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This article examines how Chinese intellectuals understand mass nationalism in China. Understanding their perspective is useful when analyzing the meaning and repercussions of nationalist trends throughout the 1990s, as well as its future course. While playing a major role in its revival, Chinese intellectuals actually have a very pragmatic view of nationalism based on China's goal of building a prosperous and powerful nation. They also play a role in influencing public opinion and the government's policy-making process. In the short to mid term, the public expression of anti-U.S. or anti-Japanese sentiments through nationalism is not likely to become extreme, as this would run counter to China's current development strategies and goals. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

The Chinese scholar-official had long constituted a special type of iron-clad intelligentsia, firmly based on the Confucian tradition and accustomed to rule China with unchallenged authority. This tradition was threatened for the first time in 1838 with the outbreak of the "Opium" or First Anglo-Chinese War. Outwardly, this was a simple military defeat by a "barbarian" force on one frontier of China, remote from the capital and court at Peking. As such it was nothing new in Chinese history. Hsiung-nu, Toba Tartars, Mongols and Manchus had threatened and overrun Chinese borders through the centuries. To most articulate Chinese both this and successive assaults on China through the nineteenth century, were adequately explained by the traditional and reassuring formula.

By reviewing the ideas of Yu Keping, one of the most prominent Chinese theorists on Chinese-style democracy and a key contributor to Chinese intellectual discourse on good governance, this article has two objectives: to fill a research gap in China studies by examining influential discourse during the past decade; and to shed light on Yu's controversial conception of Chinese-style democracy, which is intertwined with his views on good governance. We find that the discourse revolves around the call to "move China towards good governance." First, the ultimate objective of China's political reform is to move towards good governance, and not towards what Western social scientists call "democracy." Second, "good government" and civil society are two keys for achieving good governance, which demonstrates that Yu's basic orientation is liberal. Third, governance reform, constituting a major component of China's political reform, has achieved much progress. (China Q/GIGA)