Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

110 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
Confucian temple, “a descendant of the great man” lit a fre signifying the root
of Chinese culture, and a 3,000-year-old sacrifcial dance—one recently
honored by the Beijing government as part of China’s “National Intangible
heritage”—was “nobly performed.” With 3,000 people in attendance (the same
number who will be able to watch a rocket launch at Wenchang from the
foating platform), including dozens of representatives from hong Kong, Macao,
and taiwan, 500 middle-school students delighted the crowd by reading aloud
from Confucius’s Analects.
these two stories placed together in one’s mind ofer a curious starting
point for an exploration into the nature of Chinese national identity in the
early 21st century and how that nascent identity may be bolstering today’s
burgeoning Chinese human spacefight program. a principal question
addressed at “remembering the Space age: 50th anniversary Conference,”
held in Washington, DC, in October 2007 was, “Has the Space Age fostered a new
global identity, or has it reinforced distinct national identities?” the argument made by
this author at that conference was that anyone in the West trying to make sense
of the Chinese “nation,” or even what it means to be “Chinese,” must begin by
working to sort out all the ethnic, racial, and national self-identities that exist
within this vast and vastly complicated land.
On its Web site, the CNta rushes to point out that China is a “happy
family” composed of 56 diferent “nationalities”: the han, Manchu, Mongol,
Uygur, Zhuang, tibetan, and so on, and that in today’s China at least four
diferent Chinese “nations” coexist. the frst is composed of all people’s
republic of China citizens. the second is the “han” nation, as han peoples
account for more than 90 percent of the country’s population—and are always
the frst “nationality” to appear on any Chinese list. the third consists of the
prC plus hong Kong, Macao, and contested taiwan. the fourth consists of
overseas Chinese who retain some feeling of dual nationality. Understanding
what these diferent national self-identities represent, where they came from,
how they have interacted with communist ideology and doctrine, and how
they might still connect to Confucianism or other aspects of the “National
Intangible heritage”—not to mention how they overlap, harmonize, or rub
each other the wrong way, let alone relate to China’s ambitions in space—more
than merits, it requires, some very signifcant expertise in the social, cultural,
and political history of China.
any investigation into the character of the national identity in China
today must begin by becoming familiar with the ideas and interpretations
expressed in three recent books on the subject: China’s Quest for National Identity
(Cornell University press, 1993), an anthology edited by Lowell Dittmer and
Samuel S. Kim; Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity,
and International Relations (Cambridge University press, 1999), by Yongnian
Zheng; and A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism
(Stanford University press, 2004), by Suisheng Zhao.