The tough talk goes over well with the unwashed masses, one might assume, but not with the educated Chinese elite, with their exposure to Western ideas and generally liberal leanings. Two years ago, when American laser-guided bombs destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, many Western observers were caught quite off guard by the generally indignant reaction of Chinese intellectuals. Many expatriate acquaintances in China told me that even among their Westernized or Western-educated Chinese friends ordinarily critical of their government, sympathies were overwhelmingly with Beijing. In this latest crisis, popular Chinese reaction has been notably muted, but again, among intellectuals there are few who take exception with Beijing's interpretation of events. In the West, liberalism and nationalism are competing ideological strains, rarely found together in conspicuous measure in any one person.
Western liberals tend to be cosmopolitans who turn up their noses at the flag-wavers.
But in China the liberal tradition developed in lockstep with national consciousness, and nationalism remains at the very heart of the liberal Chinese worldview. During World War II and in its aftermath, the intelligentsia abandoned the Kuomintang in favor of Mao's Communist Party largely because of popular perception that the latter was more serious about saving the nation. And when the students and intellectuals took to the streets in the spring of 1989, at Tiananmen, they insisted on the patriotic nature of their demonstrations, and couched their protest in terms of national salvation. But the Party has had to squelch spontaneous expressions of nationalism when they do not serve state interests. This has been especially apparent in Sino-Japanese relations, when popular protests commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre and against Japanese occupation of the Diaoyu Islands were banned.