Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the Strident Turn SUISHENG ZHAO*

Journal of Contemporary China, 2013 Vol. 22, No. 82, 535–553, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2013.766379 Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the strident turn SUISHENG ZHAO*

This paper revisits the debate about foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the context of China’s increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in recent years. It argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls to take a confrontational position against the Western powers and to adopt tougher measures in maritime territorial disputes with its neighbors. This strident turn is partially because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion, but more importantly because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism calling for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. Enjoying an inﬂated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth and military capacities, and terriﬁed of an uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the communist state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the so-called core national interests. These developments have complicated China’s diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China’s foreign policy.

With a deeply rooted suspicion of the Western powers, Chinese nationalism is powered by a narrative of China’s century of shame and humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers and calls for the Chinese government to redeem the past humiliations and take back all ‘lost territories’. China’s increasingly muscular foreign policy behavior in defense of its so-called core national interests during the recent territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas has fed a roiling sense of anxiety in many political capitals about whether a virulent nationalism has emerged to drive China’s foreign policy in a more irrational and inﬂexible direction and make China’s rise anything but peaceful. One scholar suggested that Chinese nationalism took a ‘geopolitical turn’ in 2008, ‘shaped by many of the ideas that characterized geopolitical thinking in Germany and Japan in the nineteenth and early twentieth- centuries’. Because ‘the post-2008 hubris have made China’s leaders more susceptible to the pressure exerted by this discourse, the string of assertive acts in

* Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China–US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. The author can be reached by email at [email protected] q 2013 Taylor & Francis SUISHENG ZHAO

China’s foreign relations since 2008 have been viewed with alarm by the United States and others in Asia’.1 Although nationalism has been an important theme in Chinese political discourse for about a century, it has never caused such alarm. Scholars have debated about the foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism after its reemergence in the early 1990s. Taking a side of the debate to cautiously explore the limits of Chinese nationalism and ask if Chinese nationalism was affirmative, assertive or aggressive,2 I once argued that while the Chinese government was hardly above exploiting nationalist sentiment, it tried and was able to control its expression, practicing a pragmatic nationalism based on a sober assessment of China’s domestic and global challenges and tempered by diplomatic prudence.3 This position differed from those scholars who held that, at its reemergence, Chinese nationalism was a reckless and aggressive new nationalism ‘to influence the making of Chinese foreign policy’. ‘Driven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power, China is seeking to replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia.’4 Revisiting the debate in the context of China’s increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in relations with Western countries, and particularly its Asian– Pacific neighbors in recent years, this article argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by the emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become increasingly reluctant to constrain the expression of popular nationalism and more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls for confrontation against the Western powers and its neighbors, including the repeated use of paramilitary forces, economic sanctions, fishing and oil ventures, and other intimidating means, to deal with territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. This strident turn is, in part, because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion as the average Chinese found a growing number of ways to express their nationalist feelings and impose pressure upon foreign policy makers to be firm in protecting China’s national interests. More importantly, however, this turn is because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism. Enjoying an inflated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth

1. Christopher Hughes, ‘Reclassifying Chinese nationalism: the geopolitik turn’, Journal of Contemporary China 20(71), (2011), pp. 601–620. 2. Erica Strecker Downs and Philip C. Saunders, ‘Legitimacy and the limits of nationalism: China and the Diaoyu Island’, International Security 23(3), (Winter 1989–99); Allen Whiting, ‘Assertive nationalism in Chinese foreign policy’, Asian Survey 23(8), (1983); Allen Whiting, ‘Chinese nationalism and foreign policy after Deng’, The China Quarterly 142, (1995); Michael Oksenberg, ‘China’s confident nationalism’, Foreign Affairs 65(3), (1986–87); Chen Zhimin, ‘Nationalism, internationalism and Chinese foreign policy’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), (2005); Jia Qingguo, ‘Disrespect and distrust: the external origins of contemporary Chinese nationalism’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), (2005); Yinan He, ‘History, Chinese nationalism and the emerging Sino–Japanese conflict’, Journal of Contemporary China 16(50), (2007). 3. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); Suisheng Zhao, ‘Nationalism’s double-edge’, Wilson Quarterly, (2005); Suisheng Zhao, ‘Nationalism as a unifier-and risk’, International Politik 6(4), (2005); Suisheng Zhao, ‘China’s pragmatic nationalism: is it manageable?’, Washington Quarterly 29(1), (2005–06); Suisheng Zhao, ‘The Olympics and Chinese nationalism’, China Security 4(3), (2008). 4. Peter Gries, China’s New Nationalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 12, 134; Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, ‘The coming conflict with America’, Foreign Affairs 76(2), (1997), p. 19.

536 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM and military capacities, and terriﬁed of the uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the Chinese state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the core interests. These developments have complicated China’s diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China’s foreign policy.

Chinese state nationalism versus popular nationalism Chinese nationalism has been driven mostly by two forces from two opposite directions: the incumbent state elites from the top down and the populist societal forces from the bottom up. The top-down driven nationalism, known as state nationalism, displays three features. First, it identifies the Chinese nation closely with the communist state. Nationalist sentiment is officially expressed as 爱国, meaning ‘loving the state’, or 爱国主义 (patriotism), which is love and support of China indistinguishable from the state.5 The state claims it represents the whole nation and advances the nation’s interests rather than just the interests of the state and, therefore, speaks in the name of the nation and demands citizens to subordinate their individual interests to those of the state. The state, as the center of nationalist aspirations and the embodiment of the nation’s will, seeks the loyalty and support of the people that are granted the nation itself: ‘This conceptual manipulation is coupled with political control of nationalist sentiments and expressions, thus making Chinese nationalism subordinate to party- state interests’.6 For this purpose, the communist state launched an extensive patriotic education campaign in the 1990s to ensure loyalty in a population that was otherwise subject to many domestic discontents. The core of the patriotic education campaign was 国情教育 (education in national conditions), which unambiguously held that China’s national conditions were unique and it was not ready for adopting Western-style democracy. Instead, the current one-party rule should continue because it would help maintain political stability, a pre-condition for rapid economic development. The campaign, therefore, redefined the legitimacy of the communist regime on the basis of providing political stability and economic prosperity in a protracted process of building power sufficient to protect China’s national interests. When communist leaders called upon the Chinese people to work hard to build a prosperous and strong China and said that China was bullied and humiliated by foreign powers, they indicated that China’s economic under-development should share some of the blame.7 Second, Chinese state nationalism is guided by pragmatism, which by definition is behavior disciplined by neither a set of values nor established principles. This is

5. Michael Hunt, ‘Chinese national identity and the strong state: the late Qing-republican crisis’, in Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim, eds, China’s Quest for National Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 63. 6. Jonathan Walton, An Interview with Yingjie guo: Chinese Nationalism and its Future Prospect, Policy Q&A (The National Bureau of Asian Research, 27 June 2012), available at: http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx? id¼258. 7. Suisheng Zhao, ‘A state-led nationalism: the patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China’, Communist and Post-communist Studies 31(3), (1998).

537 SUISHENG ZHAO vividly expressed by Deng’s ‘cat theory’, i.e. ‘a cat, whether it is white or black, is a good one as long as it is able to catch mice’. The communist state exploited nationalism because of its utility as the most reliable claim to the Chinese people’s loyalty and the only important value shared by both the regime and its critics to compensate for the declining communist ideology. Indeed, a historical sense of injustice at the hands of foreign powers is deeply rooted in the national psyche and qiangguomeng (the dream of a strong China) is shared among all Chinese people. As a result of a volatile mix of rising pride and lingering insecurity in response to profound transformations in the post-Cold War era, Chinese nationalism represents an aggregation of various political forces to override China’s weakness and find its rightful place in the world. A shared objective of holding the nation together during the turbulent transition reinvigorated the loyalty of the Chinese people to the state. Reinforcing Chinese national confidence and turning past humiliation and current weakness into a driving force for China’s modernization, nationalism became an effective instrument to enhance the legitimacy of the communist state. The nationalist card was particularly effective when China was faced with pressures from foreign forces. As a Chinese official said, if the Chinese people felt threatened by external forces, the solidarity among them would be strengthened and nationalism would be a useful tool for the regime to justify its leadership role.8 It was revealing to see that although corruption and some other social and economic problems undermined the legitimacy of the communist regime, many Chinese people sided with the communist government under sanctions by Western countries, which were said to be hostile to China rather than the Communist Party. No matter how corrupt the government was, foreigners had no right to make unwarranted remarks about China. Many Chinese people were upset by US pressure on issues of human rights, intellectual property rights, trade deficits, weapons proliferation and Taiwan because they believed that the US used these issues to demonize China in an effort to prevent it from rising as a great power. Positioning itself as the defender of China’s national pride and interests in the fight against Western sanctions after the Tianamen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations and for China’s entry into the WTO, stopping Taiwan independence and hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the communist state certainly bolstered its nationalist credentials. Third, in response to perceived foreign pressure that was said to erode, corrode or endanger the national interest of China, state nationalism, for quite a while, was more reactive than proactive in international affairs. Setting peace and development as China’s major foreign policy objectives, the state emphasized political stability at home as the necessary condition for the attainment of economic prosperity, the pathway for the Communist Party to stay in power and the foundation for China’s rising nationalist aspirations. Making use of nationalism to rally support, pragmatic leaders had to make sure that nationalist sentiments would not jeopardize the overarching objectives of political stability and economic modernization upon which their legitimacy was ultimately based. Seeking to defend China’s national interests by making efforts to develop cooperative relations with the United States and other

8. Liu Ji, ‘Making the right choices in twenty-ﬁrst century Sino–American relations’, Journal of Contemporary China 7(17), (1998), p. 92.

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Western powers that held the key for China’s modernization, state nationalism was flexible in tactics, subtle in strategy and avoided appearing confrontational, although it remained uncompromising on issues that involved China’s vital interests or triggered historical sensitivities. State-led and largely reactive, state nationalism does not have a fixed, objectified and eternally defined content, nor is it driven by any ideology, religious beliefs or other abstract ideas. It was an instrument of the communist state to bolster the faith of the Chinese people in a political system in trouble and hold the country together during the period of rapid and turbulent transformation. Chinese nationalism is also driven from the bottom up by societal forces. As one scholar suggested, After a century slowly fomenting among Chinese intellectuals, national sentiment has captured and redefined the consciousness of the Chinese people during the last two decades of China’s economic boom. This mass national consciousness launched the Chinese colossus into global competition to achieve an international status commensurate with the country’s vast capacities and the Chinese people’s conception of their country’s rightful place in the world.9 The bottom-up driven popular nationalism has two features. First, it has a tendency to include liberal ideas. Like liberal nationalists who define a nation as composed of citizens who have the duty of supporting their own state in defending national rights in the world of nation-states while also pursuing individual rights of participation in the government, Chinese popular nationalists have a split personality. Identifying with the Chinese state against foreign powers, they push for political participation against the authoritarian state. Second, sharing with the government the dream of making China a strong and powerful country that could stand up against the bullies of the Western powers, popular nationalism is particularly suspicious about a Western conspiracy and hidden agenda to slow down or even stop China’s rise and, therefore, more vocal and emotional than the state in criticism of Western evil intentions. Although many in the US claim that the main point of friction with China is due to China’s authoritarianism and therefore press China on issues of human rights and democracy, Chinese nationalists have wondered whether or not the conflict will remain and perhaps grow starker even if China becomes democratic because they don’t believe that the US wants to see China, even a democratic China, become richer and stronger than America. Popular nationalism began to emerge in the 1990s, expressed powerfully in the instant bestsellers of a series of ‘say no’ books, such as The China That Can Say No, The China that Still Can Say No and How China Can Say No. With a quick and automatic conviction that the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was deliberate, popular nationalists were the leading force in the anti-American demonstrations. Because most popular nationalists are young, they are also known as ‘feng qing’ (angry youths). Connected mostly by new information technology, particularly the Internet, the youth popular nationalist movement gained momentum in the 2000s. They led the dramatic signature campaign that gathered more than

9. Liah Greenfeld, ‘Roots of Japan–China rivalry’, Japan Times, (27 September 2012), available at: http://www. japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20120927a1.html.

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20 million people on the Internet in 2005 to oppose Japan’s bid to join the United Nations Security Council, and the massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in major Chinese cities protesting Japan’s approval of history textbooks which they said whitewashed Japanese wartime atrocities, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s contentious visits to the war-tainted Yasukuni Shrine, and Japan’s pledge to help the US defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by Beijing. Showing their strong sense of wounded national pride, popular nationalists gathered in many Chinese cities and all over the world in an act of solidarity against what they believed to be an ‘anti-China’ bias of the Western media during the Olympic torch relay and to show their support to the Chinese government for hosting the Olympic Games in 2008. It was the massive worldwide protests in 2008 that gave rise to the world’s concern for Chinese youths’ nationalistic sentiment.10 Holding high expectations for the government to fulﬁll its promise of safeguarding China’s national interests, the boiling popular nationalist rhetoric was suffused with a sense of China-as-victim and a yearning for redress while calling for the opening of foreign policy making, an arena that was long a monopolized domain of the state. Seeking status, acceptance and respect on the world stage, popular nationalists routinely charged the communist state as neither conﬁdent enough nor competent enough in safeguarding China’s vital national interests and too chummy with Japan and soft in dealing with the United States.

A two-pronged strategy toward popular nationalism The emotional nature of popular nationalism posed a daunting challenge to the state that tried not only to maintain its monopoly in the making of foreign policy but also in following the taoguangyanghui policy—hiding its capabilities, focusing on national strength-building and biding its time—set by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1990s.11 Although popular nationalists called on the government to take a hard line against what they perceived as provocations from the United States and Japan, Chinese leaders, from the position of relative vulnerability, knew that China’s circumscribed national strength did not allow it to exert enough clout to confront Western powers and that its economic success depended heavily upon integration with the outside world and, particularly, upon cooperative relations with advanced Western countries. Therefore, Beijing had to make pragmatic accommodations to the US by ‘learning to live with the hegemon’, i.e. making adaptations and policy adjustment to the reality of the US dominance in the international system, because the US held the key to China’s modernization.12 Recognizing that the failure of the Soviet Union was largely due to its strategy of confrontation against the US in a competition for the hegemony that exhausted its economic and military capacity, China did not want to become the second ‘Mr No’ and follow in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union by

10. Lijun Yang and Yongnian Zheng, ‘Fen qings (angry youth) in contemporary China’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(76), (2012), p. 638. 11. Deng Qirong, Gaige kaifang yilai de zhongguo waijiao [Chinese Diplomacy since the Reform and Opening Up ] (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Chuban She, 2009), p. 18. 12. Jia Qingguo, ‘Learning to live with the hegemon: evolution of China’s policy toward the US since the end of the Cold War’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(44), (2005), p. 395.

540 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM confronting the US so as to exhaust itself. Instead, China would defend its national interest by conducting a shrewd diplomacy, which ‘requires rationality and calmness’.13 To alleviate the growing suspicion and resistance among many countries and create a peaceful international environment for its modernization programs, China followed a low profile policy and avoided confronting the US and other Western powers across a range of fronts while China’s economy began taking off rapidly in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Taking a pragmatic position, Chinese leaders emphasized the principles of peaceful co-existence, peaceful rise and peaceful development. In this case, it is not difficult for Chinese leaders to realize that nationalism is a double-edged sword: both a means to legitimate the CCP rule and a means for the Chinese people to judge the performance of the state: ‘All this makes nationalism a particularly interesting force in China, given its potential not just for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away’.14 Without constraints, nationalism could become a dangerous Pandora’s Box and release tremendous forces with unexpected consequences. If Chinese leaders could not deliver on their nationalist promise, they would become vulnerable to nationalistic criticism. It is very possible that if the Chinese people should repudiate the communist government, it could be for nationalist reasons after a conspicuous failure in the government’s foreign policy or program of economic development. As a result, ‘the Chinese leadership was constrained to deploy nationalism as a means of legitimizing the regime or to mobilize the population in support of their policies’.15 To balance the positive and the negative aspects, Chinese leaders adopted a two- pronged strategy to deal with popular nationalism. On the one hand, they tolerated and even encouraged the expression of popular sentiments in defending China’s vital national interest, such as the preservation of national sovereignty and the reunification of China. On the other hand, describing nationalism as a force that must be ‘channeled’ in its expression, the Chinese government took repeated action to restrain or even ban the popular nationalists from holding anti-foreign demonstrations. For example, the government tolerated the anti-Japanese demonstrations but forcefully ordered a stop in late April 2005 when leaders discovered an Internet call for even larger scale demonstrations on the anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, which was triggered by anger over the Versailles Treaty giving Japan control of parts of China’s Shandong Province in 1919 and is a symbol of social reform, risking not only being rushed into a confrontation with Japan but also turning the passions against the government. To stop the demonstrations, the government sent a blizzard of text messages to mobile phone users in major cities warning against ‘spreading rumors, believing rumors or joining illegal demonstrations’. Several organizers of online petition drives and popular protests were detained. Police in main cities throughout the nation went on full alert to prevent a

13. Shen Jiru, Zhongguo Budang Bu Xiansheng: Dangdai Zhongguo de Guoji Zhanlue Wenti [China Does Not Want to be Mr. No: Problems of International Strategy for Today’s China ] (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1998), p. 62. 14. Nicolas D. Kristofor, ‘Guess who’s a Chinese nationalist now?’, New York Times, (22 April 2001). 15. Ian Seckington, ‘Nationalism, ideology and China’s “fourth generation” leadership’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), (2005), p. 28.

541 SUISHENG ZHAO recurrence of anti-Japan protests on the sensitive May Fourth anniversary and during the months thereafter. Tiananmen Square was closed to the public for a government- organized coming-of-age ceremony for 18-year-olds, in an apparent attempt to thwart any protests. This was not the first time that Chinese leaders had used heavy-handed tactics to ban anti-foreign demonstrations. Beijing had learned lessons the hard way from its handling of the crises caused by the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in 1999. Following the embassy bombing, there was a highly emotional nationalism outburst. University students gathered at the front of the US embassy in Beijing and consulates in other cities, throwing eggs and stones. The Chinese government tolerated and encouraged demonstrations until they spiraled out of control, threatening damage to Sino–US relations and provoking criticism that the leadership was unwilling to confront the United States. Two days after the bombing, then Vice-President Hu Jintao made a televised speech in which, while extending government support to students’ patriotism, he warned against extreme and destabilizing behavior. In the meantime, the People’s Daily reported that various Western countries had issued advisories against traveling to China, hurting tourism and foreign investment. Meeting with foreign visitors on 11 May, President Jiang Zemin stated that life in China should now return to normal and it was time to turn a new page in the name of economic necessity. When the mid-air collision between a US EP-3 plane and a Chinese jetfighter in the South China Sea took place on 1 April 2001, Chinese leaders were determined to avoid a repeat of the anti-American demonstrations of a year earlier. In response to rising nationalist sentiments, Beijing was uncompromising in its demands that the spy plane crew would only be released after a formal apology by the US government and that the US promise to stop its provocative activities along China’s coast. However, Beijing accepted US Secretary of State Powell’s ‘very sorry’ for the missing Chinese pilot and aircraft as a close equivalent to an apology and released the crew the next day. It was a testimony to pragmatic leaders’ tactical flexibility that the Chinese official media translated Powell’s expression of ‘very sorry’ as ‘抱歉’, which is one word different from but has almost an identical meaning to ‘道歉’, the Chinese expression of ‘apology’ that Beijing demanded initially. Chinese leaders interpreted the expression of being ‘very sorry’ as a full apology and the American expressions of ‘regrets’ and ‘sorry’ that meant in most instances only for the loss of the pilot and aircraft as meant for the whole incident. As a face-saving solution, while Chinese leaders did not alter their tough rhetoric for domestic reasons, they did almost everything they could to avoid direct confrontation with the United States.16 Talking tough but acting in a calculated manner helped Chinese leaders prevent the rise of popular nationalism from damaging China’s relations with the US and Japan. Facing challenges from popular nationalism, the Chinese leadership was able to reaffirm its pragmatic foreign policy because, as one Chinese scholar indicated, it not only acknowledged that the best way to reclaim its political legitimacy at home and regain its pre-eminent position in the world was not to fan an excessive and hostile

16. Peter Hay Gries and Kaiping Feng, ‘Culture clash? Apologies East and West’, Journal of Contemporary China 11(30), (2002), pp. 173–178.

542 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM nationalism towards foreign powers but also monopolized the ofﬁcial nationalism discourse ‘so that popular nationalism could not have undue inﬂuence in the actual foreign policy making process’.17

The changing attitude of the state toward popular nationalism The pragmatic control of popular nationalism, however, began to loosen up after the global economy sputtered in 2008. Popular nationalist sentiment ran particularly high after the global financial crisis began. A multiple country and region survey in 2008 found that ‘China has one of the highest levels of popular nationalism in the world’.18 Claiming that the crisis could result in an envious West doing whatever it could to keep China down, a popular nationalist book, China is Not Happy, tapped into what the authors believed to be a widespread public feeling of disgruntlement with the West and urged China to assert itself militarily, diplomatically and in every other way to grasp its great power place in history.19 The book sold half a million copies in a few months after its release in early 2009, not counting bootleg copies and online piracy, and immediately shot to the top of the bestsellers list.20 Facing rumblings of discontent from those who saw the global downturn as a chance for China to assert itself more stridently, the Chinese government did not make serious efforts to control emotional nationalist expressions. To the surprise of many observers, in addition to scholars at state-run think tanks and universities, active duty senior military officers were allowed to openly put pressure on the government to push back against the US on many sensitive foreign policy issues. For example, Colonel Dai Xu’s popular book in late 2009 and his provocative speeches on China’s Internet claimed that China was encircled in a C-shape by hostile or wary countries beholden to the United States and could not escape the calamity of war in the not-too-distant future. Because the US put a fire in China’s backyard, he called for the Chinese leaders to light a fire in the US backyard. Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu’s 2010 book, The China Dream, stood out for its boldness in the chorus of popular nationalist expressions. Reflecting on China’s swelling nationalist ambitions, the book called for China to abandon modest foreign policy and build the world’s strongest military to deter the wary US from challenging China’s rise while the West was still mired in an economic slowdown. If China could not become world number one, it would inevitably become a straggler cast aside in the twenty-first century.21 Because Liu was teaching at the PLA’s National Defense University, it was believed that ‘the appearance of his book underscores that calls for Beijing to take a hard

17. Chen Zimin, ‘Nationalism, internationalism and Chinese foreign policy’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), (2005), pp. 51–52. 18. Wenfang Tang and Benjamin Barr, ‘Chinese nationalism and its political and social origins’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(77), (2012), p. 823. 19. Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Huang Jisu, Song Qiang et al., Zhongguo Bugaoxing [China is Not Happy ] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chuban She, 2009). 20. Raymond Zhou, ‘Why is China angry?’, China Daily, (24 April 2009). 21. 戴旭 [Dai Xu], C形包围—内忧外患下的中国突围 [C Shape Encircle, China’s Breakthrough with the Internal Concerns and External Dangers ] (Beijing: Wenhui Chubanshe, 2009); 刘明福 [Liu Mingfu], 中国梦 [The China Dream ] (Beijing: Youyi Chuban Gongshi, 2010).

543 SUISHENG ZHAO stance against Washington reach beyond nationalist views on the internet to include voices in the military elite’.22 The relatively unconstrained expression of popular nationalism reflected at least four momentous developments. One is the increasing influence of the so-called ‘public opinion’ in the making of China’s foreign policy. Although China’s authoritarian system gives the state immense power to drive foreign policy, China is no longer headed by charismatic leaders such as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping who had the authority to arbitrate disputes in the leadership or personally set the country’s course. Current Chinese leaders must cater to a range of constituencies and the power of the Chinese government has become increasingly conditional on its ability to defend China’s national interests as Communist ideology sputtered and social controls loosened by market-oriented economic reform and nationalist appeals of prosperity and power became the new base of the regime legitimacy. As the strong- man politics gave way to a collective leadership that is more sensitive to popular views on issues involving China’s vital interests, political leaders understood that mishandling these sensitive issues could not only lead to social instability but also provide political competitors an avenue by which to undermine their political standing. This created a vague sense of ‘boundary of permissible’,23 which led to the match of who was tougher on the issues that defined the game for political gains or at least not to lose any ground. Second, thanks to the commercialization of a large portion of the Chinese media as the government limited or withdrew funding and pushed newspapers to make money from subscriptions and advertising, some of China’s leading national newspapers found nationalistic expression as one powerful approach to attract readers’ attention and help raise profile and revenues. As popular nationalism was expressed vocally in a growing number of media outlets, Chinese foreign policy makers had to occasionally, but increasingly, refer to the constraints that the surging popular nationalism placed upon them to resist foreign entreaties and make their own policy positions more credible.24 Apparently gone are the days when Chinese elites could ignore these voices. Therefore, nationalist pundits and bloggers in China find allies in high places, as top government officials are nervous about countering this trend directly. The result has been the creation of a dangerously stunted version of a free press, in which a Chinese commentator may more safely criticize government policy from a hawkish, nationalist direction than from a moderate, internationalist one.25 Under the pressure of vocal popular nationalism, Chinese leaders found themselves with less room to operate on sensitive issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and the South

22. Chris Buckley, ‘China PLA ofﬁcer urges challenging US dominance’, Reuters, (1 March 2010). 23. David M. Lampton, ‘China’s foreign and national security policy-making process: is it changing and does it matter?’, in David M. Lampton, ed., The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 14. 24. Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, ‘The domestic context of Chinese foreign policy: does public opinion matter?’, in Lampton, ed., The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy, pp. 151–190. 25. Thomas J. Christensen, ‘The advantages of an assertive China: responding to Beijing’s abrasive diplomacy’, Foreign Affairs 90(2), (2011), available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67477/thomas-j-christensen/ the-advantages-of-an-assertive-china.

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China Sea, as levels of foreign policy debate increased through society, magnified by a more commercially driven press and a vibrant Internet. Third, a convergence of state nationalism and popular nationalism was catalyzed as increasing numbers of people in powerful positions in the state found themselves sharing the views of popular nationalism that the global balance of power was tilting in its favor: ‘Chinese leaders are in essence realists. Their making of Chinese foreign policy often starts from a careful assessment of China’s relative power in the world’.26 Because the Chinese economy rebounded quickly and strongly from the global downturn, Chinese leaders became increasingly confident in its ability to deal with the West and settle territorial disputes on its own terms. They also became more willing to proactively shape the external environment rather than passively react to it and forcefully safeguard China’s national interests rather than compromise them. A battered West presented a gratifying target for pent-up contempt. With Western economies floundering and Chinese economic and diplomatic clout rising, a perception of the US in heavy debt to China but still attempting to leverage its superiority to keep China down made Chinese leaders less willing to adapt and more ready to challenge the US in defending what they called core interests. As one American scholar found: Since the start of the 2008–09 financial crisis many Chinese strategists have reached the conclusion that the United States is declining, and their own country is rising much faster than had previously been expected. Belief that this is the case has fed an already powerful strain of forceful, sometimes belligerent nationalism that appears to be increasingly widespread, especially among the young.27 The fourth development is the increasing economic and political uncertainties at home. Although China was a relatively bright spot in the global downturn, rapid economic growth created huge social, economic and political tensions and raised expectations of the Chinese people regarding the performance of the government. The state faced serious challenges from growing public demands related to the government’s policies on economic and social inequality, endemic corruption, epidemic pollution, emaciated health care, shredded social services, entrenched industrial overcapacity, a swiftly aging population, ethnic conflict, etc. While few Chinese people would want Western-style democracy at the moment, the leaders knew that their legitimacy depended on their ability to meet the various demands from society. When the global financial turmoil started, the Chinese leaders were not sure if it would batter China’s economy and produce social unrest. Their concern was not unfounded because, in addition to the high profile riots in Tibet in 2008 and the Muslim region of Xinjiang in 2009, they had to deal routinely with tens of thousands of civil and ethnic protests from those robbed of their land for development and laid- off workers to those suffering from the side-effects of environmental despoilment. As the financial meltdown swept across the globe, they did not know what would

26. Suisheng Zhao, ‘Shaping the regional context of China’s rise: how the Obama administration brought back hedge in its engagement with China’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(75), (2012), p. 377. 27. Aaron Friedberg, ‘The coming clash with China’, Washington Street Journal, (17 January 2011), available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704323204576085013620618774.html? KEYWORDS¼aaronþfriedberg.

545 SUISHENG ZHAO happen to the millions of migrant workers who lost their jobs as labor intensive industries churning out cheap products for export put up their shutters and the many white-collar workers who were laid off or had their bonuses and wages cut. Out of the anxiety about the political consequences of possible economic slowdown in the long- run, the Chinese government, taking a more responsive position to the demands of popular nationalism, could not only avoid criticism of its incompetence but could also divert attention from domestic problems. The leadership transition in the run-up to the 2012 Party Congress also brought political uncertainty. As the succession process geared up, hard-line nationalist policies were popular because they could become springboards to power for ambitious and unscrupulous leaders during a caustic period. White-knuckling their way through their final two years in office before handing over to the next generation of leaders, the Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao leadership was very weak. More nervous about maintaining long-term regime legitimacy and social stability than at any other time, the Hu–Wen leadership did their best to foster their reputations as protectors of national pride and domestic stability, avoid criticism along nationalist lines, and boost support among the government officials and military officers. Taking an assertive stance in defending China’s core interests, where national pride and regime survival were seen as at stake, the Chinese government thus displayed an unusually hawkish position even at the danger of overplaying popular nationalism.

Foreign policy implications The changing position of the state toward popular nationalism has significant foreign policy implications. Reflecting the change, China’s core national interests, defined as ‘the bottom-line of national survival’,28 which ‘are essentially nonnegotiable in nature’,29 suddenly became a fashionable term, appearing more frequently in the speeches of Chinese leaders and official publications. Obviously chosen with the intent to signal the resolve in China’s rising power aspirations, Chinese leaders have steadily included more controversial issues in the expanding list of China’s core interests and reoriented foreign policy in a more assertive direction, reacting stridently to all perceived slights to its national pride and interests. These changes produced deleterious effects on China’s foreign policy making, damaging China’s relations with Western countries and many of its Asian–Pacific neighbors. In relationships with Western countries, China has appeared increasingly confrontational, ‘berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage- managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran’.30 Raising the stakes with regard to the US routine and predictable arms sales to Taiwan, China ratcheted up the rhetoric in its dire-sounding warnings about the consequences of the arms sales

28. 陈岳 [Chen Yue], ‘中国当前外交环境及应对’ [‘The current international environment and the responses’], 现代国际关系 [Contemporary International Relations ], (November 2011), p. 4. 29. Michael Swain, ‘China’s assertive behavior—part one: on “core interests”’, China Leadership Monster no. 34, (22 February 2011), available at: http://www.hoover.org/publications/china-leadership-monitor/7216. 30. Katrin Bennhold, ‘As China rises, conﬂict with West rises too’, New York Times, (27 January 2010).

546 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM as a serious challenge to China’s core interest. Following Rear-Admiral Yang Yi’s suggestion that it was time for China to sanction US defense firms behind the sales to ‘reshape the policy choices of the US’,31 Beijing made unprecedented objections to the Obama administration’s $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan on 29 January. In addition to what China did in the past to immediately announce the suspension of some military exchanges with the US and unleash a storm of bluster by various government and military agencies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman for the first time officially threatened to impose sanctions on American companies involved in the arms sales.32 In response to US President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in early 2010, instead of following the low profile dictum, China reminded the West of the tough statement that Deng once made: ‘no one should expect China to swallow the bitter fruit that hurts its interest’.33 In relations with Asian–Pacific neighbors, China modified its long time delaying strategy, which maintained China’s claim but avoided using force to escalate the conflicts, and expanded the core interest issues in 2009 to include the maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea, where China confronts a mosaic of disputes over islands and seas also claimed by Southeast Asian nations, although China’s official statements on core interest issues involving sovereignty and territorial integrity had referred almost exclusively to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.34 Embarking on a new pattern of aggressively asserting its suzerainty and sovereignty over the disputed maritime territories by deploying more personnel and installing new equipment to carry out regular sea patrols and law enforcement more frequently and forcefully in the South and East China Seas, China made strong reactions to a chain of incidents in the period of 2009–2012, including China’s repeated attempts to prevent Vietnamese and Philippine vessels from exploring oil and gas in disputed waters in the South China Sea and China’s punitive actions during the Sino–Japanese standoff over Japan’s detention of a Chinese trawler captain and the Japanese government’s decision to nationalize the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. These incidents provoked diplomatic crises during which China displayed its warships to support its sovereignty claims. In the South China Sea, while China had for a long time showed a certain degree of flexibility on the difficult maritime disputes by suggesting ‘shelving the disputes (of sovereignty) and working for joint development’ (搁置争议, 共同发展) while holding its sovereignty claims (主权在我), Beijing has renewed its claims and forcefully expanded its maritime law enforcement in the South China Sea by sending ‘combat-ready’ patrol ships regularly to escort fishing fleets and conducting naval exercises in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Chinese vessels routinely clashed with the ships of Vietnam and the Philippines, causing incidents with the Vietnam oil

31. ‘China yesterday urged the United States to cancel a massive arms deal to Taiwan, warning of severe consequences if it does not heed the call’, China Daily, (8 January 2010). 32. ‘Chinese threats to sanction Boeing are more sound than fury’, Chinese Economic Review, (3 February 2010), available at: http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/today-in-china/2010_02_03/Dont_worry_about_Boeing.html. 33. ‘Press conference of the PRC State Council Information Ofﬁce for contacts between Central Government and Dalai Lama’, Xinhua, (11 February 2010), available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-02/11/ c_13172224.htm. 34. Wu Xinbo, ‘Forging Sino–US partnership in the 21st century: opportunities and challenges’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(75), (2012), p. 393.

547 SUISHENG ZHAO exploration ships and the Philippine navy naval patrol vessels and threatening to spill over into a full-blown conflict. As a result, ‘tensions generated by contested territorial and maritime boundary claims in the South China Sea arguably reached their highest point since the end of the Cold War’.35 In response to Vietnam’s approach to internationalize its position by striking a series of deals and creating strategic partnerships with foreign oil giants to deploy advanced survey ships and push ahead with extensive exploration and survey work on the disputed continental shelf, China swiftly expanded its increasingly large and aggressive flotilla of marine surveillance and patrol ships to enforce its claims in the disputed waters. On 26 May 2011, three Chinese marine surveillance vessels approached a Vietnam seismic survey ship about 120 nautical miles off the southern Vietnamese coast and cut the Vietnam ship’s exploration cables. This incident sparked anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam where public demonstrations are rare and usually restricted by the government. As a move to assert its sovereignty, the Vietnam National Assembly passed the Vietnamese Law of the Sea on 20 June 2012, which claimed jurisdiction over the Spratly Archipelagos (Nansha in Chinese) in the South China Sea and stipulated that all foreign ships passing through the disputed waters must notify Vietnamese authorities. China protested immediately that ‘the Vietnamese law violates China’s sovereignty’ and ‘Vietnam’s unilateral action has escalated the problem’.36 It’s ironic that while China castigated Vietnam over passing its unilateral law, China’s National People’s Congress also passed a Law of Territorial Seas and Surrounding Areas (中华人民共和国领海及毗连区法) in February 1992, unilaterally declaring the Spratlys, Diaoyu/Senkaku, Taiwan and Paracels as the PRC’s territory. As a specific retaliation, China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) issued an invitation for Chinese and foreign companies to bid on nine new oil blocks located entirely within disputed waters in the South China Sea off Vietnam’s central coast. In an even more dramatic move, China announced the establishment of a new city, Sansha (three shas) in the South China Sea, to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha Islands (the Spratly, Paracel and Macclesfield Bank island chains) and their surrounding waters. Sparsely populated Sansha is China’s smallest city in terms of population and land size, but its administrative responsibility covers China’s vast claims in the South China Sea and its myriad of mostly uninhabited atolls and reefs. According to Xinhua News Agency, ‘Sansha city administers over 200 islets, sandbanks and reefs in Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha Islands, covering 13 square kilometers in island area and 2 million square kilometers of water’.37 China also decried efforts by the Philippines to invite multinationals to explore oil and gas in the disputed areas of the South China Sea. While the Philippines–China part of the maritime dispute has been long-standing, it flared up in 2011 when Manila invited foreign companies to bid for the right to explore oil and gas in the areas

35. Ian Storey, ‘ASEAN and the South China Sea: movement in lieu of progress’, China Brief 12(9), (26 April 2012), available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D¼39305& tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D¼25&cHash¼1593a4b908a210256255f8a987eefeaa. 36. Zhou Wa, ‘Vietnam’s maritime claim “will harm ties”’, Xinhua News Agency, (22 June 2012), available at: http://www.cdeclips.com/en/world/fullstory.html?id¼74236. 37. ‘China focus: China’s Sansha starts forming government’, Xinhua, (17 July 2012), available at: http://news. xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-07/17/c_131721193.htm.

548 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM around Reed Bank. About 50 foreign investors, including some of the world’s largest oil companies, expressed interest because of strong indications of oil there. Protesting to the Philippine government to immediately withdraw the bidding offer and refrain from any action that infringes on China’s sovereignty and sovereign rights,38 China crossed swords by sending its law enforcement ships to disturb operations of Filipino fishing and survey vessels in the waters of the Scarborough Shoal, known to the Philippines as Panatag and to the Chinese as the Huangyan Island, about 130 nautical miles west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and more than 500 miles from the mainland of China. A standoff was sparked on 8 April 2012 when two Chinese maritime surveillance ships appeared on the scene and blocked the Philippine warship from arresting a group of Chinese fishermen who were accused of harvesting giant clams, live sharks and coral at the Scarborough Shoal. The fishing vessels sailed away unmolested. In response, the Philippines deployed a second vessel to join its warship to assert Philippine sovereignty. This show of the Philippine flag was soon overshadowed by the arrival of the largest and most advanced Chinese fisheries patrol and enforcement ships. As both countries sent ships to the area, anger was boiling over, ratcheting up tensions on the water and leading to a diplomatic row that stoked nationalism on both sides. While hundreds of Filipino protesters rallied outside the Chinese embassy in Manila in May, China quietly started economic sanctions. Chinese tour agencies canceled tour group trips to the Philippines allegedly due to concerns for tourists’ safety. As the third-largest source of tourists for the Philippines, this action put great economic pressure on the Philippine government. In the meantime, Chinese quarantine authorities imposed restrictions on banana imports from the Philippines, citing health concerns as the official reason despite the common knowledge that it was in retaliation for the flare-up in contested waters. Bananas are the Philippines’ second largest agricultural export, with China accounting for about a quarter of all bananas exported by the Philippines. The sudden Chinese restrictions on banana imports were ‘a big disaster’ for the growers. As many as 200,000 Philippine banana farmers stood to lose their jobs due to trade restrictions imposed by China.39 Subsequently, China began slowing inspections of papayas, mangoes, coconuts and pineapples from the Philippines. The economic stakes of falling afoul of China were huge for the Philippines.40 While punishing the Philippines by economic measures, Beijing allowed hawkish voices and nationalistic commentators warning military action against the Philippines. Luo Yuan, one of the well-known hard-line Chinese army generals, wrote that because the Philippines violated China’s sovereignty over the Huangyan Island by forcing an inspection of a Chinese fishing vessel, China had to demonstrate its determination to safeguard its sovereignty and security by taking ‘decisive action’,

38. ‘Manila rejects new Chinese claim to territory just 50 miles away from Philippine province’, Washington Post, (14 November 2011), available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-paciﬁc/manila-rejects-new- chinese-claim-to-territory-just-50-miles-away-from-philippine-province/2011/11/14/gIQAv3lmJN_story.html. 39. Andrew Higgins, ‘In Philippines, banana growers feel effect of South China Sea dispute’, Washington Post, (11 June 2012), available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_paciﬁc/in-philippines-banana-growers- feel-effect-of-south-china-sea-dispute/2012/06/10/gJQA47WVTV_story.html?wpisrc¼nl_headlines_Mon. 40. Richard Javad Heydarian, ‘China splits Philippine politics’, Asia Times, (10 October 2012), available at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NJ10Ae02.html.

549 SUISHENG ZHAO including ‘war at all costs’, to reinforce Beijing’s claim on the disputed Scarborough Shoal to let both the Philippines and any potential future provocateur know that such actions will not be tolerated.41 While his comments might not represent official policy, war talk became popular in China’s media coverage of the standoff. Taking the uncompromised position to express hyper-nationalist positions, the Global Times, best known for its provocative editorials and commentaries, published an editorial on 26 October 2011, warning the countries disputing China’s maritime claims to be prepared for the sound of cannons if they didn’t want to change their ways with China.42 The beat of the war drums was unusually strong as the Chinese saw the Philippines as so weak that that it couldn’t punch back. The coercive diplomacy seemed to have worked. While President Benigno Aquino publicly condemned Chinese aggression, he quietly negotiated an agreement with Beijing in early June to make a simultaneous withdrawal from the disputed waters around Scarborough Shoal in order to de-escalate tensions and maintain crucial bilateral trade and investment ties. With Typhoon Butchoy approaching the area, Aquino ordered the withdrawal of the Philippine vessels from the shoal on 15 June as part of the agreement, but Chinese vessels never really left. Just a few days after the Philippine withdrawal, a Philippine navy reconnaissance plane found 23 Chinese fishing boats inside the lagoon and five Chinese government ships outside the lagoon in the vicinity of Scarborough.43 Hong Lei, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, confirmed at a press conference that Chinese government ships and fishing boats ‘have maintained jurisdiction and vigilance’ in the shoal and the tension in Scarborough Shoal had eased in general with no Philippine ships in sight to challenge the Chinese vessels.44 In the East China Sea, China’s position over the Diaoyu/Sankaku Islands dispute with Japan has also hardened partially in response to the burst of popular anti-Japanese nationalism. For historical and geopolitical reasons, Japan occupies a central place in the rise of China’s nationalism. China’s humiliating defeat in the war of 1894–1895 by Japan, a tiny country that the Chinese dismissively called 倭人 (dwarfs) or 小日本 (little Japan), was fundamental to the rise of the first generation of Chinese nationalists. Japanese expansion in China after the Versailles Peace Treaty triggered the anti- imperialist May Fourth Movement in 1919. Anti-Japanese sentiment was reinforced by the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s–1940s. As one scholar indicated, China was already accustomed to rapacious Western powers squabbling over its riches, but had remained self-confident in the knowledge of these powers’ irrelevance. However, the assault from Japan, a speck of dust in its own backyard, shattered this self-assurance and was experienced as a shocking and intolerable humiliation.45

41. ‘Maj. Gen Luo: China won’t “abandon” war option’, China.org.cn, (10 May 2012), available at: http://www. china.org.cn/opinion/2012-05/10/content_25350539.htm. 42. ‘Editorial: Don’t take peaceful approach for granted’, Global Times, (25 October 2011), available at: http:// www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/680694/Dont-take-peaceful-approach-for-granted.aspx. 43. Jim Gomez, ‘China boats return to disputed area: claim’, The Australian, (27 June 2012), available at: http:// www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/china-boats-return-to-disputed-area-claim/story-fn3dxix6- 1226410543959. 44. Jerry E. Esplanada, ‘China “relaxed” with no PH ships in Scarborough Shoal’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, (29 June 2012), available at: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/42045/china-‘relaxed’-with-no-ph-ships-in- scarborough-shoal. 45. Greenfeld, ‘Roots of Japan–China rivalry’.

550 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM

Although the two governments essentially agreed to put off the issue of territorial claims during their negotiations of diplomatic recognition in 1972 and signed the Sino–Japan peace treaty in 1978, this formally friendly relationship was largely superficial as the Chinese people have remained resentful about Japan for what they perceive as whitewashing of Japan’s aggressive history and lack of sincere efforts towards restitution. With the rise of China as a great power in the twenty-first century, the Chinese people began to push the Chinese government to take a hard-line position in territorial disputes with Japan. As a result, the dispute intensified and evolved into a crisis in the wake of a diplomatic row after Japanese coastguard vessels intercepted a Chinese fishing boat off the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, detained the boat’s captain, and pursued prosecution of the captain through a Japanese local court on 7 September 2010. The Japanese arrest and turning the Chinese captain in to a local court was a violation of the Sino–Japanese Fisheries Agreement, which deemed the areas around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as part of the high seas in which plying vessels are subject to flag-state jurisdiction.46 The incident thus sparked a wave of nationalistic agitation in the Chinese media. Massive anti-Japan protests broke out in multiple cities. The Chinese government acted quickly to demand the Japanese government ‘immediately and unconditionally’ release the captain. Sharply raising the stakes, the Chinese government not only suspended high-level exchanges with Japan, called off the scheduled round of talks with Japan over the joint exploitation of Chunxiao gas fields in the East China Sea, and discouraged Chinese citizens from traveling to Japan, but also blocked shipments of rare earth elements to Japan, a crucial category of minerals that the Japanese high- tech industry desperately needs in the production of electronics, hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles. As a further retaliatory measure, the Chinese authorities arrested four Japanese nationals in Hebei Province, accusing them of illegally entering a defense zone and videotaping military targets.47 The combination of diplomatic paroxysm and economic blackmail eventually forced the Japanese government to come to Beijing’s terms of resolution. After the arrest of the four Japanese nationals in China, the Japanese government released captain Zhan, citing that the decision was made ‘taking into account the impact on our citizens and Japan–China relations’.48 Although the Japanese government acceded to Chinese pressure, Beijing continued to ratchet up pressure by demanding an apology and compensation from Tokyo over Zhan’s ‘unlawful’ detention. With such hard-line moves, China certainly made a public statement concerning the territorial rights over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. While the clash between the Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coastguard sparked the worst tension between Beijing and Tokyo in years, the Japanese government

46. Sourabh Gupta, ‘China–Japan trawler incident: Japan’s unwise—and borderline illegal—detention of the Chinese skipper’, East Asian Forum, (30 September 2010), available at: http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/09/30/ china-japan-trawler-incident-japans-unwise-and-borderline-illegal-detention-of-the-chinese-skipper/. 47. ‘China frees last Fujita employee’, Japan Times, (9 October 2010), available at: http://search.japantimes.co. jp/cgi-bin/nn20101009x1.html. 48. Sachiko Sakamaki, ‘Japan cites China relations in releasing boat captain’, Businessweek, (24 September 2010), available at: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-24/japan-cites-china-relations-in-releasing-boat- captain.html.

551 SUISHENG ZHAO decision to nationalize three of the five Diaoyu/Senkaku islets on 10 September 2012 triggered another crisis in which China further displayed its coercive power. The precipitating course for the crisis was right-wing Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara’s reckless bid to purchase three of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from a private Japanese owner and develop them. Preempting the more provocative plan, the Japanese government decided to purchase (nationalize) the islands and keep them as they were. China made unprecedented responses, regarding the action as a provocation to change the status quo. These responses included lodging angry protests, ratcheting up state media coverage over the nationalization, featuring bellicose commentary, and tolerating for a while the biggest anti-Japan demonstration marked by violent acts targeting Japanese interests, such as looting shops and restaurants, smashing Japanese-made cars, burning buildings of some Japanese companies and ransacking some Japanese supermarkets. In addition, the Chinese government rolled out a series of economic retaliatory measures, including boycotting Japanese products and delaying working visas for Japanese company employees. Moreover, China intensified its action by sending patrol ships into the water within 12 nautical miles of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. While the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman openly acknowledged on 11 July 2012 for the first time that three Chinese fishery administration patrol ships entered the waters within 12 nautical miles of the Diaoyu Islands in a routine patrol of the fishing moratorium to break the Japanese effective administration over the islands, the Chinese state news agency immediately reported on the day of the Japanese nationalization announcement, that two Chinese marine surveillance ships had reached the waters around the Diaoyu Islands ‘to assert the country’s sovereignty’.49 Four days later, on 14 September, six Chinese marine surveillance ships entered waters within 12 nautical miles of the Diaoyu Islands and its affiliated islets. A Xinhua news reporter, who was aboard one of the surveillance ships, reported that while Japanese coastguard ships and helicopters followed and monitored the Chinese ships and tried to intercept China’s patrol activities, Chinese officers told a Japanese patrol ship via radio that it violated China’s sovereignty and warned Japanese vessels to immediately stop their infringing acts or they would bear all the consequences. China’s patrol ships got as close as 1.55 sea miles away from the Diaoyu Islands during the patrol.50 China’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, Le Yucheng, said at a seminar on 14 September that the patrol and other countermeasures taken by China had effectively asserted China’s sovereignty over the islets and stricken Japan’s aggressiveness: ‘As the situation develops, we will give them tit for tat and take effective measures to safeguard our territorial sovereignty resolutely’.51 Since then, China has started its steady and regularized patrol activities around the Japanese claimed territorial waters to challenge Japan’s de facto control of the islands. One People’s Daily commentary stated that the patrol missions of Chinese marine surveillance ships and fishery patrol ships had become a

49. ‘Two Chinese patrol ships reach waters around Diaoyu Islands’, Xinhua, (11 September 2012), available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90883/7944612.html. 50. ‘Patrol around Diaoyu Islands successful: ofﬁcial’, Xinhua, (16 September 2012), available at: http://english. sina.com/china/2012/0916/507037.html. 51. Yang Jingjie, ‘Chinese surveillance ships enter Diaoyu waters’, Global Times, (15 September 2012), available at: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/733258.shtm.

552 FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF CHINESE NATIONALISM regular action that the Japanese had to learn to get used to. China would be persistent in such regular missions to defend China’s territorial sovereignty and legal rights: ‘China needs persistence and has enough will and strength to be persistent’.52

Conclusion Facing chronic economic problems and acute political crisis at home and from a relatively weak geopolitical position abroad, for a long while the Chinese state took a pragmatic attitude toward nationalism and made sure that China’s foreign policy was not dictated by emotional rhetoric of popular nationalism that could damage its relations with Western powers as well as Asian neighbors. The rise of nationalism, therefore, did not make Chinese foreign policy particularly inflexible or irrational. A strident turn, however, has taken place parallel with China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the twenty-first century as the Chinese leadership has come to be more responsive to, and share more of, the views of popular nationalism in adopting tougher approaches to forcefully pursuing core interests. The impetus for China’s tougher approach toward the US and other Western powers and its Asian neighbors has come under increasing pressure from popular nationalism fostered with increased vigor by the Chinese state. Beijing’s rising power after 2008 showed that ‘The good old days (of a moderate China) before 2005 were gone’.53 Nationalism as a shared value between the Chinese state and Chinese populace has played an increasingly important role in shaping the trajectory of China’s rise. This development could become alarming to Western countries and China’s neighbors as Chinese nationalism is powered by the conviction that ‘China has been treated unjustly and its territory and related sovereign rights have been exploited by other powers’. The nationalistic discourse thus not only leads to a sense of ‘victimization’ but also ‘involves a unique and strong sense of morality and righteousness in foreign affairs’. As a result, Chinese people see any problems China faces with Western powers and neighbors over sensitive issues of sovereignty and security as caused by them and certainly not by China and have little patience with the complaints and calls for China to compromise on these issues.54 If this type of nationalism prevails in shaping the foreign policy making of a rising China, it would make compromise extremely difficult if not impossible on issues that China deems as its core interest and thereby push China to adopt increasingly bellicose foreign policies.

52. 钟声 [Zhongsheng], ‘中国需要这样的坚守’ [‘China needs such persistence’], 人民日报 [People’s Daily ], (8 October 2012), p. 3. 53. Christensen, ‘The advantages of an assertive China’. 54. Robert Sutter, ‘China’s self-absorbed nationalism’, The Diplomat, (31 August 2012), available at: http:// thediplomat.com/2012/08/31/chinas-self-absorbed-nationalism/.

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