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Opinion | How Southeast Asia’s Chinese diaspora could play a leading role in defusing Sino-US rivalry
- China has woken up to its historical failure to shape how the world sees it. In the battle to influence global opinion, amid the US-China trade war, the Chinese community in Southeast Asia can help bridge the gap between East and West
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The row over The Wall Street Journal’s “Sick Man of Asia” headline was the latest in what Beijing has bemoaned as the West’s sustained smearing of China’s character. But the long Chinese history of indifference towards the outside world is partly to blame for these mischaracterisations.
With the exception of Admiral Zheng He’s short-lived maritime expeditions during the Ming dynasty, imperial China rarely ventured beyond its borders. The Middle Kingdom, however, was not devoid of foreign contact. Many from the West were drawn to the East; these sojourners, including the fabled Marco Polo, returned home bearing tales of a vibrant yet quaint civilisation.
The world outside came to know ancient China through stories penned by foreigners. Imperial China had scant interest in and made little effort to explain itself to the world.
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This changed in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping’s historic epiphany: China could no longer afford to ignore the world. That monumental awakening turned an erstwhile reclusive, detached civilisation into an engaged, globetrotting power. And the Chinese at once encountered not merely an unfamiliar world but one with a cynical perception of China.
A history of indifference has finally caught up with the Chinese: failure to make themselves understood has resulted in a portrait, as painted by others, that is at best misinformed, if not prejudicial.
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