Hongmei Li first wants to address the concept of nationalism, which was borrowed from the West by scholars such as Yan Fu, and closely related to issues of racial hierarchy. Many 21st Century nationalists call for the expulsion of Manchurian barbarians to purify the nation. Is it possibly to assert China as a unified nation given that it has 56 ethnic groups, class and gender divisions and the like? If not, why, and what are the differences? Also, who has the power to define national interests and actively promote such an agenda? Jeffrey Wasserstrom and many others have done research on how women have been comandeered for national campaigns that places them in a secondary role. Louisa Schein (author of Minority Rules) that Miao women have been framed in a submissive, feminine role of the idealized minority. What is the desired Tibetan identity for Chinese nationalists? Often nationalism is characterized in terms of inferiority and superiority complexes, and Li asks if the panel has considered it in these terms. Duara, she points out, argues that nationalism and transnationalism are often posited as binary ideas, but interactions and connections can be seen following the Tibetan incident. Communism, as well, was a transnational movement and simultaneously used for nationalist purposes. The distinctions between state and popular nationalism must also be clearly delineated, and Li suspects that nationalist groups are influenced by China’s cyberpolice, which she estimates at 50,000. Finally, she opens the question of the impact of the financial crisis on nationalism and nationalists, and to what extent do nationalists really represent the Chinese public?
Rebecca MacKinnon, in question time, points out that it seems that many papers throughout the conference dance around the fact that China’s public sphere is almost entirely online, and if that was the situation in the U.S., for example, “God help us”, since online discussion often has greater extremes of opinion as a “silent majority” goes about their lives and does not participate. Lu Chen says that HFS participants feel they have a tool not available before to bring to justice those who are outside the reach of the law. Fan Dong points out the government censors both anti-government and pro-government speech. Moderator Ang Peng-Hwa talks about picking up the Chinese constitution in a secondhand bookstore and in its free expression section it actually allows the creation of “big character posters”, and that in some ways this prefigures the sort of expression found on the Internet.