That the people is without shame means that the state is without shame.
--Kang Youwei, c.1900
Marxism has completed its historical tour of duty. Thus although the
relationship between Marxism and nationalism has hardly been
exhausted as a subject of theoretical inquiry, it barely seems to
matter any longer in contemporary China. What does beg analysis now
is the relationship between liberalism and nationalism in
contemporary public life.
In recent years, the respective--and, to both participants and most
Western observers, conflicting--claims of individual human rights and
collective national rights have been thrown into relief by the
publication of Wei Jingsheng's Letters From Prison alongside a series
of books that have appeared in China under variations on the title
China Can Say No. In his letters, Wei recounts his struggle for
individual dignity over almost two decades of internment and
intermittent political activism. His message is that the state should
recognize the inherent dignity of individuals. The authors of the Say
No books, on the other hand, have no time for "individualism" or for
"American-style human rights." Instead, they rise to defend China's
dignity as a nation, and brand local human rights activists as
foolish if not treacherous for conspiring with foreign governments to
obstruct the country's rise to great power status. For all their
differences, both are concerned with the same issue: that of dignity.
