History and Legitimacy in Contemporary China

Towards Competing Nationalisms Robert D. Weatherley and Qiang Zhang

Abstract

This chapter examines how the Chinese Communist Party is using Chi-nese history to bolster its nationalist legitimacy. Drawing on two case studies ‒ the Anglo-French destruction of the Old Summer Palace (1860) and the legacy of the Republican era (1912-49) ‒ we identify two different types of nationalism. The first is a confrontational form of nationalism, emphasizing the trauma associated with the Old Summer Palace incident and intended to incite public resentment towards ‘hostile’ foreign powers.

The second is more consensual, emphasizing common ties with the KMT and intended to demonstrate a commitment to peaceful reunification with Taiwan. However, in both cases, an energetic public debate has arisen in which critics have accused the CCP of inadequately safeguarding Chinese sovereignty.

Keywords: China, history, legitimacy, nationalism

Introduction

The use of historical memory to stimulate popular nationalist sentiment is second nature to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The harrowing and often bitter memories associated with the First Opium War,¹ the Second Sino-Japanese War² and the Korean War³ are comprehensively documented in the annals of CCP history and frequently articulated by the state-controlled media. Sometimes the trigger for an official reminder is to commemorate the anniversary of an event epitomizing China’s subjugation by foreign powers or to mark the end of an imperialist war, be it Japanese,

1 Lovell (2011).

2 Mitter (2000).

3 Hays Gries et al. (2009).

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Korean or otherwise. Sometimes the reminder is precipitated by a perceived act of foreign aggression or a diplomatic slight against China. On other occasions, there is no obvious reason. The aim is just to keep the memory fresh in Chinese minds.

The first part of this article examines a particularly traumatic event in China’s historical memory ‒ the destruction of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan

圓明園

) by British and French forces in 1860 in retaliation for the kidnap, torture, and in some cases murder of a small delegation of Anglo-French representatives who had arrived in Beijing to enforce the terms of the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin.⁴ Since the early 1990s, there have been increased reminders of this incident in an effort to whip up a sense of public indignation not only towards Britain and France, but towards other former imperialist powers for the wrongs that they inflicted on China during the Century of Humiliation. This in turn enables the CCP to highlight the suc-cess with which it liberated China from that traumatic era and transformed the country into a major international power. We refer to this approach as confrontational nationalism.

The second part of this article examines a more conciliatory nationalist position adopted by the CCP in relation specifically to the Nationalist Party (KMT

國民黨

) and Taiwan. Here again, the emphasis is on China’s recent history, but rather than concentrating on humiliation, the focus is more upbeat and optimistic, looking at the achievements of the Republican era when the KMT intermittently ruled China. In contrast to Yuanmingyuan, the CCP has not taken the lead in articulating a clear official line on the era. Rather it has relaxed the parameters of permissible debate to allow the public to do so. But the broad objectives are equally as nationalistic with the party seeking to present itself as flexible, tolerant, and with the interests of national unity and reunification with Taiwan as its core interest.

However, these attempts by the CCP to fortify its nationalist credibility are not proving to be altogether successful because in both of our exam-ples the party has precipitated a response from members of the scholarly, media and online (or ‘netizen’) communities that is critical of the party and has even questioned its nationalist credentials. On Yuanmingyuan, some sceptics have accused the party of deliberately fabricating the official narrative of the incident for political purposes, of wasting time and public

4 Twenty members of the group died in captivity, including a correspondent for the London Times. The other sixteen, including the British envoys Henry Loch and Harry Parkes, were released after surviving for almost two weeks in the infamous Board of Punishments. For more information on the prelude to the Yuanmingyuan incident see Wolseley (1862) and BBC (2015a).

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money on the restoration of the site and ultimately of failing to protect China against foreign domination despite more than 60 years of party rule, drawing parallels with China’s weakness under the Qing Dynasty. Critics have been even more vocal on the Republican era debate, accusing the CCP of withholding basic civil freedoms in contrast to those enjoyed during the Republic, of holding the country back economically and of inadequately safeguarding Chinese sovereignty after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 in comparison to the KMT’s pre-liberation record. Ironically, instead of augmenting its nationalist legitimacy, the CCP has set in motion a process that is serving to erode its legitimacy.

Confrontational nationalism – Yuanmingyuan

Despite the often anti-Western rhetoric of the Mao regime, official denun-ciations of the Yuanmingyuan incident were surprisingly rare under Mao.

The apparent lack of significance attached to this incident was further reflected in the physical neglect of the site, with little effort being made to protect it, despite the area being declared a municipal park at the request of Zhou Enlai

周恩來

. This led one disgruntled observer to comment that:

This sacred site – ‘the garden of all gardens’ – has now become a fester-ing ground crowded with garbage heaps, vegetable plots, pigsties, and bean curd presses! Motley groups of peasant and migrant families have converged here in the thousands to make a living and to multiply in a disorderly and slipshod manner, generating pollution at a shocking speed and hastening the final deterioration of Yuanmingyuan.⁵

It was only during the 1980s that the CCP began to turn its attention to Yuanmingyuan. A government bureau and a scholarly committee was formed, symposia and writing forums were held and the party reclaimed Yuanmingyuan as a historical site, authorizing the creation of the Yuan-mingyuan Ruins Park which has been open to tourists for some time.⁶ The west side of Yuanmingyuan was moderately renovated in 2005, several small temples have been rebuilt and there are a number of tourist attractions including a museum, a small funfair, countless souvenir shops and even Jet-Ski rides on one of the main lakes. Tourists are allowed to trample around

5 Wang (1999, p. 800).

6 Lee (2009, p. 156).

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and touch the ruins with no apparent restrictions placed on photography.

Julia Lovell believes that the CCP is finally capitalizing on the propaganda value of the Yuanmingyuan ruins, ‘replacing the pigsties and piles of rub-bish with new signs littered across the gardens reminding visitors of what would have been there, if the British and French had not burnt or stolen it first’.⁷ But taken as a whole, the site remains largely untouched as the CCP contemplates what to do with it.

Constructing a historical legacy

In contrast to the current uncertainty over the physical fate of the site, the party has acted much more decisively over its historical legacy, placing the Yuanmingyuan incident firmly on the Chinese political agenda by keeping it in the public memory. This was first apparent with the launching of the Patriotic Education Campaign in the early 1990s. For example, the 1991 Circular on Fully Using Cultural Relics to Conduct Education in Patriotism and Revolutionary Traditions made direct reference to the destruction of Yuanmingyuan and stressed the importance of retrieving the stolen antiques, describing this as the ‘patriotic duty’ of all Chinese citizens. As the campaign spread into the education sector, school children, including those at primary school level, were (and still are) taught in detail about the indignity of Yuanmingyuan within the wider context of the Century of Humiliation and students of all ages are required to visit the site, of-ficially designated as one of several ‘patriotic education bases’.⁸ Anecdotal evidence suggests that students are encouraged to articulate their feelings of disgust towards Western states both at the site and back in the classroom. In addition, numerous signs have been erected in and around Yuanmingyuan reminding visitors of the incident and there is even a ‘Never Forget National Humiliation’ memorial wall on which details are inscribed of ‘the sordid history of European and American incursions into China, of opium deal-ing, and the imposition of unequal treaties that made up the century of humiliation’.⁹

Another way that the party has sought to preserve the traumatic memory of Yuanmingyuan is to recall the incident whenever it believes that foreign powers are still acting aggressively towards China, using the state-controlled media to articulate its views. So, for example, following the

7 Lovell (2011, p. 345).

8 Wang (2008, p. 796).

9 China Beat (2009).

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US-led NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, an article published in the People’s Daily made a direct comparison between the bombing and the destruction of Yuanmingyuan, stating dramatically that ‘through the Embassy riddled with bullet holes covering the charred building, I can see reflected the destroyed ruins of the Yuanmingyuan’.¹⁰ Another People’s Daily article angrily insisted that China would never again be downtrodden by Western powers, citing the burning of Yuanmingyuan as one in a series of past humiliations that must never be repeated:

This is not a period when Western forces can plunder the imperial palace at will, burn down the Yuanmingyuan and snatch Hong Kong and Macao, nor is it the same period as when the corrupt Qing government or Jiang Jieshi 蔣介石(or Chiang Kaishek) ruled. China has already stood up.¹¹ Similar impassioned analogies to the Yuanmingyuan incident were made to mark the tenth and fifteenth anniversaries of the US attack.

The hosting of international events in China has also been used by the CCP to resurrect the memory of Yuanmingyuan. This was first apparent during the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing when a number of newspaper articles made reference to the incident. One article suggested that China was much stronger in 1990 than it was in 1860 and was in a much better position on the world stage as it moved towards the 21st century.¹²

There were even more references to Yuanmingyuan in the build-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Xinhua News Agency used the Olympics to draw a symbolic and rather exaggerated comparison between the ruins of Olympia and the ruins of Yuanmingyuan and an even more exaggerated comparison was made between the flames of the Olympic torch and the flames that engulfed the palaces.¹³ The state media’s tone became confron-tational in reports about overseas demonstrators disrupting the Olympic torch relay in protest at China’s human-rights record in Tibet. Particular venom was directed towards French protestors and the perceived support given to them by the French government and media, who were accused of gross hypocrisy in the context of Yuanmingyuan. As the People’s Daily put it ‘if France wants to talk to China about human rights, they first need to apologize for what they did to Yuanmingyuan and then return the great

10 Renmin Ribao (1999a).

11 Renmin Ribao (1999b).

12 Jiefangjun Bao (1990).

13 Xinhuashe Zhongwen Xinwen (2008).

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quantity of Chinese relics that they stole’.¹⁴ Following this, opinion polls in China (cited gleefully in the People’s Daily) showed a sharp decline in positive feelings towards France¹⁵ and a sudden increase in the public boycotting of French goods, suggesting that the media campaign against France was succeeding.¹⁶

The media often publishes dramatic personal accounts made by visitors to the site. One article claims that ‘in Yuanmingyuan’s scorched ruins, I see a pool of blood’.¹⁷ Another article laments Yuanmingyuan’s ‘former imperial glory that has been reduced to a royal scar’.¹⁸ A report in China Aviation News describes the ruins as ‘like a bleeding wound, still tingling in each Chinese descendant’.¹⁹ Even articles which refer fleetingly to Yu-anmingyuan rarely fail to make mention of its destruction. For example, a seemingly innocuous article about the completion of the Beijing Number 4 subway line observes how the new line passes through Yuanmingyuan and then automatically defaults to anguished and protracted descriptions of its annihilation, completely changing the original focus of the article.²⁰

The media interest in Yuanmingyuan reached its peak in the build-up to the 150th anniversary of its destruction on 17 October 2010. The first commemorative articles started appearing as early as January 2010, with the Wenhui Bao suggesting (somewhat controversially as it turned out) that China was considering inviting an Anglo-French delegation to attend the anniversary ceremony.²¹ This was followed by a plethora of other articles and new reports about, for example, the month-long schedule of events prior to the anniversary date culminating in a live performance by Jackie Chan²² and a salt sculpture exhibit in Taipei replicating the looted and much-heralded twelve ‘zodiac animals’, thereby emphasizing the cross-straits significance of the anniversary.²³ These zodiac animals were removed after the Democratic Progressive Party took over the Taiwan government in 2016.

14 Renmin Ribao (2008a).

15 Renmin Ribao (2008b).

16 Xinhua Wang (2008).

17 Renmin Ribao (2009).

18 Renmin Ribao (2010a).

19 Zhongguo Hangtian Bao (2010).

20 Guangzhou Ribao (2009).

21 Wenhui Bao (2010).

22 Xinhuashe Zhongwen Xinwen (2010a).

23 Zhongguo Xinwenshe (2010).

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The nationalist rationale

The rationale for resurrecting the memory of Yuanmingyuan in such a deliberate and concerted manner draws directly on the CCP’s quest for na-tionalist legitimacy. Following the crisis of economic legitimacy that led to mass nationwide demonstrations in spring 1989, particularly in Tiananmen Square, the CCP was forced to diversify the basis of its popular legitimacy to include nationalism. As overseas governments lined up to criticize the party for using military force to disperse the Tiananmen protestors, the party looked to position itself as the sole defender of Chinese national interests in the face of a seemingly hostile West. A key aspect of this approach has been to utilize the legacy of Yuanmingyuan which it has done in two interrelated ways. Firstly, Yuanmingyuan reminds the Chinese people of just how ‘bad’

life was during the Century of Humiliation. The destruction of the palaces, with their ruins still visible today, is ideal for these purposes, carefully depicted as the living epitome of a terrible period in China’s history. By the same token, Yuanmingyuan is a reminder of just how ‘good’ life is under the CCP. After ‘liberating’ China from foreign imperialism in 1949, the CCP is guiding China single-handedly towards superpower status and restoring China to its rightful place in the world. So the dual objective is to create public antagonism towards the West and public gratitude towards the CCP.

Much of the party’s rhetoric bears this out. We noted earlier a reference in the People’s Daily to the West no longer being able to ‘plunder the imperial palace at will, burn down the Yuanmingyuan and snatch Hong Kong and Macao’. The message is clear: the Century of Humiliation is now over and the CCP ended it. Similarly, the claim that ‘China has already stood up’, drawing conveniently on Mao’s words at the Gate of Heavenly Peace on 1 October 1949, strongly implies that the CCP is responsible for this. Likewise, the references to Yuanmingyuan when China hosts major international events such as the Beijing Olympics is intended to contrast the humiliations of the past with the triumphs of the present, again brought about by the CCP. The Olympics was depicted as a prime example of national rejuvenation, proof that China, under the CCP, is no longer the ‘sick man of Asia’.

Returning the antiques

One of the key areas of controversy surrounding the Yuanmingyuan inci-dent is the current location of the antiques that were stolen by the British and French in 1860. The precise number is difficult to quantify. UNESCO has estimated that of the 1.6 million Chinese antiques stored in more than 200

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museums across 47 countries, approximately one million were taken from Yuanmingyuan. These include a two-metre high Buddhist stupa currently housed at the Chinese pavilion in the Fontainebleau Palace near Paris and a painting of one of the ‘forty scenic sites’ of Yuanmingyuan displayed in the Paris National Library.²⁴

With this in mind, the official Chinese media has campaigned hard for the return of the stolen antiques. Although there were sporadic efforts during the 1990s,²⁵ 2009 saw a considerable rise in media-influenced public support for the campaign after a group of Chinese lawyers working overseas formed a ‘patriotic alliance’, seeking to apply international law in order to facilitate the return of the antiques.²⁶ The CCP has also funded teams of experts to travel across the world and make contact with foreign museums in an effort to bring back the stolen items.²⁷

The nationalist symbolism associated with the stolen Yuanmingyuan treasures is palpable and has been enthusiastically developed and exploited by the CCP in its quest to whip up a nationalist zeal against former imperial-ist powers. For example, the theft of the treasures is depicted as a devastating wound struck at the very heart of the Chinese nation whilst their return is portrayed as part of ‘a long and arduous road towards national salvation’.²⁸ Each time Yuanmingyuan antiques are returned to China this is seized upon as a great victory for the Chinese nation.²⁹ But it is depicted only as a partial victory given that many treasures remain scattered throughout the world thereby constituting a continued humiliation for China.³⁰

As noted above, the return of Yuanmingyuan antiques (often by Chinese bidders) is welcomed in the Chinese media. However, sometimes reports on foreign auctions of the antiques are designed to generate resentment and anger amongst the Chinese people, especially when Chinese bidders pay a fortune to buy back what was stolen from China in the first place. The Liberation Army Daily described these auctions as an affront to China’s national dignity ‘going against the spirit of international conventions and inflicting serious harm on China’s cultural rights and national emotions’.³¹ A People’s Daily article described foreign claims that there was nothing

24 CNTV (2010).

25 Jiefangjun Bao (1998).

26 Xinhua News Agency (2009).

27 Xinhuashe Zhongwen Xinwen (2010b).

28 Jiefangjun Bao (2009a).

29 Beijing Ribao (2011).

30 Jiefangjun Bao (2009b).

31 Jiefangjun Bao (2009b).

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wrong in auctioning the antiques as an example of the continuing ‘undis-guised gangster logic’ and ‘cultural hegemony’ of Western nations.³²

The most high-profile foreign auction of Yuanmingyuan antiques took place in Paris in 2009. When Christie’s tried to sell the rat and rabbit ‘zodiac’

heads collection owned by the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his business partner Pierre Berge, there was widespread condemnation in China and demands that the statues be given back to China free of charge.

Particular outrage was sparked when Berge said that he would happily return the antiques if China promised to improve its human-rights record,

Particular outrage was sparked when Berge said that he would happily return the antiques if China promised to improve its human-rights record,

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