Multicultural Challenges and Sustainable Democracy in Europe and East Asia

N. Kim

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137403445
• eBook ISBN: 9781137403452
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This collection examines the current stage of multicultural challenges and their influence on democracy in 12 countries of Europe and East Asia. Contributors draw out the differences between European and East Asian approaches to universalizing locality and localizing global norms regarding human rights and democratic individuality.

Part I

Socio-cultural Cleavage and Challenges to Democracy in East Asia

1

Multicultural Dreaming: Democracy and Multiculturalism in the ‘Chinese Dream’

James Farrer

Multiculturalism in the once-and-future Chinese Empire

The challenge of multiculturalism for liberal democratic regimes is the inclusion, culturally, economically, socially and above all politically, of minority populations. Exclusion of a minority migrant, religious or ethnic group is anathema to the ideals of modern democratic liberalism. For an authoritarian regime such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), however, the challenge of multiculturalism is not necessarily aligned with nor conceptualized through the logic of liberal democracy. Indeed, for many in China, the ideals of multiculturalism and democracy might seem directly opposed. If free and democratic elections were held in restive Tibet or Xinjiang, would not the unassimilated minority populations simply vote to exit the Chinese nation? Would not Taiwan declare formal independence without the looming threat of Chinese military action? Would not even Hong Kong seek greater autonomy, if not outright independence, if allowed to voice its desires in unhindered elections?

Such threats to national unity are seldom voiced explicitly inside China, but the threats of ethnic unrest and separatism underlie the slogan of a state-managed ‘harmonious society’ in which multiculturalism is managed by an authoritarian one-party state. At the same time, we must not forget that the borders of the Chinese state were based on those of a multiethnic and minority-led empire, arguably the only such large-scale empire to survive the transition to the nation-state system (Schell and Delury, 2013). The politics of maintaining those national borders have vexed Chinese leaders for the last century (Mullaney, 2011). As China postures militarily over Taiwan and other maritime territories, these claims too are based on a map of historical empire. Moreover, a new ‘global China’ has emerged which is massively linked to world economy through flows of investment, ideas and people (Zweig, 2002). As the new regime mobilizes around a ‘Chinese dream’ of rising global influence, a new set of multicultural challenges emerge, as for the USA today, around the management of an informal transnational empire, with complex commercial interests abroad, and with many highly skilled migrants and other foreign nationals living within the national borders. For both historical reasons and current developments, China’s multiculturalism has an imperial scale, even if not involving a formal empire.

In sum, like the European and Asian democracies, China very clearly faces a multitude of multicultural challenges, but arguably more complex ones, framed through a radically different type of political rhetoric. The challenges involve the historical legacies of the Qing Empire, such as traditional minorities, legacies of colonialism and the Cold War, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the emerging transnational ties of ‘global China’, including educated Chinese returning from abroad, and a growing population of foreign migrants and sojourners inside China. As many commentators have noted, how China faces these unique multicultural challenges is key to the success of the ‘Chinese dream’ of ‘national restoration’ (Johnson, 2013). This chapter thus investigates China’s approach to multiculturalism, not through theories drawn from the European experience, which do not easily map onto the Chinese political context, but in terms of the recent Chinese formulation of a Chinese dream, examining how this authoritarian and nationalist narrative projects onto the multicultural terrain of a multiethnic and transnational ‘global China’.

The Chinese dream as national narrative

Since assuming the chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, President Xi Jinping has promoted a new slogan of a Chinese dream (zhongguomeng) to represent his ideals for national development. Xi has used the phrase in various contexts to encompass ‘national rejuvenation, improvement of people’s livelihoods, prosperity, construction of a better society and military strengthening as the common dream of the Chinese people that can be best achieved under one party, socialist rule’ (Bishop, 2013). The slogan has been upheld in state media as a ‘ruling ideology of the new leadership’ (Wang Yiwei, 2013).

An editorial in the People’s Daily outlines five points about the Chinese dream: (1) The Chinese Dream is the fulfilment of a two-century quest for China’s revival as a strong and rich country following the invasions and humiliations that began with the First Opium War with Britain in 1839–42. (2) The dream requires the efforts on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the complete unification of China. (3) The dream contributes to a global peaceful democratic world order. (4) The dream contributes to promoting a multicultural, multipolar and culturally pluralistic world. (5) The dream is not in conflict with other national dreams, nor is it simply the dream of one country, and certainly not a dream of global hegemony (Chen, 2013).

The emphasis on the international and peaceful version of the Chinese dream can be read as a direct response to suspicions voiced in the global press that the Chinese dream represented a narrowly nationalistic vision or even a dream of China’s global domination (People’s Daily, 2013; Wang Yiwei, 2013). Seen from a longer historical perspective, this new slogan of a Chinese dream can also be read as the latest episode in a 200-year-long quest for a ‘strong and prosperous’ China, a goal that has focused more on pragmatic outcomes than ideology, and can be traced back to Qing scholars urging a decisive reaction to rising Western power (Schell and Delury, 2013). At the present time, the new focus on the global dimensions of the Chinese dream also accents the growing importance of China’s transnational ties, including both inbound and outbound flows of goods, capital, ideas and people. China’s dream is not simply for the ‘Chinese’ but represents a transnational vision of China’s influence and, arguably, a multicultural vision of China proper. It is the transnational and multicultural dimensions of China’s developmental dream that are the focus of this chapter.

From the point of view of political sociology, Xi’s narrative of a Chinese dream shows the uses of such ‘national narratives’ for providing intuitively graspable stories on which to hang diverse state policies. In short, national narratives function as political rhetoric because they allow diverse actors to imagine themselves as part of a larger national destiny. Sociologically, the issue is not so much the veracity of stories, but their uses as collective representations. Politically, we can investigate their uses and implications for various policy areas, while viewing them as a focus of political mobilization, and also as a site of political contest.

Such narratives shape social reality by imputing goals, agents and forms of agency (Burke, 1989). National narratives matter in terms of the developmental models they imply, and in terms of who is included and excluded. It is this cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion that I focus on here, considering how different types of actors seem to be left in or out of the Chinese dream and how this narrative relates to the politics of managing political, cultural and demographic diversity within China and also managing growing streams of transnational flows in and out of China.

Under the previous leadership duo of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the state also promoted stories of ‘scientific development’ and a ‘harmonious society’ – narrative frames to mobilize the diverse elements in the country around the Party’s leadership goals (see Liu, 2012). In contrast to these previous leadership narratives that focused on China’s internal development, the rhetoric of the Chinese dream seems to have a particularly strong emphasis on China’s transnational ties and global positioning. The Chinese dream story is aimed directly at Chinese outside of mainland China proper, overtly appealing to Chinese residents in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as successful Chinese living further abroad (see Guo, 2013; Home Affairs Bureau, 2013). A related reason Chinese leaders are grasping for a ‘dream’ is to give highly mobile Chinese a reason to believe in the country’s future at a time when increasing numbers of the PRC’s educated and wealthy elites have moved abroad or are contemplating moving themselves, their assets or the families offshore (see Phoenix Television, 2013). Finally, for the first time, the vision of the Chinese dream seems aimed not only at the talented Chinese living abroad, but also at foreigners contemplating working in China. As Wang Huiyao, an expert on China’s skilled labour market, said in a television discussion of China’s skilled migrant problem, ‘We should not only look for the best among the 1.3 billion Chinese but among the 7 billion people of the world in order to realize China’s so-called China Dream’ (Phoenix Television, 2013).

Multicultural politics depends on the inclusiveness of such national narratives. National narratives, such as the American dream or the Chinese dream, are aimed primarily at citizens, but may sympathetically incline foreigners to participate in that project as investors, immigrants or ideological fellow travellers, a mechanism of ‘soft power’ projection. Unlike stories of smaller communities, the national narratives of great powers have a much wider audience than their own citizenry. The resonance of the American dream to migrants is widely known (see Lee, 2010, p. 1). Through the story of the Chinese dream, China’s cultural politics also show an increasingly transnational focus.

There is little doubt that the Chinese dream is itself a reference to the American dream (meiguomeng), a well-known phrase in Chinese (see Callahan, 2013; Hu, 2013; Yang, 2013). In his book China and the American Dream, Richard Madsen has argued that ideas of social change in post-Mao China were shaped profoundly by various versions of the American dream, with China’s intellectuals in particular looking to the USA as a model of material prosperity and individual self-development (Madsen, 1995). The use of the phrase Chinese dream thus represents both homage to and an implicit challenge to this American story. Compared with the Chinese dream, some commentators have pointed out that the American dream is largely a story of individual material success, while the Chinese dream is one of collective success (Johnson, 2013; Osnos, 2013). But the Chinese dream story has many other distinct features in its overt and implicit messages as will be discussed below.

As Madsen’s writing on China shows, even America’s rivals and adversaries felt compelled to respond to the globalized narrative of the American dream. In some ways China’s ‘dream’ seems equally expansive, though with different nuances. President Xi referred to the dream in speeches in Africa, while talking about Chinese development aid to Africa (Lin, 2013). One Chinese commentator wrote that the Chinese dream is ‘so inclusive that it will be conducive to other countries, especially developing countries, to help them realize their own dreams’ (Wang Yiwei, 2013). Nevertheless, Xi has repeatedly linked the Chinese dream explicitly to a historical mission of the ‘great revival of the Chinese people/race/nation (minzu)’. ‘Revival of the people’ could equally be translated ‘revival of the Chinese race’ and perceived as a narrowly ethno-nationalist tale (Isogawa, 2013). This story of a ‘national revival’ also retains an implicit reference to the idea of national humiliation that has been at the centrepiece of official Party patriotic education since the student movement of 1989 (Wang, 2012; Callahan, 2013; Home Affairs Bureau, 2013). Despite such ominous phrasing, the official media claimed that the Chinese dream ‘is not a call for revanchism and Chinese nationalism at the expense of its neighbors. It is the dream of China, which once suffered invasions and turmoil, to maintain lasting...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: The Universalization of Locality and Localization of Global Norms in Europe and East Asia
• Part I: Socio-cultural Cleavage and Challenges to Democracy in East Asia
• Part II: Discontent over Multiculturalism and Alternative Routes in Europe
• Index