My Take | Mainland and overseas Chinese may be worlds apart over China
- Such diverse groups necessarily have very different political priorities and sympathies, leading to misreading by self-centred Washington and Beijing
It goes without saying that there is a great deal of mutual incomprehension between China and the West. Chief among them, I would argue, is how they think mainland Chinese and ethnic Chinese in the diaspora perceive the country.
Most Westerners underestimate the high levels of support the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government at all levels of society enjoy. Many foreigners who have never visited China likely have no conception of it.
On the other hand, Beijing constantly overestimates the “loyalty”, nationalism or patriotism of ethnic Chinese overseas.
From my own experience, many who were originally from places other than mainland China share the mainstream values and political leanings of the Western societies they call home, and may well be unsympathetic or even antagonistic to Beijing. This has been especially pronounced after the violent anti-government and anti-China protests in Hong Kong last year.
Such mutual misunderstanding is often amplified by senior officials, who ought to know better. Translated into policy, it naturally leads to greater mutual antagonism between China and the West, especially the United States.
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Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says
Those of us who know something about China may find it absurd that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has tried to call on Chinese citizens to join his international effort to “change the behaviour” of their government.