How Did China Influence The Development Of Chinese Nationalism?

As mentioned previously, nationalism, nation, and national identity are all modern Western constructions that were foreign to Chinese society until the nineteenth century. Through contact with the West and Japan, Chinese society soon understood what these terms meant in the larger international context. They also understood that in order for China to join the West and Japan as international powers, they needed to develop their own nationalism, nation and national identity. The problem China encountered in their goal to be acknowledged as an modern nation, was that China was a empire for over two thousand years and had no experience or understanding of how to be a modern nation. Due to this problem, it is easily understood why China looked to the West for indications and directions on how to be a nation. They took in Western theories ideologies, sent Chinese students to be educated in the West, and adapted certain ways …show more content…
With the many ideas Chinese intellectuals borrowed from the West and incorporated into their ideas of nationalism, it becomes difficult to determine where the West’s influence starts and ends. Chu and Zarrow write, “China’s new nationalists linked the nation to different kinds of ethnological and sociological doctrines…theories of evolution, ethics, and natural selection raised by Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Thomas Huxley…” In this statement, Chu and Zarrow provide a description of how much Chinese nationalists and their ideas of nationalism were influenced by the West. Peter Bol, too, writes, “political leaders became convinced that to compete with more powerful and richer countries China had to learn the models and techniques that were thought to lead to greater wealth and power. Whether it is called globalization or modernization this has meant looking to the modern