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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defnes as a commitment to “avoid dogmatic constraints and [rather] adopt
whatever approach proves most efective in making China strong.” 15
Specifcally, Zhao demonstrates how the policies of the past two Chinese
presidents, Ziang Zemin, and hu Jintao, employed nationalism with “great
diplomatic prudence,” not just as an instrument by which the Chinese
Communist party could preserve its rule but also as the most efective way
to assemble domestic support from the many disparate divisions in Chinese
necessary prerequisite to the building of an efective modern state. 16 Zhao’s
book endorses “pragmatic nationalism” as an efective approach to Chinese
governance and foreign policy, one that promotes economic development and
is bringing a better life to the masses of Chinese people while at the same time
avoiding major confrontations with the West.
Not that there are no alternative “nationalisms” in play in today’s China.
Zhao also identifes “liberal nationalism,” whose spokesmen since the end of the
Cold War have been pressing for greater public participation in the political process,
challenging authoritarian rule (such as at tiananmen Square), and explicitly
calling for the adoption of liberal democratic ideas as the best means of promoting
China’s renewal. Zhao also shows how there is a still a strong strand of “nativism”
in China, which calls for a return to self-reliance and Chinese tradition and traces
the roots of China’s weakness to the impact of imperialism on China’s self-esteem
as well as to the subversion of indigenous Chinese values, such as Confucian ethics.
Finally, there is “anti-traditionalism,” a very diferent sense of nationalism that
holds that China’s very traditions, such as a Confucian hierarchy and an inwardlooking
culture, constitute the main source of its weakness. anti-traditionalists
call for the complete rejection of these backward traditions and the rapid adoption
of foreign culture and Western models of economic and political development.
the anti-traditionalist strand also calls for China to accommodate a “progressive”
internationalist system. Starting in the 1980s, anti-traditionalists called on
the Chinese people to rejuvenate their nation by assimilating Western culture,
adopting Western models of modernization, and adjusting to the capitalist world
system. to achieve this goal, they demanded a fundamental change in the Chinese
mindset, toward one supporting “the spirit of science and technology.” 17
What can Western observers of the Chinese space program really learn from
this literature on Chinese national identity? how might it help us comprehend
the conjunction between China today building the world’s largest aeronautics
theme park at Wenchang while simultaneously celebrating the 2,558th birthday
of Confucius at Shandong?
15. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford
University press, 2004), p. xxx.
16. Ibid, p. xxx.
17. Ibid. p. xxx.