Discourses of Weakness in Modern China: Historical Diagnoses of the "Sick Man of East Asia" (Volume 1) (Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes)

From the time of China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894–95 until the 1930s, the assumption that China was a “weak state” dominated political discourse in China and beyond. In those discussions, China was seen as lacking competitiveness in a world that was increasingly being understood in harsh Darwinian terms. Aiming to better understand contemporary China’s self-image and identity, this volume traces both the emergence of the narrative of China’s alleged “national ruin” and the discursive construction of China as the “Sick Man of East Asia.” In The Late Nineteenth Century, A Conviction That China Was Somehow Weaker Than Other Political States In Asia And The West Spread Across The Nation. Responses To This Dispiriting Notion Manifested Themselves In Cultural And Political Forms, Affecting Such Disparate Arenas As Popular Writing And National Resource Mobilization. This Book Shows How, More Than A Century Later, Modern China Has Yet To Fully Shake The Idea Of Weakness, Arguing That The Country's Communist Leadership Relies On This Trope To Shore Up Their Popularity When They Position Themselves As The Only Defense Against National Humiliation. Die Vorstellung, China sei ein'schwacher Staat', der in einer zunehmend darwinistisch konzipierten Welt nicht konkurrenzfähig sei, beherrschte vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, besonders seit dem verlorenen Krieg gegen Japan (1894/95), bis in die 1930er-Jahre den politischen Diskurs in China selbst wie auch in anderen Ländern der Welt. Der Band zeichnet diese'Untergangsgeschichte'des'kranken Mannes Asiens'nach und hilft somit, das Selbstverständnis und die Identität des heutigen China zu verstehen.