UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Imagined Communities: Patriotic Sentiment Among Chinese Students Abroad In the Era of Xi Jinping A master’s thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Anthropology by Eric Andrew Sinski 2020 © Copyright by Eric Andrew Sinski 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Imagined Communities: Patriotic Sentiment Among Chinese Students Abroad In the Era of Xi Jinping by Eric Andrew Sinski Master of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Yunxiang Yan, Chair Using a combination of participant-observation and semi-structured, person-centered interview techniques, this thesis examines nationalist subjectivities and patriotic sentiment among Chinese university students abroad during the late Xi Jinping era. By approaching this phenomenon from an anthropological, bottom-up approach, this paper concludes that rather than tempering their nationalist sentiment through exposure to other cultures and political systems, ii time spent abroad actually increases the magnitude and salience of patriotic sentiments, as well as reshapes Chinese nationalist subjectivities in ways that are unique, but whose roots can be found in the social facts and narrative lens imparted during Patriotic Education Campaign initiated by the Chinese Communist Party following the political turmoil of the 1980s, as well as in the lived experiences of Chinese students abroad today. Tracing back to its incipient roots during pre-Dynastic China, this paper contributes to anthropological studies of nationalism by arguing that nationalism, rather than being understood as a broad phenomenon that arises only when certain universal conditions are met, must be understood in a situated, localized context and centered in the lived experiences of everyday people who at once shape, and are shaped by nationalistic narratives and sentiments. iii The thesis of Eric Andrew Sinski is approved. Douglas Hollan Laurie Kain Hart Yunxiang Yan, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv Table of Contents Part I: Introduction Preface……………………………………. ...………………………...............................1 Methods and Limitations………………………………………………………………..3 Anthropological Theories of Nationalism ...………………………................................7 Part II: Historical Roots of Present-Day Chinese Nationalism A) Pre-Qing Chinese Subjectivities………………………………………………….........17 B) Foreign Colonialism and the Shaping of Chinese National Consciousness (1557- 1911)……………………………………………………………………………………..28 C) The Incipience and Emergence of Chinese Nationalism (1911-1949)……….............38 D) From Culturalism to Nationalism………………………………………………..........48 E) Mao Era Nationalist Subjectivities (1949-1978)………………………………………55 F) Nationalist Subjectivities During the Reform Era (1978-1989)……………………...59 Part III: Construction of Post-Tiananmen Nationalist Subjectivities (1991-Present) A) Introduction…………………………………………………………………..………....63 B) The Patriotic Education Campaign and the Crisis of CCP Legitimacy……..……...63 C) Emotional Contours of Post-Tiananmen Subjectivities…………………...….….…..66 D) Construction of In-Group Identities……………………………………………..........71 E) National Rejuvenation and Imagined Futures: Territorial Integrity and Economic Performance ......…………………………………………...…………………………...78 v Part IV: Encounters With The Outside World: Chinese Students Abroad and Nationalist Subjectivities A) Introduction…………………………………………………………………..………....87 B) The Lens of Patriotic Education – Conscious Aspects and Personal Experience…...89 C) The Lens of Patriotic Education – Subconscious Aspects….……………...….….…..92 D) Constituting and Re-Constituting the Patriotic Lens.…………………………..........99 E) Patriotic, Yet Practical: The Role of the CSSA in Shaping Nationalist Subjectivities..........……….………..104 F) The Chinese Internet Bubble, Censorship, and Nationalist Subjectivities………...108 G) The Strengthening of Nationalist Subjectivities Through Encounters With Foreign Media and Students……………………………………………………………………114 H) Encounters with America and the Strengthening of Chinese Nationalist Subjectivities................................…..121 Part V: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….126 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...……131 vi Acknowledgments I want to thank a number of people, without whom, this MA thesis would not have been possible. I first want to thank my committee chair, Yunxiang Yan, for all of the time spent discussing the themes of this paper, as well as helping to shape the manner in which I thought about various concepts which permeate this thesis. I also wish to thank Doug Hollan and Laurie Hart, who both made themselves generously available to me during the various stages of this project. I also want to thank my parents (Carol and Jeff Sinski) as well as my brother (David) who have supported me unconditionally throughout the course of the previous eighteen months, as well as for my entire life prior to it. Thank you also to Aunt Luanne, Uncle George and Lucie Sinski who provided me a home when I needed it most. I wish to thank my friends, who helped me survive and anchored me through these tumultuous eighteen months through long phone conversations and moral/spiritual support. I could have not done this without you. Thank you especially to IAT, Bruna, Andy Espinosa, Rushabh Shah, Gary Bierman, Heather Loase, Nick Choy, Tony Amoury Alkhoury, Robin El Kady, Nabil Hoq, Felicia Blomquist, Monika Bednarova, Keshu Pan, Chuqiu Peng, Sam Selsky, Gerardo Torres- Flores, who nourished my heart and soul with our conversations. Thank you to my friends in China: James, Newsun, Rona, and Monica, as well as to all of my students for helping to attune me to life in a small town. Thank you for putting up with the worst and best sides of myself during the long process of cultural adjustment and taking care of me in both big and small ways. Finally, thank you to Dennis – you shared every part of yourself with me and let me see China through your eyes. My whole world in China truly begins and ends with you. vii Preface It was a mild, sunny day when I met Rui Zhong for the second time, lounging outside a café on the luxuriant UCLA campus. The first time we encountered each other, both of us had been attending a seminar on cultural inclusivity in the classroom and immediately took to each other. Eyelids drooping with boredom at the virtue signaling which he considered as a mere formality (xingshi) on the way to being able to assume a TA position, he was surprised to learn that I had lived in China and was in fact, familiar with the small rural towns that dotted the mountainous landscape in southwestern Zhejiang province that he had travelled to visit relatives during his younger days. We chatted intermittently throughout the seminar, exchanged numbers and agreed to meet the following week. “Maybe I shouldn’t say it,” he said, as he glanced worryingly at my phone sitting face-up on the metal table, “but a thought just came to my head.” “What’s that?” I asked him curiously, picking up on the apprehensive tone in his voice as his gaze flitted up from the cell phone to my face. “Well,” he hesitated with a nervous smile, pausing a brief second before fixing his eyes on my phone, “is that…on?” “No,” I replied, turning it on and showing him that no voice-recording software was in fact, keeping record of our conversation. “Ok,” he said, pausing nervously again and glancing down at the table. “What’s up?” I asked worriedly, thinking that I had unwittingly done or said something intrusive. He paused again, perusing my facial expression, carefully discerning whether or not to continue. “I was just thinking,” he reiterated, “that maybe you are a spy.” Admittedly, I was a bit taken aback by the sheer paranoia in his response. However, my presence had garnered similar responses in the small Chinese town that I lived in during the four years between 2012 and 2016 and upon second thought, wasn’t all that surprising. My research 1 topic, which I disclosed to him previously, combined with my tall, muscular build, and short, military-style cropped hair, along with the audacity I displayed in asking him to have coffee with me after only the first time meeting together, probably in hindsight, came off very much as behavior stereotypical of an American counter-intelligence officer. Conducting research on a topic as contemporaneous and relevant to current affairs as Chinese nationalism in the year 2019, is fraught with both difficulty and reward. On the one hand, it is immediately gratifying to explore a topic that constantly evolves by the day, and requires intense engagement with not only previous scholarship, but with the current news cycle, both in Chinese and in English. On the other hand, the difficulties in conducting ethnographic research on such a topic, even in the United States, are considerable. For one, my positionality as a tall, white, American male, placed me immediately within the category of potential foreign agent in the eyes of many of my informants. Although Rui was the only one bold enough to directly confront me with his misgivings, I suspect that many of my interactions and interviews were silently affected by this elephant in the room. Although as an American, the US-China trade war is only one small blip on the proverbial radar of stories that inundate the 2019 news cycle, and one’s identity vis a vis China is rarely made salient in the media or even in daily interactions, it is equivocal to assume this is true the other