Identity Crisis and National security

148SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CHINA Spring 2007

increasing international political power. The expansion of this power depends on a gen-erally accepted identity as a member of the international community. The acquisition of this identity depends on the justice of a country’s social institutions and foreign policy. And this is based on common crite-ria accepted by most members of the inter-national community rather than criteria es-tablished by one government alone.

Zhou Jianming: Since reform and opening up, we have had a full appreciation of the importance of economic development, but that is not the case with the importance of national security. Many people tend to believe that as long as we have a developed economy the issue of security will take care of itself. Therefore, public interests are stressed at the expense of national interests, so that the importance of economic con-struction has become absolute and the im-portance of national security and the chal-lenges in this regard are overlooked. For example, large-scale foreign aggression has long been taken as the only situation that would change the Chinese policy of making economic development the central task. This is a narrow definition of threats to national security, since, under modern conditions, serious encroachment on national interests may occur even without large-scale foreign aggression (as proved by the development of splittist forces in Taiwan and intervention by foreign powers). Lack of an understand-ing of national security and national interests leads to absence of the geopolitical perspec-tive in judgments on the international situation. For example, it is easy to stress the mutual cooperation resulting from eco-nomic globalization without fully understand-ing the fact that the essence of international relations is contention among sovereign states over national interests, based on national strength. We said in the past that a back-ward country would come under attack. Today, our economy has developed, but we could still come under attack if we lack a strong sense of national security. If this is not remedied, we may pay a heavy price in national security.

(Translated by Deng Ying

Revised by Sally Borthwick)“Identity Crisis” and National Security

—A Comment on Samuel P. Huntington’s Who Are We?

Yu Xiaofeng, Professor at the School of Public Management, Zhejiang University Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping lilun yanjiu, 2006, no. 1

Post-Cold War realities indicate that the “identity crisis” poses a new challenge to national security. It is against this background that Huntington’s new book Who Are We? brings to light the relationship between na-tional security and the “subnational” and “transnational” identities brought about by immigration from the perspective of identity and an examination of the realities of “na-tional identity crisis.” Huntington is convinced that the present era is one of “global identity crisis” and that the dual identity, dual loyalty and dual citizenship that come with the Ameri-can social mosaic created by immigrants in-tensify the weakening of the sense of “na-tional identity” among America’s citizens. Hence he declares categorically that “immi-