Exploring the Cultural Pathway of China's Modernization - Analyzing how Cultural Identity Shapes the Legitimacy of National Identity from the Perspective of the National Cultural Structure

Abstract

Chinese-style modernisation has raised the major proposition of state building in contemporary China. Under the general consensus of an ancient civilisation of more than 5,000 years, the mechanisms and paths of how deep cultural traditions influence or constrain state building have not been clearly revealed. The theory of national cultural structure suggests that in the Chinese cultural identity-based state structure, cultural identity and national identity are naturally linked based on a long historical process, and the national cultural agenda is linked to the national political agenda, resulting in a "path lock" from cultural identity to national identity in the process of state building. In modern times, the process of globalisation, which began with Western capitalism, has forced such a cultural community as China, rooted in historical and cultural traditions, into the "coercive framework" of the modern nation-state, greatly weakening China's traditional bond of constructing national identity through cultural identity, leading to a chain reaction from traditional cultural crisis to national identity crisis, and shaking the national identity of the country. This has led to a chain reaction from traditional cultural crisis to national identity crisis, shaking the stability of the state structure, with wide-ranging effects. By sorting out the differences between the Western national identity-based state and the Chinese cultural identity-based state, and elaborating on the logic of China's state construction and transformation dilemmas as a cultural identity-based state in the long historical cycle, we will reveal in depth the national attributes and morphological characteristics of the cultural identity-based state, and then elucidate the path of China's distinctive state construction under the perspective of globalisation, which is based on the integration of cultural identity with national and religious identity, and clarify the initial cultural conditions for the launching of modernisation in the Middle Kingdom and the West. The differences in the initial cultural conditions for the launch of modernisation between China and the West have elucidated the special connotations and fundamental features of the Chinese modernisation path that are different from those of the West, so as to gain a deeper understanding of the profound connotations of "advancing the Chinese modernisation as the biggest politics", and to construct a unique theoretical logic of the Chinese modernisation path.