H ow China handles its diaspora receives greater scrutiny than the diaspora issues of other countries, such as India, Israel and Ireland. With an estimated population of 60 million ethnic Chinese abroad, the group is a global phenomenon. Beijing is in the unique and complicated position of being intimately identified with its diaspora to the extent that both are sometimes treated as an inseparable whole or mistaken one for the other. But a primary consideration that guides diaspora policy is the distinction between the huaqiao and the huaren , each with their own legal and political distinctions. The huaqiao are citizens of China living abroad. The huaren are foreign citizens who are Chinese by descent and ethnicity. This distinction is active, fluid and constantly evolving, with many people straddling the line. The Chinese government has been careful to ensure the two groups fall into different policy domains: the huaqiao are subject to China’s domestic policymaking, while the huaren come under the purview of China’s foreign affairs apparatus. There have been controversial suggestions that China is blurring the boundaries between the huaqiao and the huaren . But it is not official policy to obscure the line. Rather, Beijing is acutely aware of the complexity of the issue and is very cautious about departing from the distinction. “Beijing both creates and governs the Chinese diaspora without directly challenging the sovereignty of other countries or giving overt reasons for concern about the loyalty of the Chinese diaspora,” says Aarhus University scholar Mette Thuno. “China breaks with the Westphalian principle of congruence between territory, sovereignty, population and political authority, while introducing new ways of conceptualising citizenship and national belonging.” How China’s 19th century crises shaped the Chinese diaspora in multiracial Singapore Scepticism about the purported blurring of the boundary is largely a result of the sensitive history of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Having naturalised their citizenship in their country of residence, many wanted to maintain and emphasise their difference and distance from the Chinese mainland. This was a strategy of self-preservation to allay domestic suspicions about their allegiance, especially in the light of anti-Chinese undercurrents in their societies. NANYANG SOJOURNERS China has generally regarded the ethnic Chinese residing in Southeast Asia in favourable terms – a sentiment accompanied by a sense of emotional attachment and cultural identification. Historian and sinologist Professor Wang Gungwu has described how a romantic image of these Chinese “sojourners” was cultivated. The Nanyang Chinese (southern ocean Chinese) sailed south in vast numbers, creating numerous success stories of Chinese entrepreneurs and capitalists, along with spectacular advances in huaqiao education. For the people of south China, the Nanyang was both a land of wealth and opportunity as well as a place filled with wild or charming and easy-going people. China has much to learn from Israel and Jewish diaspora about soft power China has traditionally viewed this group as “good relatives” with whom it was keen to remain in contact. Former premier Zhou Enlai in 1956 told an audience of overseas Chinese in Burma: “The dual nationality problem of the overseas Chinese must be resolved. If they have willingly chosen to become citizens of the country they reside in, according to law, they are no longer Chinese citizens. Will they be discriminated against by the Chinese and the Chinese government? No, because we are still relatives. And what is wrong with having relatives?” QUESTIONS OF LOYALTY But with Southeast Asian states keen to unite their populations, the issue of divided allegiances and citizenship status came to the fore. This marked the emergence of the “Chinese problem” that would come to cast a long shadow on Sino-Southeast Asian relations. The question facing Chinese diaspora: for love of country or party? The Communist Party’s efforts to claim the support and allegiance of overseas Chinese contributed to the fear of the group as a “fifth column” in the region. There was hence a need to resolve the “problem” of the 10 million overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, including the issues of citizenship and dual nationality, their political integration within the newly independent nation states, their educational, cultural and heritage rights, and their economic role vis-a-vis the Chinese mainland. China therefore sought to establish “peaceful coexistence” with its newly independent Southeast Asian neighbours between 1955 and the early 1960s. Beijing relinquished its claim to the allegiance of the overseas Chinese and instead encouraged them to adopt the citizenship of their respective host countries. China also ended the possibility of holding dual nationality to signal its commitment to avoid being too deeply involved in the affairs of the overseas Chinese or asking for their allegiance to the communist cause, thus helping to lessen tension which had led to a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in countries such as Indonesia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This period witnessed the repatriation to China and resettling of a large number of returnees in special overseas Chinese farms located in the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi and Yunnan. By 1960, the final number repatriated from Indonesia was 94,000, which included 18,800 students. Steve Bannon is right about overseas Chinese – they’ve been careful around Beijing and too silent on Xinjiang ASSET, NOT LIABILITY With the exception of the period during the Cultural Revolution, China’s underlying approach has been to regard the overseas Chinese community as an asset. Prior to the 1870s, Chinese migrants were negatively characterised as “overseas orphans”, “deserters”, “exiles”, or even “traitors”. But an attitudinal shift emerged from a desire to modernise the country following the humiliation inflicted by the two opium wars. For those on the mainland, the overseas Chinese have since become a manifestation of Chinese modernity and a source of capital and expertise. When the communists came to power in 1949, there was little change in policy. On top of granting the overseas Chinese political representation in the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party continued to encourage the inflow of investments and remittances and to entice them to return to assist with the socialist construction of the Chinese motherland. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s brought an abrupt halt to this approach, but a return to the policy equilibrium began from 1978 onwards. A revival of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission aimed to encourage overseas Chinese and their relatives to return to China once again. Cases of wrongful accusations during the Cultural Revolution were revisited and redressed, with confiscated properties and bank accounts returned to their rightful owners. From Singapore to the US, overseas Chinese are increasingly fearful of criticising Beijing. Is this what China wants? But while remittances began to flow again in the 1980s, donations from the huaren were no longer adequate to sustain China’s economic reforms and opening up to global trade. What China required was their direct investment, technology and managerial expertise. By the tenure of President Jiang Zemin from 1989 to 2003, China began to attach importance to overseas Chinese talent as a significant pool of human resources, while continuing the emphasis on attracting foreign direct investment to spur modernisation. Hu Jintao, in his first term as president, then added a new dimension to policy by proposing the idea of a “harmonious overseas Chinese community”. This was prompted by a need to build a relationship of reciprocity in which the interests of the overseas communities were also served, rather than the mainland being the one-sided beneficiary. Fast-forward to today, and Beijing’s diaspora policy now seeks “to benefit China, to benefit the host countries, and to benefit Chinese overseas”. But the government must learn and accommodate the fundamental interests of Chinese communities abroad, rather than merely treating the diaspora as an asset to serve the interests of the mainland. The majority, whether Chinese or foreign nationals, have to be convinced about the value of Chinese transnationalism. Their worries must be allayed if they are to be made more receptive to Beijing’s ideas. ■ Wu Xiaoan is a professor of history at Peking University and director of its Centre for the Study of Chinese Overseas. This is an excerpt from China’s evolving policy towards the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia (1949-2018) , published in Trends in Southeast Asia by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore