‘A momentary glow of fraternity’: Narratives of Chinese nationalism and capitalism

This essay discusses how Chinese culture is variously reified and deployed in two competing discursive systems: the modernist imaginary of the nation‐state ‐ emphasizing essentialism, territoriality, and fixity‐in tension with the modernist imagining of entre‐prenurial capitalism ‐ celebrating hybridity, deterritorialization, and fluidity. These alternative visions of modernity are to a large extent conditioned by geopolitics and the dynamism of global capitalism in the Asia‐Pacific. Regimes in China and Singapore have deployed “Confucian” values in attempts to discipline their societies against the lures of transnational capitalism based on fraternal Chinese networks ("Greater China"). Both visions of Chinese modernitites depend on self‐orientalizing strategies that critique “Western” values like individualism and human rights. These narratives intersect with voices claiming an “Asian renaissance” and “the Asian Way” in global capitalism, thus constituting a counter‐hegemony to American domination of the Asia‐Pacific.

Key words:

• Chinese culture
• modernity
• social imaginary
• nationalism
• capitalism