Chinese Nation Building and Foreign Policy: Japan and the US as the Significant “Others” in National Identity Construction

East Asia ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Atanassova-Cornelis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
Chinese Nation ◽  
The Us

scholarly journals Globalization, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Understanding 'Global Korea'

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jojin V. John
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Interpretive Framework

One of the striking themes in contemporary South Korean foreign policy is a strong emphasis on achieving seonjinguk (advanced nation) status in international affairs, as articulated in the slogan 'Global Korea'. Engaging with the discourse of globalization, the concept of seonjinguk has provided Korea with an interpretive framework for discussions of its national identity and global position. The historical experience of Korea as a hujinguk (backward country) underlies the emphasis accorded to the goal of becoming seonjinguk. The article argues that the discursive practice of Global Korea was not merely a point of departure in Korean foreign policy but was also the key site of Korean national identity construction. Through an exploration of the historical context and diplomatic practice of constructing Global Korea, it illustrates the continuity and authority of the discourse of seonjinguk in interpreting and constructing Korean national identity.

The strange career of nation-building as a concept in US foreign policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremi Suri
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Self Interest

The opening chapter of the volume approaches the peculiar US vocation for nation-building on a global scale from the perspective of domestic experience. Jeremi Suri uses the study of the post-Civil War South by C. Vann Woodward to provide for non-Americans a sense of the ideological interstices and remarkable longevity of this feature of American “exceptionalism”. Writing outside of the idiom but with full sympathy for its constituent parts and continuities, Suri describes a deep US civic culture that celebrates self-governance, popular sovereignty and open trade on an uninterrupted continuum from home to the rest of the globe. Denied the normal components of national identity, American elite and popular cultures have, from Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796 to Obama’s West Point speech of 2014, sustained a form of millennial conviction to universalise domestic beliefs. These ride above the particularities of culture, geography or ethnic encounters that necessarily confront a global power and which perforce cause alterations in tactics, but rarely for any length of time the broader strategic idiom. Equally, Suri, argues, the contradiction between national self-interest and the need to construct states and societies along recognisably US lines is repressed through narrow, ‘unionist’ perspectives. It is almost as if the American public imaginary cannot conceive of an allowable ‘other’, even though the efforts at self-fashioning undeniably create a multitude of victims.

Patriotism, Nationalism and China's US Policy: Structures and Consequences of Chinese National Identity

2011 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hays Gries ◽  
Qingmin Zhang ◽  
H. Michael Crowson ◽  
Huajian Cai
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policy Attitudes

AbstractWhat is the nature of Chinese patriotism and nationalism, how does it differ from American patriotism and nationalism, and what impact do they have on Chinese foreign policy attitudes? To explore the structure and consequences of Chinese national identity, three surveys were conducted in China and the US in the spring and summer of 2009. While patriotism and nationalism were empirically similar in the US, they were highly distinct in China, with patriotism aligning with a benign internationalism and nationalism with a more malign blind patriotism. Chinese patriotism/internationalism, furthermore, had no impact on perceived US threats or US policy preferences, while nationalism did. The role of nationalist historical beliefs in structures of Chinese national identity was also explored, as well as the consequences of historical beliefs for the perception of US military and humiliation threats.

scholarly journals Championing human rights close to home and far away: human rights education in light of national identity construction and foreign policy in Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 05-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Vesterdal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
International Image ◽  
Image Building

Human rights education (HRE) has been recognised in international educational discourses as a sustainable practice to develop active citizenship and protect human dignity. However, such education has not been fully explored in a broader political context. In addition to contributing to empowering citizens to resist human rights violations, HRE plays several roles in society, contributing to both national identity and international image-building. The article explores possible relations between national identity construction, foreign policy and HRE in Norway through the following research question: What interplay occurs between Norwegian foreign policy and national identity in relation to human rights, and, within this context, what is the role of HRE? The article presents a qualitative analysis of Norwegian policy documents and reports, arguing that HRE is a component of Norwegian national identity as well as political currency in foreign relations.  

Japan's Images of China in the 1990s: Are They Ready for China's ‘Smile Diplomacy’ or Bush's ‘Strong Diplomacy’?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Rozman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
Japanese Nationalism

Both the US and China are pressing Japan to tilt its foreign policy in their direction. Japan's response depends on views of China, which turned negative as assumptions proved incorrect. Early expectations were challenged in 1990–94, despite hopes of becoming a bridge between the US and China, and were dashed from 1995. The struggle among four schools of thought intensified. The full engagement group lost the most ground. The predominantly engagement, potential threat group was attacked as the mainstream, but it survived as the best option for global political leverage. The predominantly containment, possible engagement group gained as China allowed rising nationalism to target Japan. The full containment group also gained, boosted by Japanese nationalism anxious to rationalize the war era. More than reacting to Chinese or US actions, Japanese views are driven by instability in national identity. The US should be wary of encouraging containment of China because of its impact on rising Japanese nationalism.

Fateful Futures in the Presence of the Past: Epochalist Hopes at South Sudan’s Independence

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
Timm Sureau
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Initial Moment ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Strong Relation

Hope, understood as a “temporal reorientation of knowledge” (Miyazaki 2004, 5), enacts and changes the future as a precipitate of interaction (Crapanzano 2003, 6). During South Sudan’s independence, an epochalist hope was directed towards an end of the miseries associated with Sudanese rule and government officials of the new state tried to inscribe this hope into symbols. Their idea was to create a strong relation between those symbols of hope and a new national identity, in order to bridge the epochalist anticlimax that necessarily followed the initial moment of independence. Via the examination of two examples of hope from South Sudan, and through scrutiny of the symbols of the flag and the anthem, I describe that hope in the future of South Sudan as it existed in 2011, the symbols and the nation building attempts. I conclude by returning to Frantz Fanon’s warnings against European models and an analysis of how those who follow them fall in the old trap of nationalism, an identity construction that necessarily includes and excludes. In the case of South Sudan this collapsed the country back into an old nightmare of ethnic factionalism, long-standing forms of exploitation with new beneficiaries, and new, violent, forms and acts of exclusion.

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