mainland identity? What is the relation between the Hong Kong identity and the national identity known as “Chinese”? Here, we will not discuss the language tension between Putonghua and Cantonese per se, but instead consider it as a reflection of the correlation between nation-building and localization.
2.2 The Formation of Hong Kong Identity
The construction of Hong Kong identity is key for our understanding of Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China. The Hong Kong film Comrades: Almost a Love Story
(1996), while depicting two mainlanders succeed in being Hong Kongers, reveals how Hong
Kong identity both converges with and diverges from mainland identity. This movie, directed by Peter Chan, was produced and screened in Hong Kong cinema in 1996, one year before
Hong Kong’s handover to the PRC in 1997. At that time, a considerate number of mainlanders migrated to Hong Kong to seek a better life. Meanwhile, many local people chose to leave for other countries before the year 1997. Set in the context of Hong Kong’s two migration waves in the 1980s and the 1990s, the film depicts the changing relationships between two mainlanders as they first migrate to Hong Kong and then settle down in New
York. Confronted with the same identity dilemma and marginal lives, these two mainlanders,
Li Xiaojun from the northern China and Li Qiao from the southern city Guangzhou, develop Feng 42 from good friends to intimate partners. But before long, they break up with each other, due to their divergent goals: Xiaojun’s dream is to marry his fiancee Xiao Ting in Hong Kong, whereas Qiao wants to become a successful Hong Konger and earns money to build a new house for her parents. Though they both realize their Hong Kong dreams in the end, their sense of loss is not alleviated thereafter, but instead becomes more intensified. Xiaojun puts an end to his marriage with Ting, since he feels guilty of lying to her about his romance with
Qiao. Meanwhile, Qiao becomes a successful real-estate shareholder with the help of her new boyfriend Pao, a powerful mob boss in local society. But when Pao becomes a target of local police, Qiao chooses to leave Hong Kong with him to avoid further trouble. As the second migration wave sweeps through Hong Kong before 1997, Xiaojun migrates to New York to seek better career development whilst Qiao also illegally moves there with Pao. Their rootless lives in that foreign country exacerbate their identity anxiety and thus reconnect them together. In the end, their favorite song, Sweetness [Tian Mi Mi] performed by a famous
Chinese singer Teresa Tang, offers them a sense of belonging and finally reunites them in the street of New York when they stop by the same video shop watching the death news of Tang.
The film blurs the line between Hong Kongers and mainlanders by allowing two protagonists to obtain two identities at the same time. This precisely points out the ambiguity of Hong Kong identity and explains why Hong Kong needs to clarify its boundary by creating an imagination of its “others”. If Hong Kong identity enriches its meaning through Feng 43 the comparison with mainland Chinese, then what are these distinctions between Hong Kong identity and mainland identity? It is noteworthy that Hong Kong identity is not a fixed term, but rather fluid, discursive and multifaceted. Mak offers an comprehensive view of the multiplicity and complexity of Hong Kong identity. She suggests four major variants of Hong
Kong identity: Chinese identity, regional identity, post-colonial identity and global identity
(Mak 24-41). Here, this Chinese identity variant underlines Hong Kong’s linkage with mainland China whereas other three variants celebrate its cultural, economic and political differences from mainland China. These unique features of Hong Kong identity result from the multiple processes of modernization, de-colonization and globalization.
Hong Kong’s modernization procedure enlarges its gap with mainland China. Early in the 1950s, Hong Kong already underwent a process of industrialization driven by the rise of its textile exports and manufacturing industries. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and the establishment of Special Zone accelerated Hong Kong’s modernization process. In the film, Xiaojun experiences a “modern shock” in Hong Kong as he encounters all kinds of
“new phenomenons” which are absent in his hometown, such as skyscrapers and cellphones.
His surprise implies the economic disparity between the underdeveloped mainland and highly modernized Hong Kong at that time. Hong Kong’s modern features celebrate its economic prosperity and reinforce people’s pride of their local identity. Feng 44
Besides, Hong Kong’s post-colonial identity also adds to the distinctiveness of Hong
Kong identity. Unlike other colonial states in Asia, Hong Kong’s anti-colonial nationalist sentiment is “relatively muted” (Mak 34). As the comparative literature professor Ackbar
Abbas points out, Hong Kong is “not in a dependent subaltern position but is in fact more advanced . . . than the colonizing state” (Abbas 5-6). On the one hand, Hong Kong takes advantage of the British colonial legacy to maintain its superiority when competing with mainland China. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s de-colonization process gives rise to its local awareness and allows for its independence from British colonial rule. Taking Xiaojun’s aunt Rosie for example, she spends her whole life indulging in her good memories of William
Holden, a western actor who stars in the film Love Is a Many Splendid Thing in Hong Kong.
Her love for William indicates Hong Kong’s remaining fantasy for their past colonial times.
However, Rosie’s obsession is regarded as outdated and mentally insane in the eyes of her friends. This change reveals that the prestige of Hong Kong’s colonial identity is undermined by the de-colonization process whereas its post-colonial identity is more celebrated.
Furthermore, Hong Kong’s global link also demonstrates its superiority. In the film, the ability to speak English is considered as an unique feature that distinguishes Hong
Kongers from mainlanders. The western symbols in the movie, such as Mickey Mouse and the Statue of Liberty, also highlight Hong Kong’s global perspective. All these variants of
Hong Kong identity, namely its modern, post-colonial and global identity, demonstrate the Feng 45 superiority and exclusiveness of its regional identity and meanwhile also reduce its similarity with Chinese identity.
Another distinction between Hong Kong identity and mainland identity lies in the language difference between two groups. Hong Kongers use Cantonese for daily communication, whereas most mainlanders, if not all, only speak Putonghua. Many people therefore regard Putonghua as a representation of Chinese identity and draw a link between
Cantonese and Hong Kong identity. However, these associations do not stand up to scrutiny.
Language is not a decisive factor that determines people’s identity, but only a indicator of people’s current position in a group and their relationship with outgroups. Fro example, Qiao, as a mainlander, speaks both Putonghua and Cantonese, but her ability to speak Cantonese, the local language in Hong Kong, determines her identity as a Hong Konger. As Qiao points out: “Being able to speak Putonghua does not necessarily mean that you are from the mainland, but if you don’t speak Cantonese, you must be mainlanders.” In her definition, the ability to speak Putonghua does not defines a person as a mainlander, since some Hong
Kongers can also speak it. Neither does people’s Cantonese competence define their identities as Hong Kongers. In that sense, Cantonese alone is not a distinguishing feature of
Hong Kong identity. However, people’s mastery of Cantonese expands common ground with
Hong Kongers and thus facilitates their change of status from “outsiders” to ingroup members. For example, Qiao’s capability to speak Cantonese allows her to adapt faster to the Feng 46 local society than the other Putonghua-speaking mainlanders. She is able to get three part-time jobs soon after she settles down in Hong Kong, including a waitress job in
McDonald, a cleaning job in a language training center and a delivering work in a flower shop. In contrast, Xiaojun’s job application is ignored by the manager of McDonald since he cannot speak Cantonese at that time. Therefore, It is unmistakable to conclude that the use of
Cantonese does not define Hong Kong identity but indicates the major language difference between Hong Kongers and mainlanders.
If the mastery of Cantonese does not suffice to define Hong Kong identity, then one’s code-switching ability can be seen as differentiating feature of Hong Kong identity.
Xiaojun’s changing language use corresponds to a shift in his identity from a mainlander to a
Hong Konger. At the beginning, Xiaojun is regarded as an outgroup and labeled as “Acan”, a derogatory nickname created by local people to refer to those “ignorant and rustic” mainlanders, simply because he only speaks Putonghua without any knowledge of Cantonese.
When he learns some basic Cantonese from his colleagues and Qiao, he is able to use a mixture of Cantonese and Putonghua. At that time, he already finds a job as a deliveryman in a local restaurant and becomes more adapted to the life in Hong Kong, which indicates his transition towards his Hong Kong identity. The time when Xiaojun becomes fluent in
Cantonese and English coincides with the period when he marries his fiancée in Hong Kong and then moves to New York to work as a chef. While Cantonese represents Hong Kong’s Feng 47 local culture, English which reflects on Hong Kong’s colonial legacy and global perspective add to the prestige of Hong Kong identity. Xiaojun’s different phases of language use, from the monolingual stage to language mixing and to code-switching, are in accordance with his different stages of integration into local society. This correlation between language use and social identity suggests that Xiaojun’s code-switching competence demonstrates his final fulfillment of his new status as a Hong Konger.
It has been clear that Hong Kong identity is different from mainland identity in various ways, but what methods are applied to build this difference? Without a nation-state identity, Hong Kong identity can be viewed as a product of imagination, which clarifies its boundary through the construction of “others”. According to Benedict Anderson, “our” community is built upon a collective imagination of “others” and develops on its “fraternity” based on people’s comradeship. Before we go deep into Hong Kong’s relationship with its
“others”, we need to point out that this theory of “otherness” is a result of modernity constituted by “a logic of difference” (Grossberg 93). Lawrence Grossberg, an American scholar of cultural studies, states that:
The modern never constitutes itself as an identity (different from others) but as
a difference (always different from itself--across time and space). In this
sense, the fundamental structures of modernity are always productions of
difference. (93) Feng 48
According to him, others or strangers are not the essential elements that determine our identity, but rather the “necessary supplement” or “subordinate negation” incorporated within
“us” (Grossberg 90). Here, this “supplement” means that “others” help clarify the boundaries of “us” from the outside; while the “negativity” locate “others” within the field of subjectivity as the “exotic others” (Grossberg 90). In other words, Hong Kong identity and its imagination of mainland Chinese are both constructed within, not outside the local discourse, where this
“others”, according to Derrida, is the “constitutive outside” instead of the external opposition against “us”. While examining the relationship between “us” and “others”, Iain Chambers, a professor of cultural and post-colonial studies, also adds that “strangers” who “render our
‘selves’ problematic” raise our awareness of our differences and thus “we all recognize ourselves as strangers” (Chambers 6). On the one hand, the existence of mainlanders questions the presence of Hong Kong identity by introducing their heterogeneous culture into local society; but meanwhile, it is precisely because of these “disturbing” mainlanders that the boundary of Hong Kong identity can be clearly drawn. During the first migration wave in the 1980s, the large influx of mainland immigrants threatened the stability of Hong Kong identity and underlined the division between “us” and “others”. To clarify the boundary of its identity, Hong Kong adopts the “logic of difference” to create an image of its heterogeneous
“others”, namely mainlanders, as a way to maintain its uniqueness. As Chambers concludes, the construction of others is fundamental to the reproduction of our selves (30). Feng 49
Whether “others” are necessary or disturbing, they are the constitutive elements of
Hong Kong identity defined within the discourse. The ambiguity of Qiao’s identity reveals how Hong Kong identity is disrupted but also clarified by the presence of “others”. Since many Hong Kong people are the descendants of former mainland refugees, Qiao’s case is not merely a “mainlander’s story”, but it also reflects a “Hong Kong story” where Hong Kong develops its own identity that both comes from and departs from mainland identity. Qiao distinguishes herself from other mainlanders, such as Xiaojun, like Hong Kong people usually do, simply because she “speaks Cantonese, drinks Vitasoy milk and lives closer to
Hong Kong” whereas Xiaojun don’t. Her denial of being a comrade of Xiaojun implies Hong
Kong’s reluctance to identify with mainlanders. But since she also comes from the mainland,
Qiao is not recognized as a Hong Konger either. People call her “mainland girl” in order to draw a line between mainlanders as “exotic others” and Hong Kongers as “us”. However,
Hong Kong identity is not be defined simply by people’s origins; instead, it is a discursive cultural identity that varies with its relationship with others. Here, Qiao’s identity is a not fixed place-based identity but keep changing as she integrates into Hong Kong society. When
Qiao succeeds in becoming a Hong Kongers, she develops from a “disturbing stranger” to a constitutive member of local society. Just as Chambers puts it, “the stranger exists within us”
(6). The ambiguity of Qiao’s identity, neither as a mainlander nor a Hong Konger, not only interrogates the wholeness of Hong Kong identity but also demonstrates its ambiguity and Feng 50 instability. These constitutive “strangers”, though disturbing, prove what Stuart Hall says:
“Identities are never unified . . . never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions”(4). Qiao’s intertwining identities, which render Hong Kong identity fuzzy and undefined, explains why
Hong Kong needs to construct its own identity by imagining “others”.
2.3 Hong Kong Identity and Chinese Identity
“Chineseness” is an essential issue to investigate the relationship between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity. It is common to presume that all mainlanders are Chinese, an association that people have taken for granted. But it remains arguable whether Hong
Kongers are also considered as Chinese, given that the link between Hong Kong identity and
Chinese identity is still ambiguous. Even though many Hong Kong people try to distinguish themselves from mainlanders, but it does not necessarily mean that they also negate their
Chinese identity. If Hong Kong’s ambivalence towards mainland China does not necessarily imply their resistance to Chinese identity, then the questions arise: what is the relationship between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity? Is Hong Kong identity part of the inclusive Chinese identity, or are they two separate concepts independent from each other? In this section, we will propose three possible relationships between Hong Kong identities and
Chinese identity to investigate their degree of overlap and discrepancy. Besides, we are going Feng 51 to discuss different situations when intergroup resistance and reconciliation take place.
Furthermore, we will point out two strategies adopted by the film that hint on the compatibility and a possible coexistence between Hong Kong identity and that of Chinese.
To examine the degree of Hong Kong’s “Chineseness”, namely the overlaps between
Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity, I propose three occasions in which Hong Kongers are likely to identify themselves: (1) only as a Chinese; (2) only as a Hong Konger; (3) as a
Hong Konger and meanwhile also as a Chinese. The first situation implies that Hong Kong identity is subordinate to the superordinate group of Chinese. As it only suggests an inclusion of local group into the national group, it fails to stress the distinctiveness of local identity.
The second idea points out the exclusiveness of Hong Kong identify that defines itself based on the intergroup comparison. It can be a defense strategy to preserve local uniqueness by resisting the incorporation into the superordinate group, but this clear-cut definition ignores the intersection between Hong Kongers and Chinese by regarding them as two separate groups rather than two related categories in different levels. The third situation seems to be a good solution to reconcile the contradiction between the maintenance of local distinctiveness and the achievement of national integration. According to the American social psychologist
Marilynn Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness theory, social identity derives from a tension between two human needs, one for “validation and similarity to others” and the other for
“uniqueness and individuation” (Brewer 477). In her model, optimal distinctiveness strikes a Feng 52 balance between the level of inclusiveness and the need for exclusiveness. If one of these needs is not satisfied, social identities will engage in an effort to restore the equilibrium. The third category, which suggests a combination of Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity, achieves Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness, since it serves the demands for both differentiation and integration. While combining Hong Kong identity with Chinese identity, the third option questions the arbitrary division between these two categories. However, by putting these two identities in an equal position, it assumes that they are two comparable concepts in the same level rather than two categories in different levels. In this sense, it confuses intergroup relationship with the subgroup and superordinate group relationship.
It is important to note that the terms of “subgroup” and “superordinate” suggest an inevitable contradiction that derives from the inequality of two groups. However, Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity do not always contradict with each other but instead they can be compatible and coexistent. It is better to regard them as “local identity” and “national identity” respectively, since these concepts only suggest their different category levels but do not necessarily indicate their antagonism. By choosing these terms, I insist that Hong Kong identity can be viewed as part of Chinese identity, but it is neither a subordinate member of a larger group, nor as a national identity that competes in the same level with Chinese identity.
The film Comrades: Almost a Love Story uses the method of nostalgia to universalize people’s feelings about their common past and therefore suggests an integration of local Feng 53 identity into national identity. By turning the Hong Kong’s identity anxiety into a national nostalgia sentiment shared by all Chinese, this movie emphasizes the common ground between those two identities. Teresa Tang’s song Sweetness, which embodies people’s nostalgia sentiment, unites different groups by evoking their sense of belonging to the larger group of “Chinese”. This song first starts when Xiaojun gives a bicycle ride to Qiao in a busy street of Hong Kong. At that time, Qiao distinguishes herself from Xiaojun, in order to conceal her mainland identity and avoid being treated as an outgroup. However, Tang’s nostalgic song Sweetness gives Qiao a feeling of homecoming and thus undermines her antagonistic attitude towards her mainland “comrades”. While Qiao and Xiaojun are humming their favorite song Sweetness together during the bike ride, Qiao unconsciously reveals her mainlander identity which she tries so hard to hide at the beginning. “Crying, you are crying for our separation. No more separation between us; reunion is not easy.” This song occurs again when two protagonists sit together inside their booth, frustrated by the fact that they fail to make profit from Teresa Tang’s tapes in the New Year’s Eve market in Hong
Kong. When Qiao finally admits that Xiaojun is her only friend in Hong Kong, they realize that their mainland identities are not only what glue them together but also what give them a sense of “reunion” when being “separate” from their homeland. Tang’s song creates an imagined nostalgic space, which connects people from divergent groups together by linking their individual memory with the collective memory (Boym 54). Although the film does Feng 54 reveal a contradiction between Hong Kong identity and mainland identity at the beginning, it emphasizes more on their unification rather than divergence. By including two seemingly contradictory identities into the category of Chinese, the film uses the universal nostalgia sentiment to demonstrate the commonality shared by both local and national groups, and hence suggest the compatibility between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity.
Another strategy applied in the film is to emphasize the common interests and the same fate of both Hong Kongers and mainlanders. The setting of New York at the end of the film undermines the differentiation between two groups while strengthens people’s identification with their “Chineseness”. By situating the final scene in a foreign place New
York, the film places Xiaojun and Qiao in the same rootless situation which compels them to realize their common Chinese identity. As article “Reducing Intergroup Bias: Elements of
Intergroup Cooperation” suggests, people’s common fate reduced intergroup bias by
“facilitating more positive affective reactions to the contributions of outgroup members and also influenced participants’ perceptions of perceiving the aggregate as one group” (Gaertner et al. 398). If Qiao in previous scenes still expresses her reluctance to identify with her mainland group, which implies Hong Kong’s ambivalence towards its “Chineseness”, then her marginal life in New York marks the most salient turning point where she fully accept her mainland identity. After Pao’s death in New York, Qiao faces a forced deportation as her visa expires. On her way to the airport with the company of three American police officers, Qiao Feng 55 accidentally comes across Xiaojun who rides his bike passing by their taxi. Without hesitation, Qiao quickly gets out the taxis and runs after him, regardless of the fact that she is being chased by the police. Her stronger emotional attachment to Xiaojun at that scene contrasts sharply with her previous refusal of being his comrade. This change reveals Qiao’s increasing recognition of her Chinese identity. In the end, the film implies an incorporation of
Hong Kong identity into Chinese group by juxtaposing two scenes together: one shows the end of the story where Qiao and Xiaojun coincidentally meet again in New York while watching the news of Teresa Tang together in front of the same video shop; the other scene traces back to the beginning of the story where two protagonists sit back-to-back inside the same train to Hong Kong. While depicting the final reunion and the first encounter of two mainlanders respectively, these two scenes emphasize the common fate of two protagonists, which unites them together in different locations and times. In that sense, they point out the theme of the film: however divergent people’s original identities are, they all share the common identity and belong to the same group of “Chinese”.
This film was first displayed in Hong Kong cinema in 1996 and after 19 years it was re-shown in 2015. It is noteworthy that this re-show was its first official screening in mainland; before that, this film was only available on the internet or shown in cinemas outside mainland China. Its re-show can be attributed to the increasing quota for Hong
Kong-produced films in mainland cinemas after the implementation of Closer Economic Feng 56
Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, which changed the status of Hong Kong home-made movies from imported movies to Chinese films. Under such condition, a greater number of Hong Kong films were introduced and publicly shown in mainland cinema, including Comrades: Almost a Love Story. Before Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, which was the background of this film, there was a heated debate concerning Hong Kong’s future after its return. While many Hong Kong locals worried about their future or even regarded the year 1997 as their deadline, the dominant discourse in mainland celebrated Hong Kong’s return as a sign for national reunion. This film corresponds to the mainstream culture in mainland, since it emphasizes more on the unity between Hong Kong and mainland China rather than their contradiction. Its reshow in mainland not only indicates its conformity to the
“Chineseness” discourse in mainland, but also suggests the strategy of local group to align with the nation to gain more resources and promote local culture to broader audiences. As
Tim Oakes concludes: “Promoting Chineseness is part of a strategy whereby local elites attempt to promote a cultural identity attractive to the ‘flexible accumulation’ of global capitalism.” (669) Here, the national identity, or “Chineseness”, is no longer an oppressive force that assimilates and swallows local identity, but rather an useful tool that facilitates local development and reconciles the conflicts between nation-building and local-building.
Feng 57
Chapter Three: Chinese Individualization and the Rise of Regionalism
3.1 Introduction
The outburst of Protecting Cantonese Movement on June 2010 in Guangzhou, the capital of
Guangdong Province in the southern China, not only reveals the language tension between
Cantonese and Putonghua, but also probes into the contradiction between Chinese nation-building and the development of individualization. The initial cause for this large-scaled campaign can be attributed to the changes of Guangzhou language policy before the 2010 Asian Games. Unlike most of the provinces in China, Guangdong Province was permitted by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television to use its local language in TV broadcasting since the 1980s, due to its special language context where Cantonese dominated in both the public and private sphere. Besides, the large proportion of Hong Kong
Cantonese programs in local TV channels made it a common practice for local televisions to broadcast in Cantonese. Following the state’s new language policy issued on June 2nd 1956 aiming at promoting Putonghua nationwide, the Guangzhou government replaced Cantonese with Putonghua as the standard language in schools, government offices and local TV programs. As a result, the Economy Channel of Guangzhou Television switched its broadcasting language from Cantonese to Putonghua in 2009.
In preparation for the 2010 Asian Games, the Guangzhou government initiated a series of social engineering, including the old city reconstruction project and the promotion of Feng 58
Putonghua in field of public services. Early on June 2010, Guangzhou Political Consultative
Conference conducted an online survey investigating the public opinions concerning the use of Putonghua in local TV channels. Nearly 80% of the participants reported negatively towards the switch of broadcasting language from Cantonese to Putonghua. On July 5th,
Keguang Ji, a CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) member in
Guangzhou, handed in a controversial proposal which suggested using Putonghua as the major broadcasting language for most of the TV channels in Guangzhou. Concerned about the status of Cantonese, a group of local people gathered in People’s Park on July 11th, singing popular Cantonese songs and chanting slogans. Five days later, the Guangzhou
Provincial Secretary Yang Wang reiterated the necessity to promote Putonghua, during the
Guangdong Provincial Party Committee of the Tenth Seven Plenary Session. The officials’ insistence on Putonghua promotion triggered further resentment and contention. On June
25th, a large number of people congregated near the entrance of Jiangxi West subway station in Guangzhou to show their support for Cantonese, but with the intervention of local police, this public assembly was later dismissed. Although this mass rally was forced to stop, it stirred up a nationwide online debate within a short time. Several Hong Kong journalists voluntarily came to Guangzhou to report on this event and meanwhile netizens set up various online discussion rooms to express their ideas. Due to the censorship in mainland China, there was hardly any news reporting on this event. Facing the pressure of the state’s Feng 59 information control, Sina Weibo, an influential Chinese microblogging website similar to
Twitter, dismissed its Cantonese discussion groups and limited the users’ access to micro blogs that contained the keywords of “Cantonese” and “Guangzhou”. Four days after the public gathering, Huahua Huang, the mayor of Guangzhou, clarified that the government did not mean to wipe out the use of Cantonese. Dissatisfied with the government’s response, thousands of Guangzhou citizens protested again at People’s Park, Beijing Road and Martyrs
Park on August 1st to call for more recognition of Cantonese. On the same day, around 200 to 300 people in Hong Kong went onto the street in support of the Guangzhou Pro-Cantonese movement. These two demonstrations were part of the “Guangdong-HK Support Cantonese
Action” initiated by online activists (J. Tan 199). On December 17th, Guangdong government issued a new language regulation that specified the use of Putonghua in different domains of local society, including TV broadcasting. However, the government spokesman reiterated that this law did not intend to restrict the use of regional languages.
The dispute that arises from the Protecting Cantonese Movement revolves about the question of whether the interests of the government/state or the rights of individuals should be given top priority. The difference of opinion between the officials and individuals implies a tension between city-building/nation-building and individual development. The local government holds that Guangzhou is not only a city for local citizens, but also an open and tolerant international metropolis that accommodate a large number of foreign populations. It Feng 60 believes that the unification of language in local society is the first step for social integration.
This official rhetoric indicates that Putonghua promotion is a strategy for city-planning and nation-building to present a modern image of the city and unify diverse groups in order to achieve social integration. However, other dissenting voices from local residents and pro-Cantonese individuals argue that since the overwhelming promotion of Putonghua renders Cantonese culture in a disadvantageous position, it is high time local people should protect Cantonese against the encroachment of Putonghua. They regard this movement as a battle against the oppression of the government, where they can fight for their linguistic rights and preserve their local culture.
In this chapter, I will take this Protecting Cantonese Movement as a basic context for my topics and mainly focus on the issues of Chinese individualization and regionalism. The nationwide campaign reveals the rise of Chinese individuals who participate actively in public affairs and take actions to pursue individual rights. My first section will deal with the distinctive features of Chinese individualization and examine how it differs from both the western model and the previous collectivist society in China. In the second part, I will zoom in a video work Rap Guangzhou produced by a local student, to reveal the rise of regionalism during the Protecting Cantonese Movement. This video is not merely a form of personal expression that shows concern for the disappearance of Cantonese, but it also embodies a cultural phenomenon where individuals develop a stronger identification with their regional Feng 61 group and take initiative to protect local culture. I will link individualization with the rise of regionalism by analyzing how local individuals unite into a local group to counteract the oppressive effects of urbanization and nation-building. Moreover, I will focus on how nostalgia facilitates the rise of local awareness.
3.2 The Rise of Chinese Individualization
The large-scale Protecting Cantonese Movement reveals the rise of self-conscious and proactive Chinese individuals. This movement does not mark the emergence of Chinese individualization, since the emancipation of individuals from traditional social constraints can be dated back to the Maoism society; however, this nationwide campaign does reveal a significant rise of Chinese new individuals. Since China has been long regarded as a highly collectivist society, it is necessary for us to break this stereotype and reexamine Chinese collectivist features as well as its new individualist culture. First and foremost, we need to clarify the distinction between collectivism and individualism. The article Collectivism,
Relations, and Chinese Communication offers a brief overview of the recent debates concerning the definitions of these two terms. Many scholars believe that members in a collectivist society see themselves as part of the social group whereas people in an individualist culture regard themselves as independent individuals with unique attributes
(Wang and Chen 2). However, this clear-cut pattern is questioned by other scholars who Feng 62 contend that Chinese nowadays emphasize both responsibility and personal desires, and what is more they exhibit a mixture of individualist and collectivist features (Wang and Chen 2). In this section, I would reflect these arguments and further examine the “Chineseness” and
“newness” of Chinese individualization. My key argument is that the continuity between collectivism and individualism marks the most distinctive feature of Chinese individualization. To further elaborate on this idea, I will mainly focus on three aspects of
Chinese new individual. First of all, while Chinese individuals release themselves from the former social tie, they also obtain new commitments to the society and become responsible citizens. Secondly, Chinese individualization does not divorce from the collectivist culture but on the contrary its incompleteness indicates its consistency with the previous collectivist society. Last but not least, Chinese individuals are characterized by their pragmatic and realistic attitudes, which imply a combination of resistance and compromise during their interaction with the state.
Individualization is not a recent phenomenon but the idea of “individualization” as a concept is a modern invention which arises in contemporary academic discourse. Ulrich Beck provides a general framework of individualization based on the context of modernization.
Beck proposes three essential features of individualization, which he calls as “triple individualization”: liberation, the loss of stability and reintegration (128). According to Beck, the liberation dimension relates to the sphere of reproduction where individuals are removed Feng 63 from “status-based classes” (129). In terms of the emancipation of individuals, the field of production is also included, such as the “flexibilization of working hours”, the
“decentralizaition of the work site” and a new type of “pluralized unemployment”(Beck 129).
Moreover, Beck’s main argument centers on individual’s new dependence on institutions, which he views as “reintegration”. He stresses that the use of same media brings about a
“standardization” where individuals are controlled by the same standard and become dependent on the standardized institutions, such as the labor market, education, welfare system and so on (Beck 130). Beck’s model of institution-dependent individuals points out the physical development in the individual-society relation during the process of individualization, but he does not link these institutional changes with the psychological features of new individuals. Although at the beginning Beck did mentioned the “subjective” dimension of individualization, his analysis of individual consciousness is limited to the discussion of its external conditions, such as the individual biographical pattern, rather than the evolvement of individual’s self-awareness.
Based on Beck’s individualization theory, Yunxiang Yan explores the specific features of Chinese individualization from a historical point of view. According to Yan, as early as Maoism society (1949-1976), a certain form of Chinese individualization already took shape. He points out that the household registration system divided the population into rural and urban residents (Yan 491). The unequal distribution of income and welfare Feng 64 resources between rural and urban areas compelled people to move from the countryside to cities to seek better life. This gave rise to a large-scale rural-urban migration which increased social mobility and removed the previous family constraints. Yan also adds that while individuals participated in various social engineering which aimed at building a wealthy modern nation-state, they broke away from the previous social category of kinship and family, and became the members of the socialist society (492). According to him, these highly collective features of Maoism society, despite its low degree of individual freedom and autonomy, formed the basis for the rise of individualization in the post-Maoism period
(493). Similar to Beck, Yan also approaches the development of individualization by examining the institutional changes in society. As Yan suggests, the rural reform in the post-Maosim society generated a trend of “decollectivization” as it dismantled all the rural collectives nationwide (495). As a result, peasants were given more freedom to manage their own business whilst urban individuals who engaged in small-scale commerce developed into private businessmen/women (Yan 496). What is more, the market-oriented economic reform led to a series of social changes, including the rise of “migrant labour” phenomenon (Yan
497), the privatization of housing, and the marketization of education and medical care (Yan
499). Here, I would summarize that Yan’s chronological approach reveals a certain degree of continuity between Chinese collectivism and individualism, since it indicates that Chinese individualization is a continuous process that develops from the collectivist society. Feng 65
What defines Chinese individualization as a “Chinese” movement? Scholars examine this issue by comparing Chinese individualization with the case in Western countries. In terms of the distinctive features of Chinese individualization, Yan states that unlike the
Western individualization which started in an affluent and democratic society, Chinese individualization arose in an impoverished and totalitarian society where individual freedom was largely suppressed (507). He concludes that Chinese individual copes with all the pre-modern, modern and late-modern conditions simultaneously (Yan 510). Sociocultural anthropology professor Andrew B. Kipnis further sheds light on the complexity of Chinese individualization under modern society. He argues that while the Western model of individuation is characterized by its “first-order modernity”, which suggests a sequence of industrialization, urbanization, nation-building, globalization and so on, Chinese modernization process takes place simultaneously rather than sequentially (Kipnis 5). Kipnis indicates two sources of Chinese modernity: the premodern modernity both involves the entanglement of individuals with societies and the remaining imperial bureaucracies in modern society (6); the socialism modernity creates numerous institutions to govern the population (7). Both Yan and Kipnis agree that the “Chineseness” in Chinese individualization lies in the simultaneous process of pre-modernization, modernization and late-modernization. This mixture of different modernity which takes place at the same time corresponds to what I refer to as “historical continuity” between Chinese collectivism and Feng 66 individualism. I would clarify this term in my following discussions of the features of
Chinese individualization.
Through our horizontal comparison between Chinese individualization and the western model, we have briefly discussed the “Chineseness” of this individualization process.
Another question follows: what is new about Chinese individualization from a longitudinal perspective? I would point out that this newness does not necessarily imply a rupture from the previous model; instead, the boundary of this concept is highly blurred, since the
“newness” of Chinese individualization is inextricably intertwined with the “oldness” of the collectivist culture. Considering the coherence in the development of Chinese individualization, I suggest that Chinese individualism is a new and modern form of collectivism characterized by its partial departure from the previous pattern and its consistency with collectivism. In the following part, I would further elaborate on the incompleteness and the double feature of Chinese individualization.
One of the most remarkable features of Chinese individualization is the rise of responsible individuals. Beck’s triple individualization model suggests that when individuals break free from their traditional social commitments, they also obtain a new social tie known institutional dependence. In view of the Protecting Cantonese Movement in 2010, I would rephrase Beck’s notion of “reintegration” as the “establishment of a new social obligation”.
During the movement, individuals recognize their freedom and independence, but at the same Feng 67 time their large involvement in the political sphere strengthens their bond with other social groups, especially the online community. Yan points out that while the Maoism society called on all individuals to participate in various party-state-sponsored campaigns to construct a strong and modern nation, individuals redefine themselves as the citizens of the nation rather than the members of the family (Yan 493). The idea that individuals are responsible for the society is not merely a “Maoist” concept, but it also applies to Chinese contemporary society.
The rising awareness of individual rights and a more decentralized social structure allow individuals to contend with the state in the political arena. While the connection between individuals and community still remains, individuals’ benefits are closely linked with the collective interests. Under such circumstance, individuals have to first address the social problems before they can safeguard their interests. In that case, they assume more responsibility for the society and strengthen their commitment to the social group. What is more, with the presence of the state’s powerful control, individuals who are susceptible to social changes have to unite as one group to counteract the hegemony of the state. This new collective form allows people to resist the force of the authoritarian regime, but meanwhile tightens the bond between individuals and social groups. This new responsibility reconnects
Chinese individuals with their society, which leads to what Beck puts as “re-embedment” or
“reintegration”. To sum up, Chinese individuals are neither fully autonomous nor free from social commitments, but instead they assume a new obligation to build a better society, either Feng 68 for the sake of personal development or for “achieving wealth and power of the nation-state, namely, the modernization of country” (Yan 509). This responsibility points out a continuity between Chinese collectivism and individualism, since both of them underline individual’s commitment to promote social progress.
Another feature of Chinese individualization lies in its incompleteness. Yan refers to the changes in the individual-society relation in Maoism society as a “partial and collective type of individualization” (494). According to him, there were no individual identities in traditional China, due to the fact that the term “individual” could only be defined in its relationship to the social group, including the family and lineage (Yan 493). In addition, Yan uses the concept of “dual self” to emphasize that personal benefits (“the smaller self”) remains secondary to the collective interests (“the greater self”) (494). However, I argue that this ranking has been challenged in current society, since the self-enterprising Chinese individuals tend to prioritize their personal desires over the common good. Individuals are no longer psychologically subordinated to collective forms, such as the family and the state, but develop into self-determining subjects that realize the distinction between the “individual self” and the “social self”. But this does not mean that the previous priority has been subverted. On the contrary, a new connection between individuals and social groups is introduced by modernization. Beck points out, television produces a standardized form of living which releases individuals from traditional life context on the one hand, and produces Feng 69 uniformity on the other hand (Beck 132). The same logic applies to the educational system, the occupational life and other institutional settings. Individuals detach themselves from the former social constraints in pursuit of independence, but through the process of individualization, individuals become more dependent on various institutional conditions which shape the way people express themselves and engage in right protecting activities.
In the context of China, the incompleteness of individualization, which implies the remaining traces of collectivism, marks the uniqueness of Chinese individualization. On the one hand, a series of institutional reforms—the privatization of economy and the decentralization of social regime and the popularization of the internet—they all liberate individuals from the traditional confinement and introduce a new mechanism for social interaction. On the other hand, the establishment of new commitments and the omnipresent power of institutions reconnect individuals to their social groups and institutions that provide necessary conditions for individuals to exercise their rights. This re-embedment implies that
Chinese individuals do not completely break up with the collective, but only replace their previous social tie with a new one. The incompleteness also demonstrates the coherence between collectivism and individualism: what Chinese individuals alter is their identities which they change from submissive objects to conscious subjects, not their connection with the collective. To put it differently, individual’s social commitment, which is largely emphasized in the collectivist culture, maintains their presence in the individualist society. Feng 70
The rise of individual awareness, as a significant feature of individualism, does not necessarily contradict with the reintegration of individuals into the social group. Kipnis considers this double feature of Chinese individualization as an “irony”: “The liberation of the individual is simultaneously her or his enslavement to wider social forces; differentiation is often accompanied by conformity, and estrangement or alienation by freedom”(7). The combination of “liberation” and “enslavement” precisely reveals the incompleteness of
Chinese individualization, since it exhibits a mixture of individualism and collectivism rather than a complete rupture from the previous model.
Furthermore, individual’s awareness of both their rights and limitation forms the third characteristic of Chinese individualization. Since the psychological dimension of individualization remains largely unexplored in many studies, I would like to re-stress this subjective feature of Chinese individualization here. First of all, individuals show a strong consciousness of their “self”. This “self”, different from the traditional social identity, points out individual’s new status as a subject “I”, or as a citizen endowed with both rights and obligations. The book China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the
Twenty-First Century defines the term “I” as a self-expressive, self-realized and independent individual (Johnson et al. 4). The realization of personal interests and rights might not be novel, but the recognition of “self” as an independent entity that is no longer subject to the collective identity can be seen as a modern feature of individualization. What differs from the Feng 71 previous collectivism model is that new individuals challenge the former priorities by giving precedence to personal desires over the collective interests. This increasing awareness of individual interests can be exemplified by people’s affirmation of their private lives and personal desires. It is suggested that Chinese individuals show increasing concern on personal happiness, such as food safety and air pollution (Johnson et al. 3). Similarly, Yan also points out the rise of “desiring self” which pays great attention to individual’s emotion and desire in private lives, including love and intimacy, which were regarded as improper in the socialist culture (Yan 504). However, this emphasis on personal desires does not necessarily imply a negation of collective interests. The “desiring” individuals can also be self-disciplined and self-controlling, which means that their pursuit of individual desire can be compatible with the fulfillment of collective goals.
The second aspect of individual’s awareness indicates that individuals are realistic and conscious about both their strength and limitation. While individuals recognize their rights to pursue personal interest, they are also well aware of the coercive power of the authoritarian regime. Under such condition, Chinese individuals adopt a more pragmatic and moderate approach to contend with the state in order to avoid direct confrontation. Although some activists use a radical way to seek a thorough solution, most of the individuals in China either interact indirectly with the state or adopt a more modest approach to protest. I consider this practice as a “detour” where individuals set out on a longer journey and try different Feng 72 methods to avoid direct control and pursue their final goal. Their modest approach and well awareness of the social reality reveal the weakness of individuals: since they do not form another countervailing power that is able to compete with the state, they have to compromise both with the reality and with the authorities. The realization of the state’s benefits is a prerequisite for the fulfillment of individual rights. In other words, if individuals shake the foundation of the regime, the state will exert its power to control these “violators” and deprive them of legal rights. The combination of individual resistance and compromise also reveals the incompleteness of Chinese individualization.
3.3 Nostalgia and Regionalism
The previous section has discussed how Chinese individuals become self-conscious subjects and empower themselves to pursue individual rights and freedom. In this part, we are going to examine how individuals in Guangzhou adopt nostalgia as a strategy to reconstruct an unique local identity and counteract the negative consequences of city-planning and nation-building. These two kinds of resistance—the rise of individualization and regionalism—support each other and strive for the same goal: protect the rights of people
(either as individuals or as local citizens) and contend with the government/state. The construction of a local identity, which I refer to as the “bigger self”, not only confirms the uniqueness of the regional group, but meanwhile it also recognizes the value of individuals Feng 73
(the “smaller self”), since it allows for personal expression. In that sense, the rise of regionalism is an extension of individualization. Both of them attempt to explore an alternative interaction mode where they can negotiate with the state to realize both individual and regional interests.
The video Rap Guangzhou (2010) reflects how individual’s struggle develops into a regional movement to protect local culture from being assimilated and disrupted. This video uses nostalgia to reconstruct an unique regional identity that is deeply rooted in local traditions, in order to resist the disruptive effect of urban redevelopment and nation-building.
Among the abundant digital products emerging from the Protecting Cantonese Movement,
Rap Guangzhou is a most circulated and popular video work. Shortly after its appearance on
YouTube in 2010, different versions of this genre emerged and swept through the whole country. Prevailing as it is, Rap Guangzhou becomes a cultural phenomenon where individuals draw inspiration from their language traditions and creatively invent new traditions to produce new forms of individual expression. This work borrows the images from
Guangzhou’s promotional video for the 2010 Asian Games, but replaces the official soundtrack with a song Rap Cantonese produced by a local university student Guangning
Liang. This Cantonese song adopts a first-person perspective to criticize Guangzhou’s urban planning for demolishing a large number of local neighborhoods during the Asian Games.
Meanwhile, it also expresses concern about the disappearance of Cantonese language in Feng 74 people’s everyday life. This expressive and reminiscent song quickly becomes a popular genre, since it meets the need of Chinese individuals for self-expression and reveals local people’s demand for the preservation of local traditions. This video reveals a tension between the government/state that pursues modernization at the cost of local traditions and individuals who advocate for more recognition of their local culture.
Nostalgia, which offers a reference to the past, confirms the value of local traditions.
While people in Guangzhou draw on their cultural traditions to build an unique local identity, they strengthen the connection between their group identity and local traditions. In that sense, nostalgia not only cherishes the past, namely Guangzhou’s cultural heritage, but also celebrates the uniqueness of the local identity. In the video, people’s concern of the disappearance of Cantonese in Guangzhou reflects their fear of losing the “root” of their local identity. Facing the hegemony of Putonghua in diverse domains of society, people in
Guangzhou worry that Cantonese will disappear in the public space. This identity anxiety can be illustrated in the following lyrics of Rap Guangzhou:
Rap Cantonese line by line, please don’t say Cantonese is aging. In this grand
epoch full of changes, Cantonese is the seal of the past. Rapping Cantonese
beat by beat, seeing the change of Guangzhou second by second. English and
Mandarin are often heard in this busy city, but please don’t forget Cantonese. Feng 75
( Liang, “Rap Guangzhou”)3
By stating that Cantonese becomes “a seal of the past”, the lyrics express a bitter feeling towards the shrinking living space of Cantonese culture in the present time. The loss of local culture, as the lyrics point out, results from the dominance of English and Putonghua in local society that largely threatens the use of Cantonese. Under such circumstance, Rap Guangzhou reconfirms the significance of Cantonese by celebrating its linguistic tradition and its language vitality:
Let me tell you what is Guangzhouhua: nine tones and one thousand years of
history. These (features) are absolutely true and authentic. I sing this song for
nothing more than a reminder telling you that Cantonese always represents the
culture of Guangzhou. ( Liang, “Rap Guangzhou”)
This excerpt suggests that “nine tone” displays the unique phonetic feature of Cantonese, while “one thousand years of history” underlines its historical significance. This nostalgia strategy, which highlights the distinctiveness of cultural identity by deriving resources from the past, is not an uncommon practice. In a report that investigates Chinese netizens’ opinions towards the Protecting Cantonese Movement, Xuesong Gao shows that the pro-Cantonese netizens, who insist that Cantonese is not a dialect but an independent language, consider
3 These lyrics can be found in the Rap Guangzhou video. YouTube. 18 Jul. 2010. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.
Cantonese’s rich traditional heritage as a demonstration of its superior quality that differentiates Cantonese from Putonghua (457).
Besides its traditional legacy, Cantonese is also characterized by its rich verbal expressions. For example, modal particles and mimetic words are frequently used in daily conversations. Though these oral words are considered to be less formal, they are largely applied in the lyrics of Rap Guangzhou as a way to underscore the expressiveness and vividness of Cantonese. Since these oral forms are more free from the constraints of linguistic rules, they enable individuals to fulfill creativity and self-expression. Besides, the verbal feature of Cantonese helps to distinguish itself from the more formal and “standard”
Putonghua. “Wenshui, shizhi, guhan and duosuo—how to express these (Cantonese) words in
Putonghua?” The lyrics stress the distinctiveness of Guangzhouhua (Cantonese in
Guangzhou) by celebrating the richness of local slang, such as “Wenshui, shizhi, guhan and duosuo”, which is absent in Putonghua. Though many of Cantonese verbal words have both informal written forms and the formal ones, Rap Guangzhou insists on using the informal words rather than the standard phrases in Putonghua, as a way to maintain the uniqueness of
Cantonese. This verbal feature of Cantonese, I would say, is a “necessary difference” that clarifies the boundary of local identity and adds distinctive value to local culture. Feng 77
Rap Guangzhou adopts a nostalgia theme to resist the prevailing trend of forgetting which is accelerated by the promotion of Putonghua. The video points out a sharp contrast between the past and present:
Now youngsters in school have to speak Putonghua and can only use
Guangzhouhua at home. No wonder if you ask them to borrow something (in
Cantonese), they will respond ‘Ha?’ (what do you mean) . . . In the past, when
we sang the children’s song Big Drowning . . . friends from outside the
(Guangdong) province could continue it with ‘why why’. ( Liang, “Rap
Guangzhou”)
By showing a reversal of Cantonese’s status, from a popular language known by people from outside the province to a “seal of the past” that no longer prevails in the present, Rap
Guangzhou indicates that the prevailing collective forgetting marginalizes Cantonese and the local culture. The song puts the blame on the government that promotes Putonghua regardless of people’s demand for the preservation of Cantonese:
Am I asking for too much? Or is there anyone stirring up the trouble? Some
people are unreasonable—they continue promoting Putonghua. I am not
saying you are not allowed to do that, but why are you driving Cantonese into
a blind alley? ( Liang, “Rap Guangzhou”) Feng 78
The attempts to revive local culture, as shown in the video, indicate people’s resistance to the force of the government/state and their insistence on retaining their unique local identity, known as “Guangzhouers”. As the article “Identity and language choice: ‘We equals I’” points out, people’s resistance to the norms of a new context results from a fear of losing their identities (Ige 3047). Aa the development of urbanization and modernization in Guangzhou brings out several undesirable changes, such as the disappearance of Cantonese and the destruction in the old city, they further exacerbate people’s sense of loss. In order to alleviate people’s anxiety, Rap Guangzhou uses nostalgia to repair the discontinuity and reaffirm people’s present identity by linking it to the past traditions. Here, nostalgia functions as a strategy to unite people together who share the same culture and construct a distinctive regional group to compete with the government/state. While the song Rap Guangzhou claims that “this is a song for Guangzhouers”, it draws a line between the locals known as
“Guangzhouers”, and the authorities who stand on the opposite side of “us”. Its emphasis on the exclusiveness of local identity not merely contributes to the revival of local traditions, but also indicates a rise of local group that struggles for self-affirmation and rejects the state’s language ideology that prioritizes Putonghua over Cantonese.
In addition to its language resistance, the video Rap Guangzhou also criticizes the urbanization process in Guangzhou for demolishing old residences and disrupting people’s collective memory. By superimposing the critical lyrics on the “harmonious” pictures from Feng 79 the official Asia Games video, Rap Guangzhou shows an ironic contrast: in the background, the visual images celebrate the city’s modern development; in the foreground, however, the lyrics sharply point out the destruction of old architectures that results from Guangzhou’s urban redevelopment program. As a propaganda video targeted at international audiences, the
Asian Games’ official clip promotes Guangzhou as a highly modernized and urbanized city, in order to exhibit its ability to host this international event. This official video not only highlights the city’s modern landscapes, such as shopping malls and skyscrapers, but also celebrates its dynamic city lives and economic achievement. Images that show young people playing all kinds of sports, such as gymnastics and marathons, illustrate the liveliness of
Guangzhou and underline the flourish of its sports industry.
Jia Tan, a visual studies professor who examines the video Rap Guangzhou from the perspective of Cantonese digital activism, points out that the visual narrative of this video reveals the “city-branding strategy”, which aims at promoting Guangzhou on the global stage even at the cost of displacing Cantonese and old neighborhoods, to make room for its urban expansion (203). However, the lyrics of Rap Guangzhou reveals a sharp contrast between the
“harmonious” city images presented by the government and the reality in Guangzhou which shows a massive destruction in the old city. While the screen displays the images of
Guangzhou’s modern products, such as its high-speed subway and the busy assembly line, the lyrics which stand out in the foreground in big sizes tell us how the rapid modern Feng 80 development changes people’s lives. As the lyrics suggest, in the past, the narrator used to live in an arcade building, a type of Guangzhou old architectures which offer shelters for pedestrians, with many fast-food restaurants and shops downstairs, but nowadays they are all demolished. The narrator accuses the government for spending a large sum of money on the urban planning project that “demolishes the old buildings and our memory”.
Facing the disruption caused by the government’s city-building, Rap Guangzhou uses nostalgia to reconnect people to the past and repair a sense of displacement. People’s feeling of loss not only comes from the disappearance of traditional culture, but also from the discontinuity of their cultural identity. As the sociology professor Melinda Milligan puts it, by building an emotional link between individuals and their community, spatial attachment plays an essential role in repairing people’s identity discontinuity (382). Architectures, as a witness to the city’s historical changes, build a physical linkage between the present and the past. While the video relates the demolition of old buildings to the elimination of “collective memory”, it suggests that old architectures, as a carrier of people’s cultural memory, symbolize their past. In this logic, once these spatial sites are removed, people will lose their contact with the past and suffer from a sense of displacement. By recalling people’s collective memory, nostalgia offers an imagine space where people can find traces of their past and reconnect their present identity with the past traditions. Rap Guangzhou uses the Feng 81 narrator’s personal experience to reveal how the rapid development of the city gives rise to the nostalgia sentiment:
I have lived here (in Guangzhou) for more than twenty years. When recalling
the past, (we will find that) our Guangzhou has undergone several big
changes. I lived near the Huifu West Road when I was three. Now I really
miss (the time there). ( Liang, “Rap Guangzhou”)
The reason why the narrator misses his old days is that urban planning has reshaped the city’s landscape and changed his former residence. In retrospection of the narrator’s childhood experience in Huifu West Road, the video reflects a prevailing nostalgia sentiment among local people who also suffer from a loss of place attachment.
The large-scale Protecting Cantonese Movement reveals the rise of Chinese individuals. Those individuals who take part in both online and offline campaigns obtain a new identity that differs from their past status. First of all, Chinese individuals break away from the traditional social relationship, but meanwhile become responsible citizens who shoulder new obligations and obtain a new dependency on institutions. Therefore, Chinese individuals are “re-embedded” and “reintegrated” into the modern society. But this does not mean that they become subordinated to the collective again; on the contrary, they realize their
“self” as an independent subject and attach great significance to personal interests. Besides, Feng 82 the partial and incomplete features of Chinese individualization demonstrate its consistency with the collectivist culture. If people’s rising awareness of individual rights symbolizes the emancipation of Chinese individuals, then their strong sense of responsibility and reattachment to institutions reveal the coherence between Chinese individualism and collectivism. Furthermore, individual’s well awareness of both entitlement and their limitation marks another feature of Chinese individualization. On the one hand, individuals exercise their rights to pursue personal interests; on the other hand, individuals realize the coercive power of the state and adopt a more pragmatic and moderate approach to contend, in order to avoid direct confrontations.
In the Protecting Cantonese Movement, the rise of individualization is accompanied with the development of regionalism. While facing the oppressive government/state, individuals unite into one regional group to counteract the negative effects of urbanization and nation-building. People’s increasing recognition of their local culture and regional identity implies a rise of regionalism. Their strong identification with the local group is evident in the video Rap Guangzhou, which reaffirms the uniqueness of local culture by rejecting the assimilation into the national culture. Nostalgia allows local people to repair a sense of loss and derive resources from the past traditions to rebuild their local identity. The two trends, namely individualization and regionalism, supplement each other and form another force to compete against and negotiate with the state. Feng 83
Conclusion
The process of globalization involves an interplay of national, regional and individual forces, which redefines the relationship between different groups. As globalization complicates the identity boundary of nation-states, regional groups and individuals, these different subjects all engage in a continuous process of identity reconstruction. In the book
Question of Cultural identity, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall points out that in the age of modernization, people’s cultural identity become fragmented and multiple (3). As a result, modern adopts the “logic of difference” to constitute its own identity by differentiating from others (Hall 93). For nation-states, their efforts to build a strong and united nation imply their fear for the “crisis of nation” that renders their national identity undefined. The popular practice of nation-building offers good evidence for the identity crisis of nation-states in the age of globalization. In terms of regional development, the rise of localization allows regional groups to reaffirm their local identity while interacting with the state. The processes of nation-building and localization are in a dynamic relationship with each other. While nation-states intervene in local development in order to control the degree of heterogeneity and promote national uniformity, regional groups, however, empower themselves to resist the hegemony of nation-states, which accelerates the process of decentralization and localization.
This dynamic interaction reveals the correlation between national identity and local identity.
Besides the nation-local interaction, the power relationship between individuals and the state Feng 84 is also an intriguing issue. With the rise of new individuals, the previous relationship between individuals and social groups has been altered. While individuals participate in the political sphere with a new identity as independent citizens, they call into question the monopoly of the state. At the same time, individuals also have to negotiate with the state which provides institutional conditions for the development of individualization.
Through my analysis of these three closely related processes, namely nation-building, localization and individualization, I intend to sketch out a basic framework of Chinese social transformation and disentangle the complex power relationship between different groups.
Among all these topics, the overriding issue concerning the social development in China lies in its nation-building. In the first chapter, I have discussed how Chinese mono-nation-building model promotes its national language Putonghua to achieve national unity. Chinese language planning unifies the linguistic environment through a series of institutional measures, including the normalization of Putonghua’s pronunciation based on
Peking dialect, the simplification of written characters, and the standardization of its phonetic spelling. This language standardization process greatly enhances communication efficiency and accelerates intergroup exchange on a national scale. In terms of the psychological aspect of Chinese nation-building, I suggest that its monolingualism that results from the mono-nation-building model reinforces the ideology of “one nation with one national identity” and strengthens the connection between Putonghua and Chinese identity. In other Feng 85 words, this ideology promotes Putonghua as the only legitimate representation of the national identity. While Putonghua is promoted worldwide, it evokes the national awareness of overseas Chinese and facilitates the construction of an inclusive national image known as
“Greater China” that incorporate diaspora groups within its category. In that case, Chinese mono-nation-building model, with its language ideology, fosters the predominance of its national identity.
However, this model does not merely generate uniformity but also diversity. As I have mentioned, Chinese mono-nation-building model allows for the coexistence of commonality and heterogeneity, precisely because its promotion of linguistic diversity is under careful control. On the one hand, Chinese language policy specifies the occasions where regional dialects can be applied, as a way to achieve language diversity. But meanwhile, the promotion of diversity has to serve the ultimate goal of achieving language unification, which indicates that the popularization of Putonghua takes precedence over the preservation of regional diversity. This language policy legitimates the monopoly of
Putonghua whilst undermines the status of regional languages. However, it does not mean that the less dominant languages are eliminated; instead, this monolingualism ideology compels regional languages to seek better development in other non-official domains, such as the cultural industry. As a result, the national language maintains its dominance in the public sphere while other languages thrive in the civic space. In that case, Chinese Feng 86 mono-nation-building not only produce commonality, but also gives rise to localization which seeks for regional distinctiveness in response to the process of national unification.
After introducing the large framework of Chinese nation-building, I have also examined the connection between the national identity and the local identity in my second chapter. In the context of globalization, Hong Kong faces an identity dilemma where its identity lingers between the post-colonial identity and Chinese identity but fails to find its own position. To seek self-definition, Hong Kong constructs an unique local identity that celebrates its differentiation from mainland identity. While the processes of modernization, post-colonization and globalization endow Hong Kong identity with superiority and prestige, they also question the stability and wholeness of Hong Kong identity. Under such circumstance, Hong Kong adopts the “logic of difference” to clarify its identity boundary by distinguishing itself from mainland Chinese. In the movie Comrades: Almost a Love Story, what makes Hong Kong identity “different” is not the use of Cantonese, but people’s capability of code-switching. Language alone does not suffice to define one’s cultural identity but the change of language use indicates one’s degree of integration into a social group. As I have pointed out, the “different others” are not external to “us” but rather a necessary imagination that constitutes part of “us”. In the case of Hong Kong, I argue that the formation of Hong Kong identity is indispensable from its construction of “others”, namely mainlanders. In the movie, Qiao’s changing identities, from mainlanders to Hong Kongers to Feng 87
Chinese, demonstrate that Hong Kong identity “originates from” mainland identity but later departs from it to emphasize Hong Kong’s uniqueness. However, when two groups encounter the same situation, they develop a stronger identification with the national identity “Chinese”, which strengthens their commonality whilst challenges the previous clear-cut division. The discourse of “Chineseness” allows for the integration of Hong Kong identity into the national identity. The relation between Hong Kong identity and Chinese identity, as I have argued, should not be viewed as an inevitable contradiction between a subgroup and a superordinate group, but instead a correlation between a local identity and a national identity. Produced in
1996, one year before Hong Kong’s change of sovereignty in 1997, this movie touches upon a historically significant issue at that time: how shall we reevaluate Hong Kong’s
“Chineseness”? By stressing the universal nostalgia sentiment and the common fate shared by both Hong Kongers and mainlanders, the film hints on Hong Kong’s “reunion” with mainland China and thus implies its integration into the superordinate category of Chinese.
Since its idea of national integration is consistent with the dominant “Chineseness” discourse in mainland, this film reflects a strategy of local groups to promote the national discourse in order to reach wider audiences and gain legitimacy for its cultural identity.
Last but not least, I have examined the rise of Chinese individualization in the context of the Protecting Cantonese Movement. The continuity between collectivism and individualism marks the most distinctive feature of Chinese individualization. Individuals in Feng 88
China do not completely break free from their social tie but only replace their traditional commitments with a new obligation and dependence. The combination of a desiring “smaller self” and a responsible “greater self” indicates the incompleteness of Chinese individualization and reveals its consistency with the previous collectivism society. Besides, the modest goal of Chinese individuals reveals both their resistance and compromise with the state. While they take initiative to protest for their rights, they are also well aware of their limited strength in face of the coercive state. Their “detour” allows them to reconcile the contradiction between their pursuit of personal interests and their obedience to the state.
Furthermore, the rise of individualization supplements the development of regionalism.
Facing the oppressive effects of nation-building and city-planning, individuals form an united local group to defend their linguistic rights and attach greater significance to their local culture which remains unrecognized in the official discourse.
Feng 89
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