Since imperial times, China has had a problem with foreigners. This is, in part, due to a definition of Chineseness that is at once all-encompassing and narrow, flexible and compulsory. Chineseness has never been centred around race or ethnicity, despite Han predominance . Instead, it has revolved around loyalty to the powers that be. While Chinese culture as exemplified by China’s self-conception as the Middle Kingdom is Sinocentric and does not accommodate ideas of “barbarians”, the Chinese power structure is synarchic and “barbarians”, such as Manchus during the Qing dynasty and Mongols during the Yuan dynasty, could partake in it. This may explain why Beijing now defines Chinese patriotism as love for the motherland, socialism and the Communist Party . The humiliation China endured in the 19th and 20th centuries has bred a siege mentality that still holds sway despite China’s rise as a superpower. Beijing’s approach to Hong Kong encapsulates China’s perennial problem with foreigners and self-identification. Since the handover in 1997, instead of seeing its recovery of Hong Kong as a source of national pride, Beijing has treated the city as a constant reminder of China’s past, a site where foreign elements thrive, and a home to subversives contaminated by a colonial mindset and determined to help foreign powers thwart China’s rise. Hence Beijing’s push for Article 23 legislation and policies aimed at integrating Hong Kong with the mainland, such as the failed introduction of national education, the disqualification of pro-democracy legislators, and the “co-location” of Hong Kong and mainland border checks at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station – where Simon Cheng Man-kit, a Hongkonger and former British Consulate employee, got detained. Universal suffrage, although promised in Articles 45 and 68 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, is anathema to Beijing not only because it contradicts the Communist Party’s position as the sole moral authority for all Chinese, but also because it is premised on values practised in countries that have invaded China (even Mongolia has democracy). Allowing it to materialise on Chinese territory is tantamount to admitting such values can take hold in China. Officials in Beijing, as Bonnie Glaser has observed, “generally don’t have a sense that they need to engage in self-reflection. They tend to blame the outside world.” Throughout Hong Kong’s six-month crisis, which led to United States President Donald Trump signing into law the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, Beijing has insisted that foreign “black hands” , especially the US, are behind the protests. ‘Foreign interference’? China is no stranger in other countries’ affairs Even after a record 2.94 million people, or 71.2 per cent of Hong Kong’s registered voters, took part in the November 24 elections that removed pro-government politicians from control of all but one of the 18 district councils , Beijing continues to complain about foreign interference. The notion that ordinary Hongkongers have free will of their own flies in the face of Chinese authoritarianism whereby only a select few know what is best. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her political eunuchs, some of whom (including Lam) previously held foreign citizenship, have propagated the accusation without proof. The accusation is ludicrous in a city where protesters face up to 10 years in prison on rioting charges and the police force has become a law unto itself. The accusation also invites ridicule. If foreign countries can meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs with so little difficulty, so much so that two million people could be instigated to march in the heat of June 16 and roughly the same number to vote against the government (and Beijing) on November 24, the failures in China’s extensive surveillance, espionage and counter-intelligence systems must have been staggering. In any other country, such failures would be sufficient cause for the leadership to resign. Furthermore, China’s interference in the United States’ democratic processes, by repeatedly urging Trump to veto the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and threatening “consequences” if he did not comply, truly requires a laborious exercise in suspension of disbelief. The loyalty the Communist Party demands of all Chinese knows no bounds. In addition to the flag-waving , anthem-singing counterprotests by Chinese “patriots” in Hong Kong and elsewhere, a significant number of Chinese people have been arrested, charged or convicted overseas for spying for China, even though some of them have pledged allegiance to foreign countries as naturalised citizens. How to make a fool of yourself by waving a flag The Australian government has warned its universities in perpetual need of Chinese cash that collaborations with Chinese academics and universities carry heightened risks of Beijing undermining Australia’s national security. Revelations by Wang Liqiang , a self-professed Chinese spy seeking asylum in Australia, about China’s clandestine operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia merely reinforce what everyone has long suspected. Empress Dowager Cixi believed all foreign ideas, beliefs and values were inferior to and incompatible with everything Chinese, and indulged the Boxers’ attacks on foreign missionaries and merchants, which resulted in the eight-nation siege of the Chinese capital in 1900 and precipitated the collapse of imperial China in 1912. While present-day China is unlikely to fall so easily, Beijing should take heed of lessons not only from Chinese history, but also from the rise and fall of great powers throughout world history, that China’s pride in what it has managed to overcome and become might go before a fall. Phil C.W. Chan is author of the book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order