| Abstract: | This article focuses on the so-called ‘military websites’ in Chinese cyberspace to examine the complexity of contemporary Chinese nationalism. By pointing out the fact that the majority of members of military websites are well educated and well informed, yet nationalistic and anti-Western, the author argues that the key factor in shaping their nationalist thinking is the formation of a new interest-driven game-playing paradigm in the past two decades which the Chinese use to interpret national policies and international relations today. Ironically, much of the new interpretative framework has been borrowed from Western concepts and ideas, including Comprehensive National Power, National Interests, and Rules of the Game. Equipped with this new paradigm to interpret the received information and look at the world, the more informed Chinese are the more nationalist they may be, as demonstrated by the responses to the plane bugging incident by Chinese net surfers. |
