Gendering Nationalism in 21st Century China 2

In pre-revolutionary China, Confucian familialism was central to governing both gender relations and the imperial state. During the Mao era, filial piety and other core values of Confucianism were discouraged as the people’s loyalties were directed towards the Party, the nation, and Mao himself. In the context of economic reform, however, the Communist Party sought new forms of legitimacy, rooted in a rehabilitated Confucianism. From Hu’s Harmonious society to Xi’s Chinese Dream, Confucian influenced values and discourse have become increasingly prominent. Xi’s intensified ideological control is manifested through an explicit invocation of Confucian family-nation sentiment, promoting a nostalgic, conservative, and paternalistic image of the family as the basis of individual happiness and a strong nation. This panel seeks papers from different fields to interrogate the varied gendered aspects of this discursive construct in official/mass media and Chinese society. It seeks to generate new theoretical understandings of gender, authoritarianism and nationalist political projects both in China Studies and beyond.