Comparative Study Of Nationalism In China And Korea After The First World War

China and Korean peninsula are linked by common mountains and rivers and are closely related to and naturally interdependent on each other. Since ancient times, the two countries have enjoyed a close relationship with an exchange history of several thousand years. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, China and South Korea not only shared the experience of passive modernization caused by the invasion of the western culture, but also had the common confrontation of national crisis arising from external aggression.After the First World War, with the rise of oriental nationalism and the advance of socialist movements, the world colonial system formed under the global expansion of western colonialism at the end of the 19th century began to collapse. The subsequent national liberation movement in the vast colonial and semi-colonial countries and areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America was a "national self-awakening" movement pursuing "national self-determination" under the flag of nationalism. China and South Korea were no exceptions. Both countries witnessed many nationalist movements in the process of saving and revitalizing the two countries, such as the May Fourth Movement, the Non-Christian Movement, the Movement for the Recovery of Education and the Anti-Japanese Goods Movement in China and the March First Movement, Anti-Christian Movement, the New Education Outreach Campaign and the Products Awards Movement in Korea. On the basis of these movements formed the nationalism-grounded ideas of democracy, freedom and equality. Therefore, it can be said that the "national salvation" spirit and the nationalism of the two countries have promoted their new cultural movements.Nationalism plays an important part in the modernization process and the development process of nationalism in China and in South Korea is the process of their modernization, for at that time a country must enter into the tide of modernization if it were to fight for or maintain its national independence and to secure development. At a certain stage of historical development, people of China and South Korea, taking the opportunity of external stimuli and raising the national awareness through the cohesion of cultural heritage that they are dependent on, begin to realize their own respective "national community" in contact with foreign forces.Nationalism in China and in South Korea has many similarities due to the same international and social environment as well as the common goals. However, the two countries are different in social nature. Though South Korea was not completely free from the influence of feudalism, it was politically reduced to a colonial society in 1910. While China was still a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, though the rule of Qing dynasty was overthrown and the Republic of China was built, hence ending the feudalism system in the year of 1911. Because of the differences in the modes of the invasion the two countries suffered from imperialism and the reaction of the two countries to the external forces, the crisis the two countries faced and the countermeasures they adopted were different. Therefore, nationalist movements in China and South Korea appear naturally different features with both similarities and differences, which form the basis of study and comparison.Dividing nationalism roughly into political nationalism, cultural nationalism and economic nationalism, this essay intends to analyze the nationalism in China and in South Korea from the aspects of politics, culture and economy with a historical-comparative method, expounds the similarities and differences between China's nationalism and South Korea's nationalism and then further analyze the features of nationalism in the two countries.