By Alexandre Dor
China’s WW2 remembrances are but the latest instance of a ‘new’ Chinese Nationalism created by the CCP.
For the last 25 years, nationalism has proved to be the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite ideology. Under Xi Jinping the Party’s commitment to the patriotic narrative has only strengthened.
Last year Xi announced the creation of three new holidays, two of which are pointedly anti-Japanese. The first, on September 3, is called “Victory Day of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” and will mark the end of the “World Anti-Fascist War.” The second, on December 13, is a national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
As China previously only had seven official holidays, the significance of embedding anti-Japanese sentiment into the national definition of what China “is” cannot be understated. Yet historically speaking the trend is a recent development, the term “Century of Humiliation” was not present in Chinese textbooks until 1990. What marked its introduction and brought about a new (historically speaking) Chinese nationalism was a crisis of legitimacy caused by the shifting global order of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Read the full story at The Diplomat