Racial nationalism is an ideology that advocates a

racial Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of va ...

definition of

national identity National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...

. Racial nationalism seeks to preserve "

racial purity The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...

" of a nation through policies such as banning race mixing and the immigration of other races. To create a justification for such policies, racial nationalism often promotes

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

, and advocates political and legislative solutions based on eugenic and other racial theories. Nationalism in Northeast Asia (China,

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

and Japan) is partly related to 'racial nationalism' (民族主義), it was influenced by the German ethnonationalist tradition ( ''Völkisch'' movement and

Blood and soil Blood and soil (, ) is a nationalist slogan expressing Nazi Germany's ideal of a racially defined Body national, national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). By it, rural and farm life forms are idealized as a counterweight t ...

) of the 19th century, which was imported from Japan during the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. This kind of nationalism is related to the term 民族 similar to the German word ''

Volk The German noun ''Volk'' () translates to :wikt:people, people, both uncountable in the sense of ''people'' as in a crowd, and countable (plural ''Völker'') in the sense of ''People, a people'' as in an ethnic group or nation (compare the E ...

''.

By country

China

Chinese nationalism Chinese nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that the Chinese people are a nation and promotes the cultural and national unity of all Chinese people. According to Sun Yat-sen's philosophy in the Three Principles of the People, Chin ...

(中国民族主义 or 中华民族主义), as claimed by the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

(CCP) in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

(PRC), is based on the concept of ''

Zhonghua minzu ''Zhonghua minzu'' () is a political term in modern Chinese nationalism related to the concepts of nation-building, ethnicity, and race in the Chinese nationality. Collectively, the term refers to the 56 ethnic groups of China, but being ...

'' (中华民族, lit: "Chinese

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk horror ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Fo ...

"). ''Zhonghua minzu'' is translated as "Chinese nation", "Chinese people", "Chinese ethnicity" and "Chinese race". Some academics have referred to Chinese nationalism as "racial nationalism". Some academics state that the term ''Zhonghua minzu'' is intended to justify the Han-based

assimilationist Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or fully adopts the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group. The melting pot model is based on this concept. A relat ...

policy. Jamil Anderlini, an editor for the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'', said that the concept of "Chinese race" nominally includes 56 officially recognized ethnicities (including Tibetans and

Uyghurs The Uyghurs,. alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the ti ...

) in the PRC, but is "almost universally understood to mean the majority Han ethnic group, who make up more than 90 per cent of the population." Since the mid-1990s, the CCP has utilized

Peking Man Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'', originally "''Sinanthropus pekinensis''") is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. Its fossils have been found in a cave some southw ...

as an instrument of its racial nationalist discourse.

Germany

Japan

is related to ''minzoku'' (民族), the Japanese word that translates to "

people The term "the people" refers to the public or Common people, common mass of people of a polity. As such it is a concept of human rights law, international law as well as constitutional law, particularly used for claims of popular sovereignty. I ...

", "

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

", and "

nation A nation is a type of social organization where a collective Identity (social science), identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, t ...

". ''Minzoku'' does not originally mean " race" in the general sense, and ''jinshu'' (人種) means "race", but some Japanese nationalists also use ''minzoku'' in a closer sense to "race"; Taro Aso has called Japan a "one race" or "one ''minzoku''". Prominent Japanese politicians have often kindled controversies by invoking the images of Japanese racial superiority.

Korea

Korean racial nationalism is related to the concept of ''minjok'', which often translates as "race" in the English-speaking world. In the 20th century, racial nationalist sentiment was shared on all

political spectrum A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different Politics, political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more Geometry, geometric Coordinate axis, axes that represent independent political ...

s in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

, including not just

right-wing dictatorship A right-wing dictatorship, sometimes also referred to as a rightist dictatorship or right-wing authoritarianism, is an authoritarian or sometimes totalitarian regime following right-wing policies. Right-wing dictatorships are typically characteri ...

s, but liberals and leftists who resisted it. When the racialist expressions were removed from South Korea's

Pledge of Allegiance The U.S Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States. The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army o ...

in 2007, it is opposed by some left-wing nationalists who wished for

Korean reunification Korean reunification is the hypothetical unification of North Korea and South Korea into a singular Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification of the peninsula while still maintaining two opposing regimes was started by the Ju ...

. According to Brian Reynolds Myers, racial nationalism in

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

is the main ideology of maintaining the system. Many modern Korean nationalists deny the connection to "race" by limiting the meaning of ''minjok'' to the meanings of "nation", "people" and "

", because ''minjok'' (민족, lit: "folk") and ''injong'' (인종, lit: race) are distinct concepts in

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

. However, many non-Korean observers actually recognize ''minjok'' as meaning of "race" because "Korean ''minjok''" (한민족 or 조선민족) is defined by 'pure Korean blood'.

Peru

References

Sources

* {{Historical definitions of race Racism Ethnic nationalism German nationalism Nationalism in Asia Politics and race