Justin Hatfield CAPS #2

The history of a culture is an important factor in shaping one's identity.  Preservation of cultural identity, based upon difference, is a divisive force in society giving individuals a greater sense of shared citizenship (Hall). When considering practical association in the international society, nations may share an inherent part of their "make up", which creates an alternative means of identifying with each other. Nations provide framework for cultural identities called external cultural reality, which influence the unique internal cultural realities of the individuals within the nation. Cultural identifiers may be the result of various conditions including: location, gender, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and even food (Gunter Schubert). The divisions between cultures can be very fine in some parts of the world, especially in the case of China, where the population is ethnically diverse and [for the most part] socially united - based primarily on common social values and beliefs. A range of cultural complexities structure the way individuals operate with the cultural realities in their lives. Cultural identities are influenced by several different factors such as ones religion, ancestry, skin colour, language, class, education, profession, skill, family and political attitudes. One's nation is a large factor of the cultural complexity, as it constructs the foundation for individual’s identity, however may contrast with ones cultural reality (Holliday). 

In the beginning, Chinese self-perception was not so much an ethnic one – now belonging to the Han race―as a cultural one, belonging to the Chinese culture circle: an early Chinese culturalism. Chinese culture was so attractive that it led to a long-lasting predominance over surrounding nations and tribes. This predominance, and the feeling of being superior to other nations, was an additional aspect of the identity that had developed over the centuries. The unfolding of the identity crisis in China followed continuous defeats by Western powers in the nineteenth century. Further on, during the period of Maoist “patriotism”, communist historiography did not regard classic Chinese culture as an important element of Chinese identity. On the contrary, the nation was based on classes (class nation): the peasantry, the proletariat, and the petty national bourgeoisie. In the 1980s, after the so-called "Cultural Revolution", when large parts of China’s cultural heritage were destroyed, the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to culture slowly changed. Step by step, the Party began to reinstate Chinese culture as an element of Chinese nationalism, together with ethnic aspects and Confucian ideology. There have been multiple, continuous attempts of China’s intellectual elite to develop a new cultural and national identity after the decline of Chinese Marxism-Leninism. Modern identity-building and the perception of the West by discussing the rising importance of Confucianism, the role of history and language, and the renaissance of Western thought have begun to shift Chinese nationalism more or less as a response to Western imperialism.

Despite attempts to create a national identity through reviving Chinese tradition, and even racial thinking, one cannot simply speak of one Chinese national identity or one Chinese nationalism. Instead, one can observe the fragmentation of Chinese identity - even among the Han majority - and the emergence of various regional identities and national movements in China. The Communist Party is struggling to keep all of these, sometimes centrifugal, forces under control by utilizing traditional cultural, ethnic, and racial elements under the blanket of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics".

References:

Cf. Gunter Schubert (2002), Chinas Kampf um die Nation. Hamburg, 116ff, 133ff.

Hall, S., & Du Gay, P. (1996). Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage. ISBN 0-8039-7883-9

Holliday, A. (2010). Complexity in cultural identity. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10(2), 165-177. doi: 10.1080/14708470903267384