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Cyber-nationalism in China: the relationship between government and netizens

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Cyber-nationalism in China: the relationship between government and netizens

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CYBER-NATIONALISM IN CHINA:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND NETIZENS
by
Hongqiao Li

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE
COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS AND SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Hongqiao Li
ii
Acknowledgments
Throughout the writing of this thesis, I have received so much support and assistance.
Firstly, I would like to thank faculties and staff from the USC East Asian Studies program, for
trying to lift me up when I was feeling down for a long time and not giving me up when I finally
pulled myself together. This group includes Grace, who supported me throughout the program, and
maintained communication with me well into the pandemic period, which I regretfully admit that
I did not do so well.
I would also thank my wonderful committee members: Professor Joshua Goldstein offered
crucial advice on the main structure and historiography of my thesis. Professor Stanley Rosen,
who specializes in Chinese politics, provided me valuable information on the political aspect of
nationalism in the information age. Professor Brett Sheehan inspired me to take effective ways to
make comparisons between my examples, which is a vital part in my writing.
I would also like to thank all the professors at USC who I have taken classes with and were
not mentioned above: Professor Jenny Chio, Brian Bernards and Eric Heikkila. Even though you
were not in my thesis committee, I have learnt so much from your lectures and seminars that I
would not have formed a clear research direction and structure without your teachings. You all
broadened my visions and enriched my knowledge on topics and contents in East Asian studies.
I would also like to thank Professor Ronald Suleski from the Rosenberg Institute for East
Asian Studies at Suffolk University. Our meeting was short and unexpected, but you gave me so
much help and support, with vital suggestions on research methods and directions to my thesis
writing.
iii
Secondly, I would like to thank my parents for much care and support during the difficult
times. In 2020, when Covid-19 first hit China, my home country, then US, where I had studied for
six years, I fell into an under-desired place. If it were not because of my parents, I would not have
been able to have the courage to pick up where I left behind and finish the thesis.
Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to Stephen Sondheim. While it may seem
unrelated to my studies, as a long-time musical theatre fan, I began to appreciate Sondheim’s works
during my graduate years. His creativity, wisdom and dedication to his career has inspired me so
much and helped me through the dark times.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. v
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Research Questions ..................................................................................................................... 3
Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 4
Structure ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter One Literature Review .................................................................................................... 6
Characteristics of Nationalism .................................................................................................... 6
Nationalism in Modern China ................................................................................................... 10
Research on Media Theories ..................................................................................................... 13
Chapter Two From Early Chinese Nationalism to Contemporary Cyber-nationalism ............... 20
Origins and Development of Modern Chinese Nationalism ..................................................... 21
History of the Development of Media in China ........................................................................ 30
Chapter Three Two Case Studies of Chinese Cyber-Nationalism .............................................. 35
The Hanfu Movement ............................................................................................................... 37
The Diba Expedition ................................................................................................................. 45
Comparison of the Two Cases ................................................................................................... 56
Chapter Four Covid and Beyond ................................................................................................ 59
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 68
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 71

v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. World’s leaders wearing Tangzhuang ........................................................................... 39
Figure 2. News report from Lianhe zaobao ................................................................................. 40
Figure 3. Hanwang on blacklist .................................................................................................... 44
Figure 4. Hanfu fans wearing traditional Han clothing on the street . .......................................... 45
Figure 5. Eight honors and eight disgraces post on Facebook . .................................................... 51
Figure 6, Figure 7 and Figure 8. Mainland netizens posted about Chinese food, natural and urban
scenes, and emotional poems on Facebook .................................................................................. 51
Figure 9 and Figure 10. Mainland uncivil posts on Facebook ...................................................... 51
Figure 11. Series of artwork illustrating “People’s war against the pandemic’’. .......................... 63
Figure 12. Caricature by Danish cartoonist Niels Bo Bojesen .................................................... 64
Figure 13. Caricature by Chinese netizens responding to the Danish caricature ......................... 64

vi
Abstract
This thesis traces the historical roots of nationalism in China and examines state-led and
popular cyber-nationalism’s social and political effects both domestically and internationally. It
examines a diverse set of Chinese- and English-language primary sources, including patriotic and
nationalist educational curriculum, government policies, official press releases, oral historical
sources, social media posts, and photographs. The thesis reveals the hypocritical Chinese
government policy on popular nationalism and censorship. It argues that Beijing’s information
control strategy and stance on nationalistic movements centers on pro-Beijing tropes and the one-
party rule of the government, as opposed to national security for all Chinese citizens. In the
meantime, Chinese citizens, despite restrictions, have mobilized social media as a political and
intellectual space to express and advance individual freedom and, at times, to voice dissent toward
nationalistic policies. While the current Chinese government intends to utilize the rising trend of
nationalistic sentiments online to strengthen national spirit and address issues such as sovereignty
and political stability, digital nationalists are also increasingly advocating aggressive postures in
their online activities and silencing dissident voices with the help of the state’s opinion guidance
and systemic censorship, perpetrating negative impacts on civil discussions in divided political
environments.

1
Introduction
People nowadays cannot imagine a life without the internet. Since the 1980s, the internet
and especially social media, has become one of the most important platforms for communication,
information exchange, and free speech. By the end of 2018, half of the world was online, and one
can hardly think of any scenario, whether it is education, working, or entertainment, where the
internet does not have an active role.
1

The internet in China has also gone through substantial changes since its first launch in
1987, from China’s first E-mail to the now indispensable social media.
2
By 2022 China had the
largest population on the internet, about 1.02 billion internet users.
3
However, state censorship
factors significantly in media development. Throughout the years, Chinese censorship has become
a systematic configuration that reaches into a variety of fields, including the internet, television
and other forms of media. The censorship goes nationally and internationally, with certain contents
restricted for visiting and popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and search
engines banned in the mainland. Nevertheless, because of the very nature of the internet, one can
still say that the internet enriches people’s lives within a certain scope.
Moreover, globalization and more frequent information sharing have unfortunately ignited
a sharp spike in digital nationalist discourses along with various internet restrictions in China. In
recent years, China’s sensitive historical background, and changes in the domestic and

1
Ian Sample, “What is the Internet? 13 Key Questions Answered,” the Guardian, last modified November 10, 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/22/what-is-the-internet-13-key-questions-answered.
2
Jaime A. FlorCruz and Lucrezia Seu, “From Snail Mail to 4G, China Celebrates 20 years of Internet Connectivity,”
CNN, last modified April 23, 2014, https://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/asia/china-internet-20th-
anniversary/index.html.
3
Simon Kemp, “Digital 2022: China,” Datareportal, last modified February 9, 2022,
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-
china#:~:text=Internet%20use%20in%20China%20in,percent)%20between%202021%20and%202022.

2
international environment often led to rising online nationalistic comments and discussions, and
the state also had various reactions to these self-organized online activities where a range of
opinions were expressed. Historically, nationalism has always been an unignorable force that
shaped not only the political and social environment in China, but the relationship between the
three major countries in East Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, and the world. Nationalistic activities
have been prevalent throughout contemporary Chinese history with the May Fourth Movement of
1919 being one of the most prominent examples and catalysts of public opinion. In the past decades,
Chinese nationalism was often seen as civilians taking action against countries that they believed
to have harmed their national interests, such as the popular protest in China against the bombing
of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 which the United States government claimed to be an
accident, and the anti-Japanese demonstrations of 2005 and 2012 in China that involved
controversial sovereignty issues and the legacy of historical conflicts between both countries.
During the current digital age, the internet and its associated platforms have become a more
popular medium where nationalist sentiments and movements thrive. Netizens can see these types
of nationalistic activities online as merely an extension of traditional nationalism, or as a new
approach that is capable of creating much wider influence. Since a large portion of the worldwide
internet is interconnected, the Chinese cyber-nationalism phenomenon is gaining attention within
and outside the mainland, just as is the image of the rising economic and political power of China.
Given the popularity of researching nationalism in China and other countries, there is no doubt
that Chinese cyber-nationalism should and has become another heated topic among both Chinese
and Western scholars examining how this phenomenon reflects a variety of aspects of
contemporary Chinese society.

3
This thesis discusses the relationship between the Chinese state and the Chinese netizens
on nationalism issues, specifically the transformation from traditional media to the internet in
China, the effect of cyber-nationalism on political and social environments in China, and the
opportunities and challenges Chinese cyber-nationalism are facing in the uncertainty of the times.
The thesis essentially argues that social media and other forms of online platforms provide netizens
more opportunities and freedom to communicate and express their opinions on issues related to
nationalism. Although censorship cast by the Chinese state has become a systemic form and
created restrictions for netizens in penetrating certain spaces of the internet, recent cases of cyber-
nationalism rather show that the Chinese state’s stance toward digital nationalism strikes one as
hypocritical. Beijing’s information control strategy and stance on nationalist movements center on
pro-Chinese tropes and the one-party rule of the government, as opposed to national security for
all Chinese citizens. In the meantime, Chinese citizens, despite restrictions, have mobilized social
media as a political and intellectual space to express and advance individual freedom and, at times,
to voice dissent toward nationalistic policies. While the current Chinese government intends to
utilize the rising trend of nationalistic sentiments online to strengthen national spirit and address
issues such as sovereignty and political stability, digital nationalists are also increasingly
advocating aggressive postures in their online activities and silencing dissident voices with the
help of the state’s opinion guidance and systemic censorship, perpetrating negative impacts on
civil discussions in divided political environments.
Research Questions
Since this thesis mainly examines the relationship between Chinese netizens and the
government involving cyber-nationalism activities, research questions focus on the different
sections of the three subjects, netizens, the state, and cyber space. Firstly, who are the participants

4
involved in the online nationalistic activities? What motivates their actions? Secondly, how does
the state view the function of online space and how does it regulate online activities? How does
the state value nationalistic sentiments and how does it react to various scales of nationalism and
cyber-nationalistic activities? Thirdly, how does the internet evolve and respond to different stages
of political and social activities? How does cyber space differ from the physical space associated
with nationalism? It is important to point out that these three subjects ultimately intertwine with
each other. This thesis essentially analyzes what the implications of major cyber-nationalism
events are in regard to the ideologies of certain groups and Chinese society, and how current events
shed light on the understanding of the future of China’s online culture.
Methodology
Cyber-nationalism lies at the intersection of history, cultural studies, and media studies. In
order to have a basic understanding of the cyber-nationalism phenomenon, one has to analyze the
history of both the development of nationalism that has an active role in contemporary Chinese
history and the development of modern media in China and the consequential popularity of the
internet and online culture. This part of the thesis will introduce several theories involving
nationalism and online culture, mainly discussing the state’s role in forging a nationalism-favored
environment and a systematic cyberspace that is unique in various ways from that of the outside
world, and how the Chinese people reacted to issues of nationalism in both the pre-digital era and
the digital era.
Another methodological approach the thesis will use is case studies. Based on the
assumption that actions by both netizens and the state follow relatively uniform principles, the
analysis of previous cyber-nationalism activities and events will give insights into the relationship
between the two. The thesis will give a detailed introduction of two Chinese cyber-nationalism

5
cases that while sharing certain similarities, are drastically different: the Hanfu Movement (汉服
运动) and the Diba Expedition (帝吧出征) . The Hanfu Movement primarily featured the enduring
online popularity of ethnic Chinese Han traditions and clothing that involved the state’s minority
policies and rise of ethnic nationalism. On the other hand, the Diba Expedition was an online
reaction to the controversial Cross-Strait relations between mainland China and Taiwan and it
displayed some characteristics of typical cyber-nationalism activities that include the short
duration of time involved in a cyber campaign, the large quantity of participants involved, and a
centralized organization behind the movement. The case studies of these earlier events may be
limited to some extent, thus it is important to also introduce some potentially new trends revealed
in more recent cyber-nationalism activities. Now that political interactions between China and the
rest of the world have become much more frequent than in former days, events concerning online
politics provide more recent case studies in the discussion of cyber-nationalism, such as the Hong
Kong protests of 2019 and China’s pandemic nationalism being currently expressed. The sources
used to analyze the cases are either primary sources taken from the original posts by nationalist
Chinese netizens related to recent events, comments and articles from official government
documents, or secondary sources composed mainly of research articles and chapters.
Structure
Following the introduction, the thesis starts with Chapter One, a literature review that
discusses what scholars have researched about nationalism and the cyber-nationalism phenomenon.
Chapter Two uses nationalism and communication theories including those put forward by
Benedict Anderson and Jürgen Habermas to analyze the development and characteristics of
nationalism and media in contemporary China and builds a foundation for understanding why
nationalist activities rose in popularity in the subsequent cases. Chapter Three is a detailed study

6
that will compare the Hanfu Movement and the Diba Expedition on aspects that include its
organization, outcomes and the state’s reactions. Chapter Four introduces new trends of cyber-
nationalism during the Covid-19 pandemic in Chinese netizen activities and the presence of state
censorship and assesses the impacts of digital nationalism in our increasingly divided world.
Chapter One Literature Review
Nationalism is a multidimensional and fluid concept that reflects and responds to local
contexts. My focus in this chapter is to analyze how the varied existing theories and scholarship
reinforce and are redefined by online and offline nationalist activities.
Characteristics of Nationalism
In his article Enduring Anxieties: Cultural Nationalism and Modern East Asia, Michael
Robinson suggests that most theories focus on nationalism’s power to transform societies, but its
origins and mechanics remain too complex to be encompassed in a single formation.
4
The concepts
behind the development of cultural nationalism that are still being debated by social scientists of
nationalism have not received consensus among their views. Nevertheless, their studies provide
useful insights into three major characteristics of the modern nation-state of China.
The first characteristic is that certain nations and ethnic communities have lasted for
centuries. Both the Nationalist and Communist regimes have used this concept of “China with five
thousand years of civilization” as one of the central ideologies of nationalistic policies and patriotic

4
Michael Robinson, “Enduring Anxieties: Cultural Nationalism and Modern East Asia,” in Cultural Nationalism in
East Asia: Representation and Identity, Ed. Harumi Befu (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993), quoted in
Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2004), 12.

7
education campaigns, and the ideology has also been shown in the cultural superiority sentiment
by many nationalist activists both online and offline. As possible explanations for why this has
happened, scholars have offered the concepts of primordialism and perennialism. Primordialism
argues for an unchanging national identity that uses a shared historical experience or cultural
foundation to differentiate themselves from other groups. This shared identity can apply to both
the cases of ethnic groups and nation-states. Historical sociologist Anthony Smith mentions six
main characteristics that ethnic groups usually use to define themselves as a single ethnicity: a
collective proper name, myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, a common culture
that is associated with a specific territory, and a sense of solidarity among a significant part of the
population.
5
This framework can often apply to an analysis of the old societies in Asia and Africa,
where their populations are more bound by cultural givens such as languages, religions, customs
and specific regions, rather than their civil ties to a rational view of society.
6
Nationalist scholars
of this persuasion use the theories to explain the emotional and irrational fear of domination,
expulsion or extinction, lying at the core of many ethnic conflicts. A major critique to
primordialism among scholars such as Eller and Coughlan, is that the specified cultural elements
are subject to change and are socially constructed. Thus, they are “renewed, reinterpreted, and
renegotiated” because of changing circumstances and interests.
7
Perennialism, which shares
similarities with primordialism, refers to the historical antiquity of the concept of “nation,” which
makes it difficult to define the little difference between nationality and ethnicity.
8
Thus, this

5
Anthony D Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism
(London: Routledge, 1998), quoted in Goran Patrick Filić, “Critique of Instrumentalist and Primordialist Theories:
The Case of Yugoslavia.” Političke Perspektive 11, no. 2 (2022), 97.
6
Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 151, 153.
7
Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 155.
8
Smith, 159.

8
framework focuses on the power and longevity of the community. Nevertheless, this framework
does not answer the question of who the subjects of the community are, whether they are the
general populations or the elites and the ruling class.
9
Similar to the critiques of primordialism, the
idea of perennialism also suits definitions of premodern communities with limited changes of
cultural elements, rather than to modern societies with large immigration populations.
10

The second characteristic states and in fact insists that the modern roots of nationalism are
closely associated with the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The idea of
modernism, which is a large component of nationalism theories, stresses that nations are not
ancient nor do they exist in nature. This theory refutes the ones mentioned above, and also
corresponds to the fact that Chinese intellectuals in late Qing officially introduced modern
nationalism theories such as the concept of nation state and sovereignty from the West. This notion
also aligns with the nation-building theorists, who feel that nations are the one and the only
territorial political communities that hold the primary political bonds and the chief loyalties of
their citizens. And they are the main political actors internationally.
11
Scholars of this school in the
1960s, such as Ernest Gellner, all adhered to the notion that the rise of nation-states in the West
was pushed by socio-economic and political changes since the nineteenth century. They offered as
examples the countries in the third world, particularly in Asia and Africa that dated no further than
the contemporary processes of decolonization. Under a similar trajectory to modernism,
postmodernism offers further interpretations of modern nationalism. Among scholars in this camp,
Benedict Anderson states that the nation is an imagined political community— and imagined as

9
Smith, 160-161.
10
Smith, 161.
11
Smith, 20.

9
both inherently limited and sovereign.
12
It is limited because most of the citizens will not know or
meet with other members of the nation; and from the age of enlightenment and revolution when
the populations needed the possession of a sovereign state, the rise of nations was dependent on a
developed system of capitalism, mass printing technology and a diverse set of languages that
encouraged the growth and diffusion of national consciousness inside and outside the nation.
13
In
the case studies of Chapter Three, my thesis will analyze the digital activists who created versions
of imagined communities that were bound by a shared national identity or cultural awareness,
regardless their presence in a physical sovereignty.
The last characteristic is that the elites, the ruling class and the nation itself manipulate and
bring the nation together. The assumptions of instrumentalism are that nationalistic consciousness
and actions are the consequence of political forces imagining a political unity that persuades people
who share certain similarities and backgrounds to form a nation. In order to serve their own
interests, elites of the community usually enhance this rational process by emphasizing cultural
elements to differentiate their community members from others.
14
Regarding these cultural
elements, ethno-symbolism theorists suggest that the emergence of new nations happens with the
elites’ reinterpretations of ethnic symbols, myths, memories, sentiments, values and customs. The
constructionists refer to this process as the elites reinventing new traditions in order to establish
the continuity of a historic past in order to better survive in novel situations.
15
This type of ruling

12
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edition
(London: Verso, 1991), 6.
13
Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6-7, 42-43.
14
Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 155.
15
Smith, 118, 187, 191; Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 1-2.

10
class and elites using approaches of reinventing and manipulation is essential to understand the
pragmatic nationalistic policies and campaigns in both the Nationalist and Communist regimes.
Overall, these three characteristics of nation-building based on theories of nationalism are
essential to understand, specifically in the case of China, how the Chinese nation is both an ancient
and a modern concept, where the nationalistic sentiments of the mass population are generated,
and how the elites use cultural and historical elements to mobilize and stabilize the nation.
Nationalism in Modern China
In the case of modern China, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, many
Qing officials, intellectuals, and common people felt overwhelmed by military invasions and the
economic forces of Western imperialism. They had doubts and had even lost hope in their historical
heritage and political institutions which were ignored and disdained by the Western powers. Under
this background we see a growing sense of nationalism among many Chinese people that has lasted
till today. Historian Hans Kohn argues that nationalism is first and foremost a psychological and
social concept of group-consciousness. It is only during a time when international relations, trade
and communication developed to an unprecedented level, that nationalism starts to grow in
association with languages, religions, traditions, territories and political entities.
16
Daniel
Druckman, similarly, focuses on the social and psychological perspective of nationalism, and
argues that loyalty to a group or community is at the core of nationalism, while Van Evera, Snyder
and Greenfeld claim it as a movement toward modernity for national survival, equality, and
development.
17
Greenfeld, specifically, refers to the rise of modern states as a response to an

16
Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background (New York: The Macmillan
Company), 1946, 12,14.
17
Daniel Druckman, “Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective,” Mershon
International Studies Review 38 (1994): 43-48; Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,”

11
identity crisis and, by choosing representatives from among the people, whether in democratic or
authoritarian states, national ideologies work in different ways to form different versions of
nationalism.
18
As Greenfeld uses the term “ressentiment” to depict the defense of traditional
culture and values against westernization when early modern European countries were
overwhelmed by the first nation-state, England, we see parallels to the path that led to the rise of
Chinese nationalism.
19

In the Chinese context, China’s great defeats when facing previous colonial powers starting
at the turn of the 20
th
century resulted in significant changes to many Chinese people at the time
about what it means to be Chinese in a newly founded global context, thus creating heated debates
among Chinese and Western scholars about the origins, characteristics, and implications of
Chinese nationalism. Among the many versions of nationalism in China, a commonly held belief
on the origin or early stage of Chinese nationalism, often termed the “from-culturalism-to-
nationalism” thesis, is that Confucian-centered China was a culturally defined community rather
than a politically defined nation-state.
20
Facing the astounding defeats by Britain during the Opium
War of 1840-1842, the late Qing government initially attempted reforms, including the Self-
Strengthening Movement and Hundred Days’ Reform, until its fall in 1911, but the various reforms
were superficial and uneven and for the sole purpose of keeping the state in power. While the
reforms had little effect on ordinary people, the government’s efforts and bottom-up movements

International Security 18 (Spring 1994):7; Louis Snyder, The Dynamics of Nationalism: Reading in Its Meaning and
Development (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1964), 23; Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to
Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 18.
18
Greenfeld, Nationalism, 10.
19
Greenfeld, Nationalism, 16.
20
Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2004), 12; James Townsend, “Chinese Nationalism,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 27
(1992): 113. https://doi.org/10.2307/2950028.

12
from students and intellectuals intensified the divisions among class, region, and ideology about
what they envisioned in a new nation. At the same time, the extremely unstable and violent social
and political environment in China stimulated intellectuals such as Wei Yuan and Liang Qichao to
seek out nationalistic and self-strengthening slogans and educational ideas from the Western
advanced countries. Fragmented and competing Chinese identities and the overriding clash with
Western civilizations thus led to a version of nationalism, a reactive nationalism and perceived
victimhood held by a lot of Qing officials and Chinese people.
21
This direction of analysis was
suggested by van de Ven, Liew, and Wang, leading to one of the important variations of
nationalistic ideologies giving birth to the rise and continuous development of Chinese nationalism.
Turning to the modern China period, in his work A Nation-state By Construction: Dynamics
of Modern Chinese Nationalism, political scientist Suisheng Zhao proposes a classification of
Chinese nationalism, ‘ethnic’, ‘liberal,’ and state-led ‘pragmatic,’ when reviewing the changing
dynamics of the three phases in the late Qing (late 1800s), in the Nationalist period (1911 to 1949)
and in Communist China (1949 to the new millennium), and specifically pointing out the hidden
troubles of nationalistic policies by the governments in each period.
22
Both the Nationalist and
Communist government, like any nation state governments, emphasized on fostering nationalism
among their citizens in order to maintain their ruling legitimacy and utilized a variety of
approaches in different historical periods. Nevertheless, their nationalistic policies often had the
danger of getting backfired by uncontrollable nationalistic sentiments and actions, as the thesis
will illustrate in cases linked to ethnic unrest and aggressive online activism.

21
Hans Van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 15; Leong H Liew
and Shaoguang Wang, Nationalism, Democracy and National Integration in China (New York: Routledge, 2004), 4.
22
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 21-29.

13
Deeply affected by post-Cold War international politics, many Western-oriented scholars
posit concerns over China’s rise to global status and nationalistic sentiments. Notably among these
scholars is Charles Krauthammer, who argues that China would like to expand like Germany
initially did in the 1930s when it became stronger, and a number of Chinese scholars respond with
the claim that nationalism is necessary in order to advance China’s national interests.
23
As political
scientist Jianyue Chen argues, nationalism is usually rooted in exclusionism, distrust, and the felt-
need to prioritize one’s own interests against others.
24
Such sentiment can be traced in the Chinese
government’s nationalistic education campaigns and its political agenda as expressed in media and
textbooks , and the often outraged reaction of the young generations in China toward the West as
expressed online.
25
Overall, the major dissenting scholarly debates on the implication of Chinese
nationalism center on the question of whether a positive “us” might inevitably and aggressively
lead to a negative “them,” thus igniting instability and conflicts among various ethnic communities
in China and global regions. Building on current scholarship, I offer in this study an exploratory
examination of Chinese nationalism as a part of media development, technological advancement,
and censorship.
Research on Media Theories
The public sphere theory stated by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the twentieth
century provides important meanings to the development of Chinese media and research on cyber

23
Charles Krauthammer, “Why We Must Contain China,” Time, July 31
st
, 1995,
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,983245,00.html; Suisheng, A Nation-State by Construction,
10-11.
24
Jianyue Chen, “Ethnicity Communication and Nationalism” in Ethnicity Politics and Modern Nation-state
(Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2004), 40-41.
25
Shenshen Cai, State Propaganda in China’s Entertainment Industry (New York: Routledge, 2016), 1-3; Ying
Jiang, Cyber-Nationalism in China: Challenging Western Media Portrayals of Internet Censorship in China
(Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2012), 9.

14
space. In his 1964 work The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article, Habermas suggests that “by
‘the public sphere’ we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching
public opinion can be formed.”
26
Habermas then points out several important elements of the
definition, including the subject, that is the group that forms the public opinion, and that it should
be every private individual. The unlimited access of this process suggests the guarantee of freedom
of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions about matters
of the general interest.
27
As for the medium, Habermas believes that media like newspapers and
magazines, radio and television provide the base where the public sphere can happen.
28
Of course,
the internet had not yet appeared in the 1960s, and China’s authoritarian state should in theory
oppress civil society, the base of the public sphere ideology. The monitoring and censorship by the
state has also led to international organizations putting China on the list of “enemies of the internet,”
stating that the government’s Internet Information Office has gone far beyond their original
mission in order to spy on and censor journalists, bloggers and other information providers.
29

However, as Ya-Wen Lei points out, a nationwide contentious public sphere, that is unruly
and capable of generating issues and agendas not authorized by the Chinese state, has emerged in
China.
30
Lei suggests that the rise of this particular public sphere is an unintentional consequence
of the state’s campaign of authoritarian modernization consisting of modern law, marketized media,
and the internet, has had the effect of encouraging the formation of multifaceted social networks

26
Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964).” New German Critique, no. 3 (1974): 49,
https://doi.org/10.2307/487737.
27
Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” 49.
28
Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” 49.
29
Reporters Without Borders, “Enemies of the Internet 2014: Entities at the Heart of Censorship and Surveillance,”
RSF, last modified March 11, 2014, https://rsf.org/en/enemies-internet-2014-entities-heart-censorship-and-
surveillance.
30
Ya-Wen Lei, The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2018), 3.

15
of collaborations and values of the traditional liberalism mentioned above.
31
Thus, these
capabilities created the space for contentious politics to arise. While I believe that the formation
of the public sphere was not unintentional in the state’s surveillance and regulation of early media
dating back to late Qing when they were first introduced, I do agree with Lei that the state of the
public sphere in China is and will remain vulnerable because of the ongoing and even strengthened
monitoring and censorship in an unpredictable global context. Nevertheless, we can apply the
definition and characteristics of the public sphere to China’s media development from telegraphy
to the internet, and my thesis will show in the next chapter how cyber space reinforces these ideas
to a greater level.
Research on digital nationalism has also gained increasing attention by both Chinese and
Western scholars since the world-wide internet boom in the 1990s. Communication and public
relations scholar Xu Wu defines cyber-nationalism as a popular ideology and movement that
originated and developed in China’s online sphere in the early 2000s.
32
The digital shift challenges
states, especially authoritarian regimes, previous ability to manipulate traditional media. By
contrast, online tools expand individuals avenues to freely express their thoughts and increase their
active participation in knowledge creation without undergoing the vetting process required in
traditional media. Nationalist sentiments, according to Wu, are often stronger in societies with
restrictive censorship laws.
33
Recent events caused by the ruptured scheme of globalization,
including the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the 1998 Indonesia anti-Chinese riots, and the 1999 U.S.
bombing of the Chinese Embassy in New Belgrade, incited popular nationalist discourses that

31
Lei, The Contentious Public Sphere, 3.
32
Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2007), Introduction.
33
Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Chapter 11.

16
seem to confirm Wu’s claim.
34
If not having been ignited by these international events, the online
nationalistic movements would not be so deeply connected to important historical incidents nor
would they have materialized with such speed and magnitude, thus reinforcing the importance and
urgency of doing research on Chinese cyber-nationalism.
35
The expanding digital web is, thus, a
two-edged sword that connects individuals beyond national borders and, in the meantime, raises
threats and hostility toward political rule.
Censorship has been another popular focus in the research on Chinese cyber-nationalism.
The abundant scholarship on the media aspects of censorship have given birth to great insights on
the ever-changing mechanism of state censorship and the citizens’ responses to online censorship.
Political science scholar Margret E. Roberts has done extensive research on the politics of
censorship in China, stating that often times censorship by the state is not a complete ban but is
rather like a tax on certain information that users need to pay by spending more money or more
time in order to get access to the information thay want.
36
One of the ways that my thesis will show
is that in some cases VPN, a type of software that allows users to bypass state-constructed fire-
walls and to access censored foreign media. When Western social media and search engines like
Facebook and Google became unavailable to access to in China, the news caught the attention of
Chinese scholars. These scholars pointed out that self-censorship, a system operated by the
Chinese media platforms that was deeply influenced by the state and yet was relatively
independent in actual practice, is another element that some people outside of China might mistake
it as a result of the direct state censorship policy. In her work Cyber-Nationalism in China:

34
Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Introduction.
35
Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Introduction.
36
Margaret E Roberts, Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2018), 2.

17
Challenging Western media portrayals of Internet censorship in China, Ying Jiang argues that it
is the anger of Chinese bloggers because of Western comments on Chinese censorship that
prompted cyber-nationalism to rise in China, and this reveals that China’s cyberspace has displayed
only the early signs of political liberalization with few intentions of actually achieving structural
change.
37
My thesis, on the other hand, will feature censorship by analyzing case studies that
primarily deal with international sovereignty issues when Chinese netizens were more likely to
use VPNs to visit foreign media platforms and I will also discuss the state’s reaction toward
netizen’s access to censored information and areas.
With the rise of new social media platforms such as Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of
Twitter) and the gradual advancement of Baidu Tieba (the Chinese equivalent of Reddit) in the
2010s, scholars have turned to individual cyber-nationalism events, especially since the Diba
Expedition on Facebook in 2016 that led to the establishment of focused studies and workshops
about the event in The Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication. Scholars in these fields,
such as Guobin Yang and Hongmei Li, examined the event through the lens of visual analysis and
emotional expression, focusing on the qualitative analysis of visual memes, texts and participant
interviews.
38
These scholars argue that the expedition reflected the commercial and digital
characteristics of the online youth culture and collective emotional expressions.
39
The recurring
themes in this scholarship such as censorship, patriotism and reactive emotions showed me the
existing research perspectives and provided valuable analytical methods to engage with this type
of online literature. Furthermore, more political scholars such as Gries and Schneider examined

37
Cyber-nationalism in China, 5-7.
38
Guobin Yang, “Performing Cyber-Nationalism in Twenty-First Century China” in From Cyber-nationalism to
Fandom Nationalism: The Case of Diba Expedition in China, ed. Hailong Liu (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1-2.
39
Guobin Yang, “Performing Cyber-Nationalism in Twenty-First Century China.”

18
Chinese nationalism and cyber-nationalism through the issue of sovereignty and the influence of
online activism on China’s sensitive political relations with Japan and the US.
40
My thesis has
benefited from the digital and archival methods of these scholars and provided a deeper analysis
of nationalism produced by radial political disputes.
Turning to the most recent years, the pandemic environment has alerted national and
international scholars to various aspects of this topic that include a new wave of analysis of Chinese
online and offline nationalism when reacting to the global pandemic crisis, and we are starting to
see a more divergent trend of nationalist opinions. The appearance of terms such as “pandemic
nationalism” and “vaccine nationalism,” mostly indicates there were attempts to link the pandemic
with nationalism. Social scientists have done studies in various disciplines on the impact of
nationalism toward countries like the US, UK, and other major countries in Europe. While there
are some common themes in this phenomenon, there is no consensus among scholars on the impact
of the pandemic on nationalism, because a variety of factors affected each government’s actions
and its citizens responses.
41
In the case of China during the pandemic, pandemic nationalism
involves aspects that include China’s own geopolitical stance on the pandemic as compared to the
common practice of the Western world and the Western governments viewpoints and policies
toward various communities that associate with China. Zhenyu Wang and Yuzhou Tao’s research
on Chinese social media points out the coexistence of for and against globalization and global

40
Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 4; Florian Schneider, China’s Digital Nationalism (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2018),
Introduction,
41
Harris Mylonas, and Ned Whalley,“Pandemic Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 50, no. 1 (2022): 3, (Habermas
1974) doi:10.1017/nps.2021.105; Pichamon Yeophantong, and Chih‑yu Shih, “A Relational Reflection on Pandemic
Nationalism,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 26: 550 (Mylonas and Whalley 2022)(2021),
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-021-09736-5.

19
competition under the effects of the pandemic.
42
Yeophantong and Shih, on the other hand, reveal
the rise of Chinese nationalism from top-down and bottom-up processes manufactured by the state
and a variety of communities that expressed loyalty and moral values during the process.
43
Both
Xiaoyu Zhao’s and Yeophantong and Shih’s studies also suggest that this form of nationalism
sometimes went beyond the reach of the central state and decentralized the Communist Party-
oriented nationalism.
44
The emerging research provides essential background to this new stage of
analysis in social science research. I will further discuss some cases in the Chinese context, such
as nationalist attitudes and policies toward overseas citizens that may have not been mentioned in
the current studies.
Existing scholarship examining Chinese cyber-nationalism in media studies and political
science, hence, primarily focuses on individual events or international relations while analyzing
how the act of nationalism online reveals a hidden historical background and current social
mentality. I will continue my case studies research by putting the Diba Expedition and the Hanfu
Movement in dialogue with the consistent Chinese government engagement with nationalistic
activism in contemporary Chinese regimes while underscoring the shifting government policies
on both information exchange and popular nationalism, especially during the pandemic era.
Informed by the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, my research on China goes beyond
geographical and thematic relevance. I hope to offer insights to scholars, policy makers, and

42
Zhenyu Wang, and Yuzhou Tao, “Many Nationalisms, One Disaster: Categories, Attitudes and Evolution of
Chinese Nationalism on Social Media during the COVID -19 Pandemic,” Chinese Journal of Political Science 26,
no. 3 (2021): 525–548.
43
Yeophantong, Shih, “A Relational Reflection on Pandemic Nationalism.”
44
Yeophantong, Shih, “A Relational Reflection on Pandemic Nationalism”; Xiaoyu Zhao, “Chinese Nationalism
During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Conciliatory and Confrontational Discourses,” Nations and Nationalism (2022).

20
civically engaged citizens across the globe in how to utilize the internet in creating a more just and
open world.
Chapter Two From Early Chinese Nationalism to Contemporary Cyber-
nationalism
Even though the rise of cyber-nationalism is a relatively recent event, nationalism is not a
new topic in China. In Chapter One, my thesis introduced the direction of recent studies on Chinese
nationalism and cyber-nationalism. This chapter provides a more detailed introduction to the
origins and development of nationalism and associated online activities to give readers a better
understanding of the current state of Chinese cyber-nationalism. This chapter features a brief
introduction of the growth of nationalism and media development in modern China in which
nationalism has played an active role, revealing important characteristics that link closely to the
rise of contemporary cyber-nationalism in China. This chapter argues that pragmatic nationalism
provides the Chinese state a useful and effective approach to link China’s rich and capricious past
with the Communist present and to consolidate its united front and ruling legitimacy. The internet
and social media, while offering citizens much more freedom of information sharing and receiving
than ever before in the past, including the expression of their opinions, still suffers from the state’s
continuous monitoring and censorship for the purpose of maintaining social and political stability.
Due to the state’s patriotic education campaigns and on-going manipulation of public opinion, the
public sphere under the authoritarian state continues to be vulnerable and potentially unstable and
may even lead to patriotic overreaction prompting state aggression that would be threatening to
the real-world situation of increasingly complicated global politics.

21
Origins and Development of Modern Chinese Nationalism
Modern Chinese nationalism was born in the social and political environment of severe
defeats by Western and Japanese imperialism from the 1800s on. As the last chapter explained,
nationalist theories that emphasize the antiquity of nations with long histories run into the question
of how to explain the changing elements and socially constructed characteristics of the modern
state. Some Chinese nationalist intellectuals hold that the concept of nation, as expressed by the
primordialists, has existed for thousands of years. These scholars often use examples in words
taken from ancient Chinese texts, such as the term Zhongguo renmin (中国人民, Chinese people)
that appeared in Sima Qian’s Shiji (史记, Records of the Grand Historian) in the Han Dynasty
[202 BC – 220 AD], or the early concept of China as Zhongguo (中国, the middle kingdom).
However, the terms mentioned here actually refer to the Chinese concept of huaxia (华夏, universe)
versus yidi (夷狄, the barbarians). What distinguished the two was not based on ethnicity but
whether or not the community had been assimilated by the Confucian culture.
45
This particularly
popular nationalist ideology in fact aligns with not just the nationalist intellectuals’ satisfaction of
claiming a durable and strong nation, but with the state’s patriotic propaganda and education.
In response to the great defeats in armed conflicts from the late 1800s on with the Western
powers of the time, not only did the Qing government experience failed attempts to carry out even
superficial reforms, but Chinese elites and intellectuals also started advocating in favor of early
modern nationalist ideologies and movements. In 1842, the British forced the start of a war with

45
Xiao Gongqin萧功秦, “Minzu zhuyi yu Zhongguo zhuanxing shiqi de yishi xingtai” 民族主义与中国转型时期
的意识形态 [Nationalism and ideology in China in the transitional era], Zhanlüe yu guanli 战略与管理 no.4
(1994): 58.

22
the Qing army in order to protect the British illegal opium trade in China. China then fought a war
with Japan over the disputed control over Korea during 1894 to 1895. Both wars ended with Qing
defeats that shocked and humiliated both the government and intellectuals, especially the defeat
by Japan, which was once ancient China’s admirer, but had become Westernized and militarized.
These two events precipitated the destruction of many Chinese people’s once arrogant view of
being the only advanced civilization of the world, and they presaged the transition to a Western-
dominated international system. Under these circumstances, the state and the mass population
formed two types of nationalist movements though both ended in failure. The Self-strengthening
Movement of 1869 to 1895, represented “ti-yongism,” which refers to the famous statement of
“zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong” (中学为体, 西学为用, Chinese learning as the substance,
Western learning for application). It was a way of saying that China would use Western advanced
technology in order to defeat the barbarian Westerners.
Based on Wei Yuan’s Haiguo Tuzhi (海国图志, Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime
Kingdoms), prominent Qing officials such as Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and Zeng Guofan
intended to learn Western technology and military skills to preserve traditional Confucian
ideologies. This conservative and pragmatic nationalist movement of course did not achieve its
goal of making China strong enough to defend itself against foreign invasion. With Japan’s
dominating victory in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing officials realized that China’s
defeats were not only because of Western technology, but also because of the advanced political
administration and ideologies of the West.
Another movement within China, the Boxer Uprising of 1900 was an example of nativist
nationalism. After China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the humiliation and
unprecedented “unequal treaties” forced upon China by the Western powers, pushed antiforeign

23
sentiments to new heights. The Boxer Uprising that lasted from 1898 to 1900 was the most famous
antiforeign uprising of its time, mostly because of its audacious attacks on Western missionaries,
Chinese Christian converts and essentially everything foreign. The Boxers practiced traditional
Chinese martial arts and called on traditional Daoist and Buddhist deities for protection. The
uprising brutally ended with the foreign powers sending armies from eight countries that totally
shattered the “invincible” Boxers.
Many intellectuals at the time, on the other hand, finally came to terms with the fact that
the survival of the nation required radical reforms. Through studying abroad in Japan, the United
States and European countries, or reading foreign political works, intellectuals such as Liang
Qichao, Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao gradually engaged with concepts of Western modern
nationalism, nation-state and sovereignty. Antitraditionalist nationalism also emerged during this
time, giving birth to the New Cultural Movement during the 1910s and 1920s, and the May Fourth
Movement of 1916 to 1919. As Westernized intellectuals seeing Chinese traditions threatening the
survival of the nation, they decided to abandon traditional Confucian studies and old customs and
ideologies, and to instead systematically adopt Western science, values, and political systems.
Their efforts thus provided the intellectual foundations such as the concepts of liberalism,
socialism and Marxism that gave rise to the Nationalist and Communist Parties in the 1920s.
The development of ethnic ideologies adopted by both the Nationalist and Communist
Parties also offer important insights into the process of the formation of government policies in
later periods. In China’s long history, even though the ethnic Han majority were culturally
dominant, for long periods of historical time ethnic minorities ruled over the Han people. The most
recent example would be the Manchu people, who ruled China from 1664 to 1911. Since the
Manchu retained a certain degree of their cultural traits even after having been in China for over

24
two hundred years, by the end of the Qing period Chinese intellectuals began to target both Western
imperialists and the Manchus as the enemies of the nation. A popular slogan by Sun Yet-sen was
“Quchu dalu, huifu zhonghua” (驱除鞑虏, 恢复中华, throw out the Tartar and revive the Chinese
nation). This demonstrated the intellectuals’ intention of overthrowing the Manchus and
establishing a new nation of the Han majority.
46
Ironically, the Qing Dynasty expanded the territory
it controlled as it incorporated ethnic minority regions such as Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang. If
Sun Yat-sen and the rest of the revolutionary leaders only sought the establishment of a new nation
that consisted of the majority Han population, they would lose the legitimate claim to the frontier
regions. Consequently, the new government planned to incorporate five nationalities, Han, Manchu,
Mongol, Hui and Tibet into the new nation. Nevertheless, Sun still approved the idea of the
assimilation of the five nationalities into a single Chinese nation dominated by the Han
population.
47
Subsequent leaders, including Chiang Kai-shek, eventually adopted the same ethnic
policy of constructing the process of Sinicization.
Fast forward to the current Chinese state led by the Communist Party, the approved nation-
building campaigns and political movements are mainly presented in three areas. First, the Chinese
Communist Party has practiced a strategy of pragmatic nationalism. Before the establishment of
the People’s Republic of China in 1949, both the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party
intended to set up nationalistic movements. Albeit with different visions toward the nation they
were building, both achieved the mission of national independence, sovereign unity, and one-party
rule. Nevertheless, because of Japan’s invasion starting in 1937, the Nationalist Party suffered from
both external attack from Japan and internal competition with the Communist Party and failed to

46
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 64.
47
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 68.

25
transform from elite rule and nationalism to mass nationalism. On the other hand, the Communist
Party during its early days used the ideology of state nationalism to absorb as many communities
as possible and created the sense of belonging among all the nation’s citizens, but at the same time
it strongly demanded they put their own interests behind those of the nation. After the
establishment of the nation and convoluted explorations for decades, facing the challenges of
ethnic nationalism that might cause a separatism into liberal nationalism that values individual
rights under national unity, the Communist Party eventually adopted a pragmatic nationalistic
approach to prevent the aspects of nationalism that could transform into threats to national stability.
Specifically, the Communist Party leaders set economic growth as a top priority and the crucial
indicator for national stability, as was clearly shown in Deng Xiaoping’s push for the transition
from a centrally planned economy to a socialist market economy that began in 1978.
Another major aspect of the state’s nationalistic strategy is the practice of mounting
patriotic campaigns, which represents a deviation by the state from standard Marxist education.
During the early days of the Communist Party, Marxism was useful for rallying the masses against
foreign imperialism and for supporting national independence. As the market reform campaigns
of the 1980s and 1990s turned away from Marxist and Maoist ideologies, the party leaders realized
that they needed a new approach to maintain their ruling legitimacy, so they reintroduced the idea
of patriotism for that very purpose. This approach shows that the nationalism-building policies of
the party were situational and without a predefined content. The Program for China’s Education
Reform and Development issued in January 1993 by the State Education Commission signaled the
start of the campaign.
48
It first ran in primary and middle schools, requiring students getting

48
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 218.

26
organized to watch patriotic films and writing essays about what they learned. Simultaneously,
high schools and colleges added patriotic education courses as an approach to get rid of most of
the unpopular Marxist study materials. The patriotic campaign reached its height in September
1994, when People’ s Daily published the Communist Party Central Committee’s ‘Outline for
Conducting Patriotic Education,’ which stressed the need for boosting the nation’s spirit and its
self-esteem and sense of pride, and developing a patriotic united front to use the passions for the
great cause of Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and helping the nation become
unified, prosperous, and strong.
49

The patriotic education campaign consisted of mainly two aspects, with one focusing on
the long history and rich culture of China. Even though in recent Chinese history intellectuals and
party leaders had brutally criticized Confucian ideologies and traditional customs, the patriotic
education program selectively used certain ideologies taken from the ancient philosophies and the
previous century of humiliation that fit the themes of loyalty to the party and the legitimacy of
ruling an ancient nation with a strongly defined past. The reinterpretation of the past and
‘mythologization,’ as Paul Cohen suggests, is prevalent in the daily lives of ordinary people, in a
variety of literary forms, personal perceptions, and of course, in official discourses.
50
The
emotional commemoration of anniversaries of victory in the Anti-Japanese War is one of many
examples.

49
Zhonggong Zhongyang Weiyuanhui 中共中央委员会 [The Communist Party Central Committee], “Aiguo zhuyi
jiaoyu dagang 爱国主义教育大纲 [Outlines for education in patriotism]”, Renmin ribao 人民日报 [People’s daily],
September 6, 1994.
50
Paul A Cohen, History in Three Keys the Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997), 215-221.

27
The second aspect of the patriotic mass campaign concerns defining the current condition
of the nation, which is emphasizing the issues of overpopulation, limited natural resources, and
the underdeveloped economy. The current analysis holds that China is not suited for Western
democracy but requires the leadership of the Communist Party under the guidance of a socialist
path with Chinese characteristics. In this way, the patriotic campaigns that paralleled the opening
up of the market economy, set the foundation for the characteristics of the state’s pragmatic
nationalism and the subsequent nationalist movements among the masses in recent China.
Regarding the issues surrounding ethnic minorities, the Communist Party seeks to maintain
the unity of a multiethnic nation. The modern Chinese nation includes many ethnic minority
communities that possess distinctive languages, cultures and customs. According to the Seventh
National Census released in 2021, the population of ethnic minority groups increased 10.26 percent
to 125.47 million since 2010, while that of the Han Chinese grew 4.93 percent to 1.28631 billion,
accounting for 91.11 percent of the total population.
51
In order to govern these diverse ethnic
communities and avoid movements toward separatism, the Communist Party launched an ethnic
identification campaign in 1950, enabling the state to calculate the appropriate size of the ethnic
communities and the authority to survey their populations. The party also established Minority
Autonomous Regions in provinces such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Guangxi and Ningxia
where many minority people reside, but did not grant these regions complete freedom to govern
themselves. The purpose of this policy was to ensure the unity of the multiethnic state. Thus,
patriotic education naturally becomes a major part of minority youth and adult life. Furthermore,

51
Huaxia, “Ethnic Minority Proportion in China’s Population Rises,” Xinhuanet, last modified May 11, 2021,
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-
05/11/c_139938133.htm#:~:text=BEIJING%2C%20May%2011%20(Xinhua),national%20census%20conducted%2
0in%202020.

28
the party adopted the following inducement policies to ensure the diversity in their cultures and
lifestyles was contained under the close observation by the party because of potential ethnic
divisions: Firstly, the inducement policy provided a certain level of political representation and
official minority presence in both the national level and the autonomous regions.
52
Secondly, a
variety of policies, such as advancing cross-national commerce and local tourism, aimed to aid
ethnic regions to develop economies that may prevent them from being disadvantaged during the
market economy era.
53
Thirdly, the state may provide specific benefits to the ethnic communities,
such as family migration and access to higher level education.
54
Nevertheless, for the past few
decades these inducement policies have proved to have limits. For example, the calculated
autonomy promoted a certain level of unrest and cries for political liberation, and the economic
aids did not help mitigate the growing disparity between the ethnic regions and the Han areas. In
some respects, it strengthened the stereotypical image of the ethnic minorities as inferior
populations.
Finally, the Communist Party tends to use nonconfrontational tactics to deal with
international affairs. As the pragmatic nationalistic strategy mainly concerns national interests, it
is logical for the party leaders to try avoiding confrontations with the United States and other
Western countries, and to develop more cooperative relations with international communities,
unless they posit clear threats to China’s vital national interests or sensitive historical issues. And
even when facing foreign pressures in these situations, the pragmatic tactics tend to force party
leaders to adopt reactive rather than proactive measures in international affairs.

52
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 195.
53
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 196.
54
Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 197.

29
As we can see, this pragmatic nationalistic policy is a double-edged sword. Avoiding
concrete conflicts with Western countries enables China to focus more on advancing its own
economic development, and in turn boosts national confidence and prosperity, while also receiving
potential support from cooperative partners in the marketplace. On the other hand, the continuous
patriotic campaigns may receive a backlash from intellectuals and mass populations when the party
tends to stay too cautious when facing foreign pressures from countries like the United States and
Japan because of concerns for preserving normal economic cooperation. While there will always
be Chinese intellectuals praising and advocating for a liberal democracy, since the start of national
patriotic education, there has also been a growing number of intellectuals voicing their suspicions
toward the West. As Chapter One mentioned, while Western scholars such as Charles
Krauthammer warned about the potential consequences of the rise of China and Chinese
nationalism, many Chinese intellectuals were in favor of advocating for solely Chinese national
interests. The popularity of the book, China Can Say No, reveals the strength of the anti-Japanese
and anti-American sentiment in the Chinese public and calls for challenging the United States in
global competition.
55
In 2012, an anti-Japanese demonstration occurred in various cities due to
China’s dispute with Japan on the ownership of the Senkaku (called Diaoyu in mainland China)
Islands, and in Shenzhen it led to a violent protest where protestors smashed Japanese-branded
cars and vandalized stores with Japanese goods.
56
Online forums and social media during that time
were also extremely active in the events, even under the cautious censorship from government
organs. These two incidents show that some of the Western concerns are justified, and that wide-

55
Shannon Tiezzi, “The China Can Say No Effect,” The Diplomat, last modified August 7, 2014,
https://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-china-can-say-no-effect/.
56
Kevin Foley, Jeremy L Wallace, and Jessica Chen Weiss, “The Political and Economic Consequences of
Nationalist Protest in China: The 2012 Anti-Japanese Demonstrations,” The China Quarterly 236 (2018): 1133,
1135.

30
spread patriotic education and uncontrolled nationalistic sentiments may lead to aggression,
xenophobia, and antiforeignism that would not benefit either national stability or the rational self-
growth of its citizens. In the current and upcoming more complicated social and political
environment, the approach that the Communist Party will use with its pragmatic nationalism and
the attitude of its citizens will be crucial to international stability.
History of the Development of Media in China
Even though the Chinese were pioneers in the creation of paper and printing technologies,
modern forms of media were not introduced into China until the late Qing years in the 1860s. The
Qing government, however, initially resisted Western technologies and forcefully extracted all
equipment installed by foreign merchants despite the establishment of the Zongli Yamen (总理衙
门, Office for the General Management of Affairs), a new government bureau in charge of Western-
related affairs.
57
Under persistent foreign pressure, the Qing government eventually gave in and
yielded power to some British and Danish companies to set up telegraph lines in 1870. Li
Hongzhang, then governor of Jiangsu province, adamantly insisted on controlling the ownership
of the Chinese infrastructure and warned of the danger of imperialistic expansion.
58
Li’s advice
was not adopted right away, unfortunately, but China eventually established its own telegraph lines
in the 1880s.
Telegraphy played an important role in advancing the growth of Chinese newspapers,
especially in expressing political views and shaping public opinion. At first, it was the Western
Christian missionaries and churches that published most of the newspapers in China, and thus most

57
Yongming Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), CH1.
58
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, CH1.

31
of the content concerned spreading Christianity to the populace. In 1865, the first and only modern
Chinese newspaper, Shanghai Xinbao, although primarily a commercial sheet with a limited
readership, started to provide political coverage, such as the Taiping Uprising of 1850 to 1864 and
the Tianjin Massacre of 1870. In 1872, the establishment of Shen Bao newspaper opened a new
episode of fast, mass communication via telegraph to quickly publish political news and it attracted
a large audience.
59
Shen Bao was the first instance where an independent organization had the
opportunity to express political and social opinions that were previously solely controlled by the
government. The expanding telegraph networks exacerbated and accelerated this development by
including more popular topics into news reports and enabling information sharing across great
distances. Political coverage helped form and influence public opinion to some extent, though the
voices of everyday citizens remained largely marginalized.
The growing newspaper media was also accompanied by an intensified state censorship.
After the failed One Hundred Days Reform and the imprisonment of Emperor Guangxu, Empress
Cixi’s decision on January 24, 1900 to designate Fujun as an heir to Emperor Tongzhi incited
furious reactions from Chinese both in China and from abroad.
60
Several waves of protest
telegrams eventually forced Empress Cixi to abandon the designation plan, thus showing the
effectiveness and power of the telegraph to mobilize public opinion, as well as its threatening
challenge to late Qing imperil rule.
Alerted by the popular dissent, the Qing government undertook the regulation of the
telegraph system by trying to regulate three aspects: infrastructure, service, and content.
Infrastructurally, many telegraph service providers later became shareholder companies and only

59
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, CH1.
60
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, CH3.

32
conducted business under strict government supervision. Furthermore, regarding service
management, the punishment of officials who sent unauthorized telegrams or blocked
transmissions also protected the Qing government’s information control. Additionally, among all
content concerns, national security even today remains the priority in censorship, one close parallel
between late Qing and contemporary Chinese information control practices. The Qing government
did not oppose the development of modern media, especially in the later periods, as much as it
wanted to strictly control public discourse. Nevertheless, the global telegraph network, despite
opportunities for social and political development, presented pressing obstacles to the state’s
information control.
The late 19
th
century also witnessed the first instance where media transformed nationalist
discourses into patriotic movements and materialized the public sphere without the restriction of
national borders. In response to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act passed by the U.S. Congress, the
Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce asked the Qing government not to sign a new treaty with
the United States, while in America concerned Chinese businessmen in San Francisco also sent
telegrams to the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the same issue.
61
At that time, the telegraph was
the quickest way for overseas Chinese to contact the Qing government, and the result was clear:
between May 9 and May 13, 1882, a total of 21 telegrams from Chinese in America were sent to
the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing.
62
Meanwhile, the telegraph was also an effective means
of transmitting information on the Exclusion Act and mobilizing resistance among the Chinese to
oppose the treaty. Shen Bao and other Shanghai-based newspapers played a critical role in covering
the on-going developments of opposition to the Chinese Exclusion Act. The telegraph was not only

61
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, CH4.
62
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, CH4.

33
a communication platform but was also an effective means of mobilizing political campaigns
internationally.
Fast forward to the turn of the 21
st
century, the internet and social media have led to the
largest human interactions in the world. In China alone there are 903 million internet users, and
more than 516 million active users on Sina Weibo (2019 numbers), China’s principal Twitter-like
service.
63
A combination of favorable economic, political, and social developments have
contributed to the internet phenomenon. The reform era that began in China in 1978 brought an
increase in individual wealth, access to education, and urbanization. Each of these strengthened
the need for online activities. The commercialization of online media also led to the reform from
direct state-owned media to more independently operated media companies able to compete in a
globalized market.
The social effect of digital media on Chinese internet users’ daily lives is multifaceted. On
the one hand, the internet and social media provide ordinary citizens new avenues for obtaining
information and expressing shared opinions on social and political affairs. On the other hand, new
media outlets also offer authoritarian regimes additional channels to influence and regulate their
citizens. The reach and mobilization of digital discourse and movements are unparallel when
compared to traditional media, and therefore the strategies and scale of state censorship has also
heightened.

63
Shulin Hu, “Weibo – How is China’s second largest social media platform being used for social research?,” LSE
Impact Blog, last modified March 26, 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/03/26/weibo-how-
is-chinas-second-largest-social-media-platform-being-used-for-social-research/#comments ; Lai Lin Thomala,
“Number of Internet Users in China from December 2008 to March 2020,” Statista, last modified May 12, 2022,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265140/number-of-internet-users-in-china/.

34
Since hundreds of millions of netizens are active on the internet, the state’s evolution of a
regulatory structure in the new era became necessary. Rogier Creemers claims that the
transformation of contemporary Chinese censorship consists of two stages. Initially, the state
expanded the existing regulatory structure from traditional written and audiovisual media to
including internet content. By the 1990s, the advancement of online technologies had made
possible the online transmission of audiovisual content and information services, such as online
forums and BBS.
64
In response to these trends, the State Administration of Radio Film and
Television (SARFT) was the first Chinse state agency to impose content regulations on online
activities and to require all media organizations to obtain licenses. This new policy was executed
through three actions: disciplinary government regulations, professionalizing industrial
associations, and criminalizing state-deemed inappropriate online behavior with legal actions.
65

Nevertheless, regulations could not keep up with the same rapid pace of the evolution of
the internet. Since the early 2000s, the internet has expanded to reach a broad population across
socioeconomic backgrounds, levels of education, geographical region, and age groups. Negative
effects also inevitably brought a degree of chaos, notably the “black PR” industry that
unconsensually removes information, and the “human flesh search engine,” which exposes and
violates the privacy of many individuals. The increasing complexity of online media called for
further institutional change, which occurred in both public policy and business practice. Within the
Communist Party-State structure, the establishment of a coordinating group for information
security within the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in 2010 along with

64
Rogier Creemers,,“The Privilege of Speech and New Media: Conceptualizing China’s Communications Law in
the Internet Age,” in The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, ed. Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and
Guobin Yang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 92.
65
Creemers, “The Privilege of Speech and New Media,” 92.

35
the creation of the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2014 to improvise internet service
regulations were adopted.
66
In the private sector, internet companies began to implement
mandatory self-regulatory measures to control online activities based on user complaints and
tightened monitoring of influencers and intellectuals who attracted large online audiences.
Furthermore, these new institutions were also responsible for the analysis and reporting of online
public opinion to the policy makers.
Overall, the historicizing of media development reveals the similarities and differences of
traditional media and the internet. The appearance of telegraphy represented the traditional media
that initially accelerated the transmission of information and provided a limited space for political
and social participation for the educated and resourceful elites. The internet and social media, on
the other hand, serve as the essential prerequisite of the emergence of public sphere and expand
ordinary citizens’ freedom of information sharing and expression of opinions with a noticeably
more diverse usership and a wider range of discussion topics. Nevertheless, the central government
of China has always been consciously monitoring and regulating the contents of information for
the purpose of maintaining social and political stability. The rapid evolution of the internet, in
particular, further forced the intensification of government regulation and surveillance, thus
maintaining a public sphere but with contingent conditions.
Chapter Three Two Case Studies of Chinese Cyber-Nationalism
As the government’s patriotic education campaigns continued, and as the internet became
an inseparable part of people’s life, a trend of online nationalistic activities emerged as a force to

66
Creemers, “The Privilege of Speech and New Media,” 98.

36
be reckoned with. In less than ten years, China’s online nationalistic fervor went from a superficial
discussion of political issues on BBS online bulletin boards in the mid 1990s to the more advanced
online reactions by both mainland and overseas Chinese communities concerning the anti-Chinese
riots in Indonesia in the late 1990s. Also in that time period, a heated cyber-war took place between
China and the United States ignited by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May
7, 1999. That was followed by the collision of an American spy plane with a Chinese fighter jet
over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001.
67
The anti-Japanese demonstrations throughout China
in 2005 showed that Chinese netizens were not content merely to chat online, but were prepared
to use online platforms to make an impact on the real world, thus complicating China’s foreign
policy, and particularly causing difficulties in the Sino-Japanese bilateral relationship.
68

This chapter compares and analyzes two drastically different cases of Chinese cyber-
nationalism: the Hanfu Movement represented an ethnic-nationalist oriented movement; the Diba
Expedition was closely associated with the idea of national sovereignty. With a detailed
introduction to the backgrounds of the events and a close analysis of the intentions of the Chinese
netizens, their online comments, and the state reactions of the Chinese government, this chapter
investigates the various ways netizens were able to express their nationalistic sentiments and
opinions, and the factors that led to the state’s reactions, which encompassed encouragement,
indifference and censorship. The chapter argues that while the two online nationalist activities
varied in their intentions and organizations, the side of overt nationalistic sentiments in both events
resulted in negative effects on the stability of both cyberspace and society. The state’s indifference

67
Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Introduction.
68
Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Introduction.

37
or approval of this type of performance was formed based upon the ambiguous and practical
calculations of its own national interests, further fostered the netizens’ strong sentiments.
The Hanfu Movement
Ethnic nationalism, an ideology mentioned in the previous chapter, sees the nation as a
politicized ethnic group that usually shares a common culture, historical past and language.
Because this type of nationalism often inspires movements of states whose ethnic leaders often do
not have control over an autonomous or independent state, ethnic nationalism is often associated
with separatist movements. Since China has numerous distinctive ethnic minorities and large
regions of land associated with these groups, ethnic nationalism potentially becomes a serious
challenge to the party’s rule. As Chapter One illustrated, the Nationalist leaders were forced to turn
to the building of a multiethnic nation-state, rather than work for an ethnic-nationalist nation with
a Han majority. Following a similar strategy, the Communist leaders in the 1950s set up policies
to integrate the ethnic minorities into the new state with inducement policies, and the Han cultural
and patriotic education mentioned in the previous chapter. Nevertheless, the current state is still
constructed around Han culture and history, and there have been numerous protests and acts of
resistance in the major ethnic minority regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia.
The themes of Han-centrism and ethnic nationalism are closely associated with the Hanfu
Movement or Han Clothing Movement (汉服运动), which expanded from BBS websites to other
Chinese social media platforms such as Baidu Tieba, and Weibo. This movement, also known as
the Hanfu Revival Movement, started with China holding the 2001 Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation annual meeting, which Chinese representatives attended wearing Tangzhuang (唐装,
Tang clothing). This particular Chinese image ignited a heated discussion online, mostly

38
surrounding the Manchu origin of the term Tangzhuang. In spite of its name as Tang style clothing,
the style actually originated from Manchu clothing that was an updated version of the Manchu
horse riding jacket magua 马褂 that features a mandarin collar closing at the front with frog buttons.
Discontented netizens believed that the Chinese representatives wearing Manchu-originated
Tangzhuang indicated the state’s recognition of this style as China’s national dress, while in fact
the historical Manchu Qing dynasty had once forced all males to shave their forehead, wear a braid
down the back and wear Manchu style clothing in a policy called tifayifu (剃发易服, shaving the
hair and changing the clothes). The policy initially faced great opposition from the Han Chinese.
69

Participants in the Hanfu Movement regarded wearing Tangzhuang as reflecting the humiliated
history of premodern Han-centric China that was invaded and culturally suppressed by other
nationalities, notably the Manchus, who they believed to be responsible for the century of
humiliation that China suffered in its early modern history. On the other hand, they praised
traditional Han clothing, characterized by broad sleeves and flowing robes decorated with vibrant
colors, as a vital apparel of the historic Han people, essentially linking the clothing to the history
and identity of Han Chinese, from the mythical Yellow Emperor to Han people in modern China.
The clothing thus became a representation of the ethnic nationalism of the great Han Chinese
nation.

69
Yi Wang, “Contesting the Past on the Chinese Internet: Han-Centrism and Mnemonic Practices,” Memory Studies
15, no. 2 (April 2022): 311, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698019875996.

39

Figure 1. World leaders wearing Tangzhuang at the 2001 APEC
Summit (2001). Photo: Lingo Bus.

As the Tangzhuang style became popular after the APEC meeting, the arguments about
what actually represented Chinese national clothing was fervently discussed. In 2003 reporters
from the Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao (United Morning News) interviewed Letian Wang,
who was regarded as the first person to wear Hanfu in public after more than three hundred years.
70

In the interview Wang stated that he wanted to promote Hanfu to the Han Chinese, since they were
the only ethnicity in China that did not have ethnic clothing, and he said this kind of promotion
did not oppose the ethnic policies of the state.
71
The popularity of the Hanfu Movement
subsequently led to the opening of Hanfu stores online and offline, and to enthusiasts wearing
Hanfu in public and organizing activities to learn about traditional Chinese culture. The movement
reached a new height when a member of the National People’s Congress proposed Hanfu to be the
national dress during the annual meeting in 2007.
72

70
Congxing Zhang, “Hanfu chongxian jietou 汉服重现街头 [Hanfu Reappeared on the Streets]”, Lianhe zaobao
[United morning news], Novernmber 29
th
, 2003.
71
Zhang, “Hanfu Chongxian Jietou.”
72
“Zhengxie weiyuan tiyi queli hanfu wei guofu 政协委员提议确立汉服为国服 [Member of National People’s
Congress proposed to set Hanfu as the national dress]” Sina News, last modified March 11, 2007,
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-03-11/105012486706.shtml.

40

Figure 2. News report from Lianhe zaobao that shows Letian Wang
walking in Hanfu (2003). Photo: Lianhe zaobao.

The Hanfu Movement often blurred the boundary between patriotic acts used to express
genuine pride and celebration of the Han culture, while also fundamentally expressing an extreme
Han-centrism ideology. As stated above, the multiethnic policy of the Chinese state was intended
to ensure the “harmony” and political stability of the Han and the other fifty-five ethnic minorities
in the nation. On the other hand, Han nationalists intended to create an alternative narrative of Han
victimization and to redefine the Chinese nation-state as a pure Han state with a dominating Han
culture at its core.
73
The Han nationalists thus challenged the state’s inclusive attitudes toward
multi-ethnicity and unification.
James Leibold has investigated in-depth the origin and background of the emerging Han
nationalism and the implications of their activities online and he claims that there is a historical tie
between the Hanfu Movement and the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations that gave rise to a

73
James Leibold, “Han Cybernationalism and State Territorialization in the People’s Republic of China,” China
Information 30, no. 1 (March 2016): 4.

41
tide of conservatism.
74
Leibold argues that the 1989 Tiananmen Incident intensified a lot of Han
nationalists’ opposition to the West, as they found alternative ideologies in Chinese traditional
culture. This sentiment gave rise to harsh critiques of historical television shows and movies about
the Qing regime, which the Han nationalists deemed as alienating the focus of Han culture. The
internet seemed to have brought timely hope for the young population to be exposed to the Han-
centric narratives and to be able to express individual opinions without the concern of police
suppression, since a multitude of opinions on this issue were expressed online.
In 2003, the same year of the Letian Wang interview, followers of the Hanfu Movement
launched the Han website Hanwang 汉网 to promote traditional Han clothing. With 45 key
supporters, Li Minhui, one of the leading members of the Hanfu movement, launched the website
to also introduce his Han supremacist ideology.
75
The Hanwang website rapidly gained popularity
with the rise of other digital groups promoting Han culture throughout mainland China and among
the Chinese diaspora abroad. Li commented in a 2007 interview that Han clothes should be
highlighted in the broader Chinese racial and political identity, and the central idea of the Hanfu
Movement was to scrutinize the earlier Manchu rule and to reestablish supremacy of the Han
race.
76
By March 2010, the original Hanwang website had nearly 117,000 registered members, a
tenfold increase since 2007 with an average of 1,000 postings per day and a total of 2.4 million
postings on its BBS.
77
While founded with an extreme nationalistic ideology in mind, the website
indeed created an imagined community where a group of strangers with shared love for Hanfu and
Han culture were able to gather and express their opinions on state policies. It would be almost

74
James Leibold, “More Than a Category: Han Supremacism on the Chinese Internet,” The China Quarterly, no.
203 (September 1, 2010): 546.
75
Leibold, “More Than a Category, 546.
76
Leibold, “More Than a Category,” 547.
77
Leibold, “More Than a Category,” 551.

42
impossible to allow a large community with such diverse and extreme ideologies to exist and make
a huge impact in real life.
Without the circulation of the Hanfu Movement online, the effects of either nationalistic
sentiment or traditional culture fandom would have been more scattered and would have only
occurred offline. According to Hanwang’s constitution, the website “supports the leadership of the
Communist Party and the Chinese government, ardently loves the socialist system, and abides by
all Chinese laws and government policies.”
78
Nevertheless, it is clear that its actual ideology put
the Han as a racial category, and promoted the term “Han-centrism”, which refers to the belief in
“the paramount importance of racial righteousness and the upholding of the Han race’s position by
defending and promoting the legitimate interests and struggles of the Chinese.”
79
As stated in
earlier sections of the thesis, the Communist state implemented seemingly supportive ethnic
policies to retain the completion of national sovereignty and stability in ethnic minority regions,
and tried to create an image of a harmonious multi-ethnic nation state, clearly opposing the Han-
nationalists’ desire of a Han-centric state. This contradiction indicated that the statement of
supporting the leadership and policies of the government was a pretense, because its Hanfu
ideologies opposed the state’s policies toward ethnic minority groups, their traditions, and culture.
The state’s reaction to the rise of the Hanfu Movement also seemed largely hypocritical.
The state supported the celebration of traditional Chinese culture and proposed to make Hanfu the
national dress, a decision that the Hanfu Movement supporters viewed as a sign of approval. The
state initially turned a blind eye and did not take actions to censor posts or forums of a Han

78
Leibold, “More Than a Category,” 549.
79
Leibold, “More Than a Category,” 549.

43
supremacist nature, until years after the founding of the website. I contend that this policy cannot
be mistaken as a relaxation of state control but was rather within the norm of state censorship.
As the Hanfu Movement gained more momentum online and offline, discriminatory
sentiments toward the Xinjiang region eventually triggered and contributed to the ethnic violence
in Ürümqi in July 2009. Around the same time, Minhui Li also further radicalized the Hanwang
website, making the forum more political and less about the celebration of culture.
80
Consequently,
alarmed by national security and its international image, the state shut down all related sites of
Hanwang. From the state’s perspective, the action seems logical, as ethno-nationalist sentiments
were prevalent among Han Chinese. In Kevin Carrico’s interview with Yu, a member of the Hanfu
Movement, Yu commented on the minority unrest during that period, that Tibetans and Uyghurs
and other minorities were uncivilized, thus disqualified to be independent within the body politic.
He believed that the state altruistically spent money on an underdeveloped region whose people
simply had no idea how to take care of themselves, making one imagine how many Han Chinese
like him outside of the movement may have firmly held such discriminatory opinions. Thus, the
ending of the Hanwang website displayed the state’s alarmed fear of potential ethnic-nationalist
opinions and movements, and that national security and the Communist’s one-party rule needed to
remain at the heart of state censorship. In the state’s eyes, as long as minority unrest and
discrimination from ethnic nationalists are both unseen, the unification of the country will be
assured.
After the launch of the Hanwang website, lots of Hanwang-inspired forums also appeared
online. Members of these forums sometimes attacked each other because of their dissident views

80
Leibold, “More Than a Category, 551.

44
on the Han-centrism centered subject matter, and gradually these forums were closed due to either
censorship or insufficient resources to keep them running. After the forced shutdown of the
Hanwang website in 2009, the Hanfu community moved their base to other popular social media
platforms, such as Weibo and Baidu Tieba. Nowadays, a legacy website of Hanwang is still running,
but the discussion sections are filled with meaningless and scattered comments that have seemingly
lost the website’s original mission of revitalizing a Han-centric nation-state. It may true that the
once famous ethnic nationalists intended to create an imagined community driven by personal
aspirations, but now they are forced to live in the middle ground between fantasy and reality.

Figure 3. The IP address and website information record management system shows
that Hanwang is on the blacklist (2014). Photo: Zhihu.
Besides the existence of a Han supremacy ideology, another factor that contributed to the
uncertain faith of the Hanfu Movement was the diversity of its participants. A large number of
young netizens involved in the Hanfu Movement are genuine Hanfu fans. They have no knowledge
or intention of influencing the social and political positions of rural minorities, let alone supporting
the Han supremacy ideologies. Furthermore, many joined the movement for economic motivations
such as considering the increasing demand for Japanese-style cosplay and traditional Chinese art
forms such as the traditional stringed musical instrument, the guqin古琴. Instead of ideological

45
concerns, participants were more interested in questions including the authenticity of Hanfu
traditional clothing, and how to view Hanfu from the perspective of fitting into the standards of
modern society. Of course, dissidents remain in the Hanfu community, as enthusiasts who intend
to promote traditional Han culture and those who even study the phenomenon in academia may
criticize the trivialized state of the movement. Nevertheless, this is a natural outcome when the
community has been highly commercialized and diversified.

Figure 4. Hanfu fans wearing traditional Han clothing on the street (2019).
Photo: Business of Fashion.
The Diba Expedition
Before we go into details of this movement, it is important to briefly introduce the historical
background of the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan, as it is one of the most
essential parts of the sovereignty issues in Chinese nationalism and it was the direct trigger of the
Diba Expedition in 2016.
As the Sino-Japanese War came to an end in 1945, the already contradictory Second United
Front between the Communist and Nationalist Parties officially broke apart, and the civil war
resumed in June 1946 and lasted for more than three years. The Communist Party gained control
of mainland China and established the new nation in October 1949, forcing the leaders of the

46
Nationalists, the Republic of China, to retreat to the island of Taiwan. Starting in the 1950s, a
lasting political and military standoff was initiated, with both the Republic of China on Taiwan
and the People’s Republic of China on the mainland claiming to be the legitimate government of
China. In recent decades, there have been numerous communications between the two, but the two
countries never reached a successful conclusion to their differences. The Cross-Strait relations
between both political bodies remain an unsolved issue, with the United Nations General Assembly
admitting the People’s Republic of China and rejecting The Republic of China on Taiwan, and the
rise of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan that supported the independent “Republic of
Taiwan” instead of a strong desire to reclaim the China that the Nationalists lost in the civil war.
The targets of the Diba Expedition were Taiwanese youth, which revealed another
complexity of the Cross-Strait relationship. It seems to have become clear that the national identity
in Taiwan, especially among the younger population, has grown more alienated from China in the
past few decades. After the Nationalist Party leaders retreated to Taiwan following the defeat in
1949, they launched a series of pro-China nationalistic campaigns, intending to claim that the
Republic of China was the only legitimate government of China. They believed that the defeat was
just temporary, thus it was still reasonable to culturally identity themselves with China.
81
The
Communist Party on the mainland, on the other hand, embraced the notion that “Taiwan has been
historically a part of China” as an undeniable fact in its patriotic mobilization campaigns. However,
in the era of pro-Taiwan independence and pro-Taiwanese national identity since the late 1980s,
the notion that Taiwanese should seek to establish their own nation not necessarily related to China
has gained popularity.
82
Profoundly affected by the Cross-Strait disputes of the recent years, a 2021

81
Hsin-Yi Yeh, “Using an Awakening Narrative to Leave Behind a Former National-Identity: An Investigation of
the Conversion of National-Identity in Taiwan,” Nations and Nationalism 22, no. 3 (2016): 544.
82
Yeh, “Using an Awakening Narrative to Leave Behind a Former National-Identity,” 545.

47
poll released by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University shows that less than three percent of
people in Taiwan identify as Chinese, comparing to nearly 26 percent in 1992. Instead, over 60
percent of the population identify as solely Taiwanese.
83
With the Taiwanese youths actively
announcing their pride in democracy, freedom and human rights, their attitudes toward the cultural
identity of China set an intriguing background in the series of Diba Expedition incidents.
The Diba Expedition (帝吧出征) is a prominent cyber-nationalism phenomenon in China
that is self-organized via social media platforms to express nationalist thoughts in reaction to social
and political events. Baidu Tieba, established in 2003 and among the plethora of digital products
that emerged in the early 2000s, is the largest online communication platform in China. As the
Chinese equivalent of Reddit, the forum is hosted by the major Chinese search engine Baidu, and
it functions as a “bar” that consists of numerous mini forums, embracing a wide array of themes
covering all aspects of social lives. For each sub-forum, there are numerous types of organizers,
including administrators who run the forum by their own rules and regulations. Diba (帝吧, bar of
the emperor), or Liyiba (李毅吧, the bar of Li Yi), was initially launched to criticize a former
Chinese soccer player, Yi Li (李毅), and then evolved into a forum dealing with subcultures and
the expression of neihan (内涵), a notion of commenting and criticizing social and entertainment
phenomenon within the guidance of the law and moral standards.
84
Since Li Yi had the nickname
Dadi (大帝), the great emperor, this particular bar of Baidu Tieba got the name of Diba. Diba
claimed that its forum was distinct from other popular social media, such as Sina Weibo and

83
Agence France-Presse, “‘We are a Country’: Taiwanese Youth Embrace Distinct Identity,” Firstpost, last
modified November 11, 2021, https://www.firstpost.com/world/we-are-a-country-taiwanese-youth-embrace-distinct-
identity-10129381.html.
84
“Li Yi Ba,” Baidu Baike, accessed May 31, 2022, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B8%9D%E5%90%A7.

48
WeChat. Instead of reposting and commenting on recent news by celebrity bloggers, Diba focuses
on using its enormous user base to create collective actions, which formed the initial Diba online
movement.
Diba demonstrates a few central characteristics and trends of cyber-nationalism in China.
First of all, young people form the primary user population of the digital forums. Moreover, online
platforms offer a broad network that connects and mobilizes Chinese netizens with diverse
backgrounds and similar interests to assemble for collective actions. Jing Wu, Simin Li, and
Hongzhe Wang use “Little Pink” to refer to the young generation of internet patriotic groups that
reflect representing the populism, conservatism, and irrational character of internet patriotic
groups.
85
The emergence of this group challenged the common notion that the young generation
composed of fans of popular culture were not interested in nationalism and international affairs.
The Diba Expedition is one such representation of the “Little Pink” phenomenon.
The first Diba expedition in June 2007 on the sub-forum of Yuchun Li, a Chinese singer,
originated from the suspicion of some forum users that they were being subject to specific
censorship due to aggressive reports from users in the singer’s sub-forum.
86
The second expedition
in August 2007, with Diba users attacking the forum of Chenglin Yang because of her controversial
comment about the historic Nanjing Massacre of 1938, generated more heated and aggressive
online discussions that went beyond internet-related arguments.
87
Both events ended with Diba

85
Jing Wu, Simin Li, and Hongzhe Wang, “From Fans to ‘Little Pink’: The Production and Mobilization
Mechanism of National Identity under New Media Commercial Culture” in From Cyber-nationalism to Fandom
Nationalism: The Case of Diba Expedition in China, ed. Hailong Liu (New York: Routledge, 2019), 32-33.
86
“Diba chuzheng FB: zhe Li Yi ba de “baoba” wenhua shi ruhe xingcheng de? 帝吧出征FB：这李毅吧的“爆
吧”文化是如何形成的? [Diba expedition on Facebook: how the culture of trolling bars at Li Yi Bar has
formed?],” Huxiu, last modified January 21, 2016, https://www.huxiu.com/article/137749.html.
87
“Diba chuzheng FB.”

49
targeting specific sub-forums within Baidu Tieba and Diba members blasting and paralyzing forum
operations with a disruptive and an astronomical number of negative comments. These events
corresponded to Min Jiang’s notion of an “uncivil society online,” which refers to the extreme
digital incivility between groups over public issues, as it not only fails to produce solutions but
also discriminates against group identities and ideologies.
88
By contrast, the “Diba Expedition to
Facebook” was different in that instead of posting meaningless messages, the Diba members
decided to self-regulate the content and approach of their posts.
The crucial 2016 event commenced due to Ziyu Zhou, a Taiwanese singer who was active
in the South Korean entertainment industry, waving the flag of Taiwan during a performance at the
end of 2015. Online and offline pressure forced Zhou to post an apology video on YouTube
affirming her support for the Chinese government’s official One China Policy.
89
Since this incident
occurred close to the Taiwan presidential election in 2016, analysts believe that it arose out of the
prevalent anti-mainland China sentiment in Taiwan and had an impact on the voter turnout in
Taiwan leading to the victory of the Democratic Progressive Party.
90
On January 20, 2016, Diba
members started the event by using VPNs and targeting the official Facebook accounts of Taiwan
politicians and news media that supported Taiwan independence, including the newly elected
president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, Sanlih E-Television, and Apple Daily.

88
Min Jiang, “The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China,” in The Internet,
Social Media, and a Changing China, ed. Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 46.
89
“Zhou Ziyu lupian daoqian wangyou xintong: si ISIS, renge zao zhanshou 周子瑜录片道歉网友心痛:似 ISIS 人
格遭斩首[Ziyu Zhou’s recorded apology, netizens are heartbroken: like ISIS got her spirit cut off],” Now News, last
modified January 16, 2016, https://news.now.com/home/entertainment/player?newsId=165347.
90
“Zhou Ziyu shijian, Ke P: cuipiao xiaoguo huibi junzhaida 周子瑜事件柯 P：催票效果会比军宅大[Ziyu Zhou
incident, Ke P: more effective on votes than military dependents’ village],” Taiwan People News, last modified
January 16, 2016, https://www.peoplemedia.tw/news/093c61ae-7109-4fd3-8734-0ab33cb18fdd.

50
Zhe Wang conducted research on the “Diba Expedition to Facebook” event by capturing
all of the 13,684 comments on Tsai Ing-wen’s Facebook page posted during the event and
observing the “Diba Central Division” established after the expedition and the corresponding QQ
groups. Wang’s research identified the most frequent and influential themes, including “Eight
Honors and Eight Disgraces” (N = 580), “March of the V olunteers” (N = 214), “Homesick” (N =
179), “Ode to the Motherland” (N = 99), “the Macau Song” (N = 46), and “Diba Expedition” (N
= 22).
91
These results revealed several characteristics of the relationship between the state and
netizens. First of all, most of the comments were about patriotic and nationalistic ideologies that
emphasized the unification of the country. It is worth noting that notions such as “Barong bachi”
(八荣八耻, eight honors and eight disgraces), a patriotic slogan used over a decade prior to the
event were still heavily cited in the comments. It implied that the ongoing patriotic and nationalistic
education campaigns administered by Beijing have had lasting impacts on the younger generation.
Moreover, the “One China” notion that Taiwan is a part of China had also been treated as a
nonnegotiable fact for the majority of the mainland population.

91
Zhe Wang, ““We are all Diba members tonight”: Cyber-nationalism as emotional and playful actions online,” in
From Cyber-nationalism to Fandom Nationalism: The Case of Diba Expedition in China, ed. Hailong Liu (New
York: Routledge, 2019), 58.

51

Figure 5. (left) Eight honors and eight disgraces post on Facebook (2016). Photo: Sina News.
Figure 6, Figure 7 and Figure 8 (from the second left to the last). Mainland netizens posted about Chinese food, natural and urban
scenes, and emotional poems on Facebook (2016). Photo: China Digital Times.

Figure 9 and Figure 10. Some mainland netizens posted playful but uncivil posts to insult
pro-Taiwan independence community.

Interestingly, there was a surprisingly playful sentiment beneath this digital nationalistic
movement. The organizers tried to reinforce their strict rules by using militant words such as

52
“frontline troops” and “preparing weapons” to describe their actions.
92
There was a sharp contrast
with the organizers’ militant phrases, however, because participants practiced a lot of humor and
parody through their comments and images. Many comments were photos and writings about
mainland scenes and food, and some were even made into memes by the participants. In other
words, at the same time as they implemented the forum “commander’s” order to spread a political
ideology, the netizens also blended friendly sentiments into this nationalist and political context.
Finally, the nationalistic comments that did appear exposed the underlying notion of
mainland superiority as an unintended product of the state’s patriotic education campaigns and
propaganda. For the majority of expedition members, the “Diba Central Division” set up
regulations, including to not use uncivil language and not attacking Taiwanese in general, and,
instead, to increase the number of comments that expressed “love” and “friendship” when
discussing patriotism and shared culture, such as food.
93
Communication scholar Hongmei Li
suggests that the use of popular culture in memes is an indication of consumer nationalism, as
these netizens expressed their sense of cultural superiority, mischief, identity, and emotion.
94
Those
expedition members who often posted images of scenes and food also intended to create a closer
relation with people on the other side over shared culture and history, thus meant to construct an
imagined community, regardless of its actual effectiveness. Extreme nationalistic comments,
nonetheless, such as “Your Chinese dad doesn’t even deign to call your names!” also managed to

92
““Diba FB chuzheng” zuzhizhe: shua barongbachi gei taidu shang aiguoke “帝吧 fb出征”组织者：刷八荣八耻
给台独上爱国课 [The Organizer of Diba Expedition to Facebook: Sustained Posting Eight Honors and Eight
Shames to Give Patriotic Lessons to Taiwan Independence Supporters],” Sina News, last modified January 21, 2016,
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/zg/2016-01-21/doc-ifxnuvxe8316358.shtml.
93
““Diba FB chuzheng” zuzhizhe.”
94
Hongmei Li, “Understanding Chinese Nationalism: A Historical Perspective,” in From Cyber-nationalism to
Fandom Nationalism: The Case of Diba Expedition in China, ed. Hailong Liu (New York: Routledge, 2019), 20.

53
escape forum surveillance and appeared in the comment sections. Since the state initiated more
effective regulations and censorship of online content in the name of filtering unhealthy content
out of the reach of its citizens, it had forced the blockage of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other
popular Western social media and had further eliminated the availability of virtual private networks
(VPNs). In fact, VPNs are officially prohibited unless they are used by corporations and state
agencies to access international websites for enterprise and political purposes. Because the private
networks had enabled users to visit internet contents not accessible through the government-
approved networks, these expedition netizens had been able to use the tool to log into Facebook
through the guidance of leaders of the expedition who possessed more advanced technological
knowledge. This not only corresponded to the notion of utilizing technological mediations and
interacting with them to shape social life in public spheres but added another perspective of using
more advanced technology to make the emergence of public sphere possible. While it may be true
that the ban of VPNs in China is literally in name only, and a huge number of Chinese netizens are
using a variety of unapproved VPN software, it is obvious for any news audience who saw Chinese
officials praising expedition acts that these digital activists had to use VPNs to access to destined
websites. Thus, the state was not supposed to support the expedition because its execution was an
obvious violation of the pervasive system of state control. Despite the controversy, the People’ s
Daily WeChat account, a state-owned organ, commented favorably on this event, praising
mainland netizens’ patriotism and loyalty to national unity and sovereignty.
95

95
“Renminribao ping dibachuzheng FB: 90 hou xiangxin nimen 人民日报评帝吧出征 FB：90后相信你们[The
people’s daily Commented on diba expedition to Facebook: 90s, we believe you],” China Digital Times, last
modified January 22, 2016, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/426296.html.

54
While it seemed that the state supported this popular nationalist activity online, the
hypocrisy is obvious in the Chinese government’s strong reaction against pro-Taiwanese
independence ideologies. A clear and ethical stance on popular nationalism and exclusivist thought
appears to be absent. The major platforms of state media within China did not report the reactions
in Taiwan to the expedition’s postings nor the other effects of the expedition beyond the Chinese
government’s praise of mainland netizens. I argue that the state perceived the expedition as a pro-
Beijing, nationalist performance and wanted the general population to view the event in the same
way. This case represents the rising self-organized and self-regulated digital nationalism as a
powerful weapon of China’s netizens to react to political affairs concerning national sovereignty.
While illustrating a fluid Chinese censorship stance, the Diba Expedition affair unveiled a sobering
indication in the Chinese government’s online control policies when the issues align with interests
of the Beijing regime.
Similar to the outcome of the operation of the Hanwang website and the Hanfu Movement,
the series of Diba Expeditions came to an abrupt end. After the 2016 expedition event, the leaders
organized another online expedition on September 24
th
, 2018, because of an incident involving
Chinese tourists in Sweden on September 2
nd
. A dispute between the Chinese tourists and a hostel
in Stockholm over the check-in time turned into a diplomatic incident between China and Sweden
after the Chinese state criticized Sweden for violating the human rights of its Chinese citizens. A
satirical news segment on the Swedish national network SVT, which many Chinese netizens found

55
racist and insulting, drove the anger of netizens to new heights.
96
The leaders of Diba then
organized their groups and left over 12 thousand comments on the Facebook page of the Swedish
Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the television program host, even though a great number of the
comments got deleted after the posts.
97
In mostly Chinese, English and some in Swedish, many of
the comments centered on demanding an apology from the Swedish government and the TV
program host. Some comments were uncivil, calling the Swedes racist, violent, and ignorant.
98

This further example of the Diba Expedition shows the type of diplomatic events that the
pragmatic nationalist state and its zealous netizens react to. It was natural to expect that leaders of
the expedition would take action when the Yuen Long attack occurred during the 2019 Hong Kong
protests in response to a proposed extradition bill. In that case the Hong Kong government
proposed an extradition bill to establish a mechanism to transfer fugitives into China for legal
processing, including those from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, that received widespread
criticism in Hong Kong and abroad. There was concern about the erosion of Hong Kong’s legal
system and the new authority of the mainland to arrest political dissidents in the city.
99
The
proposal of the extradition bill led to one of the largest series of demonstrations in the history of

96
Xueying Wang, “China Accuses Sweden of Violating Human Rights over Treatment of Tourists,” the Guardian,
last modified September 17, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/17/china-accuses-sweden-of-
violating-human-rights-over-treatment-of-
tourists#:~:text=China%20has%20demanded%20an%20apology,midnight%2C%20hours%20before%20their%20bo
oking.
97
Zhaoyang Wang, “Neidi wangmin fanqiang yong ruidian waijiaobu Facebook xiban ziyu “zhongshi youmo” 内地
网民翻墙勇瑞典外交部 Facebook洗版自诩中式幽默 [Mainland netizens bypassed firewall, flooding and trolling
on the Facebook page of Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and self-praised as “Chinese humor”], HK01, last
modified September 25, 2018, https://www.hk01.com/即時中國/239611/內地網民-翻牆-湧瑞典外交部 facebook
洗版-自詡-中式幽默.
98
Wang, “Neidi wangmin.”
99
Eva Fu, “China’s Social Media Troll Army ‘Diba’ Disbanded Following Hong Kong Protesters’ Doxing,” the
Epoch News, last modified July 26, 2019, https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-social-media-troll-army-diba-
disbanded-following-hong-kong-protesters-doxing_3016919.html.

56
Hong Kong, and on July 21, 2019, an armed mob of suspected triad secret society members dressed
in white indiscriminately attacked civilians on the street and at Yuen Long train station, including
the elders and children.
100
The Hong Kong police received criticism because of their late arrival
on the scene and their suspected collusion with the mob and the pro-legislation community.
Showing support for the Hong Kong government and police, the Diba leaders announced on its
official Weibo account that they would organize another expedition about Hong Kong pro-
democracy Facebook groups and online forums.
However, the main Diba Expedition leaders soon claimed that Hong Kong netizens had
managed to track down some of their detailed personal information, and one Diba member said
that protestors had filled out an army recruitment form in his name and claimed that he was
volunteering in remote regions of China as a Muslim.
101
The Diba leaders subsequently announced
that they would cancel their event to ensure the ordinary life and order of the Hong Kongers and
they disbanded the Diba fans group for privacy and personal security reasons the next day.
102

Comparison of the Two Cases
The Diba Expedition and Hanfu Movement share several common characteristics. Firstly,
both became popular among the young population with diverse intentions in mind and their
comments took form online. Moreover, the two events were organized civilly while still abiding
by government and business regulations. Even while expressing extreme mainland superiority
ideas in the “Diba expedition to Facebook,” most participants practiced self-discipline and

100
Lily Kuo, “‘Where were the police?’ Hong Kong Outcry after Masked Thugs Launch Attack,” the Guardian, last
modified July 22, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/22/where-were-the-police-hong-kong-outcry-
after-masked-thugs-launch-attack.
101
Fu, “China’s Social Media Troll Army.”
102
Fu, “China’s Social Media Troll Army.”

57
common courtesy. Similarly, most of the Hanfu fans voiced authentic enthusiasm toward
traditional Chinese culture, despite the origin of their ideology in Han supremacy.
The two events diverged in the results. The Diba Expedition was a reaction to the idea of
sovereignty in international affairs, originating from real events and extending their influence into
cyber space. The Hanfu movement, by contrast, was rooted in the idea of the superiority of Chinese
ethnic culture and transformed the digital discourse into offline activities. Another distinction lies
in the organizations of these nationalism activities. Diba mostly focused on the Baidu Tieba
platform and publicized its events on social media, such as Sina Weibo and WeChat, complying
with regulations of the state and digital platforms. The series of expeditions were also formed
through a highly organized community with more advanced technological knowledge in order to
avoid structured online censorship. This was further shown in the more diverse forms of comments,
pictures, and the memes they left on Facebook pages, self-made by Diba members. The Hanfu
Movement, although it later included a large population base on Baidu Tieba, originally relied on
the rise of the Hanwang website and related to self-founded channels to gain attraction, which was
relatively decentralized and difficult for monitoring and regulation.
This comparative analysis also reveals the fluid standards in the Chinese government’s
censorship policy. While state agencies praised mainland digital nationalist movement during the
Diba Expedition against Taiwan independence, the authorities initially allowed the escalation of
ethnic supremacy discourses led by the Hanfu Movement until the violence in Ürümqi occurred.
When Diba Expedition members organized another event targeting the Hong Kong protesters as
an attempted revival of the Diba community the same year on September 30, 2019, Xinwen Lianbo
news broadcasts by China Central Television even mentioned Diba as one of the nationalist forces
protecting Hong Kong from protesters. This clearly showed the Chinese government’s heightened

58
attitude from an incident with a Korean-based artist involved in pro-Taiwan independence forces
to the issue of the social and political stability of Hong Kong. While the Taiwanese artist incident
mostly circulated in the limited fan circle and loosely linked to the Cross-Strait relations, the
Chinese news media platforms actively reported the Hong Kong protests and condemned the
leaders for destroying the normality of the city. There is an apparent irony and hypocrisy in the
central government’s inconsistent and swinging stance on free speech and its definition of
“appropriate” online behavior. More precisely, the inconsistent state’s reaction toward these two
cases is a representation of the state’s calculated assessment of its national interest, as the state or
the digital nationalists may take actions when facing potential backlash. In the case of the Hanfu
Movement, the state received criticism from Han-Nationalists of not dedicated to the support of
Han culture and ethnic Han Chinese; while in the case of the Diba Expedition, the state’s tolerance
toward the overt nationalistic sentiments encouraged the continuous conduct of expeditions, and
it was the expedition members who received backlash from the opposing protesters and were
forced to pause future activities. Nevertheless, the comparison above does not indicate that the
Chinese state is fragile in reacting to potential challenges of public opinions, but in the process of
learning and reacting it has developed a mature mechanism for tolerating and responding to
sporadic instances of public opinion while maintaining its original political stance.
103

Finally, the development and outcome of both cases show that the more aggressive
nationalist activities online could easily generate dangerous effects on the stability of cyberspace
and reality. While there was not a direct link between the unrest in Chinese minority regions and
overt Han-centrism online, it is concerning from some of the cases and interviews from the Hanfu

103
James Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012), 131.

59
Movements that Han nationalist ideologies have been prevalent and certain state ethnicity policies
may have even exacerbated this trend. In the series of Diba Expeditions, even though mainland
members intended to be disciplined and civil, their playful “communication” plays on the fact that
they to some extent ignored the complicated historical background of Cross-Strait relations and
the changing national identity of the younger generation in Taiwan, let alone the attitudes of those
who posted insulting comments and memes. The doxing incident of Hong Kong protestors getting
personal information of expedition members, on the other hand, reveals the ability of these online
activities to affect the offline society and the unpredictable danger of the internet, even though it
was the Diba members rather than the state who received a backlash. We have seen this type of
incident during the violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2012, and how the aggressive
sentiments might affect Chinese foreign affairs, further extending the negative effects outside of
China. Furthermore, reports in Western media already showed their concerns over the independent
online nationalist activities risking the state’s economic development with foreign companies and
China’s national image, leading to the critical question of how the Chinese state should view and
guide the rising nationalist sentiments in the near future.
Chapter Four Covid and Beyond
The previous chapter looked at the similarities and differences of two pro-nationalism
activities that happened in Chinese cyber space. This chapter introduces how Chinese cyber-
nationalism developed during the pandemic era after 2019 when China’s opinions and policies on
many issues were more divided and separate from the rest of the world, and what effects it might
have on both China’s and international social and political stability. The thesis ends with an
assessment of cyber-nationalist activities in China’s society today.

60

China and the World in the Pandemic Era
The Covid-19 pandemic, as I write this, is an ongoing global health crisis that has disrupted
the world for the past three years. The pandemic began from an outbreak of the coronavirus in
Wuhan, Hubei province in December 2019. Due to a delayed and failed attempt to immediately
contain the virus, the Covid virus and its variations spread worldwide. This was not the first time
China dealt with a coronavirus, since the earlier SARS outbreak of 2002-2004 that was first
identified in Foshan, Guangzhou province went through a similar containment process, and ended
up infecting more than 5,300 people and killing 349 people nationwide in its main run of eight
months.
104
A test for the public health infrastructure and state governance, the SARS pandemic
raised serious questions about the capacity and ability of the Chinese political structure to deal
with future pandemic outbreaks. Compared to SARS, the Covid-19 disease generally has been
more contagious, but less fatal. After the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, the Chinese state
enforced a total lockdown in the city, with an additional 15 cities in complete or partial lockdown
and strict travel limitations as early as January 27, 2020.
105
In the following two years, the state
set up a dynamic zero Covid case policy, which enforced mass testing and strict quarantine
measures to prevent further potential outbreaks of COVID-19 before it could spread.
106
The state

104
Yanzhong Huang, “The SARS Epidemic and its Aftermath in China: a Political Perspective,” in Learning from
SARS: Preparing for the Next Disease Outbreak: Workshop Summary, ed. Knobler S, Mahmoud A, Lemon S, et al
(Washington, D.C: National Academies Press, 2004).
105
James Griffiths and Amy Woodyatt, “China Goes into Emergency Mode as Number of Confirmed Wuhan
Coronavirus Cases Reaches 2,700,” CNN, last modified January 27, 2020,
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/26/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-update-intl-hnk/index.html.
106
Jessie Lau, “The End Game of China’s Zero-Covid Policy Nightmare,” Wired, last modified February 18, 2022,
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-zero-covid-vaccines.

61
also implemented strict travel restrictions preventing the spread of the virus from coming into
China that reached new heights in early 2022, requiring passengers to quarantine in departing cities
and to receive multiple Covid and antigen tests before departure, in addition to the already
established policies of organized hotel quarantine and self-quarantine after arriving in China.
While the rest of the world has since lifted the more strict measurements and restrictions against
Covid after a variety of levels of containment and mitigation took place, China has so far been
continuing its comprehensive pandemic policies, for example in spring 2022 enforcing a lockdown
for 65 days in Shanghai, the major economic center of China.
107
Overall, the containment and
travel restriction policies, while mostly successful for acutely reducing the spread of the virus and
fatalities, have been very disruptive to the economy and the social living conditions and mobility
of the mass populations.
In different stages of the pandemic period, because of its mostly effective but controversial
containment policies, the Chinese state carried out new rounds of nationalist publicity and
censorship, in turn generating new waves of cyber-nationalism activities online. The first stage of
the nationalist activities took place at the beginning of the pandemic, when cases were mostly
centered in Wuhan, and when the rest of China and the world had only limited facts about the virus.
Political scientist Florian Bieber regards the state of emergency, prejudice, anti-globalization
border closures, and fears caused by disasters as the main factors in stimulating the rise in
nationalism.
108
Given the political and psychological effects of the virus on the nation and mass

107
Patrick Jackson and Zubaidah Abdul Jalil, “Shanghai Lockdown: China Eases Covid Restrictions after Two
Months,” last modified June 1, 2022, BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61647687.
108
Florian Bieber, Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020),
quoted in Zhenyu Wang and Yuzhou Tao, “Many Nationalisms, One Disaster: Categories, Attitudes and Evolution
of Chinese Nationalism on Social Media During the COVID -19 Pandemic,” Chinese Journal of Political Science
26, no. 3 (2021): 529.

62
populations, it is reasonable to speculate that China had already experienced the above four factors
during the early days of the outbreak. As the state demonstrated national support for importing
medical resources into Wuhan and fighting the pandemic, the Chinese people often saw images of
health officials, leading doctors and first responders as national heroes. One of the examples was
that the state decided to mobilize people to fight the pandemic through a substantial amount of art
and visual propaganda, with official art organizations calling for artwork illustrating the “people’s
war” against the virus, and later curating them online.
109
This artwork revealed that the scale of
the anti-virus campaign was not just covering Wuhan, but the entire nation, and not just the local
government and medical staff, but all citizens in China. Furthermore, a variety of social media
platforms are still posting daily reports of the pandemic status specifying the number of cases and
location, and we often see repetitive comments by netizens, such as “kangyi jiayou” (抗疫加油,
work hard to fight the pandemic) and “zaori qingling” (早日清零, reach zero cases soon). On the
days when even a single case of infection is detected, the Chinese people see these types of slogans
and new reports.

109
Florian Schneider, “COVID-19 Nationalism and the Visual Construction of Sovereignty during China’s
Coronavirus Crisis,” China Information 35, no. 3 (November 2021): 305.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211034692.

63

Figure 11. Series of artwork illustrating “People’s war against the pandemic (2020).” Photo: Compiled by Florian Schneider
in “COVID-19 Nationalism and the Visual Construction of Sovereignty during China’s Coronavirus Crisis,” China Information
35, no. 3 (November 2021): 307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211034692.

Another type of nationalistic activity seen at the early stage of the pandemic was an
outbreak of hate crimes and racist comments toward Chinese and Asians in many places, even
though the virus was mostly reported in Wuhan. Rooted in fears of infection and racist and
stereotypical ideologies about disease transmission, this type of hate crime was prevalent in a
variety of communities, such as non-Wuhan Chinese toward Wuhan residents, Chinese toward
foreign residents in China, and non-Asian communities toward Asians in Western countries. And
when it occurred, especially when it originated from a foreign country toward China, a new wave
of nationalist sentiments arose online in China, even when the original source may have been
satirical. In January 2020, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten posted a caricature by cartoonist
Niels Bo Bojesen depicting the national flag of the People’s Republic of China, but with five
coronaviruses instead of five stars.
110
The caricature received criticism from both the Chinese
government and citizens, with the Chinese ambassador to Denmark, Feng Tie, calling the satire

110
“China Angry over Coronavirus Cartoon in Danish Newspaper,” DW, accessed June 4, 2022,
https://www.dw.com/en/china-angry-over-coronavirus-cartoon-in-danish-newspaper/a-52196383.

64
“shocking and deeply insulting to the Chinese people,” and warning that China’s 280 million
netizens were already outraged by the artwork, and it might damage Denmark’s reputation not just
in China but elsewhere in the world.
111
It is worth noting that the ambassador zeroed-in on the
impact of the caricature on a potential cyber-nationalist community, and although the artwork was
a personal product, the ambassador pointed at the entire Danish nation for blame. Chinese netizens
also posted satirical works attacking Denmark on the internet, prominently using cultural
stereotypes and memes that referred to Denmark’s surrender in four hours after Hitler’s sudden
invasion in 1940, thus their postings mostly featured the number four, the phrase four hours, and
white flags of surrender.
112
On the other hand, the caricature by the Danish artist inspired anti-
China nationalistic postings with similarly demeaning images online, often featuring either the
virus or President Xi. Even though both sides seemed to present the “image attacks” in a playful
way, they harbored an aggressive tone and put their contents in a national context. Much like the
series of online expeditions, these comments went beyond the scope of reacting to specific events
and became outright anti-foreign hate crime and goading rather than effective communications.

Figure 12. (left) Caricature by Danish cartoonist Niels Bo Bojesen (2020). Photo: Jyllands-Posten.
Figure 13. Caricature by Chinese netizens responding to the Danish caricature (2020). Photo: DW

111
Schneider, “COVID-19 Nationalism,” 309.
112
Schneider, “COVID-19 Nationalism,” 310.

65
The second stage of pandemic policies refers mainly to the period after China announced
its initial success in combating the disease through its strict containment policy and its dynamic
zero case policy. The state was very vocal about the effective and unique path it took that was
drastically different from the approaches of short cycles of lockdowns and partial containment that
most other countries adopted, and the state praised leading doctors, medical staff and volunteers
at major national conferences. The unique path also showed in the state’s insistence on dispensing
the homegrown inactivated-virus vaccine rather than the mRNA vaccines used by most other
countries. This type of decision by the state that often generates nationalistic sentiments of
superiority, while being widely circulated on social media platforms, also led to the Chinese
nationalists mocking foreign countries that had not contained the pandemic. On the other hand, the
increasingly intense travel restrictions imposed by China caused tremendous difficulties and
expenses for oversea Chinese, especially for the huge population of students studying abroad who
had to undergo multiple Covid tests, and multiple periods of quarantine before and after coming
back to China, let alone the difficulties of being able to obtain one of the frequently cancelled
flights home. This community was vocal about the difficulties it faced since the beginning of the
travel restrictions, and it received serious criticism and attack from mainland netizens, notably the
phrase “guojia jianshe nibuzai, qianli toudu diyiming” (国家建设你不在，千里投毒第一名, you
are not here to contribute to your country, but the first to deliver viruses from thousands of miles
away). Similar phrases were prevalent on comment sections of social media platforms, even on
accounts exclusively providing overseas Chinese with information on how to obtain tickets. This
type of discrimination, although similar to those Wuhan and Hubei residents faced from people in
the rest of China, can also be categorized as extreme nationalistic actions, xenophobia, or
exclusionism.

66
The current stage as of 2022 represents the main dilemma that the Chinese state is facing
between its strict pandemic policies and the living conditions of its citizens in China and overseas.
On the one hand, travel bans and overt restrictions have mostly been lifted in most countries of the
world, while cities in China still go through severe lockdowns and daily Covid tests for a long time
when cases appear. This type of repetitive process has led to serious expressions of impatience and
isolation, and has even affected normal daily life, with most noticeably the enduring lockdowns in
Shanghai in spring 2022. Under this circumstance, the voice of questioning whether it is also
China’s turn to take the co-existence route like the rest of the world is appearing on the internet
and has received serious criticism from those netizens who were keen to follow the current strict
government policies, even if they might have also gone through lockdowns in their own cities. The
state also views those voices supporting a co-existence policy as dissidents, thus implementing
censorship of their views online. From firstly censoring information about Doctor Li Wenliang,
who was the whistleblower who reported on a potentially new virus in late 2019, and who
eventually died from Covid in early 2020, to the ban on daily visual updates of living conditions
in the locked-down Shanghai that showed citizens’ confusion and anger toward the zero Covid
policy. Recently in 2022, a new type of censorship has appeared on almost all social media
platforms: the publishing of online users’ latest IP addresses.
113
While censorship often refers to
actions to erase certain information from the public, this act of adding specific information about
the user has its own logic that may be seen as more complex than the usual means of censorship.
When the state and media companies announced that the new regulation aimed at preventing the
spread of rumors and misinformation, the signal was also mixed by presenting IP addresses not

113
Joy Dong, “China’s Internet Censors Try a New Trick: Revealing Users’ Locations,” The New York Times, last
modified May 18, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/18/business/china-internet-censors-ip-address.html.

67
just for social media moderators but for all public online users. For the overseas Chinese mentioned
above, the situation intensified after the implementation of the new regulation, as it contributed to
indiscriminate attacks toward this community without a justified cause. Even though VPN users
can easily change their IP addresses to hide their foreign locations, overseas Chinese normally
would not conceal their locations, and are often named as spies or traitors online, further
complicating a proper cyber environment for civilized and open dialogue.
Overall, compared to the Hanfu Movement and Diba Expedition, this section has looked
at cyber-nationalism activities during the pandemic period in a larger context that covers social
media platforms in general, thus showing more of the divided opinions that exist. This last section
breaks down the introduction and analysis into three stages, since the pandemic is also a critical
global event that started two and half years ago and will exist as a continuing part of our lives.
During this ongoing situation, while pandemic nationalist discourse has been prevalent in
mobilizing the mass populations to fight against the disease, there were also dissident voices
criticizing the state’s policies in different stages of the pandemic. Once again, for the purpose of
social and political stability, the state elevated censorship to allow mostly unified voices in every
corner of the internet and it was indifferent and tolerant of the existence of extreme nationalistic
sentiments of xenophobia and exclusionism, and it even fostered the aggressive environment
toward both mainland Chinese and foreigners. Horrendously, as we see in the online censorship of
dissident voices on Covid policy, and a variety of discriminations, the state’s tolerance or even
encouragement of overt cyber-nationalistic activities creates a kind of norm of silencing dissident
voices. Unlike the Hanfu Movement case in which the Hanwang website was mostly hidden from
the public, and the Diba Expedition case in which the activism was active in restricted cyber space,
the state nationalistic mobilization during the pandemic is closely linked to the daily life and public

68
policy in such a level that the strong nationalistic sentiments may intimidate dissident voices into
silence. As James Reilly suggests, the best test to an authoritarian regime’s propaganda capacity
is a case in which the state seeks to reverse previous propaganda messages or promote propaganda
contrary to dominant public preferences, so perhaps we have to wait until the Chinese state takes
a new direction in fighting the pandemic to see what the new phase of online nationalistic activism
will be.
114
These cases further demonstrate the potentially dangerous impact of overt cyber-
nationalism in uncertain and complicated global social and political environments.
Conclusion
In summary, this thesis has covered an aspect of the development of traditional media and
the rise of the internet that has accelerated information circulation and popular communication.
Nationalism has always been one of the major conversations in contemporary Chinese history,
whether during foreign invasions or changes of governments. In uncertain and difficult times, be
it national salvation or the global pandemic, nationalism has been a useful discourse by both the
state and the citizens for mobilizing collective actions against internal and external threats.
Nevertheless, we also see problems regarding both the great majorities and minorities generated
through implementing this type of collective ideologies that are often strengthened in authoritarian
governments. Through the comparison of two cyber-nationalist activities, the thesis demonstrates
the phenomenon of the young population using social media and digital tools to express
nationalistic ideologies and to organize collective nationalist actions. Almost a decade after the
Hanfu Movement and the Diba Expedition, these two nationalistic events are still generating

114
Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State, 3.

69
contested, and sometimes alarming, online discussions and offline gatherings that intensify the
polarization between multilateralism and Chinese protectionism. These two cases unearth a
sobering informality of the Chinese government’s stance to tolerate free speech while oppressing
threats against national interests.
In recent years we have witnessed increasing political polarization in China and the rest of
the world, such as the U.S.-China trade war, the Hong Kong protests, and now the pandemic
policies. Beyond the political arena, nationalism affects multilateralism and peaceful resolutions
in all aspects of global development, ranging from business and trade, technological advancement,
to humanitarian assistance. Social media, in turn, has become a contested political space where
citizens and political authorities rival over competing ideologies and visions for progress.
115

Increasing popular civic engagement also poses alarming threats to authoritarian rulers, which
motivates heightened information control.
Turning to the Covid era, although the division among online opinions, nationalist
communities and state censorship has seemed to reach a new level, it is often easy to forget that
there is not a unified voice, even in China. Immersed in the ideological mindset that a monolithic
voice exists in any historical stage of contemporary China not only shows an unrealistic view of
China as a nation but leads to a binary thinking that is prevalent in the study of nationalism.
116

Furthermore, the last chapter primarily provides a more pessimistic narrative because, firstly, the
advanced level of censorship created a huge barrier that prevented citizens from voicing their views
in emergent environments unlike what should be the case in a normal public sphere. Secondly, the

115
Dave Lee, “Hong Kong protests: Twitter and Facebook remove Chinese accounts,” BBC News, last modified
August 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49402222.
116
Chenchen Zhang, “Covid-19 in China: From ‘Chernobyl Moment’ to Impetus for Nationalism,” Made in China
Journal 5 no.2 (2020):164-165, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/05/04/covid-19-in-china-from-chernobyl-
moment-to-impetus-for-nationalism.

70
seemingly playful or aggressive approach many netizens took toward the subject matters of
national sovereignty or image, while it was only part of the types of voices in these activities,
tended to silence dissident voices and overshadow the more open and cosmopolitan ones that are
much needed in the polarizing world. As the state develops a strong mechanism to respond to overt
expression of public opinions, it is concerning that the state also utilizes approaches such as
opinion guidance and heightened censorship to create aggressive online disputes and controversies
in this uncertain time. At the end of the day, cyber-nationalism activities are a manifestation of
international relationships in the real world. With the deeply intertwined nationalistic views of the
state and its citizens, it is critical for both counterparts to realize that misunderstandings and
arrested cooperation are just as harmful as are uncontrolled and aggressive nationalist activities in
today’s interconnected globalization.

71
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Creator Li, Hongqiao (author)

Core Title Cyber-nationalism in China: the relationship between government and netizens

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/22/2022

Defense Date 06/22/2022

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Tag contemporary China,COVID-19,digital media,Internet,nationalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,social media

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Advisor Goldstein , Joshua (committee chair), Rosen, Stanley (committee member), Sheehan , Brett (committee member)

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