IHT: Nationalism at core of China's reaction to Tibet unrest

IHT: Nationalism at core of China's reaction to Tibet unrest

Communist Party leaders had hoped to use this Olympic moment to showcase how China has become a modern and nonthreatening emerging world power. President Hu Jintao has advocated a "harmonious society" as a catchphrase to signal a new government emphasis on addressing inequality in society. At the same time, China's soft power abroad is rising with its bulging foreign exchange reserves, its aid programs to poor countries and its increasingly active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear crisis.

But the Tibet crisis has revealed a leadership that has seemingly stepped back into its harsher past. Buddhist monks in Tibet are now being subjected to punitive "patriotic education" campaigns. Paramilitary police officers and soldiers have swept across huge areas of western China in a crackdown that is under way, if unseen. Party leaders, including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, have vilified the Dalai Lama and blamed a "Dalai clique" for orchestrating the protests to sabotage China's Olympic moment.

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Scholars often describe nationalism as the state religion in China now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country's priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism can be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country's main ethnic groups - the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples - as the "five fingers" of China.

Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China's leaders do not consider the country whole.

"The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China together," said Anand, a reader in international relations at Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regard the Tibetan protests "as an attack on their core identity."