Abstract :
Using the October 2008 slapping incident of historian Yan
Chongnian 阎崇年as a case study, this article attempts to contextualize
and critically examine the articulation of Han supremacism on the
Chinese internet. It demonstrates how an informal group of non-elite,
urban youth are mobilizing the ancient Han ethnonym to challenge the
Chinese Communist Party’s official policy of multiculturalism, while seeking
to promote pride and self-identification with the Han race (han minzu 汉民
族) to the exclusion of the non-Han minorities. In contrast to most of the
Anglophone literature on Chinese nationalism, this article seeks to employ
“Han” as a “boundary-spanner,” a category that turns our analysis of
Chinese national identity formation on its head, side-stepping the “usual suspects”
(intellectuals, dissidents and the state itself) and the prominent role of
the “foreign other” in Chinese ethnogenesis, and instead probing the
unstable plurality of the self/othering process in modern China and the
role of the internet in opening up new spaces for non-mainstream identity
articulation.
On 5 October 2008, the respected 74-year-old historian Yan Chongnian 阎崇年
was signing copies of his new book, The Kangxi Emperor (Kangxi dadi 康熙大
帝), at the Xinhua Bookstore in Wuxi 无锡. Professor Yan was the founding
Director of the Manchu Research Institute (Manxue yanjiusuo 满学研究所) at
the Beijing-based Academy of Social Sciences, but thanks to a series of popular
lectures that had been repeatedly played on the primetime Lecture Room (Baijia
jiangtan 百家讲坛) programme on CCTV-10, he had also become a household
name and a wealthy man. When he leaned down to sign a copy of his book,
he was suddenly and forcefully slapped in the face twice. As the offender was
pulled away he repeatedly shouted “Hanjian, Hanjian” (汉奸汉奸, Han traitor,
Han traitor) before a crowd of shocked onlookers.1
* La Trobe University. Email: j.leibold@latrobe.edu.au
1 For various accounts of the incident see Jenne Jeremiah, “The perils of studying the Qing,” Jottings
from the Granite Studio, 8 October 2008, at http://granitestudio.org/2008/10/08/the-perils-of-studyingthe-
qing/; “Historian slapped, ethnic tensions persist China’s nationalist narrative,” China Digital
Times, 7 October 2008, at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/10/historian-slapped-ethnic-tensions-inchinas-
nationalist-narrative-persist/; “Historian slapped in the face for pro-Manchu view,” Danwei, 7
