A MOMENTARY GLOW OF FRATERNITY - NARRATIVES OF CHINESE NATIONALISM AND CAPITALISM

This essay discusses how Chinese culture is variously reified and depl oyed in two competing discursive systems: the modernist imaginary of t he nation-state - emphasizing essentialism, territoriality, and fixity -in tension with the modernist imagining of entreprenurial capitalism - celebrating hybridity, deterritorialization. and fluidity. These alt ernative visions of modernity are to a large extent conditioned by geo politics and the dynamism of global capitalism in the Asia-Pacific. Re gimes in China and Singapore have deployed ''Confucian'' Values in att empts to discipline their societies against the lures of transnational capitalism based on fraternal Chinese networks (''Greater China''). B oth visions of Chinese modernitites depend on self-orientalizing strat egies that critique ''Western'' values like individualism and human ri ghts. These narratives intersect with voices claiming an ''Asian renai ssance'' and ''the Asian Way'' in global capitalism, thus constituting a counter-hegemony to American domination of the Asia-Pacific.