Contemporary Asia in the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. xiii, 293 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$32.50, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-14890-0.
In the eye of many observers, China’s ongoing tense standoffs with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines over a few disputed isles have shattered Beijing’s facade of “Peaceful Rise,” whereas waves of anti-foreign demonstrations as recent as the anti-Japanese riots in 2012 have exposed its nationalist impulses to the fullest. Against this backdrop it is no surprise that Never Forget National Humiliation has quickly garnered a great deal of attention and positive reviews since its publication.
In his book Zheng Wang seeks to investigate two crucial questions: how has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used history and memory to reshape national identity and bolster its legitimacy at home, and how has this reconstruction of identity influenced China’s domestic politics and international behaviour. Born and raised in China, Zheng Wang worked for a top government research institute for many years before completing his graduate studies in the United States. Drawing upon an expanding literature on social identity and the role of ideas, Wang begins by developing two frameworks. Claiming that collective identity generates constitutive norms, relational content, cognitive models and social purpose, the first framework is supposed to aid the research of historical memory in the formation of group identity. A second framework contends that memory and identity influence behaviour by serving as road maps to process information, morally motivate for action and guide behaviour, as focal points that facilitate cooperation and group cohesion, and as rules and norms that are embedded into political institutions.
The ensuing two chapters set the stage for the bulk of the book: grievous events through the “century of humiliation”—from the Opium War of 1839 to the Anti-Japanese War that ended in 1945—that not only still loom large in the Chinese psyche and give rise to its Chosenness-Myth-Trauma Complex, but which were also integral to the discourse of national destiny and construction of national identity until the Maoist era. The next three chapters delve into the party-state’s political use, since 1991, of historical memory that is still pertinent today. The shift is strident, as the CCP leadership led by Jiang Zemin adroitly phased out Mao’s victorious account in favour of an unambiguous victim narrative, and launched a rigorous Patriotic Education Campaign across the country. The goal, according to Wang, is to shore up its political legitimacy in the face of the Party’s dissipated appeal of communism, and the decidedly nationalist narrative, which was put to good use in 2008 when Beijing had to juggle the twin crises of the Olympic Games and the megaquake in Sichuan. In the last two chapters, Wang further explores the impact of China’s institutionalized historical consciousness on its foreign relations, and detailed case studies are applied to a series of diplomatic crises with the United States as well as the joint writing of textbooks with Japan over their shared wartime history.
Much of the book’s empirical content is a familiar tale for those of us who grew up in China, but Wang does an admirable job of presenting to a non- Chinese audience an overview of China’s tortured past with foreign powers, and its struggle in coming to terms with it while remaining an authoritarian party-state. Traversing a broad tapestry of history, domestic and international politics, this is an ambitious project that deserves credit. Cleverly contrasting the tone and tenor of the post-Tian’anmen era with that of the preceding era, the chapters on Beijing’s arduous efforts to propagate its preferred version of history through education and mass propaganda are as systematic as they are illuminating. The now time-honoured trick of blaming foreigners for troubles old and new continues to serve the CCP well, giving the book a great deal of contemporary flair and some policy relevance.
On the other hand, the book is not free of flaws. In spite of its innovative application of identity literature, it relies overwhelmingly on secondary sources and loose anecdotes (phrases like “according to” are dotted throughout), and there is no rigorous evidence like survey data to pinpoint or measure identity that is by definition nebulous. As a result, readers are more likely to come away impressed with the broad, intuitively plausible assertions that historical memory matters greatly in both domestic and international relations, and that the CCP will not cease manipulating it for its own political gains. Moreover, despite references to comparable examples of historical memory in countries such as Russia, the book curiously suffers from a dearth of comparative perspectives. In attributing the CCP’s new tactic to its pursuit of new legitimacy, for instance, Wang seems to imply that history and memory are above politics in a democracy. Yet when stating Japanese officials’ objections to China’s anti-Japan history education (116, 208), he spills little ink on the fact that Japan, a democracy, suffers from a parallel nationalist tide and history amnesia that is frequently a source of contention with not just China, but also South Korea.
A closer look at Wang’s case studies raises further questions. In examining the conditions for activation of historical memory in the conduct of US-China relations, he compares three diplomatic crises—the Taiwan Strait Crisis (1995-1996), the Belgrade Embassy bombing (1999) and the EP-3 spy plane incident (2001) with three nonconflict incidents, notably, negotiations over China’s WTO entry and arms control. Yet the two groups of incidents cannot be more different, with the latter being more of an obvious non-zero-sum nature and more subject to socialization effects. As for Beijing’s combativeness in the conflicts, Wang claims that it was because leaders’ policy options were restricted vis-à-vis memories of past grievances (199) when, in fact, they themselves were actively involved in escalating the disputes and could have easily clamped down on media coverage of US offenses.
All in all, this is a timely addition to the fast-expanding literature on Chinese nationalism. Readers cannot avoid being disappointed that because today’s Chinese youths—for all their familiarity with the evils of foreigners— have little inkling of the Great Famine and Tian’anmen protest in 1989, China’s democratic future is stunted.
Xiangfeng Yang
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
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