published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In the late 1980s and early 1990s a chain of events hit Chinese society that led to the crisis of identity. Nationalism became a new ideology that substituted Marxism as a source of identity for both state and society. This paper aims at defining differences between nationalism at the level of state and popular society, demonstrating how these versions of nationalism interact in discourses and what the implications of these interaction are on the legitimity and position of the communist party.

Besides, it finds that China's social structure indeed transformed as the unintended consequence of the agents' hegemonic struggles. Though both China's mass media and the burgeoning Internet society have not yet developed as a civil society, and the rational-critical discourse has not acquired consensus among the society, this study adopts an optimistic attitude towards them, yet, of course, the final answers indeed lie in the agents' own hands. / By examining Chinese nationalistic discourse from discursive relations and the structural perspective, this study tries to combine "structure-agency", stressing both the deeper structural reasons in shaping nationalistic discourse and power relations amongst the four agents, as well as the active role of agents in promoting the transformation of social structures through such hegemonic struggles. Besides, considering China's social structure as a dynamic transitional process, and examining in which respect the four agents' hegemonic struggles contribute to the transformation of social structure, this study also goes beyond the dominant paradigm that regards the "state-society" as a static structure, especially in the field of communication study. Moreover, putting mass media into a broader social context, this thesis hopes to make a contribution to the study of the "publicness" of China's mass media and the role of the mass media and the Internet society in promoting democratic discourse and the formation of a civil society. This study finds that in the past thirty years, Chinese nationalistic discourse experienced significant change from intellectual-led to the CCP-led, and then, to netizen-led. Such change reflected the fierce hegemonic. struggles among the four agents and the transitional power relations amongst them. Yet, fundamentally, it is the changing economic-political-cultural (media) structure in China's thirty years that shaped the power relations amongst the four agents and the features of hegemonic nationalistic discourse. Especially, it finds that market economy, combined with the authoritarian political structure, tends to promote radical nationalistic discourse, rather than a democratic and rational discourse as the consensus among the society. Then, China's media commercialization, operating under the dual logic of the state and market, further radicalized such radical anti-western discourse. The Internet society that emerged in the 2000s sharply decentralized China's authoritarian political structure. Yet, under the marketized authoritarian structure, the rational-critical discourse still cannot acquire the hegemonic status. / Considering nationalism as an important political issue, China's Party-state has always paid considerable attention towards acquiring the leading status for its official patriotic discourse. Yet, the mass media, intellectuals and the ordinary citizens all strived to influence the nationalistic discourse, and as a result, the fierce power struggles unfolded amongst the four agents. Such power struggles were dynamic with the rise of the Chinese nationalistic sentiment during the past thirty years. Accordingly, Chinese nationalism becomes an ideal approach to study contemporary China's power relations and its transitions. / The main aim of this thesis is to examine power relations among the Party-state, intellectuals, mass media and the ordinary citizens, the four agents that are involved in the hegemonic struggle for the leading position of nationalistic discourse in the thirty years' "reform and opening" era, and explain the features and transitions of China's nationalistic discourse and the power relations behind it from the political-economic-cultural (media) structure perspectives. / Three nationalistic cases - TV-documentary Heshang ( River Elegy) in 1988, the anti-NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the anti-Tibet Independence movement in 2008 - will be analyzed in detail in this thesis. They were selected because these are unique cases that could clearly illustrate the relationships of the four agents and the political context during that historical period. Then, the critical realism-based hegemony approach will be suggested as a new theoretical framework in this study. From this approach, on the one hand, Chinese nationalism will be considered as a hegemonic field in which all four agents struggled in for the hegemonic status of nationalistic discourse. Accordingly, we can examine the nationalistic discourses/projects promoted by the four agents, their discursive struggles and the dynamic process of how one's nationalistic discourse acquires hegemonic status in each case. In this process, the power relations among the four agents can also be explored clearly. On the other hand, since the critical realism perspective pays attention to the dialectical relations between structure and agency, this approach can help us explore how China's transitional structures in the past thirty years - from totalitarian state to authoritarian state, from planned commodity economy to socialist market economy, and from a media market to the Internet society - shaped the power relations amongst the four agents and the hegemonic nationalistic discourse, as well as how their hegemonic power struggles contribute to the transformation of China's social structure. Moreover, the critical discourse analysis can help us clarify such issues from three levels: text/discourse, power relationships/ discursive struggles, and social structure. / Zhao, Jing. / Adviser: Anthony Yin Him Fung. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-270). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-224).

The Best PhD Thesis in the Faculties of Architecture, Arts, Business & Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences (University of Hong Kong), Li Ka Shing Prize, 2001-2003. / published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Curriculum and Educational Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This essay examines the relationship between national consciousness and the Communist Revolution in China between the years 1921 and 1928. / In tracing the trajectory of the national consciousness in our stipulated time period we can discern three distinct phases in its manifestation. Up until 1919 national consciousness was confined primarily to an intellectual elite whose primary concern was the decadence of the Imperial and Confucian state. Following the May Fourth movement (1919), these concerns came to be diffused amongst the urban population. / After the formation of the Chinese Communist Party, the Party addressed nationalist concerns by focusing on the role of imperialists and warlords. This continued following the alliance with the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang, under the United Front. / By 1925 there was the growth of populist movements with distinctly anti-imperialist overtones. The same time also saw a growing interest in the potential of the peasantry as the vanguard for the nationalist revolution. After the April 12, 1927 coup, the Party focused exclusively on the peasantry to carry on with the Nationalist Revolution.

This thesis illustrates a general sense of national identity within the Taiwanese people brought on by the Kuomintang (KMT) and existing throughout the KMT's reign over the island, and contrasts this with the new identity that came to exist in the post-KMT period. Comparisons are centered around two works of literature: Sayonara, Zaijian!, written in 1979 by Chunming Huang, and My Diary of Japanomania, written in 1999 by Hari Xingzi. Louis Althusser's view of history-based on structural materialism, complexity and overdetermination---will be employed to discuss and explain the contrast between Sayonara, Zaijian! and My Diary of Japanomania in order to discover how national subject is formed and how it interacts within ideology.

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