Columbia East Asia Review 75
Fenqing: A Study of China’s
‘Angry Youth’ in the Era of the Internet
Nina Baculinao, Columbia University
A startling new force is casting a shadow on China’s domestic and international situation: the fenqing, or China’s “angry youth.” In its search for an
alternative theory of legitimacy and its embrace of technological positivism
to enhance control, the Chinese party-state has condoned new forms of public discourse. The fenqing discourse, with its combative and anti-Western
characteristics, is challenging conventional theories about China’s state-society dialectic. Some of the most educated and globally engaged segments of
China’s youth, empowered by the Internet, are considered a natural constituency for liberalizing China. But so far, they have generally helped the partystate overpower the liberal-democratic discourse, choosing patriotism over
democracy. On the other hand, they have also shown that, despite censorship
and control, Chinese public opinion is not an oxymoron, and that, lacking
elective procedural legitimacy, the Chinese party-state is also susceptible to
popular nationalist pressures.
This paper seeks to explore how China’s rise as a global power and the advent of the Internet have stirred up a new form of cyber-nationalism among
the younger generation, which represents a double-edged sword that can potentially buttress or threaten state goals. The protests against the U.S. in
1999 and 2001, and against Japan in 2005, and populist backlash against
Tibet supporters in 2008, highlight the unpredictable and volatile power of
the fenqing. This paper draws from original interviews of central actors involved in these events, including patriotic “red hackers,” anti-Japan activists,
and authors of nationalistic bestsellers, to tackle the central questions of the
fenqing’s demographic scope, historical roots and potential impact.
Given historical precedents, it bears watching whether the growing perception of Western attempts to contain China’s rise can trigger new waves of
fenqing movements in the future, that in turn can affect the rational construction of China’s relations with the world.
B
oth China and the world first witnessed the startling force of fenqing or
China’s “angry youth” in the aftermath of the accidental bombing of the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade by U.S.-led NATO forces in 1999. For
weeks, debates and conspiracy theories regarding the incident thrived in online forums, inciting tens of thousands of students to march by and inflict damages to U.S.
embassy and consulate buildings in China, as the police contingents simply stood by
even as the Consulate in the city of Chengdu burned to the ground. What followed
76 Baculinao • Fenqing
were intense cyber-attacks on the U.S. after the 2001 Hainan spy plane incident,
violence against Japanese establishments in China in the wake of the 2005 textbook
controversy, and counter-attacks against pro-Tibet protests during the 2008 Olympic
Torch relay. Recently, China’s youth’s reaction to the Arab Spring sweeping across the
Middle East has two extremes: suspicion of a Western scheme to control a strategic
region, and a desire for pro-democracy demonstrations in China proper. Moreover,
the U.S. has declared a new Asia-Pacific strategy that seeks to rebuild America’s geopolitical power in the region, fueling concern among China’s youth that America is
plotting to contain China’s rise.
This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about China’s fenqing by tackling
three basic questions: Who are the fenqing and what are their general characteristics?
Why did fenqing emerge in the 1990s and how is the nature of fenqing’s nationalism
distinct from China’s past nationalistic movements? To what extent do fenqing impact
China’s domestic and foreign policies and how do their actions align with state goals?
This paper argues that the fenqing are a modern grassroots ideational force
representing the rise of militant popular nationalism among China’s youth as the
country rises on the world stage. The fenqing can easily mobilize with the help of
the virtual public sphere provided by the Internet. Moreover, they develop mostly
outside the direct control of the ruling Chinese party-state and have the potential to
buttress or threaten state goals.
Methodology
I approach the issue of fenqing from a primarily sociological perspective, using Guobin Yang’s multi-interactionist model as an analytical approach.1 2 This approach uses
an integrated, field analysis of different forces and actors. The dominant force in the
field is China’s authoritarian party-state with its top-down or official nationalism.
As a grassroots force stemming from bottom-up nationalism, the fenqing interacts
with the state, while maintaining their autonomous existence. The other main forces
are the Internet and online activism, foreign actors and potential agents of domestic
crisis.3 The interactions and contentions between the fenqing and the state are the
1 Multi-interactionism refers to the “multidimensional interactions that both enable and constrain
online activism.” Yang places this mode of analysis within the context of a broader intellectual trend of
examining “interrelations in a complex society.” In particular, he discusses Robert Keohane and Joseph
Nye’s international relations theory of complex interdependence, where the dominance of the nation-state
is diminished and more emphasis is placed on interactions and influences, such as the flow of money,
goods, people, and messages across international boundaries. Moreover, they argue that in the information
age, “the influence of states depends increasingly on their ability to remain credible, and non-state actors
can now challenge this ability more easily because new communication technologies give citizens better
means to transmit critical information.”
2 Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009), 7-9.
3 Foreign actors include perceived anti-China foreign policies and media coverage, as well as pro-Taiwan
and pro-Tibet overseas movements, while potential agents of domestic crisis encompass anti-corruption
activists, pro-democracy groups, dispossessed farmers, and jobless youths.
Columbia East Asia Review 77
main loci of analysis.
As a relatively recent field of academic inquiry, the topic of China’s fenqing generation gives researchers ample opportunity to conduct original field research both
online and offline. Secondary sources in the form of scholarly articles, books and
news reports from both Chinese and international media offer a wealth of relevant
case studies and historical and analytical accounts as well. This paper has drawn from
both primary and secondary sources to explore the importance and potentially enduring legacy of the fenqing generation for China and the world.
The empirical findings in this paper are the culmination of a three-month period of research in Beijing, and numerous follow-up correspondences conducted online. Since one foremost goal is to obtain an in-depth understanding of fenqing youth
as perceived by themselves and by others, my paper uses a qualitative methodology, as
such an approach allows me to communicate the complexity, detail and depth of the
research subjects’ views and experiences. In the process, I prepared a generic questionnaire and customized interview questions for key individuals involved in the fenqing
movement. Research subjects were asked to sign an informed consent form and given
the choice to be named in the paper or to remain anonymous, and to respond in
either English or Chinese.
Defining the Fenqing
Fennu qingnian (愤怒青年), or in the short term, fenqing, stands for “Angry Youth.”
Fenqing as a term dates back to 1970s in Hong Kong, in reference to dissatisfied
youth who sought reforms, but it has acquired a more current usage in the context of
present-day China.4 It has become an accepted new terminology to describe a relatively new and distinct generation of nationalistic Chinese youth, who are “angry” at
a suspected plot by the West to undercut China’s rise on the global stage.5 6 The term
gained popularity in 2008 when Chinese netizens exposed fake reporting by overseas
media regarding the Tibet riots; they created YouTube videos and “anti-CNN” websites to protest, both online and offline, against the West.
Some commentators have written about fenqing in unflattering light and pejorative terms. One blogger presents fenqing as “netizens of a self-righteous and aggressively nationalist tendency…[who] infest the blogs and bulletin boards of the
Chinese Internet…[while] some of the ones with slightly better foreign language
skills stalk the foreign China blogs, looking to pick a fight whenever somebody dares
4 Rui Zhang, “Unease over China’s Angry Youth,” China.org.cn, November 17, 2005, accessed May 2,
2011, http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005/Nov/149085.htm.
5 Osnos, Evan, “Angry Youth: The new generation’s neocon nationalists,” The New Yorker, July
28, 2008, accessed April 21, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/ 2008/07/28/080728fa_
fact_?currentPage=all.
6 Rosen, Stanley, “Contemporary Chinese Youth and the State,” The Journal of Asian Studies 68.2 (2009):
359-369, accessed April 21, 2011, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=555
4688&jid=JAS&volumeId=68&issueId=02&aid=5554680.
78 Baculinao • Fenqing
to make an observation that appears to be ‘critical’ of China.”7 Yet another portrays
them as “online trolls…lonely boys, bullies hiding behind ridiculous screen names,
and anti-intellectual frauds.”8 Thinkweird, a Chinese blogger who writes in English,
has written about the “brain-washed” fenqing who are “easily manipulated and highly
disposable after finishing the ‘jobs.’” He admits he was “once like them, but only to
a much lesser degree in terms of ignorance and fervency, simply because I was an
English major.”9
There is an open debate on how to understand the fenqing generation, the value
of applying such a label and how to define it in the first place. Many of the speakers
in The Brookings Institution seminar, “Understanding China’s ‘Angry Youth:’ What
does the Future hold?” addressed the difficulty of forging a tenable definition of the
fenqing.
Kai-Fu Lee, the former Vice President of Google Inc. and Google Greater China, presents three categories of fenqing based on Chinese wordplay. First, the original
meaning of fen refers to fury (fennu 愤怒) and can describe critical young people who
use the anonymity of the Internet to speak up about issues they observe. Second, fen
can come from revolutionary struggle (fendou 奋斗) to represent the subset of patriotic youth with a strong sense of social responsibility, who are likely to participate
activism to instigate revolutionary change. Finally, fen can mean excrement (fen 粪)
and indicates a subset of impetuous and gullible youth who are easily provoked and
wish to take action without an objective understanding of the topic or the difference between patriotism (aiguozhuyi 爱国主义) and nationalism (minzuzhuyi 民
族主义).10 Generally, Lee defines the fenqing as “young people who have access to
information, who have a sense of social responsibility, who have their sense of right
and wrong – they are not always right – but they have a sense of right and wrong.”11
Lee suggests that the “anger” of the fenqing can also be interpreted as energy, passion
and social justice.
Stanley Rosen, the director East Asian Studies Center at the University of
Southern California, shares conflicting images of Chinese youth based on media reports and tackles the difficulty of reconciling the images of the “angry youth” and
“compassionate youth,” etc.12 He observes the scathing criticism of youth born after
the 1980s, called the “Me Generation,” portrayed as “reliant and rebellious, cynical
and pragmatic, self-centered and equality obsessed” and “China’s first generation of
7 Froog, “How to be a fenqing,” Froogville, March 12, 2009, accessed September 5, 2011, http://
froogville.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-be-fenqing.html.
8 Jeremiah Jenne, “Lonely Boys and Losers: Are we overstating the fenqing phenomenon?” Jottings from
the Granite Studio, March 15, 2009, accessed September 5, 2011, http://granitestudio.org/2009/03/15/
lonely-boys-and-losers-are-we-overstating-the-fenqing-phenomenon.
9 Thinkweird, “Dr Li Yutang on Fenqing and their Patriotism,” Thinkweird Blog, May 24, 2008,
accessed September 5, 2011, thinkweird.info/?p=211.
10 Carlos Pascual, et al., “Understanding China’s ‘Angry Youth’: What does the Future hold?” The
Brookings Institution, April 29, 2009: 10-11, accessed February 13, 2011, http://www.brookings.edu/~/
media/Files/events/2009/0429_china_youth/ 20090429_china_youth.pdf.
11 Ibid., 12.
12 Ibid., 150.
Columbia East Asia Review 79
couch potatoes, addicts of online games, patrons of fast food chains, and loyal audiences for Hollywood movies.”13 However, he notes a shift in media portrayals in
2008 after the Sichuan earthquake, when youth were praised for having “the virtues
of great compassion, benevolence, and gallantness from imbibing traditional Chinese
culture [and] China’s 30 years of reform in opening up.”14 In order to address these
contrary views, he underlines three major characteristics of Chinese youth: internationalism, materialism and nationalism. To explain what he means, he shares an
anecdote from 2008 in which some youth participated in the nationalistic boycott
of Carrefour because the French supermarket was seen as pro-Tibet. Days prior to
the May 1st protest, they made sure they finished using all their discount coupons.
This case indicates that China’s youth are “capable of exhibiting all of these tendencies [internationalism, materialism, nationalism] at different times, depending on
circumstances, or even at the same time.”15 Similarly, Fengshu Liu, a postdoctoral
research fellow at the University of Oslo, observes “Chinese urban youth appear to be
both radicals eager for individual self-expressions and dismal pragmatists bent on the
goal of the ‘middle-class dream’ based on material achievement.”16 As Xu Wu, an assistant professor at the journalism school of Arizona State University, put it, Chinese
youths are like a “double-edged sword with no handle”—an increasingly potent force
that can cut in numerous directions, but cannot be wielded by any single individual,
institution, interest or ideal.17
Evan Osnos’s New Yorker article on China’s “Angry Youth” is a major contribution to the study of fenqing phenomenon. Equivalent to a case study, Osnos’ work
centered on a 28-year-old doctoral student Tang Jie, who authored and posted the
highly popular video “2008 China Stand Up!” that drew a million hits in its first week
and half online, and captured the mood among China’s youth during the turbulent
weeks of the Olympic torch relay. China’s crackdown on Tibetan uprisings provoked
international criticism of China’s hosting of the Olympics, which in turn triggered
a Chinese nationalist backlash. People who criticized the Chinese government or
showed sympathy to Tibetans were accused as “traitors not by the government, but by
Chinese society and the media.”18 With their high level of education, the example of
Tang Jie and his circle of scholars showed that “it is among the more internationally
engaged sections of China that the laments against Westerners have been loudest.”19
The angry protests and debates leading to the Beijing Olympics showed that for the
Chinese people, “…when China’s national pride is at stake, most would choose paRosen, “Contemporary Chinese Youth and the State,” 361.
Ibid.
Pascual et al., “Understanding China’s ‘Angry Youth,’” 151-152.
Fengshu Liu, Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self (New York: Routledge,
2011), 76.
17 Pascual et al., “Understanding China’s ‘Angry Youth,’” 83.
18 Shiuan-Ju Chen, “Searching for Consensus in Cross-Strait Relations: Building Bridges Among the
Next Generation,” Issues and Insights 9.4 (2009): 18, accessed August 21, 2011, http://csis.org/publication/
issues-insights-vol-09-no-04-april-2009.
19 Rowan Callick, “Inflamed Passions,” The Australian, April 26, 2008, accessed on April 21, 2011,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inflamed-passions/story-e6frg6t6-1111116165644.
13 14 15 16 80 Baculinao • Fenqing
triotism over democracy.”20
The fenqing or “Angry Youth” generation in this discourse can be described as
mostly encompassing the youths born after the 1980s who generally have a critical
and even cynical worldview, have embraced the militant type of popular nationalism,
and wield the power of the Internet to propagate their ideas. The fenqing are not a
cohesive social group or an organization per se, but represent a spontaneous movement of shared sentiments and ideas that ebb and flow in reaction to larger events
that affect the country’s interests. A significant and influential segment of the fenqing
youth are well educated and share a global outlook, and as such, they are the natural
constituency for liberal democratic discourse that can potentially change China,21
but for now they embrace nationalism and generally stand with China’s authoritarian
party-state for the common goal of regaining China’s greatness.
Background Information
Nationalism
As a fundamental categorization, the nationalism of China’s fenqing is a type of bottom-up or popular nationalism as distinct from top-down or state-led nationalism.
However, there is no deducible unanimity from existing scholarship on a more precise
definition for the new phenomenon of fenqing nationalism. Terms such as revanchist,
xenophobic, chauvinistic, neo-conservative or neo-authoritarian, ultra-nationalistic
or nativistic are usable in specific critical contexts, but they do not capture the textual
and emotional connotations of the term in the original Chinese language. Therefore,
for wider acceptability to both sides of the debate while not precluding other characteristics, fenqing nationalism is defined in this discourse as a militant type of online
popular nationalism that often spills offline, distinguished primarily by the combative and emotional force of its expression.
Historians generally agree that Chinese nationalism in its nascent form was
born in the shock of China’s forced contact with the West with the Opium War of
1840s. Before this period, China identified itself as an empire, not as a nation-state.22
Since then, nationalism has been a driving force in major transformative events in
modern China. As Chinese nationalism traces its roots to the bainian guochi（百
年国耻）or “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers, scholars have
noted that Chinese nationalism today is tangled with the “memory of national humiliation” and “feelings of historical humiliation and wounded national pride.”23
Fenqing have evolved as a modern form of Chinese nationalism. In a Pew
20 Suisheng Zhao, “The Olympics and Chinese Nationalism,” World Security Institute, China Security 4.3
(2008): 49, accessed April 21, 2011, http://www.chinasecurity.us/pdfs/cs11_3.pdf.
21 Osnos, “Angry Youth.”
22 Jean-Pierre Cabestan, “The Many Facets of Chinese Nationalism,” China Perspectives 59 (2005): 3,
accessed April 21, 2011, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/2793.
23 Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 34.
Columbia East Asia Review 81
Global Attitudes Project survey in 2010, China was one of the only four countries
where the majority of the public (91%) said that their national economic conditions
were good. Furthermore, an overwhelming nine-in-ten Chinese expressed their belief
that the Chinese government is doing a good job.24 Qingguo Jia, a professor and the
associate dean of the School of International Studies of Peking University, stresses
the “disrespect and distrust” and non-acceptance of Chinese “core interests” in international affairs as important factors for the xenophobic and chauvinistic nature
of contemporary Chinese nationalism,25 while Xiguang Li, the executive dean of the
School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, has zeroed in on
the “demonization” of China in Western media as important cause of anti-Western
nationalism.26 27
Chinese nationalist sentiments today tend to correlate with increased faith in
the state and the nation. The aggrieved nationalism of the past when China was a
downtrodden nation has given way to a more assertive fenqing nationalism that takes
pride in the strong and prosperous China of today. Moreover, underpinning this nationalism is a widely held suspicion or belief that “the U.S. will oppose a richer and
stronger China, whether it is democratic or not.”28
Technology
As of June 2011, China had 485 million Internet users, which means roughly 36.2%
of the population has access to Internet. Nearly one-third of Internet users were students, while 58.5% of Internet users were below the age of 30. While the Internet
is primarily thought of as an urban tool, the number of rural residents with Internet
access is rapidly increasing and had reached 131 million persons, constituting 27%
of all Internet users in China.29 According to some of the most recent reports, China
now has about 500 million Internet users,30 and some 300 million of them are regis24 Bruce Stokes, “Summary of Findings from Pew Global Attitudes Project 2010 Survey of 22 Nations,”
Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, June 18, 2010: 5, accessed April 21, 2011, http://www2.lse.ac.uk/
IDEAS/programmes/transatlantic Programme/pdf/pewGlobal.pdf.
25 Qingguo Jia, “Disrespect and Distrust: the external origins of contemporary Chinese nationalism,”
Journal of Contemporary China 14.42 (2005): 18, accessed April 21, 2011, http://web.rollins.edu/~tlairson/
china/chinationalism.pdf.
26 Kang Liu 刘康 and Li Xiguang 李希光, Yaomohua Zhongguo de beihou 妖魔化中国的背后 [Behind
Efforts to Demonize China] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe 中国社会科学出版社, 1996).
27 Li Xiguang, “US Media: Behind the Demonization of China,” Beijing Review 43, October
21, 1996, accessed November 29, 2011, http://www.sinoperi.com/bjreview/Articles-Details.
aspx?id=5161&lang=EN.
28 Zhao, “Olympics and Chinese Nationalism,” 52.
29 China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Di ershiba ci zhongguo hulian wangluo fazhan
zhuangkuang tongji baogao 第28次中国互联网络发展状况统计报告 [The 28th Survey Report], June 19, 2011, accessed
September 8, 2011, http://www.cnnic.cn/dtygg/dtgg/201107/W020110719521725234632.pdf.
30 Shasha Deng, ed., “China Internet users exceed 500 million,” Xinhua Wang 新华网 [English.xinhuanet.
com], September 29, 2011, accessed November 3, 2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/
china/2011-09/29/c_131167919.htm.
82 Baculinao • Fenqing
tered micro-bloggers.31 Seventy-five percent of China’s population is between the ages
18-35, and they are the main force in cyber-politics. The end-result is a generation
of technology-savvy youth who adeptly use the computer and other modern communications devices to spread their opinions and ideas.
Re-affirming the positive functions of the Internet, in June 2010, the Chinese
government produced its first White Paper on the Internet, which takes pride in
China’s achievement in “providing netizens with opinion expression services.”32 According to a sample survey, each day people post over three million messages via BBS,
news commentary sites, blogs, etc., and over 66% of Chinese netizens frequently
place postings to discuss various topics, and to fully express their opinions and represent their interests.”33
Moreover, the Internet has provided the nationalism of fenqing a potent platform that was never enjoyed by past youth movements. The message of fenqing about
China’s rightful place is also aimed at the world, and cyberspace provides the virtual
public sphere for delivering their message. Studies show that despite the geographical flattening produced by online space and Marshall McLuhan’s aspirations for the
global village, strong geographical and linguistic boundaries still remain.34 Realizing
the dominance of English on the Internet, Chinese fenqing and netizens show their
desire to play to a global audience by making opinionated comments, poems and
Youtube videos in English with varying degrees of grammar proficiency.35 The force
of contemporary fenqing nationalism is inseparable from the power of the Internet,
which, for the purposes of discourse here, covers Internet proper and related infor31 “China records 300 million registered microblog users,” Reuters, November 28, 2011, accessed
November 28, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-china-microblogsidUSTRE7AK
1Q720111121.
32 Pliny Han, ed., White Paper: The Internet in China, Information Office of the State Council of the
People’s Republic of China, Xinhua, 2010, accessed May 21, 2011, http://www.gov.cn/english/2010-06/08/
content_1622956.htm.
33 Ibid.
34 Chun-chou Liu, et al., “User Behavior and the ‘Globalness’ of Internet: From a Taiwan Users’
Perspective,” Journal of Computed-Mediated Communication 7.2 (2002), accessed December 1, 2011,
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue2/taiwan.html.
35 In 2008, a number of YouTube videos defending China’s sovereignty and criticizing Western media
was created by angry Chinese youth across the world, including “Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE
a part of China,” “Riot in Tibet: True face of Western media,” “China Stand Up!” and “What Do You
Want From Us?” (See Qing, Dionysos615 2008, Tang, and SilentChinese citations in the bibliography).
The last video on the list features “A poem by a Silent, Silent Chinese” that also entered Internet forums.
It was targeted at the West and written in us-versus-you terms, and accused the West of hypocrisy and
condemnatory rhetoric. Excerpt:
When we buy oil, you call that exploitation and genocide.
When you fight for oil, you call that liberation and democracy.
When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you wanted rule of law for us.
When we uphold law against violence, you call that violating human rights.
When we were silent, you said you want us to have free speech.
When we were silent no more, you say we are brainwashed racists.
Why do you hate us so much? We asked.
“No,” you answered, “We don’t hate You.”
We don’t hate you either,
But do you understand us?
“Of course we do,” You said,
“We have NBC, CNN and BBCs…”
Columbia East Asia Review 83
mation and communications technologies that have made possible the sharing of
information and ideas in near real time.
State and Society Dialectic
Chinese nationalism is at the center of a struggle between state and non-state actors.
Just as online nationalism is a reaction to structural transformations of Chinese society caused by the state, the state must also adjust its position to respond to nationalist
activism.
One issue that merits examination is whether online nationalists and the partystate have a shared agenda, because online nationalists’ freedom of speech implies
tacit government approval. Xu Wu, who also published a book in 2007 entitled Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications, observes that not
only online activists and nationalists have utilized the Internet’s “in-born characteristics of decentralization and democratization,” but so has the Chinese government,
which has taken a bottom-up approach and “treated the online sphere as a testing
ground for the agenda-setting, agenda-building, and agenda seeking process.”36 Wu
also writes, “the government is not only the censor but also a watchful security guard,
an engaging audience, and in the case of cyber-nationalism sometimes even an invisible cheerleader.”37 Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, concurs,
“the Chinese authorities are actively using the Internet for their own purposes: to
create and disseminate political propaganda,” as well as “to bolster the government’s
legitimacy by promoting a particular nationalistic narrative with the help of loyalist
bloggers.”38
The strength of Chinese nationalism cannot be separated from the state’s instrumentalizing role in two areas. One, the state launched patriotic education campaigns to bolster an alternative source of legitimacy with the decline of communist
ideology in the course of market reforms and especially in the aftermath of the 1989
Tiananmen Incident.39 40 Two, the state has systematically promoted the Internet and
allowed space for online nationalism because it has been able to harness technology
to serve its political needs.
Xu Wu and Guobin Yang, an associate professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, have explored the reasons why China’s networked authoritarian state
has given way to active online activism and cyber-nationalism despite its censorship
36 Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications (Florida: Lexington
Books, 2007), 169-170.
37 Ibid., 170.
38 Randy Kluver, et. al, “Book Review Roundtable,” Review of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen
Activism Online, by Guobin Yang, Asia Policy 10 (2010): 172, accessed February 13, 2011, http://www.
nbr.org/publications/asia_policy/AP10/AP10_G_PowerInternetBRRT.pdf.
39 Suisheng Zhao, “A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen
China,” Communist and Post Communist Studies 31.3 (1998): 287-302, accessed April 21, 2011, http://
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967067X98000099.
40 Yongming Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in
China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
84 Baculinao • Fenqing
regime, noting that popular nationalism is one of the most powerful categories of
online activism due to their political tolerability and public resonance. Yang writes
that “to the extent that neonationalism helps to fill the ideological vacuum in China,
the state supports its expression.”41 42
Jessica Weiss, an assistant professor at Yale University, analyzes the strategic use
of anti-foreign protests by the Chinese state in furthering its diplomatic interests. She
argues that “autocrats face a risk-return tradeoff in deciding whether to repress, tolerate, or encourage anti-foreign protest.”43 On one hand, the government makes itself
visibly vulnerable to public opinion, but on the other hand they gain the appearance
of government toughness or resolve which can translate into “potential bargaining
advantage.”44 Another study “indicates that cyber-politics is more likely to be used
to promote nationalism than liberal-democracy, the former being far more difficult
to suppress than the latter for a regime whose legitimacy depends increasingly on
nationalist claims,”45 and that when online nationalism threatens to jeopardize important foreign policy goals, then the party-state will adopt suppressive measures.
This would explain why “red hackers” flourished from 1999-2001, but desisted their
activities a decade later, and why anti-Japan activists were tolerated in 2005 and earlier, but have been more low key in recent years.
The risk of diplomatic relations and territorial disputes developing in inflexible
directions can be seen in the anti-Japan case studies that Peter H. Gries, the director
of the Institute for U.S.-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma, has analyzed.
Gries debunks the conventional view in the West that solely democracies “are constrained by elections and public opinion and thus at a disadvantage in foreign policy
making,” while the “communist tyranny” of the CCP can “calmly construct China’s
foreign policies unfettered by domestic constraints.”46 Gries observes that the CCP
increasingly relies on its nationalist credentials due to the decline of communist ideology and lack of elective democratic legitimacy; hence, the Chinese government too
is compelled to satisfy popular opinion in the form of nationalism. He predicts that
“[p]opular nationalists may even, therefore, come to play a greater role in foreign
policy decision making in China than in the U.S.,”47 adding that “‘Chinese popular
opinion’ is not an oxymoron: domestic nationalist opinion is increasingly shaping
41 Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 56.
42 Kluver, et al., “Book Review Roundtable,” 171.
43 Jessica C. Weiss, “Powerful Patriots: Nationalism, Diplomacy, and the Strategic Logic of Anti-Foreign
Protest” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2008), 4, accessed December 14, 2011, http://
escholarship.org/uc/item/9z19141j;jsessionid=BBDA28D8B64A57B44E724827949F539A.
44 Ibid., 4.
45 Christopher R. Hughes, “Nationalism in Cyberspace,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 13.2
(2000): 195-209, accessed April 28, 2011, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/7013/1/Nationalism_in_Chinese_
cyberspace(LSERO).pdf.
46 Peter H. Gries, “Nationalism, Indignation, and China’s Japan Policy,” The SAIS Review of
International Affairs 25.2 (2005): 110, accessed April 21, 2011, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/
v025/25.2gries.html.
47 Ibid., 111.
Columbia East Asia Review 85
Chinese foreign policy making.”48
Simon Shen, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,
and Shaun Breslin, a professor at the University of Warwick, contend that the autonomous nature of nationalism presents several problems for China’s policy-makers:
firstly, “by being hyper-critical of other countries and potentially undermining official relations with that country; secondly, “by being critical of ‘official scholars’ who
are closely related to the policy process; and thirdly, “by being critical of state policy
itself.”49 Furthermore, attendant risks and threats to domestic instability can follow
if discontent with politics and social disparity rises at home. Wu Hao argues that
fenqing can threaten public order or stir up social conflict due to Internet “rumor
mongering”50 and calls for greater government control or monitoring of Internet
discourse to protect political stability.
Zhao observes that nationalism is “a double-edged sword” because while it
legitimizes the CCP’s rule, it is also a way for the Chinese people to evaluate and
criticize the performance of the party state.51 Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times
China analyst, sums up the paradoxical power of Chinese nationalism, “its potential
for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away.”52 The autonomous nature of fenqing, and the threats of other types of activism, can therefore
pose a challenge to the authoritarian party-state.
Interviews: Ambiguities and Complexity
The complexity of the fenqing phenomenon, commonalities in understanding as well
as certain definitional ambiguities were further gathered from the varied responses
to interview questions presented to China-based respondents. From interviews with
several China-based respondents, who are primarily educated youths born after the
1980s, valuable data was gathered that helps in understanding how the fenqing are
seen by their generational peers in China.53 A consensus is clear that the Chinese fear
of Western opposition is an important factor driving China’s fenqing, and that fenqing
will remain an important force of public opinion. There was a healthy dose of debate
48 Ibid., 112.
49 Simon Shen and Shaun Breslin, eds., Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations
(Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010), 6-7.
50 Hao Wu 吴浩, “Jiema gonggong tufa shijian zhong: ‘fenqing’ yu wangluo yaoyan xianxiang” 解码公
共突发事件中：”愤青”与网络谣言现象 [Decoding the Phenomenon of fenqing and Internet Rumors
amid Public Emergencies], Jiangxi qingnian zhiye xueyuan xuebao 江西青年职业学院学报 [Journal of
Jiangxi Youth Vocational College) 18.3 (2008).
51 Shuisheng Zhao, “China’s Pragmatic Nationalism: Is it Manageable?” The Center for Strategic and
International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Washington Quarterly 29.1
(2005): 142, accessed April 21, 2011, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wq/summary/v029/29.1zhao.html.
52 Nicholas D. Kristof,”Fruits of Democracy: Guess Who’s a Chinese Nationalist Now?” The New York
Times, April 22, 2001, accessed April 28, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/weekinreview/theworld-fruits-of-democracy-guess-who-s-a-chinese-nationalist-now.html.
53 See list of interviewees in Section IX: Primary Sources.
86 Baculinao • Fenqing
among the respondents, with one extolling the virtues of China’s fenqing generation,
while two respondents differed on whether it was right for the Chinese government
to control the anti-Japanese fenqing.
For Michael Anti, an outspoken political blogger and expert on new media,
the lack of “right political education” in Chinese schools explains the rise of Angry
Youth. “They realized that society is not as perfect as he was taught and he would
show discontent in an angry way,” he said, adding that the anger was not only limited
to foreigners but also “tended to blame corrupt officials for anything they were not
satisfied with.” He identified his own subcategories of the fenqing youth, dividing
them between “Left fenqing and Right fenqing, Left for nationalist and Right for
democratic, or a mixture of both…” With regards to the Internet, Anti called it “the
field where the anger is spreading [for] it speeds up the growth of fenqing and it heats
up the debates between the Left fenqing and Right fenqing.” Thus Anti pointed to the
need to correct problems in education as a way to root out the fenqing phenomenon.
On the other hand, for Kaiser Kuo, a long-time observer of China’s Internet
development and spokesman of Chinese search giant Baidu, Chinese Internet users
are more complex, and the fenqing are no exception to this rule. He described three
common stereotypes of Chinese Internet users, and concluded, “Often—maybe even
more often than not—you can find all three of these types all wrapped up within a
single individual. They play games during much of their time online. But they also
chafe at censorship perhaps and get angry about instances of official malfeasance
they read about online, and they’re passionate about political affairs, where they’re
often quite critical. And while they may appear to be quite critical of Beijing at
times, they’ll lash out very angrily at people who attack Chinese policy on, say, issues
like Tibet or Taiwan.” In effect, Kuo’s words echoed what Helen Sun, a professor
at the University of Texas-Permian Basin, has written about the fragmentation and
multiplication of identity in the cyber-sphere.54 Kuo also evaluated the double effect
of China’s economic rise on bolstering the pride of nationalistic Chinese, as well as
raising “the threat level felt by people already inclined to distrust Beijing.” Therefore,
Kuo also argues that fenqing are online clashes are formed by several factors: “the
combination of the rise of China and its consequences; the profound differences in
political cultures; and the availability of a medium for direct communication in the
Internet.”
For Professor Xuetang Guo, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, “every
country has fenqing, though you may see the power of fenqing is stronger in Japan
and South Korea in terms of foreign policy than that in China…” He agreed with
the view that every government has some role in the emergence of nationalism, and
54 Helen Sun, Internet Policy in China: a Field Study of Internet Cafés (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2010), 172.
Columbia East Asia Review 87
pointed to China as an extreme case where “the government even does Internet
censorship to prevent the fenqing nationalism from harming its status.” When I
asked whether he thought that the fenqing constituted a temporary phenomenon,
he disagreed, arguing that fenqing will “remain to be a significant force in the public
opinion for a long time as long as the west gives China a strong pressure internationally and Chinese government carries out the reform slowly.” According to
Professor Guo, the Chinese public believes that Western media coverage is “unfair
and hypocritical,” which gives the impression “that Western countries are trying
to block Chinese development and rise…[just as] the Western countries exploited
China for one century when they were strong powers and China was weak and now
that China wants to be strong country again, the Western countries don’t want to
see this happen.”
Professor Guo referred to his earlier work on the “mismatch of mutual
cognition”55 of national interests as a source of conflict. “To ask Chinese to forget
the century-long historical humiliation is not as easy as to ask Americans to abandon its century-long leadership of the Western world,” he writes. He proposes that
the two sides “reach a tacit understanding in terms of China’s rise and American
leadership…China has to share more international responsibilities under American
leadership, but it also deserves America’s respect in its vital national interests.”56
The call for Chinese recognition of American leadership by a China-based scholar
is an encouraging sign of independent thinking, against a nationalistic climate of
opinion that calls for Chinese contention with America for the dominant position.
Case Studies: Views and Contention over China’s ‘Angry
Youth’
According to Shen and Breslin, the first wave of contemporary nationalist movement was in 1999-2001, after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,
when people not only protested on the streets but also participated in an unprecedented nationalist online forum. In 2001, the Hainan spy plane incident, in which
one Chinese pilot was killed, incited a storm of public anger and attacks by “patriotic hackers” on American websites. This first wave was confined to debates and
actions by intellectual elite with access to the Internet. The second wave involved a
greater part of the population as Internet activity became more widespread, build55 Xuetang Guo, “Urgent Need for China-U.S. to Build Strategic Mutual Trust, But Still a Long Way
Off,” China-U.S. Focus, May 18, 2011, accessed November 12, 2011, http://www.chinausfocus.com/
foreign-policy/urgent-need-for-china-u-s-to-build-strategic-mutual-trust-but-still-a-long-way-off/.
56 Hailin Ye, “As China rises, its people grow arrogant,” People’s Daily Online, September 3, 2010,
accessed April 28, 2011, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/ 90780/91345/7128339.html.
88 Baculinao • Fenqing
ing momentum in 2005 when the first online nationalistic campaign was mobilized
into physical street movements against Japan.57 I suggest a new third stage or lull in
2010-2011, where few nationalist protests have occurred and nationalist hackers and
activists have remained relatively quiescent, which may reflect a more vigilant and
cautious approach of the government to grassroots activism. The following case studies present the viewpoints of actors who were active during the first two stages and
noticeably more passive in the third and present-day stage.
Red Hackers’ Army, Then and Now
“Cyber-nationalism,” the marriage of technology and ideology, found its controversial expression in the late 1990s with the formation of the so-called “Red hackers’
army,” including the China Eagle Union (zhongguo yingpai lianmeng 中国鹰派联盟)
and the Red Hacker Alliance (hongke lianmeng 红客联盟), which attacked the White
House and other U.S. government and military websites. I had the opportunity to
converse in Chinese with ex-hackers, who agreed to share their fenqing motivations
then and the reasons for their transformation from fervent attackers of websites to
unlikely defenders of cyber-security today.
One ex-hacker who preferred to remain anonymous was once associated with
the Red Hacker Alliance based in a major city in East China, but is now running
a company providing anti-hacking or server security services. “We are not hackers
now, we don’t conduct attacks on anybody,” he said. “At present, we strongly oppose
hacking, and in fact our work now is to fight attacks by hackers.” He denied any
government support for their hacking activities, stating, “Our actions had nothing
to do with the government, we were only young people with fondness for technology, we didn’t do anything on a large-scale and our reasons were simple.” In response
to reports that China is engaged in cyber-warfare, he declared, “We are not hackers
now, I am no longer concerned with these questions.” When I asked how he would
characterize fenqing or cyber-nationalism, he responded, “Today, we don’t engage in
fenqing activities. What we did in the past was a form of loving our country, I think
nationalism is a way of loving one’s own country,” he explained. He also added, “Nationalism will never disappear in any country.”
Tao Wan, the founder of China Eagle Union,58 traced his days as an “angry
young man” to 1997 when he joined cyber-attacks on Japanese websites. “In the beginning, China Eagle Union represented the voice of fenqing. I was an angry young
man. We thought that Chinese diplomacy was too weak, that we should be able to
express our opinions more aggressively, and so we thought of the Internet, the Internet was safe,” he explained. “But we had certain rules, we never did actual damage, we
57 Shen and Breslin, Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations, 20-21.
58 Heike 黑客 [The Dark Visitor], “China Eagle Union,” October 21, 2007, accessed November 26,
2011, http://www.thedarkvisitor.com/tag/wan-tao/.
Columbia East Asia Review 89
didn’t delete databases, we only defaced your homepage but we’d keep all your stuff,
and in fact by doing so we made people realize their websites were not safe. It’s like
giving warning free of charge,” he further clarified.
Recalling the 2001 Hainan spy place incident and attacks on American websites, Wan clarified that their message was also aimed at the Chinese government.
“We thought letting go of the airplane was too light. We needed to express our anger, our dissatisfaction, which were directed more at our own government than at
America,” he said. According to him, China Eagle Union had some 10,000 members
at its height, of varying degrees of involvement.
Wan continued to characterize hacking activities as a way to express strong
emotions and a youthful phase. “Hacking skills gave cyber-nationalism a way to express itself. Political topics are always sensitive in China, and we didn’t find a way to
talk about it until the Internet time came,” he said. Wan categorically denied any
government links to nationalist hacking activity. “China Eagle Union had no links
with the Chinese government. I believe no government will come to a hackers’ organization, it’s not possible for the two to have any relations, not just in China but in
other countries too. Because states have rule of law, governments won’t do something
under the table,” he said, adding that the China Eagle Union has now become an
NGO that develops cyber-security program as a public service.
Not unlike Wan, Jason Zhang, a Beijing-based observer, viewed the expressions
of fenqing as akin to public service. He also believed that the force off cyber nationalism would last for some time. He suggested that “the fenqing today may look strong
because people ‘need’ them to be strong and want to see them strong.” He predicted
that the influence of “the fenqing, which represents the thoughts of certain social
groups” will remain for some time, because no nation-state could unify the thoughts
of all of its people.
From the cases above, the following points may be deduced. First, the Internet
made it possible for groups of nationalistic Chinese youths to express their political
opinion and anger in ways that were not possible before; their message was not only
aimed at foreign countries but also at the Chinese government, although due to
China’s political environment and Internet infrastructure it was easier to attack foreign targets. Second, hacking attacks were undertaken as defensive moves in reaction
to external events and a manifestation of fenqing nationalism; the youths involved
uphold their nationalistic motivation for doing so even as they have moved on and
given up the practice of hacking. Third, the actors involved have not only denied
any government support for their actions but also cited government efforts to discourage, stop or punish hacking attacks. Fourth, they take pride in their autonomy
from the government, and even when they quit their hacking activities, they try to
maintain their independence by transforming their hacking circles into NGOs and
business enterprises, which may constitute effective new agents of change to combat
institutional forces. Fifth, they moved on and parlayed their hacking experience into
professional skills, as was the case with the anonymous hacker and Wan, which speaks
90 Baculinao • Fenqing
to another dimension that Sun has analyzed.59 Sixth, fenqing nationalism could be
a phase in an individual’s life that may fade with time in favor of more pragmatic
economic goals, but it is unlikely to disappear as a social phenomenon as long as
the roots and motivations that gave it life exist. These hackers were active in the
late 1990s as part of a small technological elite. Today, an even larger generation of
youth wields the Internet and cyber-activism. Under China’s conditions, the fenqing phenomenon could be viewed as both a phase in an individual’s life and a selfreproducing social phenomenon.
Anti-Japanese Campaigns, Underlying Issues
Zeng Tong, a professional management consultant who has been China’s most prominent anti-Japan campaigner since the late 1980s, diplomatically denied during our
interview any suggestion that the Chinese government is manipulating the anti-Japan
movement for political purposes. Tong is the chairman of the China Federation for
Defending the Diaoyu Islands (called Senkaku Islands by Japan), a group of islands
contested by both countries. Tong acknowledges that the fenqing youth important
force of his anti-Japan campaign, which also demands Japan’s war reparations. “The
suggestion that the government is exploiting and encouraging the anti-Japan campaigns “is not very objective and I don’t agree,” Tong said, explaining that any kind
of people’s movement is always very difficult.
Likun Zhang, a former soldier of the People’s Liberation Army and executive board member of the Federation, provided a more straightforward perspective.
Zhang sparked a tense situation with Japan after he and six other Chinese activists
landed on the disputed Diaoyu Islands controlled by Japan in March 2004, leading
to their detention and a diplomatic row. “The Chinese navy did not dare land on the
islands but I did,” he declared proudly. “Thirty years ago, I was a military officer and
I know that there are certain things that are not convenient for the government to
do or the government is even unwilling or afraid to do, that are convenient for the
people to do,” he observed. He interpreted passiveness on the part of the government
in immediately quashing nationalistic actions at times like these as tacit state approval
of the people’s actions, and asserted, “So long as the people are doing beneficial things
for the country, the government did not need to give us its endorsement, it only
needed to ‘not repress us.’”
Zhang articulated a line of thinking that the people can act in times when the
party has its hands tied up for diplomatic reasons. In the case of the China-Japan
disputes, Gries suggests that Chinese foreign policy making and even foreign policy
debates have at times been held “hostage” by popular nationalist opinion,60 a point
59 On page 84 of Internet Policy in China, Helen Sun has suggested in her analysis of Internet structures
that “in addition to state censorship and surveillance, the commercialization and privatization of the
Internet can significantly affect the autonomy of private people whose activities online can be gradually
oriented toward entertaining, purchasing, and business communication, and becoming less concerned
about public affairs.”
60 Gries, “Nationalism, Indignation, and China’s Japan Policy,” 110.
Columbia East Asia Review 91
that signifies the important impact of the anti-Japan campaigns of Tong and his supporters.
Two Protagonist Authors and Government Denial
Inside China, fenqing and the type of nationalism that they represent have been a
subject of heated debate, encapsulated by the clash of viewpoints between two books.
The type of nationalism that critics say borders on ultra-nationalism may well be exemplified by Unhappy China (zhongguo bu gaoxing 中国不高兴), a best-seller which
is a follow-up to the 1996 nationalistic book China Can Say No (zhongguo keyi shuo
bu 中国可以说不). It argues that China should stand up to America and the West
and should fight to become the dominant power. While defending and applauding a
new generation of patriotic youth, it clearly refers to a fenqing category of youth—although it does not label them fenqing outright—as a source of hope and strength for
the rejuvenation of China. It also directed criticism at the ruling Communist party
for being too weak and inept in wielding China’s new global clout.
Responding to my question of how to characterize the nationalism represented
by his book and by fenqing, Jisu Huang, a Chinese sociologist and one of the authors
for both of the two nationalist books, tried to counter his critics. “This book doesn’t
represent ‘ultra-nationalism’ and I myself don’t consider ‘nationalism’ an accurate
summation of its main points—this book is far more colorful than the label ‘nationalism,’” he insisted. “‘Neo-conservatism’ or ‘New Authoritarianism’ doesn’t fit
us either because we are for inheriting the fine traditions of the nation and also for
learning the good points of the West including the democratic system. We are not for
going back to the past or to Stalinism.”
Huang acknowledged that the rise of patriotism among youth in any country is
normal and natural, and he expected that “it will continue to develop as an important
force influencing China’s development, but it won’t be the only force.” He rejected
comparisons between China’s fenqing and ultra-nationalistic youth from the West. In
the case of China, “It will remain on the normal, rational level, and acts like those of
anti-Jew elements in Germany, KKK elements in America, chauvinistic elements in
Russia or ultra-right nationalists in Norway will never occur in China.” Other than
spontaneous nationalistic youth, he identifies another major force in China: “the
ruling bureaucratic clique [who] are utilitarians, they make use of whatever is useful,
including nationalism, even socialism.” Similar to Zhang, he suggested that the ruling authorities “use it and restrict it [nationalism] towards their own ends.”
Huang continued to position himself as an independent critic of the government by creating a distinction between the official nationalism of the state and the
popular nationalism of the people. “Official nationalism equates the country with the
government, to ‘love the country’ is to love the party, and the government is beyond
criticism. But for us, the country’s interests don’t necessarily equate with the interests
of the government and party. When they coincide, we support the government,” he
explained. However, a divergence of interests means that “we criticize or oppose the
92 Baculinao • Fenqing
government,” he added. When I asked him about his thoughts on the division between Chinese youth who advocate liberal democracy and nationalism, he answered,
“To counterpose ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘nationalism’ is weird to me, because my
friends who advocate ‘liberal democracy’ all hope China to become strong, while
many friends who are described as ‘nationalist’ do not oppose liberal democracy at
all.” Foremost in Huang’s worldview is the goal of a “strong China” which is shared by
fenqing, and also by the Chinese party-state, even if he has made clear his autonomy
from the government. Moreover, with his remarks about liberal democracy and nationalism, he was rejecting the dichotomy between the “Right and Left” fenqing that
Michael Anti referred to earlier.
At the opposite end of the pole is Baoping Liao, a current affairs commentator
and newspaper columnist, as well as the author of the 2010 book Fishing out China’s
Fenqing: Hidden Obstacle and Threat to China’s Rise, a 270-page polemical critique
of fenqing nationalism, which he described as “blind, narrow and ultra-xenophobic
nationalism.” His book has sold over 100,000 copies so far, as opposed to Huang
Jisu’s book which has sold 100,000 copies within the first two weeks and over a million to date.
At the outset of our interview, Liao expressed his opposition to the fenqing. “It
is necessary to drag the fenqing to the operating table and dissect their soul and behavior, their culture and psychology, their logic and language,” he said. And what he
can see is “morbid nationalism.” He further added that “because China has become
stronger, the fenqing clothe themselves with ‘loving the country’ in order to justify
a return to the Cold War and treating the whole world as enemy.” However, in his
mind the fenqing “will only destroy China’s peaceful development, obstruct China’s
rise and push China to a dangerous abyss.” He identified four characteristics of China’s fenqing: blindness, xenophobia, ignorant arrogance, and lastly, a fondness for
“thoughtless uproar.” Liao continued to recount how the fenqing youth cursed him
online, searched for his personal information and physically hounded him following
his public opposition to the fenqing’s nation-wide call to boycott French goods and
the supermarket chain Carrefour after French President Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama
in December 2008.
Liao is a self-confessed former fenqing, who blamed China’s educational system
for his “misguided” path. In a separate interview posted online, he stated, “I was a
former fenqing, because under China’s educational system, not to go through a phase
in life as a fenqing is very difficult, and it’s almost predetermined. This is because
they want you to become a fenqing, someone who cannot think for himself, and who
stubbornly rejects different opinions.”61 During my interview, Liao insisted that one
major external factor behind the rise of the fenqing is “the effort of the Communist
61 Bo Li 李波, “Luzhong chenbao jizhe zuoriduihua Dalao Zhongguo fenqing zuozhe Liao Baoping” 鲁
中晨报记者昨日对话《打捞中国愤青》作者廖保平 [Central Shandong Morning Paper Journalist’s
Interview Yesterday with Fishing out the Fenqing Author Liao Baoping], Luzhong Chenbao 鲁中晨报
[Central Shandong Morning Paper], July 13, 2011, accessed December 14, 2011, http://news.lznews.cn/
2011/0713 /446598.html.
Columbia East Asia Review 93
party central leadership to incite nationalism in place of democracy, even to the extent of using old authoritarian ideologies to poison the fenqing, making them more
ruthless and tyrannical.” He described state strategy as a desire to maintain domestic peace, “The party leadership used nationalism and fanned nationalisms to shift
people’s attention from domestic problems to other countries, to shift the blame
for the people’s dissatisfaction as if the problems at home were created by others.”
Liao therefore proposed his opinion that the fenqing are “not an isolated phenomenon but a product of political and social factors and the Communist party has a
responsibility for it.” Despite the fundamental differences between their stances,
Liao’s point on government responsibility for the rise of fenqing intersects with
Huang’s remarks about the Communist party’s “utilitarian” use of nationalism.
But the government position, at least in public rhetoric, is something else, as
was made clear at a forum of grassroots party activists to mark the 90th birthday
of the Communist party in late June this year. A question was raised on whether
the party was taking advantage of fenqing nationalism to oppose Western-style
democracy and attract the youth to the party. Xiaodong Li, one of the activists
and a local party secretary from Panjin city, responded that the party was “not
exploiting nationalism to oppose Western-style democracy.” The issue of fenqing
and dissatisfaction with society that you raised doesn’t exist. There are 68 party
members in our company and a hundred activists and most of them are young
people. We have never carried out the propaganda of exploiting nationalism to
oppose Western-style democracy and there is no need to do so. Our party is doing
very well. We believe that taking the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics
suits China’s development path,” he was quoted. Weimin Guo, media director of
the State Council Information Office and organizer of the forum, also agreed with
Li Xiaodong, “The saying that we use nationalism to attract the youth is not wellfounded and not accurate.”62
Conclusion
The fenqing or “Angry Youth” generation represents militant popular nationalism.
With historical roots in China’s “century of humiliation,” they are highly sensitive
to how China’s important interests are impacted by the behavior of other actors in
the international system. China’s rise on the world stage and the consequent resurgence of Chinese national pride, and the unprecedented power of the Internet in
enabling mass communications, are the twin pillars of the fenqing phenomenon.
Five findings stand out in this research:
One, while it is conventional tendency to regard China’s “Angry Youth”
62 Xiaolin Xi 喜晓林, Xiaodong Li 李晓东 and Weimin Guo 郭卫民, “Zhongyang waixuanban juxing
jiceng gongchandangyuan he dangwu gongzuozhe zhongwai jizhe jianmianhui” 中央外宣办举行基
层共产党员和党务工作者中外记者见面会, Zhonggong zhongyang duiwai xuanchuan bangongshi
xinwen fabuhui 中共中央对外宣传办公室新闻发布会, June 24, 2011, transcript, accessed June 28,
2011, http://www.china.com.cn/zhibo/2011-06/28/content_22846442.htm?show=t.
94 Baculinao • Fenqing
nationalists as uninformed, it was startling that they represent some of the highlyeducated, globally engaged segments of China’s youth.
Second, fenqing nationalism is tied to the condition of youth and culture of
idealism in China. Fenqing do not become fenzhongnian (愤中年) or “angry middleaged people,” and the next generation of fenqing will take their idealistic place. Fenqing can be considered a phase in one’s life as the examples of Tao Wan and Baoping
Liao show.
Third, it is also the conventional theory that the Internet, wielded by highly
educated youth, should help China’s greater socialization with global values. The rise
of fenqing, however, has challenged this theory of “convergence.”
Fourth, it is conventional belief in the democratic West that public opinion
does not play any significant role under China’s authoritarian Communist partystate, but the impact of fenqing and popular nationalism has shown that public opinion plays an important role, and that China’s nationalistic youth, wielding the power
of the Internet, may even exercise far more influence in foreign policy making that
their counterparts in the U.S. or Japan.
Fifth, China’s party-state is playing with the double-edged sword of nationalism. Despite official denial of instrumental nationalism, nearly all primary respondents, including supporters and opponents of fenqing, point to the Communist
party’s influence in the both the upsurges and relatively quiescent periods of popular
nationalism. As an autonomous societal force not directly controlled by the Communist party, the fenqing can also shift their attention or coalesce with other forces of
public opinion to challenge the government to address perceived domestic ills, creating potential threats to domestic stability. But the main field of contention will be in
international relations, with the dynamics of China-U.S. relation as a key issue, the
U.S. being in possession of the greatest ability for affecting China’s rise.
A new variable that can alter the posture and movement of fenqing nationalism may be the recent thrust of the U.S. to rebuild its geopolitical position in the
Asia-Pacific region.63 The U.S. officially denies any anti-China scheme in its strategic
initiative, but there are growing concerns that the U.S. is seeking a policy of encirclement and containment.64 Based on historical precedents, it bears watching whether
rising perceptions of U.S. containment will trigger a new wave of nationalistic “Angry
Youth” movements, which in turn could impair the rational management of SinoAmerican relations. Indeed, fenqing can be an obstinate challenge to both China and
the world.
63 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, November 2011, accessed November 17,
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