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In 2018, during a speech at Peking University to mark May Fourth Youth Day, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader and China's president, Xi Jinping 习近平, declared that “Patriotism (aiguozhuyi 爱国主义) is the source of morality and personal dignity … We must understand the history of the Chinese nation, carry on the Chinese cultural genes (Zhonghua wenhua jiyin 中华文化基因), exhibit national pride and maintain cultural self-confidence.” He then cautioned that “Patriotism cannot remain a mere slogan: it means aligning your ideals with the future of the motherland, linking your life with the destiny of the nation, becoming rooted in the people and dedicating yourself to the country (fengxian guojia 奉献国家).”1
Despite the platitudes that have become a hallmark of the CCP's public jargon,2 Xi's remarks are significant in that they encapsulate the party-state's current vision of China as a national collectivity and reveal the CCP's ongoing attempts at shaping youth attitudes towards this collectivity. A central means through which the Party has sought to achieve this aim is the “patriotic education” campaign (hereafter, PE campaign). Implemented since the early 1990s through various media channels and public sites as well as in the nation's schools, the PE campaign equates “China” with the “Communist Party” and the goals of the state with those of the nation.3 It further instructs youth that “a sense of pride in one's own Chinese identity, and commitment to the unity, strength and development of the party-state” constitute core values that are “absolutely central to the individual's sense of self.”4
How these messages are received by young Chinese people from different social backgrounds remains a disputed issue, however. Ethnographic work conducted in the 2000s has highlighted the multidimensional nature of youth nationalism in China.5 Yet, studies that document the views of Han Chinese youth towards their nation while attempting to identify the various factors that shape these views remain relatively scarce.6 Moreover, previous work on Chinese youth nationalism has mainly focused on urban students or those attending elite educational institutes in large metropolitan areas, while overlooking the effects of social background, type of school and geographical location within the country on youth attitudes. The present article, which draws on the results of a multi-sited...