While ruling China proper, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty had promoted a common, "Manchufying" identity among members of the Eight Banners, its primary military forces.

[1] Thereafter, ethnic identity grew greatly in importance, and the Banner people had to decide whether to identify as Manchu, Han Chinese, or Mongol.

[4] In general, anti-Republican groups founded by Banner people, most prominently the Royalist Party, were initially more motivated by monarchism, conservatism, and revisionism than Manchu/Manchurian nationalism.

The Japanese Kwantung Army was already attempting to use the Royalist Party and Zhang Zuolin (who claimed descent from Han Chinese Bannermen) as early as 1916 to promote Manchurian independence.

Media summaries of its website state that the Manchukuo Government includes an emperor, a royal family, a prime minister, and a cabinet.

[19] Its website claimed to sell Manchukuo postage stamps, but when a Ming Pao columnist enquired with them about the possibility of purchasing them, a spokesperson stated that the items were sold out.

[11] Hong Kong political scientist Simon Shen, an expert on Chinese nationalism and the internet, also expressed suspicion of the website and its attempt to portray the revival of Manchukuo as a movement undertaken on behalf of Manchu people; he pointed out that the people who ever felt genuine identification with the state of Manchukuo were mostly not Chinese or Manchu but rather Japanese.

[23] James Leipold of the China Policy Institute described it as "thick on anti-communist vitriol" while failing to address Japanese hegemony in Manchukuo.

A NOWnews guest columnist in May 2011, in the midst of other arguments against Taiwan independence, called the Manchukuo Government "the shame of the people of Northeast China".

[14] Its stated political positions, such as support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan independence movement, as well as its calls to disrupt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, earned it the ire of internet users in mainland China.