國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

In the late nineteenth century German conservatives came to advocate andcelebrate what they called the German Sonderweg (special path). Thisideologically laden phrase identified the uniquely all-powerful German state as thekey to Germany’s extraordinary rise. Correspondingly, the idea of equalcitizenship rights was condemned as “Western” pollution or even “enemy of theempire.” This paper, drawing on nineteenth-century German nationalism as a pointof reference, reflects critically upon the current talks of the “Chinese model” or“Chinese road” and its “uniqueness.” At the heart of the latter is, as will be argued,a species of “nationalism against citizenship rights” which shares importantcharacteristics with the original German version. The danger with such nationalismis, all too similarly, that it lends support to unrestrained state power and itscontinuing repression of legitimate claims of citizenship rights. Herein lay theseeds of a major social and political crisis which might result in an ever moreregressive state-nationalist regime in China. For all its “anti-West” overtones, theChinese version of “nationalism against citizenship rights” comes dangerouslyclose to the erstwhile German one. In rejecting citizenship rights as part and parcelof “Western modernity,” so to speak, it endorses a full-blooded “Western” modelof “modernistic” reactionary state-nationalism.