Author ｜
Yang Jui-sung
Abstract ｜
My research aims to analyze the historical process and significance of how the term “Four Hundred Millions,” originally a plain description of the Qing population, has gradually become widely utilized by many people as a national symbol of modern China. Thanks to the late Qing reform thinking, especially the discourses of Kang Yowei and Liang Qichao, the “digitalized” way of depicting the population size of Qing China, together with the use of the term “Compatriot,” came to shape a highly homogeneous national identity of modern China. This symbol also indicates the important transition of China transforming into a nation-statefrom a traditional empire. However, on the other hand, this symbol has also been constantly appropriated to construct negative national identities,such as “Four Hundred Million Animals,” in order to shame China into becoming a true nation. And since the “Four Hundred Millions” discourse is also often paralleled to other famous collective images/symbols, such as “a heap of loose sand” and “republic of five peoples,” my study has tried to reflect on the complicated relationship and tension between these symbols as well. The symbolic power of “Four Hundred Millions” not only performs the function of setting the “boundary” of modern Chinese nation against other nations, a function that has been analyzed by B. Anderson,but also has become “naturally” embedded in the banal nationalism of modern China. By “denaturalizing” this phenomenon and historicizing this symbol by means of analyzing and comparing painstakingly a variety of texts which utilize this symbol, my study has tried to further our understanding of the historical formation and the significance of the symbolic power of “Four-Hundred Millions” in the construction of modern Chinese identity.
keywords ｜
Four Hundred Millions, Compatriots, Loose Sand, Five Peoples, Liang Qichao