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
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.
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.
In contrast, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam have evolved into multi-ethnic, multilinguistic world religions. Until recently, mastery of the Chinese language was the sole way to access the Analects of Confucius.
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But weak command of English continues to hamper Beijing’s effort to steer international discourse. In the battle to shape global opinion, China faces one major handicap: it has to compete with arch-rival US in the latter’s native tongue.
In the US, one apt example is the Harvard University-based Confucian philosopher, Tu Weiming. A pioneer in inter-civilisational dialogue, Tu’s bilingual scholarship was crucial in making an erstwhile obscure Confucianism accessible to the English-speaking world.
More broadly and importantly, the Chinese-American community, in synthesising two distinct civilisational sources, began to function as a cultural conduit between the Confucian East and the Christian West.
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In Southeast Asia, China’s rise, though stirring some concerns, is still generally perceived as a positive development. Here, members of the local Chinese community are able to maintain their long-standing role as intermediaries, bringing together their home country with their ancestral homeland.
Imperial China did not bother to tell China’s story to the world and modern China is still struggling to meet President Xi Jinping’s call to do so. It was the overseas Chinese who first acquired the acumen for this and who are now providing an alternative Chinese voice, “neither native nor foreign”, connecting China with the wider world.
Beijing had long recognised the Chinese diaspora’s historic role, and has co-opted returnees, such as Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University, to counter Western disinformation with an “authorised version” of the China story.
The Chinese state co-option marks a step up in an intensifying media war with the West. And overseas Chinese caught in the crossfire are grappling to stay above the fray. Understandably, Chinese Americans must now, more than ever, affirm their patriotism, sadly at considerable expense to their intermediary efforts.
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Peter T.C. Chang is a senior lecturer at the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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