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As Hong Kong is integrated into the People's Republic of China, ever fewer people in the city identify as Chinese. Two Systems, Two Countries explains why.Two Systems, Two Countries traces the origins of Hong Kong nationalism and introduces readers to its main schools of thought: city-state theory, self-determination, independence, and return-ism. The idea of Hong Kong independence, Kevin Carrico shows, is more than just a provocation testing Beijing's red lines: it represents a collective awakening to the failure of One Country Two Systems and the need to transcend obsolete orthodoxies. With a conclusion that examines Hong Kong nationalism's influence on the 2019 protest movement, Two Systems, Two Countries is an engaging and accessible introduction to the tumultuous shifts in Hong Kong politics and identity over the past decade

"The Great Han is an ethnographic study of the Han Clothing movement (Hanfu yundong), a neo-traditionalist and majority racial nationalist movement that has emerged in China since 2001. Participants come together both online and in person in cities across China to revitalize their utopian vision of the authentic "Great Han" and corresponding "real China" through pseudo-traditional ethnic dress, reinvented Confucian ritual, and anti-foreign sentiment. Employing close analysis of movement ideas and practices, this book finds that the movement's "real China," envisioning a pure, perfectly ordered, ethnically homogeneous, and secure society, is in fact an imaginary vision constructed in response to the challenging realities of the present. Yet this national imaginary is reproduced precisely through its own perpetual elusiveness. The Great Han is a pioneering analysis of Han identity, nationalism, and social movements in a rapidly changing China."--Provided by publisher

AbstractWhat is Chinese nationalism? Is nationalism the most effective framework for understanding how people in China are making sense of the world today? These are among the questions raised by Allen Carlson in his 2009 article 'A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism', which developed a provocative critique of decades of scholarship. Acknowledging the insights of Carlton's questions while disagreeing with his proposed conceptual shift towards national identity construction, I propose a further shift towards national identity deconstruction. In doing so, I combine the political insights of Hong Kong nationalists with the theoretical insights of deconstruction. This shift redirects the study of Chinese nationalism away from an abstract conceptualisation of nationalism to a more precise definition of the phenomena under study, as well as moving the debate on potential impacts away from international relations to consideration of the complex dynamics of China's ethnic politics. New definitions of both nationalism and minzu (of minzu zhuyi) are developed, reconceptualising the phenomena heretofore known as 'Chinese nationalism' as external symptoms of underlying tensions between conflicting identity narratives. In conclusion, the practical implications of this reconceptualisation are considered, exploring potential future paths for the People's Republic of China.

Most histories have analyzed China's 1983 Campaign to Eliminate Spiritual Pollution through the lens of elite politics. This article proposes a new interpretation of "spiritual pollution," drawing upon anthropological theories of taboo and pollution to reinterpret the campaign's role in reform-era culture and identity construction. The early reform era was a time of collapsing social borders that erased the obsessively delineated identities of the previous decades. Within this context, I reinterpret the struggle against spiritual pollution as an attempt to employ taboos to reinstate schematic boundaries in a world suddenly in flux. This process of post-Maoist boundary building particularly focused upon the distinction between "East" and "West," as well as the distinction between the economic and political realms. The results of the campaign can still be seen today: the construction of a pure official identity based in overcoming Mao-era economic taboos alongside the perpetuation of political and cultural taboos. (China J/GIGA)

Introduction: The Rise and Fall of Southern Weekly and the Changing Landscape of Journalism in China: A Pivotal Event / by David Bandurski and Fang Kecheng -- The "Panvence Five" -- Dead of Winter -- Kills, Cuts, Edits, Removals -- The Great Flood -- Tuo Zhen Did it(?) -- The Itch of Uncertainty -- Settling Accounts -- Fighting back the Flood Waters -- The Banality of Evil -- The Longest Night -- Hitting a Wall -- On Central Guangzhou Avenue, the People Come like Waves-- -- The Beijing News Dilemma -- The Net is Intact, and the Fish Live On -- All Going Our Separate Ways -- The Aftermath.

As critical voices question the quality, authenticity, and value of people, goods, and words in post-Mao China, accusations of emptiness render things open to new investments of meaning, substance, and value. Exploring the production of lack and desire through fine-grained ethnography, this volume examines how diagnoses of emptiness operate in a range of very different domains in contemporary China: In the ostensibly meritocratic exam system and the rhetoric of officials, in underground churches, housing bubbles, and nationalist fantasies, in bodies possessed by spirits and evaluations of jade, there is a pervasive concern with states of lack and emptiness and the contributions suggest that this play of emptiness and fullness is crucial to ongoing constructions of quality, value, and subjectivity in China