Important Remarks

The Chinese people are self-esteemed and are proud of their own nation. They take it the greatest honor to love their own country and contribute all they can to build the socialist motherland, and they consider it the greatest shame to harm the interest, respect and honor of their socialist motherland.

——Deng Xiaoping

Patriotism and nationalism is closely related. Connotation of nationalism depends on the definition of“nationality”. “Nationality”has two definitions, the narrow one, and the broad one. In its narrow sense, nationality refers to a tribal or ethnic group of stable community with a common language, area of inhabitation, life style, culture and psyche, such as the Han, Mongolian and Russian nationalities within China. The broad meaning of nationality emphasizes a“community nationality”which is a political community of common value under one government, such as the Chinese nationality. In today's world, most countries are of multiple nationalities. Very few are of single nationality. Even the so-called homogeneous society of Japan has a small number of ethnic groups. Therefore, in its broad sense, nationality refers to a community of multiple ethnic groups. The Chinese nationality is such a community comprised of the Han and other ethnic groups. In this context, nationalism and patriotism are in accord with each other, and rational and healthy nationalism equals to patriotism. However, if nationalism in the interest of the country goes to extremes, it will harm its overall and long-term national interest. From the perspective of history and reality, that kind of nationalism has been expressed in two irrational ways. The first is chauvinism, which strongly believes that its own nationality is superior to others and has the inclination of rejecting other nationalities. The typical example is fascism. The second one is national conservatism, which rejects advanced foreign cultures with its cultural nationalism, which usually results in the withering and shrinking of its own national culture. Local nationalism is a kind of narrow nationalism within a country. Local nationalism has its origin and basis in patriotism, and patriotism is the extension and sublimation of local nationalism. In our country, most people recognize the uniformity of local nationalism and the Chinese nationality as a whole. However, if local nationalism goes to extreme, it may become a centrifugal force, leading to ethnic conflicts, to the detriment of national unification and unity.

To sum up, chauvinism derives from the principal nationality of a country, and separatism stems from ethnic minority groups. These two extreme forms of nationalism are contradictory to patriotism which is based on national interest.