April 27, 2021 | Is Nationalism Constraining China's Soft Power?
It's becoming clear nationalism is rising in conjunction with China's global influence. How can Chinese leaders navigate this constraint on its current growth trajectory?
Chloe Zhao winning the Oscar for Best Director revealed some things about China and the state of Chinese society. It's becoming clear nationalism is rising in conjunction with China's global influence. How can Chinese leaders navigate this constraint on its current growth trajectory?
Some background first:
Zhao is the first woman of color and the first Chinese woman to win this award, a phenomenal achievement. Many in the west expected China to celebrate the success of one of its own. That’s not what happened. Instead of celebrating, Chinese authorities censored news of Zhao’s Oscar victory on Chinese state and social media platforms.
Along with many others in the west, I was confused when I heard the news of the censorship, but it didn’t really surprise me either. China’s media censorship laws are among the strictest in the world. Authorities frequently censor anything from children’s cartoons to former Premier Wen Jiabao’s eulogy for his late mother.
Apparently, Chloe Zhao has been somewhat critical of China in the past. Yet, by other accounts, she has expressed pride in her Chinese heritage and country. When I learned Zhao was censored, my initial thought was this was just another heavy-handed move by thin-skinned PRC censors. The reality is a bit more complicated.
In short, the Chinese government will censor media that is either overly critical of government policies or anything likely to trigger some form of collective action that the government may not be able to control. See the tweet below from one of my favorite Twitter accounts for a more detailed explanation of the main types of media content that will trigger censorship in China.
In Zhao’s case, this wasn’t a matter of touchy censors removing news related to her Oscar win because they felt she was a threat to CCP authority. Rather the news was likely censored due to a highly negative response among a vast swarm of internet nationalists on Chinese social media.
Zhao’s censorship revealed the prominent role of nationalism in China’s public discourse and political environment. It’s also clearer how censorship is not always a function of blocking Chinese citizens’ access to information about the outside world. It’s also a function of dialing down nationalist tendencies to a manageable volume.
Moreover, this week’s events reveal much about how Chinese citizens envision their country’s relationship with the rest of the world. Ten or fifteen years ago, if a PRC citizen won a major academy award or received any international recognition, this would have been an unequivocally proud moment of national celebration. But not anymore — something’s changed.
Based on discussions with those familiar with China’s cultural discourse, Chinese nationalists’ rejection of Chloe Zhao is a question of identity and whether or not she should be “qualified” to be the embodiment of contemporary Chinese culture on the world stage.
Although Zhao is a Chinese citizen, she left China at 15 to attend boarding school in the United Kingdom. Later she moved to the US to continue her education before ultimately settling down in the US for good.
Zhao’s family background is also a source of controversy and target of derision. Zhao’s father is a wealthy industrialist, and her step-mother is Song Dandan, one of China’s most famous actresses. Her privileged background and her perceived disconnect from China’s growth and evolution over the past 25 years seem to be an internal source of ambivalence regarding how Zhao is perceived in China.
China’s public response to Chloe Zhao’s Oscar win reveals Chinese leaders’ complicated relationship with the growing nationalist tendencies that are part and parcel with China’s growth and rise in global influence. Nationalist sentiment remains a powerful force among large segments of the Chinese population and is an incredibly powerful internal constraint for China’s political leaders.
It’s worth considering how these internal constraints will influence Chinese projections of soft power moving forward. Despite a concerted effort to influence global narratives, Chinese external propaganda is notoriously clumsy and combative. It’s unclear how Chinese authorities intend to manage this balancing act between finding a way to effectively influence global hearts and minds while placating the volatile impulses of nationalists back home.
Previous Notes:
Additional Reading
China-born Chloe Zhao sought common ground in Oscars speech
In her acceptance speech for the Best Director Oscar for "Nomadland," Chloe Zhao recited the first verses of the San Zi Jing, a classic Confucian poem her father taught her.
Her reference evoked pan-Chineseness and the intimacy of family, while rejecting the patriotic education of the Chinese Communist Party. Her reference evoked a pride in the classics with wide appeal in some Chinese cultural contexts.
But even as Zhao's speech expressed gratitude to her father, it fell far short of praising her motherland. And this is the challenge facing not just artists born in China, but anyone seeking to distribute media there -- the space for ambiguous expression in the mainland has collapsed.
This year's Oscars could have been a moment of pride for China. Then politics got in the way
The Academy Awards this year could have been a major moment of pride for China.
Chloe Zhao, a Beijing-born filmmaker, made history Sunday by winning the best director Oscar for her movie "Nomadland" -- becoming the first Asian woman and only the second woman to ever win the award. Zhao's movie also won best picture.
But China is not celebrating -- at least not officially.
On the contrary, this year's Oscars was not aired anywhere in China -- including on two major streaming platforms where the annual ceremony had been shown live in previous years. In Hong Kong, a leading broadcaster opted not to air the Oscars for the first time in more than half a century.
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash