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

the Great Leap UpWarD: ChINa’S hUMaN SpaCeFLIGht
prOGraM aND ChINeSe NatIONaL IDeNtItY
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China’s Quest for National Identity ofers ten quality articles from 1993 on
the meanings—and lack of meanings—of “national identity” in China from the
early dynasties of ancient times through the imperial and colonial periods to the
present day. In the book’s fnal chapter, its editors Lowell Dittmer (a professor of
political science at Berkeley) and Samuel Kim (a Senior research Scholar at the
east asian Institute of Columbia University) explore the question: “Whither
China’s Quest for National Identity?” In a nutshell, Dittmer and Kim conclude
that post-tiananmen China faced an “unprecedented national identity crisis,”
the basic dilemma for which was what to do about its “apparent inability to
completely embrace or reject socialism.” 1 Not a word in the book, published
ten years before the frst Chinese astronaut went into space in Shenzhou V,
mentioned Chinese missile development or its fedgling human spacefight
program. Doubtless to say, such a book would do so today.
the 1999 book Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization,
Identity, and International Relations, by Yongnian Zheng, a research Fellow in
the east asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, presents a very
diferent picture of China’s New Nationalism” than that portrayed by most
Western intelligence analysts. 2 Zheng, following the lead of edward W. Said’s
classic 1978 study Orientalism, a masterpiece of comparative literature studies
and deconstruction, places his emphasis on how fundamental misperceptions
occur when Westerners attempt to understand non-Western cultures. 3 It was
in order to emphasize the internal forces of nationalism in China, rather than
those forces imperfectly or inappropriately perceived in the West, that Zheng
entitled his book, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China.
Western perceptions deeply distort what the recent rise of nationalist
feeling in China is all about, Zheng argues. Many of the misperceptions tie
into such geopolitical and strategic notions as the “China threat” and “China
containment,” which derive from the West observing rapid economic growth,
an increase in military spending, military modernization, growing anti-West
sentiment, assertiveness in foreign behavior, and the rise of the New Nationalism,
and then interpreting these developments solely from the “outside,” relying on
analysts who have never even visited China. Following Zheng’s thesis, such
misperceptions come directly into play when Western observers consider an
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Samuel S. Jim and Lowell Ditmer, “Whither China’s Quest for National Identity?” in China’s
Quest for National Identity (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University press, 1993), p. 287.
a good look into U.S. intelligence approaches to understanding what has been going on in
the Chinese space program can be made on the Web site http://GlobalSecurity.org/space/world/
china.index.html. In particular, see the following: Ofce of the State Council, “White paper on
China’s Space activities,” November 2000; Mark a. Stokes, “China’s Strategic Modernization
Implications for the United States,” U.S. army Strategic Studies Institute, September 1999;
and J. Barry patterson, “China’s Space program and Its Implications for the United States,” air
University, Maxwell aFB, aL, april 19, 1995.
edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, NY: pantheon Books, 1978).