Nations and Nationalism roundtable discussion on Chinese nationalism and national identity

The literature on Chinese nationalism is vast and contentious. In his article titled ‘A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism’, published by Nations and Nationalism in 2009, Allen Carlson identifies two opposing arguments in the English-language literature on the subject: the first arguing that Chinese nationalism pushes Chinese foreign policy in a more assertive direction and the second maintaining that, conversely, Chinese nationalism has been misconstrued and exaggerated and erroneously linked to ‘China threat’ theories. Carlson claims that both these positions are empirically unsubstantiated not only because they analyse nationalism in inadequate ways but also, and more importantly, because a focus on nationalism is in itself inherently constraining and even distorting. He suggests that rather than simply redressing flaws within the Chinese nationalism scholarship, a more radical intellectual move is needed, mainly shifting focus away from nationalism towards the notion of ‘national identity formation’. Such conceptual reframing will, according to Carlson, enable scholars to understand how both leaders and the general public in the People’s Republic of China define their position in world politics better than they would by continuing to focus on nationalist politics alone. Anna Costa’s response, published in 2014 in the same journal under the title ‘Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson’, addresses Carlson’s claim that focusing on nationalism inhibits research on Chinese identity politics. She argues that while some of the problems that Carlson identifies do plague the literature on Chinese nationalism, his advocacy of abandoning this focus is unwarranted. Two main shortcomings affect Carlson’s plan: first, it is based on a rather particular understanding of the scope of Nationalism Studies, this perspective leading him to conclude that focusing on nationalism necessarily narrows the gaze of the China watcher. In particular, Costa queries Carlson’s identification of a ‘consensus’ in the extant literature about the dual nature – historical and instrumental – of Chinese nationalism, which tends to conflate not onlymultiple nationalist discourses with official nationalism but also the study of nationalism with the phenomenon itself. Second, Carlson’s proposition to move to an alternative framework – national Nations and Nationalism 22 (3), 2016, 415–446. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12232