Why should we care about chineseness?

Chun traces “Chineseness”, asking in turn what it would take for Americans to critically reflect on their own cultural ethos. The Chinese rendition of identity is rentong (assimilation), which expresses status and identification to a group and its values. For example, the concept of guanxi is considered so difficult to render in English that it is often left untranslated, underscoring its inherent Chineseness. The content of culture inculcated as a product of socialization has a literal meaning that is less important than blindness to its subjective values. Abrams remarked that the state is not the reality that stands behind the mask of political practice but rather the mask that prevents seeing political practice as it is. Chun labels the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan as a “politics of the unreal”; Hong Kong, the PRC, and other societies can be viewed similarly if viewed literally from “the inside”. He argues that Taiwan could more easily realize its independence by rewriting history starting from its expulsion from the UN rather than tying it to 2000 years of Chinese civilization. Orientalisms on both ends need to be deconstructed as points of departure for unraveling the politicizing processes central to identification in general.