I suspect Chinese diaspora are not particularly patriotic or communist. When they come to the capitalist West, it is likely with an expectation for a higher material quality of life. There is a powerful incentive, monetarily and socially, to sell oneself as a “victim of communism” who overwhelmingly loves liberal and capitalist values. Now, if a patriotic or communist Chinese person was willing to leave China for the US for whatever reason, I think they’d quickly be met with hostility and suspicion for challenging the anticommunist narrative. To back this up, I have some anecdotes to help illustrate my point if you feel like reading them.
spoiler
Most recent anecdote: My partner was telling me about a funeral she attended for a Chinese American woman, and a huge chunk of the service was about her “escaping” the Cultural Revolution. Apparently she came home reciting communist slogans, her brother chastised her, then abused his connections working in shipping to send her to the US. Presumably, a good chunk of her life involved her being an avid anticommunist, acting like she escaped some great evil, to the point where it took up a chunk of her eulogy. She’s not simply “the Chinese lady”, she’s “the lady who escaped communist China”.
Second anecdote: A comrade of mine worked as a therapist in training for a bit while in college. One of his patients was an obnoxious rich man who repeatedly blamed all of his toxic behaviors on communism. He was from the former USSR, so whenever he did or said something that elicited a negative reaction from people (like visibly showing distaste), he’d go “sorry, I come from communist country.”
Third anecdote: Around the same time, I lived with said comrade and worked in something like a hospice. A nurse there was from Romania and randomly brings up how she never had bananas in Romania because “Romania was a communist country”. Instead of expressing sympathy or just taking what she said as fact, I was like “wasn’t it because a lot of bananas cone from US-controlled countries and the US might have just been refusing to trade them with Romania at the time?” She looked so confused because I had presented a logical alternative, not simply accepted “communism bad”.
One more thing: When I was working my history degree, we read some sources about the Ottoman Empire for a class on the Middle East. One of the sources was an excerpt from a janissary defector (I forget his name, but he’s famous and held up as a national hero by white supremacists in the Balkans). It’s the guy going on about how evil janissaries are, and how true blue Christian and loyal he is. We were learning to read sources while asking ourselves who, what, where, when, and why they were written. One point brought up about the validity of the source is that it’s very probable the defector was simply overselling his hatred for janissaries and making up shit about them to serve as anti-Ottoman propaganda, because he was living a cozy lifestyle as a “guest” of the Christian King. If he were, say, to be suspected of Muslim or Ottoman sympathies, well, why would a Christian, anti-Ottoman kingdom tolerate that, let alone furnish him with an above-average quality of life?
I suspect Chinese diaspora are not particularly patriotic or communist. When they come to the capitalist West, it is likely with an expectation for a higher material quality of life. There is a powerful incentive, monetarily and socially, to sell oneself as a “victim of communism” who overwhelmingly loves liberal and capitalist values. Now, if a patriotic or communist Chinese person was willing to leave China for the US for whatever reason, I think they’d quickly be met with hostility and suspicion for challenging the anticommunist narrative. To back this up, I have some anecdotes to help illustrate my point if you feel like reading them.
spoiler
Most recent anecdote: My partner was telling me about a funeral she attended for a Chinese American woman, and a huge chunk of the service was about her “escaping” the Cultural Revolution. Apparently she came home reciting communist slogans, her brother chastised her, then abused his connections working in shipping to send her to the US. Presumably, a good chunk of her life involved her being an avid anticommunist, acting like she escaped some great evil, to the point where it took up a chunk of her eulogy. She’s not simply “the Chinese lady”, she’s “the lady who escaped communist China”.
Second anecdote: A comrade of mine worked as a therapist in training for a bit while in college. One of his patients was an obnoxious rich man who repeatedly blamed all of his toxic behaviors on communism. He was from the former USSR, so whenever he did or said something that elicited a negative reaction from people (like visibly showing distaste), he’d go “sorry, I come from communist country.”
Third anecdote: Around the same time, I lived with said comrade and worked in something like a hospice. A nurse there was from Romania and randomly brings up how she never had bananas in Romania because “Romania was a communist country”. Instead of expressing sympathy or just taking what she said as fact, I was like “wasn’t it because a lot of bananas cone from US-controlled countries and the US might have just been refusing to trade them with Romania at the time?” She looked so confused because I had presented a logical alternative, not simply accepted “communism bad”.
One more thing: When I was working my history degree, we read some sources about the Ottoman Empire for a class on the Middle East. One of the sources was an excerpt from a janissary defector (I forget his name, but he’s famous and held up as a national hero by white supremacists in the Balkans). It’s the guy going on about how evil janissaries are, and how true blue Christian and loyal he is. We were learning to read sources while asking ourselves who, what, where, when, and why they were written. One point brought up about the validity of the source is that it’s very probable the defector was simply overselling his hatred for janissaries and making up shit about them to serve as anti-Ottoman propaganda, because he was living a cozy lifestyle as a “guest” of the Christian King. If he were, say, to be suspected of Muslim or Ottoman sympathies, well, why would a Christian, anti-Ottoman kingdom tolerate that, let alone furnish him with an above-average quality of life?