China Seminar | 11 September 1996

Patriotism? Nationalism? Power Struggle?: Recent Manifestations and Concerns

Daniel W. Y. Kwok

From the missile crisis in the Taiwan Straits to the recently concluded Olympic Games, and indeed on numerous other occasions, China appears to offer the world a new intensity in her nationalistic sentiments. The reasons are many, so are the views interpreting this new stridency. In this thirtieth year of the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, one cannot but be reminded of the same stridency in that movement and wonder about continuities and discontinuities of political style and substance in China. Daniel Kwok, founder of the China Seminar, will discuss some aspects of this recent phenomenon.

Professor Kwok is a member of the history department of the University of Hawaii, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Chinese history, Chinese intellectual history and World Civilizations. He has concurrently served in numerous administrative posts, including chair of Asian Studies, chair of History Department, director of Council of Chinese Studies, and director of Center for Chinese Studies. Among his writings are Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900-1950; Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (with Richard J. Smith), and the recently published Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution (translator and editor of work by Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao). He is also preparing for publication a cultural history of China (in Chinese), translations of works by Han dynasty thinkers Jia Yi and Lu Jia, and a work on the Chinese garden.