Nationalism and Economic Reform in the 1990s: A Case Study of the Debates in the Journal Zhanlue Yu Guanli (Strategy and Management)

This paper discusses nationalism in the context of China’s rapid urban economic reform and debate about the path of China’s modernization in the 1990s. China’s urban reform was accompanied by a quiet abandonment of the guiding principle of Marxist class and class struggle for much of communist Chinese history, at a time when many urban workers were let go from their jobs. Regarding the situation, debates among Chinese scholars and administrators often revolved around nationalism as a displacement of class and class struggles. Nationalism here was tied to a more socialist approach to governance: their advocates would champion a state-centered reform instead of rapid marketization. These advocates would also tie such policies to a denigration of free market economy and depict the West as vicious toward China.

This paper focuses on the debates that tied a discussion of economic reform to nationalism in Zhanlue yu guanli (Strategy and management), the flagship journal for the China Institute of Strategy and Management (zhongguo zhanlue yu guanli yanjiuhui), a leading Chinese think tank on reform in the 1990s. Connecting the debates in the journal with other discussions of China’s industrial workers’ plight in the 1990s, this paper explores how nationalism became a new venue to discuss the plight of labor when class and class struggle ceased to be the discourse to justify working class interests.