I love my land-

In China, today’s younger generation missed the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They were just children or hadn’t even been born during the Tiananmen Square uprising. They weren’t raised with Mao’s Little Red Book. Communistic ideology is quickly giving way to western consumerism. Yet every generation needs something to believe in, something to stand for besides the latest cell phone technology, Enter, nationalism. Today’s youth believe in China. How could they not? Look how “China” has improved their lives.

One of the largest demonstrations of China’s nationalist pride took place in April of 2005 when violent student demonstration erupted in twenty-five cities against Japan. This is a group of youth that has been raised on patriotism. In 1994, the CCP had launched a “patriotic education campaign” in the schools and mass media. Students won awards for reading 100 patriotic books or seeing 100 patriotic movies. Rather than feeling like the party is imposing patriotism, today’s youth see patriotism as an act of self-assertion.

Enter the Olympic Torch! National pride is running high as Beijing looks forward to hosting the 2008 Summer Games. Great preparations have been made to insure that the games go off without a hitch. Then last week in Paris, in response to the Tibet crisis, things began to unravel. A disabled Chinese athlete, Jin Jing was attacked while sitting in a wheelchair. Several times the torch had to be extinguished and put on a bus as the athletes made their way through the city. Western youth are used to protesting and then sitting back and watching things change. What they hadn’t counted on was the nationalistic spirit of today’s Internet savvy Chinese youth.

In response to the Paris torch debacle, Chinese youth everywhere are passing the word to boycott French goods and companies. Headlines for the past week have included “From now on do not buy a Peugeot, do not wear French perfume and do not eat French food.” Citizens are being asked to boycott the French owned department store, Carrefour. A similar protest to the torch run occurred in San Francisco, the one U.S. stop for the torch.

While many in the world are disturbed by the issues surrounding , an attack against a Chinese athlete, as was seen in Paris, will do nothing to help the Tibetans. However, it will do much to increase the nationalistic spirit of today’s younger generation. We have all experienced the school pride of a rival football game. We may work someone from the other school, go to a workshop at the school across town and even date someone from a rival school but come game day our blood runs with our school colors. We must understand this principle with today’s Chinese youth. As the torch passes to a new generation, an understanding of this intense nationalism will do much to furthering peace and opening dialogue to the many issues that divide us.