Chinese national identity and national image in the age of globalisation

Abstract

The present interest in globalisation focuses on a most fundamental question: do we need-and can we find-a new reference point for eliciting nationality and identity? The underlying reasoning has to be seen in the far-reaching shortcomings of those methodological foundations of social science that emerged in the wake of the Western Enlightenment-namely, individualism, nationalism, solutionism and presentism. This chapter examines if-and in which way-the new position, which China is likely going to occupy in this globalising world, may be one that can only persist by overcoming a national focus. That would translate into a paradoxical notion of national identity where to be ‘truly Chinese’ would translate into striving for a global understanding of citizenship.