By Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang

Source: Richard Munden’s flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.

In order to reach Xi’s goal of building China into a cyber-power, the approach toward internet censorship is seen as crucial. Such internet control may be a means to eliminate any possible anti-governmental “cyber nationalism”, as described in part one. China’s new cyber nationalism is best understood in relation to the old school ‘People’s War’ in the traditional Chinese strategic outlook. The term People’s War (人民戰爭, renmin zhanzheng) was coined by Mao in the 1920s. It is a strategic concept originally formulated to oppose the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) enemy during China’s civil war, which then became a general doctrine of mobilizing the massive Chinese populace to achieve a political goal and to defeat a militarily superior opponent despite military inferiority.

Whether it is seen as a negative or positive phenomenon, China’s nationalism is likely to be the most impactful globally due to China’s huge populace and the patriotic education delivered through various systems. Two questions should be raised when exploring the factors driving nationalism in the modern Chinese era. First, how can the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mobilize the Chinese people to develop a certain power in order to defeat or oppose external enemies? Second, how can the government discipline its massive populace in order to guarantee that the influence of the nationalism is controlled and consistent with its initial political purpose? To answer these questions, certain measures employed by the PRC, such as ‘patriotic education,’ ‘ideological cultivation,’ and ‘internet control and monitoring’ should be taken into account. This patriotic/ideological education, also known as 思想教育(sixiang jiaoyu), has been delivered through various systems. It is a compulsory element in China’s education system used to formulate a unique political ideology, which is distinct from general citizenship education. For instance, evidence suggests that the Chinese State Council has officially proclaimed the guideline of patriotic education, which should be assimilated into university curricula in order to progressively ‘educate’ the students’ ideology. On the other hand, there are ‘Internet commentators,’ also known as the 50 Cent Party (五毛黨 wǔmáo dǎng), hired and instructed by the Chinese governmental sector at various levels. Their duty is to post comments in an attempt to ‘manipulate’ public opinions in order to favor the Party’s policies and political claims.

Moreover, in the process of Chinese economic reform, on the one hand, China is enjoying the fruits of Western capitalism; but on the other hand, China is unable to tamp down the nationalism formed by historical humiliation from Western imperialists. Thus, as one of the fundamental ideas of the ‘People’s War’ is to mobilize the populace against Western imperialism from one generation to another, it is also possible to harness this nationalism to drive the people to support an ideological resistance in the entire Chinese nation for a political purpose. The idea can be shifted from a solely government revolution of the Chinese Civil War in a geographical campaign to an all-out battle on a national level. This may also include not only military aspects, but also political, economic, and cultural struggles.In addition, the nationalism complex against Western ideology may carry on to indoctrinate people through the education system nowadays as Education Minister Yuan Guiren’s comments indicate.

‘People’s War’ is also driven by the ‘Chinese national character,’ which is one of the major reasons behind the long persistence of the concept of ‘People’s War.’ It is likely that ‘the century of humiliation’ and ‘a long period of poverty and weakness’ oppressed the Chinese in the past, and this oppression became a feature of the national character. Therefore, despite the fact that the PRC claims to be rising peacefully, the Chinese national character determines that China will inevitably compete tooth and nail with U.S. hegemony, in order to symbolically sweep away past humiliations.

As the ‘century of humiliation’ has become an unforgettable part of history for the Chinese people, this collective memory represents one of the best tools to cement nationalism. The mobilization on which ‘People’s War’ places emphasis is driven by enthusiasm for this nationalism. It can therefore be argued that the ‘century of humiliation’ is one of the motivations behind the launch and development of ‘People’s War.’ Based on the theory of ‘People’s War,’ the anti-government movements during the late Qing Dynasty and the ten revolutions led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China, are categorized into armed uprisings in the early stages of ‘People’s War.’ At the time, the armed masses fought alone without cooperating with the People’s Liberation Army, and it was this lack of armed forces that led to their failure. Though the concept of ‘People’s War’ is a conventional strategy, cyberspace offers a perfect arena for the strategic concept to mobilize populace without the limit of geographic boundaries.

Thus, the idea of ‘People’s War’ has been transformed from the principle of fighting in the conventional battlefield to a new strategic concept behind the mobilization in cyberspace in the information age. As a result, internet control and monitoring in China is not necessarily solely employed for political purposes to prevent the Chinese people from accessing sensitive political information but can also offer a platform far superior to any other medium for the rapid dissemination of information, conducive to the mobilization of the Chinese people in the form of cyber nationalism. Cyber nationalism can be employed not only by the Chinese government for external political purposes, but applied to the Chinese people themselves for the CCP’s internal aims.

Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang is a visiting fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS.