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SUISHENG ZHAO, A Nation-State by Construction. Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 376 pages, 6 tables, 1 map, US$ 70.00 (hb), US$ 24.95 (pb). ISBN 0-8047-4897-7 (hb)/0-8047-5001-7 (pb)
Years ago, a German sinology professor used to mock Western colleagues who "aim to explain Asia to Asians". Suisheng Zhao explains China from an insider perspective, the book's Chinese bibliography is a third longer than the English one. He views China's search for a modern identity through the prism of its confrontation with Western nationalism, which was introduced from Europe and Japan by the Chinese political elite of the late 19th century. Zhao distinguishes three types of nationalism that have persisted throughout modern Chinese history, liberal (often elite-focussed), ethnic, and state-led pragmatic nationalism.
The author graphically portrays the challenges that leaders from Sun Yatsen to Mao faced when they had to make historic, far-reaching decisions in a totally fluid situation between 1911 and 1949, only too conscious as they were of their incomplete knowledge. In that period China introduced the narrow Western concept of political nationalism to protect the legitimacy of its new state, though universalism has long been a characteristic of Chinese culture: people defined history in terms of...