I confess. Twice a day I need several shots of caffeine, usually administered through the beverage we call coffee. I also confess to an occasional splurging on a latte. People who see me during the day might even catch me with coffee in my hand. But it has only been recently that I've noticed that my scholarly identity has become subsumed by the drink.

The occasion for this rather odd turn of events has been recent publications of Peter Gries, who, either by himself or with his co-authors, has criticized my scepticism of rising nationalism in China in my book Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). This study, which is based on archival research in several municipal, county, and provincial archives and local gazetteers, examines the “everyday” treatment of these populations in villages, offices, factories and protest movements. Methodologically, it argues for a adopting a behaviouralist and interactive measure of patriotism, one which stresses sustained action on behalf of fellow citizens more than the occasional protest, speech or comment in support of the state. Rather than focusing on Benedict Anderson's notion of the nation as an “imagined community,” I take very seriously the other, more neglected, part of his definition of nationalism as a “deep, horizontal comradeship” and a “fraternity”Footnote ¹ but with behaviour rather than cognition as the primary evidence for the existence of this comradeship. My study is not about students, “urbanites,” “netizens,” or even foreign relations, the populations and issues that most concern Gries and his co-authors. The only time coffee of any brew is mentioned is in the following passage in the book's introduction:

Given that Embattled Glory does not focus on a period in Chinese history when drinking coffee at Starbucks was an option for most people, and that my definition of patriotism has absolutely nothing to do with drinking coffee, I have been quite surprised to see the term “caffè latte nationalist” associated with my name on several occasions this last year. In his contribution to the edited volume Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods and Field Strategies, Gries writes that

and

In the March 2011 issue of the China Quarterly, Gries et al. once again refers to coffee:

and

Those of us who have been around academic life long enough are certainly familiar with short-hand labeling. This would be understandable, if the name was the correct one. The problem here is that I never use the concept caffè latte nationalist, something that Gries tries to skirt around by using quotation marks only around the words “caffè latte” and leaving out “nationalist.” Relying on paraphrasing rather than direct citation, in not one of these extended quotes does Gries cite a specific page number from my book or other publications. This is not a coincidence, simply because I never use the term “largely inconsequential” in reference to anyone in China; I never used the word “genuine” to describe veterans' patriotic standing but rather their claim to patriotic standing, which I happen to agree with. In fact, the key argument I advance in the book is that too many groups in China asserted claims to patriotic standing, diluting veterans' contributions. I did not dismiss the significance of netizens' patriotism inasmuch as neither this population nor “cyberspace” are even mentioned in my published work. On the other hand, the answers to Gries' rhetorical questions, such as “What level of ‘sacrifice’ is sufficient to be included in his ‘patriot’ category?” is easily located, in the introduction where I lay out my critique of cognition-based theories of patriotism, and offer my own definition based on principles grounded in republican political theory.

At issue here is more than a scholarly quibble over terminology. Chinese nationalism and its alleged “rise” have engendered a cottage industry of academic scholarship, in part because of its foreign policy implications. Is it dangerous? Just how anti-American, or anti-Japanese or anti-foreign are those “urban youth who have been at the forefront of popular nationalist protests”? Unlike many other academic questions, tremendous financial and institutional interests are at stake in how this question is answered. Just like the perception of threat from the USSR and its satellites and proxies during the Cold War resulted in massive funding for think tanks, academic centres, the Department of Defense, CIA, and other agencies, so too is the study of Chinese nationalism (and beating its drums) inextricably bound up with potentially massive state and private investments.

Given this, it strikes me as especially important to raise foundational, definitional and methodological issues in the study of patriotism, without assuming its apriori existence, even in wartime conditions.Footnote ⁷ These are the issues that I took up in the introduction of my book. What makes someone a patriot or nationalist? Is the category of “patriot,” and its derivative benefits, open to everyone? Is talking the talk as important as walking the walk? Should we place no limits on the hypocrisy of those who positively and absolutely hate Japan but who would never actually boycott its products, even in a “crisis” (as Patricia Thornton has shown, “crises” can be manufactured by politicians for their own purposesFootnote ⁸)? And if we think that patriotism is a powerful motive for action, how do we measure it? These days it's become popular to examine various blogs and bulletin board posts, in addition to the infrequent (but visually gripping) protests. But how can we know for certain that the Central Department of Propaganda and other agencies are not lurking beyond these posts, or helping to organize the protests? Do bloggers constitute a real community?Footnote ⁹ Do numbers matter? Exactly how many anti-foreign protests have taken place in the last 20 years, how long did they last, how many people were involved and how do these compare to protests against the party-state?Footnote ¹⁰ Or, in the vein of Anderson's notion of nationalism as “deep, horizontal comradeship,” how many protests among urbanites have demonstrated empathy with their marginalized fellow nationals? And for all the discussion about Chinese nationalism being defined by the state-sponsored trope of “100 Years of Humiliation” by the West and Japan, there has been no been decline of mostly urban Chinese who seek to advance their careers by leaving China to the US, UK, and Japan.Footnote ¹¹ Blogs with any sort of political content comprise “an extremely tiny portion of China's cyber-cacophony,”Footnote ¹² and even in the case of Japan, Reilly reports that since 2006 there has been “a clear trend of improved attitudes.”Footnote ¹³ Surely these issues, covering both behaviour and attitudes, should be taken into account when considering the structure of patriotism. Never do I take the position that the former is the sole legitimate measure – the text above calls on scholars to “at least include, and hopefully emphasize” my criteria, nothing more.

Let's take, for example, the case of a “nationalist” – those folks who are said to be the main social force behind the occasional protest. If analysts include in this category anyone who posts an anti-American/Western/Japanese screed from their bedroom or dorm, or attends a rally, perhaps there is room for concern. (Here, for argument's sake, let's ignore the very real possibility that quite a few bloggers and protesters are on state payroll.) However, if we adopt a definition that requires some degree of commitment, risk, courage, sacrifice, or, at the very least, narrowing the scope of hypocrisy so that someone who purports to be “anti-Japanese” should not have a house full of Japanese products, I imagine that the pool of “nationalists” would become notably smaller. As noted earlier, in Embattled Glory I argued that another way of measuring nationalism was to examine “everyday interactions” between people that the state and other elites had officially defined as worthy of support because of their patriotic contributions and their fellow citizens. This was a way to operationalize the idea that nationalism is not only a matter of imagining the nation but significant action – one should demonstrate Anderson's notion of “fraternity” and “deep horizontal comradeship.” Veterans and military families, not I, claimed that their patriotism was genuine simply because the state sanctioned this perspective. But over the course of decades and continuing until today, a very substantial number of veterans have felt abandoned by the state, and evidence shows that many of those “nationalists” who churn out books, articles, and blogs proclaiming to support the glorious PLA do nothing to ameliorate their condition. In the 1950s as well, publishing houses in particular were harshly condemned for refusing to hire, or hiring and then dismissing, even reasonably well-educated Korean War veterans. Even if one were to look more broadly for examples of “comradeship” – say, in the treatment of migrant workers and children, the poor, and farmers on the part of “urban nationalists” – examples of maltreatment, neglect, and disrespect vastly outnumber more positive examples.

Gries et al. criticize me for referring to various urban protesters and writers as “caffè latte” nationalists. Not only is this inaccurate in the sense that I never use this concept, but also that it misses the larger point in that, by a more republican version of nationalism and patriotism, these people might not be considered “nationalists” at all, or at best those of the big mouth spectator variety.Footnote ¹⁴ This is not an attack on Chinese elites or the middle class; it simply a way of asking people to align their rhetoric with their money. For instance, “economic nationalists,” to the extent that they exist, must sustain a boycott against a target country, or buy locally made products even at higher cost, behaviour that is extremely rare in China. Similarly, I do not consider as “economic nationalists” Americans who in surveys say they would definitely purchase American-made products even at somewhat higher cost, but then ignore this when shopping. In fact, Dana Frank's research shows that it is often corporations or labour unions that are behind “Buy America” campaigns – they are rarely “popular” and rarely work.Footnote ¹⁵

Left unaccounted for both in Gries et al.'s critique of my work and in much of the literature about nationalism and patriotism in China is this comparative perspective. Embattled Glory argues that states have a very difficult time manufacturing these sentiments, and action based upon them, in the absence of an active civil society (particularly organizations of veterans and war widows), widespread conscription in total wars (which often reduces class stratification) with clear successful outcomes, among other variables; Linda Colley's account of the formation of British patriotism, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (1992, Yale University Press), is an excellent example of this. Even in the most conducive of circumstances, patriotism has to contend with other, potentially countervailing, forces, such as self and community interest, cosmopolitanism, individualism, consumerism, and materialism; achieving synergy between a “self-orientation” and one focused on the collective is a tall order. Unsurprisingly, historically states have struggled to recruit urbanites to sacrifice for it – the very people Gries places at the forefront of patriotism – preferring instead to take advantage of rural populations. (Even in Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces encounters the most draft-dodging in and around large cities.) In their critiques Gries et al. never address the intellectual, historical or comparative substance of this argument, preferring instead to associate me with the easily derisible term “caffè latte nationalist.”

I am all for a considered, historically informed debate about the Chinese patriotism. Embattled Glory attempted to do just this by engaging in literature ranging from political theory to multiple comparative case studies of the treatment of veterans and military dependents. I look forward to future discussions with Peter Gries and his co-authors (I'll spring for the caffè latte!) that go beyond misapplied labels and misleading paraphrases to address more seriously the substance, deeper implications – and limitations – of Chinese nationalism.