Benedict Anderson Imagined Community Analysis

We as humans tend to group together in order to better survive. The notion of community and society has always been imbedded into the way we live, whether it be the smaller communities we are part of or the larger nations we assimilate with. Just as we look for similarities our own groups, a nation and its people look for the same. Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism takes a step outside of the classic political frame and focuses more on the social aspects of how a nation becomes nationalized. It is no wonder that Anderson’s idea of the “Imagined [Community]” is applicable to a country the same size and far more densely populated than the United States. While Benedict Anderson contends that capitalism and vernacular in print are the two major forces which create national consciousness, the forces behind China’s nationalism are slightly different (Anderson, 52-55). The Communist party in China used nation-wide education and employment as a means to not only unify China, but also to ensure the loyalty and trust of the people. Before looking at the specifics of Chinese …show more content…
When the Communists had finally achieved victory over the Nationalists, there were few spoils they could claim. The Communists were faced with a China that was disorganized, wrought with social tension, and a lack or production and education in a huge country (Hsu, 2016). Thus, we can see that unifying China under a single national identity was no easy task. However, what we do know is that the largely uneducated and capitalist-hating population of China would not assimilate under Anderson’s capitalism and vernacular in print model of nationalization (Hsu 2016). So, in order to connect and unify the millions of uneducated and unproductive people, it is no wonder that the government would focus on the education and employment of the