The language of citizenship
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The PRC does have a word for "citizen", namely, "guómín 國民" (lit., "person of a country"), but it is a bit more problematic to find a Chinese word equivalent to the abstract concept of "citizenship". If we mean by "citizenship", "the status / condition of being a citizen of a certain country", the legal term "guójí 國籍", which signifies the country in / to which an individual enjoys certain rights, duties, and privileges, will suffice. If, however, we are searching for a term that conveys the notion of "a person's conduct as a citizen" (Collins) or "the character of an individual viewed as a member of society" (Random House), it is difficult to find a comparable Chinese term.
It is interesting that PRC citizenship in the latter respect is defined pretty much in terms of its absence
Below is a call for papers that engages on this subject:
Chinese Citizenship in Linguistic Dilemma:
Civic Practices and Social Struggles in the Xi Jinping Era
Overview
In the study of Chinese citizenship, a perplexing and understudied phenomenon persists—how does the enactment of citizenship remain possible despite the stringent regulation and elimination of citizenship language in public and private discourse? This issue can be theoretically addressed by drawing on Engin Isin’s conceptualization of citizenship as an apparatus of government, as outlined in his new book, “Citizenship: New Trajectories in Law” (2024). According to Isin, there is a gap between the ordinary language of political thinking in emancipatory citizenship practices and the language of political thinking in dominating citizenship practices. This gap generates sites and senses of social struggles, through which citizens and noncitizens construct various ordinary languages to raise questions of social justice, rights, equality, and solidarity, performing their rights regardless of their status of citizenship. It is these ordinary, situated, and enacted performances that disrupt hegemonic languages by performing citizenship without explicitly naming it.
This special issue, however, focuses on China under Xi Jinping’s leadership, examining social struggles that do not explicitly invoke citizenship in a context where control and restrictions on individuals and organizations have visibly intensified. It aims to reveal the profound theoretical and practical implications of these struggles for understanding the complex relationships between the state and society, and between the state and individuals in contemporary China. We view citizenship as an open, dynamic, creative, and performative concept, filled with possibilities for struggling against dominating power.
We define the official, authorized language that directly employs the terms of citizenship and core elements (such as rights, obligations, and public participation) as the “language of citizenship.” We refer to the “language for citizenship” as the everyday discourses along with relevant practices that indirectly relate to and point towards terms of citizenship. While the use of the language for citizenship in socio-political struggles is common across different polities (Guo 2022; Isin 2024; Wang 2022), it becomes more complex in China. Particularly over the past twelve years under Xi Jinping’s rule, the concept of “citizen” has been intentionally and systematically diminished and excluded from everyday public discourse by dominating political power (Stern and O’Brien 2012). In recent years, the use of the citizenship term and its related core elements (especially citizen rights and public participation) has surprisingly reduced, if not completely disappeared, from both social discussions and academic research, as well as from public life and individual actions.
Does this mean the enactment and practice of citizenship in China have diminished or disappeared as well? Certainly not. In fact, there are numerous ongoing citizenship practices and acts in China that do not explicitly invoke the term “citizen.” We acknowledge that the ordinary language of citizenship means that citizens do not necessarily directly use the concept in their actions and speech, but in the contemporary Chinese context, citizenship faces distinct, profound challenges. There are two observations about this challenge.
First, practices and actions of citizenship have increasingly adopted non-citizenship concepts, terms, and vocabularies to re-express themselves. A typical example is the emergence of numerous homonyms, neologisms, pinyin abbreviations, metaphors, symbols, and mixed signals online to obscurely express politically sensitive views, breaking through sophisticated and stringent speech censorship (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013; Nordin 2013). Additionally, recent discussions in China on food safety (Yan 2012), digital labor and the platform economy (McDonald 2019), educational involution (neijuan) (Mulvey and Wright 2022), and the 996-work regime as modern slavery (J. Wang 2020) have used everyday languages of social well-being, health, technological control, and inequality to replace the official language of citizenship. However, this replacement must occur within the boundaries allowed by socialist state power and ideology. Once these discussions cross the line or are perceived to cross it, they face the risk of being controlled, co-opted, or even blocked and eliminated.
Second, along with the diminishing voice of citizens, the official discourse of citizenship has begun to monopolistically emphasize the responsibility/obligation elements of citizenship while downplaying the equally core elements of rights and public participation. This dominant, biased, and unilateral emphasis may result in the rich connotation of citizenship being oversimplified, potentially reinforcing the instrumental nature of citizenship as a tool to build up a powerful state in modern China (Zhao and Wang 2023; C. Wang 2023a).
We emphasize that the above phenomena represent a special case of citizenship studies in China, which we call the “linguistic dilemma” of Chinese citizenship. This term refers to the reluctance of directly using citizenship terms in everyday social and political struggles over citizenship due to political control and ideological dominance, revealing the gaps between discourse and practice, and between words and actions, in Chinese citizenship.
Furthermore, this judgment is based on three reasons.
1. Politically, over the past decade, China’s socialist regime has intensified control over society and citizens, especially with the aid of artificial intelligence and big data technologies, strengthening an increasingly stringent surveillance society (Xiao 2019). In this context,
citizenship discourse and actions are more rigorously regulated, controlled, and even suppressed by state power due to their emancipatory and creative potential to escape and challenge dominance.
2. Culturally, Chinese political and social life is deeply influenced by Confucian cultural values, which are widely perceived to emphasize responsibility and obligation over rights and to stress obedience to authority over public participation (C. Wang 2023b, 2021). This potentially influences the absence of citizenship language use in contemporary China.
3. Historically, since the concept of citizenship was introduced to China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it has been treated as a tool for building a strong modern nation-state, preventing the development of liberal citizenship (Guo 2014; Zhao, Wang, and Guo 2023). Under the socialist regime, citizens continue to play an instrumental role in achieving Chinese-style modernization, with socialist collective values prioritized over individualistic values, leading to citizens being constantly dominated by power in their speech and actions.
Despite the lack of attention from Chinese citizenship researchers to the “linguistic dilemma,” this special issue aims to problematize this phenomenon, exploring its origins, causes and impacts, thereby reflecting on how to interpret and advance the study of Chinese citizenship.
Why do citizenship practices in China often occur in the form of absent, concealed, or distorted language of citizenship? What political, social, and cultural factors contribute to this case? How does the change in citizenship language impact citizenship practices and actions? Is there consistency, misalignment, or conflict between citizenship language and practices? How should we understand these relationships? How can we comprehend this phenomenon from a historical perspective? What insights do these considerations provide for our understanding of Chinese politics and society in general?
We invite scholars to join us in exploring these issues. We welcome research from a range of disciplines and methods, particularly those interested in employing the approach of citizenship to analyze everyday struggles and creative acts that may not be explicitly recognized as citizenship in public and private life. We encourage researchers to reflect and explore the diverse named and unnamed citizenship practices in everyday interactions, revealing their profound theoretical and practical significance for understanding contemporary Chinese politics and society.
For further information about the call for papers and the target journal to which the organizers aim to submit selected papers, Citizenship Studies, contact Canglong Wang (c.wang@brighton.ac.uk).
Selected readings
- "Citizenship and syntax (updated, and updated again)" (7/25/18)
- "Chinese nationality" (2/20/22)
- "Linguistics Required for British Citizenship" (11/1/05)
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer]