It doesn't take much exposure to China to realize the pervasiveness of identity politics here. Indeed, whether in the Chinese government’s occasionally hamfisted efforts to micromanage ethnic minority cultures or the Foreign Ministry’s soft-power promotion efforts abroad, it seems that barely a day goes by without someone in the Chinese government confusing the idea of China (the state) with the Han ethnic diaspora.
This week, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by David Moser, Director of the CET immersion program in Beijing, and Jeremiah Jenne, renegade Qing historian and director of The Hutong. We chat about what it means to be Chinese, where these ideas came from, and whether anything is likely to change them in the future.
Recommendations
- Beyond the Past: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864, James A. Millward (Stanford University Press, 1998)
- “How the Qing Became China,” Joseph W. Esherick, Empire to Nation (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006)
- Minor Sights
- Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World, Pamela K. Crossley (Princeton University Press, 1990)
- The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, Mark C. Elliott (Stanford University Press, 2001)
- The Mandarin and the Cadre: China’s Political Cultures, Lucian W. Pye (Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988)