China's National Identity: Background and Current State

Ideology is intended to serve as a construct that helps maintain social stability by relying on core values and guiding the actions of individuals and groups. The models formed by ideology facilitate the overcoming of critical situations, divisions, contradictions, and hostilities. In this regard, China's unique experience, with its specific characteristics, is being examined. China, with its five-thousand-year-old cultural code and distinct development path, is increasingly attracting the attention of Central Asian people. Studying the identity of the People's Republic of China allows us to learn more about the country, its cultural peculiarities, and to understand China's foreign policy. Therefore, this study attempts to understand China's national identity and its ideological component. However, the author acknowledges that such an ambitious goal cannot be achieved through a single article. This work should be seen as a modest contribution to the study of China's identity, history, and the current state of its ideological component, including the period of Chairman Xi Jinping's leadership. Based on the objectives outlined above, this article is divided into four parts: the first provides an overview of "China's history of forming national identity and ideology"; the second presents the results of the analysis of "the foundations of Confucian ideology and Marxism in the PRC"; the third focuses on the most significant aspect, in the author's view, "Chinese ideology in the contemporary stage (the concept of the 'Chinese Dream')"; and finally, a series of conclusions are drawn regarding how China's approaches to identity, both historically and in the present, impact its international relations.