The Role of Language in the Nationalism Development in China

Anderson has proposed a creative definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson, 1991). It is a Copernican argument which raises questions to what we regard so natural. Most importantly, Anderson breaks down the long-standing superstition about the “myth” of “nation” and tells us that nation is not a natural talent with no inherent legitimacy, but an imaginary community emerging at a particular stage in human society.
However, Anderson’s theory doesn’t seem to explain the situation in China. He argues that nationalism has three cultural roots: religious community, dynastic political system, and the change of time view (Anderson, 1991). In China, religion never reached the heights of what European religion had reached.(weren’t emperors monarchs?) Even in their heyday, Buddhism and Taoism did not overcome secular beliefs. And China’s dynasties were never so weak as to rely on religion for legitimacy (even though the pretense of religion was often used in insurrections but ultimately indecisive).

In China, what is closer to Anderson’s sense of a religious community is Confucianism, or, more bluntly, a code of ethics, including “family and country”, “three cardinal principles and five constant virtues”, and “superior and subordinate in order”. The traditional order itself is secular, with no sanctity to support it. Where does its legitimacy come from? On the one hand, it is the support of political power, of which the feudal dynasty itself was born. On the other hand, it is the word “tradition” itself. (Yes but who’s tradition?) Different from the linear western view of time, the Chinese view of time is more like a continuous circle. While the west view is in the non-stop rush to the final “Messiah” (a savior leads them to the flourishing age) that each moment is a brand new moment different from the previous one, each Chinese dynasty attempts to return to and repeat the previous sages. This cyclic view of time makes “tradition” of ineffable importance. China’s dynastic history, with its establishment, governance, rise and fall, is more like a history of continuous replication of previous dynasties. (But when a dynasty is overthrown, how do the people regard that dynasty? Throughout Chinese history, the rise and fall of dyansties were often resultant of people regarding political leadership as being “outside” or illegitimate—like the Manchus, or the Mongols, etc.)

Depending on such order and time view, people have long understood that they are a member of the collective, subject to the order of a superior, in a fatalistic world of reincarnation. With the help of this all-embracing order itself, or with the help of China’s long-unified writing system (In the early 20th century, Classical Chinese was replaced in this role by written vernacular Chinese, corresponding to the standard spoken language ('Mandarin'). Although most other varieties of Chinese are not written, there are traditions of written Cantonese, written Shanghainese and written Hokkien,) and its ever-evolving culture, ancient Chinese people realized their national imagination, which is extremely important for the maintenance of order and the political maintenance of a unified country. The nation itself was integrated into order and politics. As a result, the succession of dynasties and foreign occupation could not shake the integrity of the nation. But so often the changes in dynasty were a direct result of takeover by groups considered outsiders—I think you have oversimplified the “integrity of the nation” concept here…)Models of the past, ancient legends, and culture inheritance have become the official preaching for maintaining nationalism. What reinforces this pattern of maintaining nationalism is the tradition loaded with language and culture. This project is going to explore the role of language in shaping the establishment and development of the nation and nationalism in China.

Among the various elements of national composition, religion and language are at the core (Huntington, 1997). Some scholars believe that national consciousness and identity existed in England at least in the late middle ages, and national language is closely related to the formation of national identity (Adrian, 1997). Herder (1772) also emphasize the dialectical relationship between national language and national spirit. In his view, national language embodies the wisdom of a nation and national characters that languages of euphemistic nations often have many abstract concept nouns, and languages of diligent heroic nations tend to have abundant verbs expressing bold and unrestrained. In contrast, language is a national attribute that is more obvious and has a more extended history. What about French in Canada, or Spanish in the US, or Cantonese vs Mandarin in China) Because of this, language often becomes an important part of the national political appeal, and plays an important role in awakening the national consciousness internally, unifying the national centripetal force and separating the nation from other nations externally in the nationalist movement. What about the millions of Chinese who live in the US or Canada who only speak Chinese, but identify as Americans or Canadians?) European and Asian countries have shown the closest relationship between language, state and nation.

China is different from most European countries in terms of language, nation and state relations. As a “state” in the traditional sense, China has a history of thousands of years (even though the establishment of the People’s Republic of China happened just in the 20th century). Although it has split from time to time, it has been a unified centralized whole for a long time, with strong homogeneity and continuity in administration, law, ideology, culture and customs. The name of “Chinese nation” appeared in the late Qing dynasty (1616 to 1911 A.D.), which is a concept accompanying China’s modernization process. From the perspective of the relationship between the state and the nation, “Chinese nation” is mainly defined by the state, which is a typical state nation. It refers to the aggregation of many ethnic groups living in the vast territory for generations. As a self-conscious national entity, the Chinese nation emerged in the confrontation between China and western powers in the past century, but as an already-existing national entity, it was formed in the course of thousands of years of history (Fei, 1999).

The characteristics of the Chinese nation are pluralistic integration, and as far as its composition is concerned, the Han ethnic group undoubtedly is a major part of the Chinese nation. However, the Han ethnic group comes from multiple sources. It is evolved from Huaxia ethnic group, whose ancestors are Huang Emperor and Yan Emperor tribal alliances, communicating and merging with local Qiang people, Yi people, Rong people, Di people, Miao people and others through war, natural migration and various economic and cultural exchanges, in the development from the northwest to the central plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. During the Qin (221 B.C. to 207 B.C.) and Han dynasties (202 B.C. to 220 A.D.), China was already a unified country with the Han ethnic group as the main body, but the internal differences were still quite obvious. (But the boundaries are nothing like they are today, what accounts for this?) The subjects of the seven kingdoms in the Warring States Period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.) were all Huaxia ethnic group. However, according to Shuo Wen Jie Zi (China’s first systematic analysis of the Chinese character font and the study of the character origin), there existed huge differences in field weights and measures, wheel track, laws and regulations, clothes, language, and writing of words (Shen, 100-121). After the first emperor of Qin united China, he took a series of measures to strengthen the centralization of power, among which the most significant one was “writing in the same style”, which played a key role in the continuation and development of the Chinese civilization, the enhancement of the cohesion of the Chinese nation, and the cultivation of the concept of unity in the folk traditional consciousness. “Without writing, human consciousness cannot achieve its fuller potentials, cannot produce other beautiful and powerful creations… Literacy.. .. is absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art, and indeed for the explanation of language (including oral speech) itself” (Walter cited by Wysocki & Johnson-Eilola, 1999).

The written language of traditional Chinese, namely the classical Chinese, separated from the spoken language very early. The traditional vernacular language, which was gradually formed and developed in the late Tang and Five Dynasties period (about 850 to 960 A.D.), was based on the northern dialect at the very beginning. The southern dialect never had its own standard written language, and this situation has continued to this day.