Coding The Nationalist Discourse: The Western-Educated Student Class In The Anti-Russian Campaign Of The 1900s

Traditional China is a civilization system of Tianxiaism, which had kept the empire stable over centuries. However, it was forced to transform into a modern national-state under the influence of the west. From then on, intellectuals have been playing an important part in the construction of nationalist discourse and the reconstruction of a political community. In the crisis of national doom and racial extinction, saving the nation from extinction became the most important consideration. It compelled the intellectuals to shelve the quest for individual liberty and place the individual benefit below national interest temporarily. Under the circumstances, they constructed a discourse of collectivistic and ethnic nationalism. As we know, the building of modern national-state does not only demand the sovereignty of the nation, but also the identity of liberty, which depends on a construction of civil nationalism to a great extent. What makes people regret is that civil nationalism and the universal value of liberalism have never overcome ethnic nationalism in the modernization of China.This thesis takes the case of Anti-Russian Campaign, around which the national discourse of the western-educated student class has been analyzed, and the reason of the tension between nationalism and liberalism has been discussed. It begins with the discussion of the medium and the subject of the construction of national discourse. It was the western-educated students who pursued the construction, by introducing the theory on nationalism, constructing the common enemy and the collective memories of the nation, and exaggerating the nationality sentiments. They were characterized by vivid racial elements, the adoration of force and the trend of revanchism, all of which obviously reflected a tension between nationalism and liberalism. It can be attributed to the radical political context and the ideal context affected by the blend of traditional ethnic consciousness and the external theories of state and nationalism, both of which lead to the tension between nationalism and liberalism in modern China.