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?
What I’ve seen is that most of the Chinese diaspora in Burgerstan are almost as misinformed about contemporary China as everyone else here.
I guess it depends on the level of connection they still have to China. If they don’t go to China every once in a while and don’t regularly talk to relatives and friends in China then they are not going to know much more than what the media tells them.
my observation as ABC is that most of my peers (other ABCs) can’t read Chinese and have fossilized speaking/listening skills, if they retain much at all. There is some “blame” on parents pushing kids to focus on English, or the education system or other society things, but the fact of the matter is at least for me anecdotally, Chinese language weekend schools (designed for native speakers) I attended start off with a lot of kids in the beginner/lower levels (30+) but very few sticks with it all that long. Grade 11/12 and HSK class we only had 7 people iirc, and this was more than 10 years ago. I didn’t even want to attend, being Chinese and doing culturally Chinese things were uncool and made it really awkward to try to make friends in white society, as well as took time away from socializing as a teen. I’m glad I stuck with it, however I will say that efforts towards Chinese literacy was more due to efforts I made as an adult, but I’m very grateful that my parents tried and it gave me a decent foundation.
Another thing is, even as recently as 10-15 years ago, China was still very much developing country, homeless could still be seen begging on the streets and income inequality especially with lots of migrant workers from rural areas - surface level observations but very visually prominent, which could lead someone to think that China is backwards or communism is a fraud or failure. Additionally during that era my relatives were abuzz about corruption in government officials and my understanding from them was that moving up in society was about who you knew 关系. So these things reinforced my left-liberal position for a long time, didn’t start shaking it off until the pro-dem HK situation in 2019 and atrocity fabrication in XUAR.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience, this was very interesting to read. I hope some of this is starting to change and more folks in the Chinese diaspora start to take an interest in China. I feel like we’ve truly reached an inflection point with how easy it is nowadays to watch videos from China and see just how far they have come in the last 10-20 years, with how easy it is to bridge the language barrier with translation apps, and with the various travel opportunities that have opened up.
finished the video and was a little bit annoyed because it focused on anecdotal rather than analytical, which the title suggested it would do. Please I know there’s a lot of content featuring domestic conditions in China, it’s good. But with that kind of title, I thought it would go more into the manufacture of sinophobia, how the sausage is made… because frankly, diaspora who hold the sinophobia torch in the west are under-discussed. From Ai Weiwei and Chai Ling to falun gong media empire (hi David Zhang) and certain YA novel authors, news reporters with a Chinese face spreading sinophobic tropes… I recognize that these individuals or groups have amassed credence and power in the west, but ! oh my god. Oh my god it is everywhere.
further discourse for people interested: Can the Chinese Diaspora Speak?
linked article goes more into specifically chinese americans but I believe analysis should be applicable to other groups of imperial core diaspora. The article is already long, but I think more complete analysis would include mention more recent history & developments, such as dissident industrial complex [related to 6-4 and operation yellowbird, but also beyond], and prominence of FLG cult and integration with US right wing, as well as discussion of religion (per my own experience “church asians” are much more vehemently anti-China, and community or lack thereof is also related to recent decades shuttering of Chinese cultural centers while Chinese language churches have taken up their emptied niche as social centers)
Very good points. I agree the video was rather on the shallow side if you were looking for something deep and analytical. Though i would say that there is a place for this type of video too, as people are often more strongly impacted by hearing personal stories and anecdotes. Objective analysis is vitally important for us as dialectical materialists but we shouldn’t underestimate the value of stories with an emotional appeal when we want to reach and convince regular people.
that is an awesome article thanks for sharing it.
ive always mantained that the US is the stronghold of the petitbourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of the rest of the world so people should take the opinions of the different diasporas about their countries with a grain of salt.
