Arguments in the West over the existence of a “China threat” frequently atomize and even demonize China, as the author of the book points out at the beginning. Is Chinese nationalism benign or malign? The rise of Chinese nationalism in recent times has become an issue of great interest and importance to the world because of concerns over China's intentions as economic growth propels the country's ascendance onto the world stage. This timely account analyzes the sources and dimensions of the new nationalism, from what Peter Hays Gries calls the “rarely told Chinese side of the story” (p. 4). It is premised on a refreshing perspective that “to understand Chinese nationalism, we must listen to the Chinese” (p. 4). Gries's attempt to introduce Western scholars to the views of these new nationalists is an important contribution in itself, as so often mainstream views of Chinese nationalism in the West construe it as a tool to legitimize Communist Party rule. This book gets it right by taking Chinese nationalism seriously and treats it as a matter of genuine popular base and emotional content.

Central to the book is the contention that Chinese nationalism cannot be interpreted in isolation and that Western dismissals greatly oversimplify reality. This point is on target and well grounded. Gries explicitly, and correctly, rejects subjective interpretations of Chinese nationalism commonplace in the Western media and among Western commentators. As a correction, the author insists on the centrality of the empirical context in which Chinese nationalism is situated and must therefore be understood. The latter position may seem like common sense but unfortunately is all too often neglected. In this connection, the book advances four sound arguments. First and second, Chinese nationalism must be understood in the context of the country's relationship with other nations and with its past. Third and fourth, Chinese nationalism involves the Chinese people, not just the party and elites, and it involves their genuine emotional attachments to their national identity.

Despite the author's good intentions, sound perspective, and strong arguments, the book falls short of delivering what it aims at: to tell the Chinese side of the story. It is still largely his account of that story, with what one may call an outsider's interpretations. I say “outsider” in the sense that a Chinese may read the same texts quite differently from Gries, and what Gries reads from a Chinese text may surprise a Chinese reader of the same material. Among the constant sources of the nationalism identified by Gries are the father–son relationship, the old and younger-brother relationship, face, moral authority, and self-image. Other than self-image, which may be construed as a cultural universal, the rest do not hold up convincingly and can take the Chinese by surprise. Granted, they are not a monolith and may differ over the sources of their nationalism. But one will have to go back to the early nineteenth century to find a Chinese who might base his national identity on Confucian concepts of moral authority or hierarchal relationships.

In his first substantive chapter, on how Chinese identity has been defined by dynamic interactions with the West, particularly the United States, Gries finds the teacher–student relationship to be a prominent metaphor in Chinese writings about America. He cites prominent figures in China's modern history to show the people looking up to America as teacher. But to say one has something to learn from a friend or one looks up to the friend as role model is quite different from saying that the friend is your teacher. Gries's contention that new Chinese nationalists today “clearly want to exchange roles within their teacher-student relationship with America” (p. 34) is even more stretched, and unsubstantiated even by his own evidence. In all instances where Gries asserts that the Chinese are casting China as father to the United States, one finds no reference to the idea in the the original source.

For example, citing this quotation from a Chinese magazine—“Facing an ancient Eastern colossus, America is at most a child”—Gries asserts that “by ‘altercasting’ America as a child, China can play the superior elder” (p. 33). In another citation of two Chinese authors who declare the United States to be a “spoiled child,” Gries again asserts that by “altercasting America in the role of child, Li and Qiang depict China as a parent—and clearly believe that parents have both the right and responsibility to discipline their children” (pp. 34–35). But where did the two Chinese authors say or even imply that China may be the “father”? These are all Gries's own inferences. Most Chinese would understand the casting of America as a child to mean that America is a young country with a short history, or that the American way of acting as it wishes in the world is childish.

Such subjective interpretations abound in an otherwise rich and lucid empirical account. Recounting how Chinese nationalists enjoy retelling the story of Margaret Thatcher falling off the stairs after meeting with Deng Xiaoping, Gries comments that “the message is clear: the British must kneel down and beg forgiveness from their betters” (p. 51). This interpretation is not normally what a contemporary Chinese would think of. Instead, the Thatcher story suggests to the Chinese the metaphor of the downfall of a once arrogant colonial overlord. In discussing how Chinese self-image has been influenced by Sino-Japanese relations, Gries repeatedly emphasizes the Chinese presumption of moral superiority and teacher–student hierarchy. But nowhere in this chapter does he point to the basis of the Chinese assumption of Japanese moral inferiority: Japan's aggressive war of the 1930s and 1940s and its lingering reluctance to show genuine remorse.

Gries's victimhood thesis excellently captures an important source of contemporary Chinese nationalism. Unfortunately, his further elaboration only shows more lack of understanding for the Chinese victimhood narrative. Here, the author appears to be more critical of the “obsession” with Japanese atrocities than of the nature of Japanese actions (regardless of the exact death toll during Japanese invasions). Contrary to Gries's claims of the Chinese pursuit of “face” in the world on this matter, the Chinese are bothered that they, as victims of the Japanese war, are now frequently demonized in the Western world as possible aggressors in the future, whereas those refusing to fully acknowledge war guilt are not thought of as likely aggressors. The victimhood literature in China is also often used to assert the point that as past victims of foreign aggression, the Chinese are not likely to revisit the pain on others. Gries is also on weak ground when he lumps Iris Chang, the author of The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1998), together with the mainland Chinese. Chang is a Chinese American, with primarily America-bred sensitivities and outlooks. In depicting Chinese efforts to display Japanese war atrocities as obsessive, “face” saving, and satisfying a need for “foreign validation” (p. 84), Gries fails to ask a different question that will help him better understand the Chinese mindset: How would the world react if Germany reluctantly apologizes for its war atrocities and its leaders pay annual visits to shrines honoring the country's wartime soldiers and officers?

In another otherwise well-chosen topic, the Sino-Japanese and Sino-American “apology diplomacy,” Gries again wrongly locates the Chinese motives. “Apologies are about power relations. Offenses to the social order threaten established hierarchies, and one way that the aggrieved can regain social position is vengeance” (p. 89), writes the author. He fails to appreciate the cultural imperative of apology in not only Chinese but also Japanese culture. Apology in Confucian cultures is not about power or hierarchy, but acknowledgment of the source of wrong and exhibition of contrition. The party that apologizes sincerely is easily forgiven and reparations absolved. The fact that the Chinese have not accepted Japan's repeated apologies is not due to obsessions with power but to the fact the Japanese can apologize in one instance but visit war shrines in another. Such inconsistencies, in other words, show lack of sincere repentance.

Likewise, in the Belgrade bombing of the Chinese Embassy and the U.S. spy plane incident, the seeking of apologies was the seeking of justice. In this case, the Chinese may have been even more surprised by the American perception of no need for apology than the Americans were surprised by the Chinese demand for apology. After all, the U.S. spy plane was all the way off the Chinese coast and the Chinese embassy was bombed, not the other way around. To Gries, “[a]pologies are another means of restoring threatened social hierarchies. The form an apology takes depends critically upon the relative status of the parties involved” (p. 89). But to the average Chinese, apologies are means of showing judgment on right and wrong, and the form of apology depends on the degree of wrongs involved.

My comments should perhaps not be read so much as criticisms of Gries as pointing to a deeply troubling question: If Gries, a student of Chinese politics with a childhood background in China and a consciously “Chinese-oriented” perspective, is not able to “get it right” about the nuances of Chinese nationalism, then misunderstandings and misconceptions should be even worse among mainstream Western commentators. But his earnest effort is a major step in the right direction toward better understanding.