Social Construction of National Reality

Fu-Lai Tony Yu is emeritus professor of economics at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.Diana S. Kwan is project coordinator in the Office of Medical Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Social Construction of National Reality: Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong is a highly interesting book, using the phenomenological sociology of Berger and Luckmann—as well as Weber and Schutz—to shed light on the struggles over identity and belonging being waged between China and Taiwan/Tibet/Hong Kong. If both mainland Chinese unificationists and Taiwanese/Tibetan/Hongkonger separatists were to read this clearly-written and clearly-argued book, they might come to a deeper understanding of one another's seemingly intractable positions and why those positions are held—an understanding that in today's tense times is all too lacking.

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Social Construction of National Reality: Towards a Theory of National Consciousness and IdentityChapter 3: Historical Origins of China’s National Identity: Grand Unification Doctrine, Great Han Mentality, Patriotism and NationalismChapter 4: The Taiwan Strait Conflict: Taiwanese Consciousness versus Chinese ConsciousnessChapter 5: Tension in Tibet: Tibetan Buddhism against Chinese Cultural AssimilationChapter 6: Explaining the Rise of Hong Kong Consciousness: Localization against MainlandizationChapter 7: A Comparative Analysis on the Taiwan Strait Conflict, Tibet’s Tension and Hong Kong’s Localization Movement