By Ian Buruma
For many centuries China thought it was the center of the world, and it expected foreign- ers to share this view. Foreign dignitaries were received at the imperial court, but only as vassals paying Heaven. This perception is n tribute to the Son of w obsolete, of course, even though Chairman Mao often behaved like an emperor toward his foreign guests, but Chinese still care deeply about nationalhonor. "Face," forwant of a better word, still counts. This is why the Olympic Games are so important, as well as the events leading up to them.
The recent tragic earthquake in Sichuan province showed the best of China, and glimpses of the worst. Compared with the Burmese regime, whose response to Cyclone Nargis was criminally negligent, the Chi nese authorities (after some initial hesitation) did their best to cope with the disaster. Not only did they allow rescue teams from Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Russia to come in and help，but, contrary to their usual practice, they allowed domestic media to report on the full scale of the disaster. This unexpected gust of press freedom inspired the most extraordinary outpouring of spontaneous solidarity with the victims. Volunteers rushed to the scene from all over China.
This is unlikely to have happened without the im pending Olympic Games. China's rulers knew the eyes of the world were on them, especially after the crack- down on Tibetan demonstrators. So China is suddenly looking rather better than before. A slender hope for more freedom emerged out of a natural catastrophe that has so far left nearly 70,000 dead. Unfortunately, the Chinese government now appears to be reverting to its old ways. Web sites asking critical questions of the government are being closed down. A scholar from Nanjing Normal University was arrested for drawing attention to the problems of having nuclear facilities near the earthquake zone. Even civic groups with the most benevolent intentions can be seen as a threat by a government that views all independent collective ac tivities with deep suspicion. Patriotism is encouraged in China, but not when it runs outside official control. Howwill this affect that greatjamboree of global patri otism, the Olympic Games?
In some ways China and the Olympic Games were made for each other. The People's Republic of China can no longer really be described as a Communist coun try, Marxism having been pretty much discarded in the rush to economic wealth. But like most autocracies with strong 19th-century roots, China still is a society given to mass spectacles, national pageants, officially boosted nationalism and grand state-led projects. Chi nese nationalism-with its belief in the Darwinian struggle of nations-is rather anachronistic, and so are the Olympic Games.
The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was a minor French aristocrat who was deeply affected by the French defeat in the 1871 war against Prussia and the popular uprising in Paris that followed. France, in his view, had become a decadent country, which needed invigorating ("rebronzing," to use his peculiar phrase). Organized sports were the proper way to do this. Mr. Coubertin, like many blaz ered grandees, was a great admirer of the British pub- lic-school system, with its stress on games and physi cal prowess. Sports, he believed, would restore na tional health, and not only in France. Vigorous competi tion would make people everywhere more industrious and less rebellious. Wars would become obsolete. And so in 1896 the modern Olympics were born, appropri ately enough in Athens.
For a nobleman of his time, Mr. Coubertin actually had a relatively liberal disposition. His brand of patrio tism was never militant. Following the British public- school style, his motto for the Games was that the im portant thing was not to win, but to take part. But an- other brand of nationalism-marked by a loathing of liberals, Anglo-Saxons and Jews, though not necessarily in that order-also flourished in 19th-century France. It was represented by a slightly younger man than Mr. Coubertin, Charles Maurras, founder of the radical-right movement Action Frangaise and a specta tor at the 1896 Athens Games. Initially he felt distaste for a contest that he regarded as typical of Anglo- Saxon cosmopolitanism, but as the Games went on he began to change his mind. He was hopeful that "when different races are thrown together, and made to inter- act, they repel one another, estranging themselves, even as they believe they are mixing." The cosmopoli tan gathering would surely become "the joyous battle- field of races and languages," thus vindicating Mr. Mau rras's view of the world.
Modern Chinese nationalism often veers between Mr. Coubertin's and Mr. Maurras's ideas of nation- hood. Officially, the government likes to talk about friendship between peoples and harmony and peace, while at the same time promoting an injured sense of historical Chinese victimhood at the hands of foreign powers. When demonstrations of Chinese nationalism run out of control, with or without official encourage- ment, the feeling of national hurt can turn to violent aggression. It has been happening of late in the U.S., among other places, when Chinese students attacked Tibetans, or indeed anyone who "offended the feelings of the Chinese people."
What makes outbursts of aggressive Chinese na tionalism Maurrasian rather than Coubertinian is the tendency to collapse the borderlines between race, cul tare and nation. At the Athens Olympics of 1896, Mr. Maurras saw-or hoped to see-a racial and cultural clash, not a strictly national one.
Chinese nationalism is complicated by the fact that it is not always clear what people mean by China. Tel- wan, also known as the Republic of China, is officially part of China, but is in fact an independent state. Clii- nese civilization is spread across the world, from Sin- gapore to Amsterdam. Different versions of the Chi- nese language are spoken all over Southeast Asia, as well as in China and Taiwan. Ethnically, many Chinese- Americans see themselves as Chinese, no less than Chi nese in China do. So when Yo-Yo Ma, an American born in Paris, gave a concert in Hong Kong in 1997 to celebrate the return of the British colony to China, this provided a boost for Chi nese patriotism.
This kind of patriotism is not always political. The Sichuan earthquake not only inspired a patriotic spirit of solidar ity inside China, but drew a flood of dona tions from overseas Chinese as well. Chi nese, whatever their nationality, often say that they love China, whoever rules it. "China," then, is much more than just a nation-state.
Ethnic chauvinism is actually a rela tively modern concept. Before the 19th century few people thought of nations in terms of race or ethnicity. In fact, most people never looked beyond their re gions, or even villages. Nationalism among the ethnic Han Chinese was stimu lated, however, by the growing sense of humiliation of being ruled by Manchus, a northern people with their own language and customs, starting in 1644. Nine- teenth-century rebellions against the Manchu Qing即nasty were often expres sions of Han Chinese resentment. At the same time, Western colonial powers, es pecially Britain, were dictating terms of trade to the Chinese through the barrels of their vastly superior guns. One reason that Mao is still admired in China, despite being one of the prime mass murderers of the 20th century, is that it was he who restored full Han Chinese sovereignty for the first time since the 17th century.
When the Manchu rulers were fi nally overthrown in 1912, the "three principles of the people" promoted by Sun Yat-sen's new Nationalist Party (now confined to Taiwan) were "nation- alism, democracy and welfare." The word used in nationalism is the same word used for race. Not that Sun was necessarily a racist, but he wished to stress that the founding of the Chinese republic was part of the Chinese peo ple's struggle to reclaim its nationhood. He once wrote that "nationalistic ideas in China did not come from a foreign source; they were inherited from our re mote forefathers." This was not strictly true. He himself was inspired by his- toric figures that included 19th-century U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. And like most forms of ethnic nationalism, the Chinese variety owes something to German Romanticism.
When German lands were conquered by Napoleon's army in the name of lib erty and universal reason, German poets, philosophers and intellectuals re sponded勿devising a new type of nation- alism based on language, blood and soil. This notion appealed to many romantics in Europe. But it had a special appeal to Asian peoples who felt dominated by the Western imperial powers.
The Olympic Games, as conceived by Mt Coubertin, did not fit well with Ger manic nationalism. Like Charles Maur ras, German nationalists thought they smacked of unhealthy Anglo-Saxon mndi- vidualism. Germans liked calisthenics and military drills, preferably in very large groups. Competitive sports were not encouraged under Mao's dictator- ship either. Mass spectacles of the kind still common in North Korea, celebrating revolutionary heroism and the crushing of reactionary enemies, were more to the rulers' liking.
This has changed, of course. But not the strong whiff of nationalism. Even now, the common view of Chinese com petitors at international games is that they are soldiers for a national cause. De feat is seen notjust as an individual disap pointment, but as a national disgrace. Such sentiments are not confined to China, or even just to autocracies. Soccer nationalism in Europe and South Amer ica can degenerate into a form of collec tive madness. But Chinese sports nation- alism is given an especially sharp edge by the officially promoted grievance over past humiliations.
When Communist ideology began to lose its potency in China, after the death of Mao and his successors' turn toward capitalism, something had to be found to replace it. The Deng era slogan, "to get rich is glorious," was not quite enough. Chinese rulers have always needed the le gitimacy of an official orthodoxy, whether Confucian or Communist, tojus t询their grip on power. The official post- Maoist answer has been nationalism. In- stead of studying Marx, Engels and Mao's Little Red Book, Chinese have been subjected to regular doses of what is known as patriotic education. China is now dotted with so-called patriotic edu cation sites-museums and memorials located in places with a dark national sig nificance-such as one on the coast be- tween Guangzhou and Hong Kong re minding visitors of China's defeat in the Opium Wars.
On a bitterly cold day a fewyearsagol visited the 9.18 Museum in Shenyang, built on the spot where Japanese sol diers, preparing for a military occupa tion of Manchuria, blew up part of the South Manchurian Railway line in 1931-an act of "sabotage" they blamed on the Chinese. The waxwork tableaux of fiendish Japanese torturing Chinese par- tisans, of barbaric Japanese soldiers mur dering and raping innocent civilians, were striking enough.
But more typical of the kind of patri otic education encouraged since the death of Mao was the text carved in the wall near the exit, right next to a painted pair of Chinese eyes shedding tears of blood. It spoke of the "hatred burning in all Chinese hearts" for "the criminal Japa nese militarists" who cruelly invaded "Great China, with its 5,000 years of civi lization." The message, as in all such pa- triotic exhortations, disseminated in school textbooks, official speeches and indeed sporting events, is that past wrongs can be righted only by the resur gence of Chinese greatness, a show of Chi nese power, the restoration of pride among all Chinese people-led by the Communist Party of course.
This type of official patriotism is based on a peculiarly skewed view of his- tory. Rather than celebrate the high points of Chinese civilization, the em- phasis falls on suffering at the hands of foreigners. The sense of victimhood runs so deep that it is impossible for most Chinese to view themselves as ag gressors. The idea that Tibetans, for example, might have some reason to see themselves as victims of the Chinese is seen as absurd. More than that, many Chinese genuinely believe that this type of Tibetan "propaganda" has been delib erately taken up by the Western press to inflict yet another humiliation on the Chinese people.
Protests around the Chinese Olym pics are seen in the same light. Staging an Olympic Games is a source of national pride everywhere, not just in China. But to many Chinese it has a special sigriifi cance, because it is part of that promised restoration of Chinese greatness. Na- tional pride has to be bolstered by inter- national recognition. So Westerners who use this occasion to criticize Chinese abuses of human rights are not just wrongheaded, but enemies who wish to stop the rise of Great China. And Chinese who support foreign criticisms of China's human rights record are traitors.
To blame the Chinese government for this militancy is only half the story. The collective sense of grievance can be, and often is, turned against the government itself. One of the most influential mass movements in modern Chinese history is the May Four Movement. It's named for the day in 1919 that students and intellec tuals took part in huge antigovernment demonstrations in Beijing, demanding Science and Democracy. Science stood for modern rationalism, which would sweep away the old feudal cobwebs of Confucian authoritarianism. May Four was about culture, society and politics, but it was sparked by popular anger at the alleged weakness of the Chinese gov ernment, which allowed Japan to take over German concessions in China as part of the post-World War I arrange- ments made in Versailles.
Not standing up vigorously enough to foreign pressure is a common accusation thrown at Chinese governments by rebel- lious students and intellectuals. This is why the rulers have to be very careful when they unleash public indignation againstthe behavior of fore论n powers. It can suddenly be turned against them. This almost happened a few times in the past 20 years, when the government was thought to be soft on Japan. When the U.S. bombed the Chinese Embassy in Bel grade in 1999, thousands of Chinese demonstrators attacked U.S. and British em- bassies. Hu Jintao, then vice president, said that such demonstrations fully re flected "the Chinese people's great fury at the atrocity of the embassy attacks by NATO and the Chinese people's strong patriotism." But as soon as the crowds looked like they were running out of con- trol, the government cracked down. The same thing appears to be happening now, after protesters attacked French and other foreign businesses because of Western support for the Tibetan cause. Such attacks, if they go too far, are bad for business, for the Olympic Games, and ultimately for the government itself.
Aggressive nationalism usually goes together with authoritarian politics. When people have no legitimate means to show dissent, vent their frustrations, express critical opinions in public, and generanally take part in politics, national- ism filis the void. This suits authoritar ian rulers, as long as they can control it. In China, a certain unspoken sense of guilt may also play a role. The same peo pie who demanded democracy in 1989, when they were students, are now often among the fiercest nationalists. The edu cated urban elite has prospered since the Tiananmen massacre, and when people are reminded of the political compro mises this involved, resentment can flare up easily.
This does not mean, however, that de mocracy would be an automatic cure. In the ur1ikely event that China were sud denly to have a peaceful transformation to a liberal democracy, nationalism would not go away. No party would like be seen to be soft on foreign powers, es pecially Japan and the U.S. Modern Chi nese history has been so bloo勿that the scars will take a long time to heal. Ethr|c nationalism can beakind of poison, espe cially when it is based on a feeling of vic timhood. Political freedom should help to soothe such feelings in the long run, but this will not happen in time for the Beijing Olympics.
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