In honor of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1st, my friend Carsey Yee has sent another video: The Two Chinese Characters do the March of the Volunteers (twice, once with English subtitles). I was a bit surprised to learn that the song predates the PRC by over ten years, that the author was arrested and the song banned for a time (Can anyone think of another case where a national anthem was banned without a regime change taking place?), and, of course, the lyrics changed during the Cultural Revolution.

I suppose it makes sense: the history of the song really is the history of China.

I just learned of the Japanese Emperor and Empress’ visit to Hawai’i [via]. It’s not the first time that a member of the Japanese Imperial family has visited the islands, though you would hardly know it from the gushing “historic” reports of the media. Though this is the first visit by Akihito as Emperor, Akihito has visited the islands before, as have other members of Japan’s now-symbolic dynasty. In addition to the Advertiser’s photo gallery, there are some excellent shots on Flickr by “731photo” and “onecardshort”, as well as one picture from the US Pacific Command.¹

The continuing connection between the Hawai’i Japanese immigrant community and Japan was a matter of strategic concern from the beginning: The Kingdom of Hawai’i wanted to use Japan as a counterweight against US power; the Republic of Hawai’i used the threat of Japan — which was actively concerned about the treatment of Japanese in Hawai’i — to support the annexation of the islands by the US; in the Territorial era, disputes about immigration and about labor organization often involved the Japanese consulate.² And it’s also true that the Japanese government considered Japanese emigrants to be an extension of the nation³ , and tried, in a fairly blunt fashion, to influence foreign opinion through the overseas communities. By the 1910s and 20s, discussion in the media and halls of power of the Hawaiian Japanese community as a potential “fifth column” was pretty common, and that view was also common on the mainland. It took an immigration ban, a war, Japan’s crushing defeat and entry into the US security system, and the “blood sacrifice” of Nikkei serving with distinction in the US military to overcome those fears, and transform the Japanese immigrant community and their descendants into simply “ethnic” Americans. So, a little over twenty years past the end of WWII, fifteen past the end of the US occupation, the centennial of Japanese immigration into Hawai’i could be celebrated with public monuments, publications and events.

This history is why I was so disturbed to read about PRC policy which sees overseas Chinese as intelligence and lobbying agents. There’s a reasonable argument to be made — as Ichioka does — that Japanese government policy towards emigrants gave support to anti-immigrant attitudes in the US and elsewhere. It’s true that other governments treat emigres as resources to some extent, and urge their citizens overseas to represent the nation well, but the level of coordination, and open encouragement distinguishes pre-war Japanese policy and current PRC policy from the rest of the pack. I don’t think we’re on the verge of a “Yellow Peril” panic in the US at this point, but there’s no question that this has lead to serious negative consequences for individuals, and could lead to wider problems in the future.

x-posted

1. That it’s a better shot of the Admiral than of the Emperor is, I suppose, not surprising.
2. See Gary Okihiro, John Stephan, also Morris-Suzuki
3. see also

From the Times via CDT an article about a group of Chinese intellectuals who are asking for some new people to be put on Chinese currency. This is actually a big issue, since who nations put on their money is a political statement of some importance.¹ The list of suggested people is pretty interesting. They are suggesting Qu Yuan, Li Bai, Yue Fei, and Wen Tianxiang. The Times calls Qu Yuan a poet, which he was, but of course he was much better known as a protester against political corruption. Li Bai is the “pure” poet in the group, and Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang are both straight nationalist figures who died resisting foreign interference in China’s internal affairs. It is a well-thought out list (Not all Mao, but nationalistic enough to pass muster) and I wish them luck, but I suspect not much will change. Chinese money has always been very focused on politicians.

Sun Yat-sen got most of the face time under the Republic, appearing on all sorts of notes.

Mao has taken pride of place since.

Below is a 1945 note with Lin Sen, President of the Republic and one of the very few non-ultimate leader politicians to make it on the money

A lot of nations will put great heroes of the past on the currency, in part to avoid the whole cult of personality thing. China has not done this much. Below is a Commercial Bank of China note with (I assume) Confucius on it. After May 4th a lot of the great culture heroes were “Feudal” and did not work well as symbols of the new nation

Apparently nobody told the Japanese that, as they liked putting Confucius on the money

One of the puppet governments in North China issued notes with Confucius, the symbol of Chinese culture and Prince Shotoku, symbol of Japanese culture. Supposedly in one of the early versions a Chinese engraver made Confucius flick Prince Shotoku an obscene gesture. Not sure if that story is true, but I hope it is.

To the extent you do get symbols of Traditional China on Chinese money they tend to be abstract and cleaned up by a connection to nationalism, like the note below, with a traditional ritual vessel and Sun Yat-sen

Like many other nations China has tried to symbolize the national past with common people, like the Farmer’s Bank note below.

Below is one from Xinjiang which shows both farming (the canonical occupation for men) and weaving (the canonical occupation for women) Given that Xinjiang was not a very Han place under the Republic they may have been trying to emphasize their Chinese-ness

Foreign banks could tie themselves to China too, as with the Sino-Scandinavian Bank note below, which emphasizes the great historic links between China and Scandinavia. Frankly I’m not sure if in the 1920′s pictures that bring to mind white people coming from across the sea to rob you was the best selling point for a Chinese audience. The bank folded in 1927

Regional banks could of course do national symbols, but a lot of them seem to have done scenic spots to play up local identity, such as the Guangxi note below

Or this Anhui note, which gives the impression that Anhui does not have much for scenery.

The big theme that comes out if you look at a lot of Chinese money however is modernization. Lots of pictures of how we are making China into a developed country.

Provincial banks did it, like the Guanxi note above with a road and a building (this is a 1912 note, and they seem to be blurring their political position by putting in all three revolutionary flags) Below is a Guangdong note with yet another modern building.

Many of these seem pretty unimpressive today. So China has trains, big deal

Or they seem to emphasize bits of modernization that one might not celebrate, as with this circulating bond to build a new (modern) prison.

The Communists at first did some fairly radical stuff, as below

But they pretty soon settled down into doing fairly standard development stuff. (a lot of their pre-1949 notes were actually very traditional and could just as well have been from any provincial bank)

But as below, it was Communist development, with the all-important tractor and of course a woman driving it.

The note above has People’s Bank of China written in lots of minority languages. Minorities get a lot of play since 1976

But it is mostly all Mao all the time. The real issue of course will not be who to put on if we take Mao off some of the notes, it will be will anyone have the nerve to take him off at all.

1. I’ve always thought that American money had remained stuck in the 19th century because of a lack of national confidence. If someone did suggest changing our money some Democrat would probably suggest putting MLK on there and Republicans would go nuts about political correctness. Easier to stick with Jackson. Plus, if we went with more modern designs and colors like most of the world has done in might turn us gay.

The new book Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 (Harvard University Press) by Xu Guoqi ¹ , is a good read but also a serious piece of research which uses sport to see new dimensions of nationalism. The Olympics, one of those “invented traditions” if there ever was one, and nationalism feed on each other. Xu has the story on everything from Chiang Kai-shek to Ping Pong Diplomacy to the politicization of the non-political ideal and all points in between.

Susan Brownell’s Beijing Olympic FAQ at China Beat has a slightly contrarian take on the recent flap over Olympic torch protests. She suggests that the comparison with the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany is not so useful as a comparison with the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis — remember the song, “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louey?” The United States was then the rising power, fresh from conquests in the Philippines and ready to take on the world. Brownell points out why Europeans could look down their noses at the newcomers and how Americans responded.

Meanwhile, two other recent posts also put the present moment into (drum roll, please) Historical Perspective.

“China’s Nationalism and How Not to Deal With It” at China Digital Times translates a Chinese blog posting which also urges more patience, while the response from “angry young Chinese” to the torch protests is nicely illustrated in a YouTube video, “Chinese Nationalism is Westerners’ Fear.

The video accuses the West of hypocrisy. One of many examples: 1) “we tried Communism and you hated us for being Communist” and then 2) “when we embraced Capitalism you hate us for being Capitalist.” Robert Daly, Responding to Chinese Grievances posted at China Digital Times, comments on this long list. For instance, to 1) he replies: “True, more or less. And China hated America for being a capitalist liberal democracy. It was a hate- and fear-filled time all around” and 2) “Not exactly. But America does fear China, in part, because China is gaining wealth and power through following (with Chinese characteristics) prescriptions that were offered by the West.”

1. Full disclosure, Guoqi is a good friend.

Via China Digital Times a You Tube presentation for foreigners who know f****¹ all about Chinese history explaining why Tibet was, is and always will be part of China. The only really interesting thing about it in a historical sense is that when they flash a series of maps to prove the “legitimancy” of China’s claims to Tibet they give the start and end dates for the Yuan and Qing dynasties² For the Republic they only have a start date, not an end date, whereas most mainland stuff ends the Republic in 1949. Nice to see an attempt to reach out to the other side.

1. a word that is used about 20 times in this bit of scholarship
2. They have a map showing that the Ming controlled Tibet too. Did you know that? Neither did I. Learn something everyday

Have you been to the British Museum? One of the best museums in the world, largely because it contains the loot of empire, stuff the Brits brought back from all over the place, mostly from the days when archeology was more like looting. They have the Elgin Marbles which have been the source of a good deal of controversy, with the Greeks wanting it back and the Brits not wanting to return it.

One of the jewels of the BM collection is the Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang, the world’s first printed book.

Although it was “acquired” by Aurel Stein under conditions that would not pass muster today, as far as I know the Chinese have not asked for it back. This is a bit surprising to me. Part of it is that the whole reclaiming antiquities thing seems to be less common in East Asia then in the West. I think it also has to do with where things fit into the popular mind. Greeks want the Elgin Marbles back because they are masterworks of Greek art and they are Greeks. China has requested some stuff from An-yang back, but they have not, as yet, been interested in this. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before Chinese nationalists start demanding back the treasures of Chinese culture all over the world. I suspect that even then the Diamond Sutra would not be as big a deal for China since being Buddhist it may fit less well into modern Chinese conceptions of the treasures of Chinese culture than it does for westerners. It’s one of those things which seems, to me anyway, to loom larger in the foreign concept of China than the Chinese one.

Migration and identity are tough issues, particularly as our tendency towards literalism (you thought we were all postmodernists? Not even close.) with regard to concepts like nation and ethnicity continues to grow. Using Nationmaster, Sun Bin produced some lovely maps of the Chinese Diaspora. My only big quibble is the lack of data for the Russian Federation, given the thousands of Chinese in the Russian East before the PRC and particularly in the present. Still, it’s a fantastic example of the ease with which data and imaging tools can produce fantastic graphics.

A while back, I ran across this critique of media coverage of Taiwan [via] from Michael Turton (a fantastic Taiwan-based blogger, with lots of links and interesting things to say, including a regular roundup of Taiwan blogs that looks like a great resource) which actually illustrated for me this tendency to literalism quite strongly. In this particular post he actually argues that “China has never owned Taiwan” largely because Taiwan was “never the possession of any ethnic Chinese emperor.” In other words, the Qing dynasty which conquered Taiwan and which was the acknowledged possessor of it in international law (up to 1895, when the Japanese got it as part of the Sino-Japanese war indemnity), doesn’t count as Chinese.

From a strictly literal ethnic point of view, and based on thoroughly modern concepts of international law, there’s some grounding to that: the Qing dynasty was Manchurian in origin, ethnically distinct and based on conquest. Though Qing emperors lived very typical Chinese Imperial lives, throughout the Qing, the government was deeply concerned that non-Manchu Chinese would discover some ethnic solidarity or identity (Kuhn’s Soulstealers is a good example, from mid-dynasty) and there’s no question that part of the fall of the Qing was related to irredentist Han nationalism. But that’s a very late development; there’s about two centuries of the Qing dynasty in which nobody seriously questions the legitimacy of Manchu rule. If the Qing isn’t legitimately Chinese, then the modern borders of China — based on Qing conquests — need serious reconsideration, particularly in the west.

But the “strictly literal ethnic” and “thoroughly modern concepts of international law” are absurdities when applied that far back or that literally. While I’m sympathetic to Turton’s position on Taiwanese independence, applying the same principles would delegitimize its current government — based on ethnic migration and conquest — and probably (since Turton seems to acknowledge Japanese colonization) result in US control of the island. More to the point, it presumes an historical purity which runs counter to all experience.

Non Sequitur: a bibliography of Chinese popular religion scholarship

It has been in the news of late that China has built a rail line to Tibet. It cost $3.2 billion, and the train cars have to be pressurized, but you can now get to Tibet cheaper than you could before. The official reason for this is to encourage economic development in the backward area of Tibet. The unspoken purpose is of course is to encourage Han migration and tie Tibet more closely to China. Might also help in case of war with India.

I have not seen it mentioned, but another reason to build it is because Sun Yat-sen wanted to build a railway to Tibet. Everyone who visits Nanjing learns that Sun wanted to build a bridge across the Yangzi, but that Mao did it. Carrying out the great tasks of the revolution is always something Chinese governments like to do.

After the 1911 revolution, when Yuan Shikai was made President Sun was made Minister of Railways. Yuan was chosen over Sun because Yuan was seen as a practical politician while Sun was a dreamer. Sun’s plan for railway development was quite frankly nuts, as the map below, from his collected works, shows.

Sun’s plan

In China proper he called for a network of railways that has not been built to this day. The map of Tibet is even more fantastic. I particularly like the route that goes along the border with India along, apparently, the spine of the Himalayas. This, like his net of rails in Mongolia, was intended to tie these border areas more closely to China. The era around 1911 was the age of the Rights Recovery Movement, when in addition to Chinese governments trying to hold on to every bit of sovereignty they could, non-state actors and individual citizens were supposed to do the same. All the spur lines running into Nepal seem to be laying claim to endangered territory. Most of these lines seem economically insane, but as they are more political than economic plans in the first place that is fine. The modern Tibet line is pretty much the same thing. I have no idea how much economic growth in will generate, but I’m sure it will be short of 3.2 billion. Still, Tibet is tied to the motherland, and the fact that it is economically crazy almost makes it better.

The modern line