China’s unrealistic expectations of overseas Chinese

Attempts by the Chinese media to instruct Singapore on how it should have behaved at the recent Non-Aligned Movement summit at Venezuela are not the first by various Chinese governments to influence and shape the opinions and actions of Chinese Singaporeans.

Both the Communist Party of China (CCP), which has ruled China since 1949, and the Nationalist Government before that, looked to Chinese communities in Singapore and South-east Asia for support, and actively worked to garner their assistance for China. For both the Nationalist Government and the CCP, the Chinese communities in Singapore and elsewhere were huaqiao, or “overseas Chinese”, who should remember and support their motherland.

The Nationalist Government was grateful to the Chinese community in Singapore for its support in the escalating war against Japan in the 1930s and, before that, funding given to Sun Yat Sen to enable him to launch the 1911 Revolution.

The CCP had a special interest in Malaya and Singapore, where it had a hand in establishing the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in the 1930s.

Mao’s 1949 victory over the Nationalists posed a dilemma for the Chinese community in Singapore and Malaya as to whether China’s road to modernity under Mao was also the way to independence for Malaya and Singapore.

The MCP thought so. Inspired and encouraged by the CCP, it launched an armed struggle for independence for Malaya and Singapore from 1948 to 1960.

In Singapore, the communists infiltrated and subverted labour unions, Chinese student groups and political parties, such as the newly formed People’s Action Party (PAP), to challenge the colonial government.

However, the Straits-born Chinese, who did not think of themselves as huaqiao and did not identify with China, disagreed.

They were comfortable with British colonial rule and, represented by the Progressive Party, preferred the constitutional way to independence offered by the British.

But the MCP, through its underground networks, mobilised and shaped public opinion against British colonial rule much more effectively than the other parties.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew recognised that if the PAP were to win the 1959 elections, then it had to cooperate with the communists.

The problem for Mr Lee and the PAP was how to dismount from the communist tiger it had ridden to political power after winning the 1959 elections.

The PAP was fortunate that its communist challenge was part of a larger communist threat to Malaysia, which Singapore had become a part of through merger.

The MCP was not militarily defeated when it withdrew to the Thai-Malaysian border after 1960. There, it was encouraged and supported by the CCP to consolidate and relaunch the armed struggle for independence, which continued until the end of the Cold War in 1989.

China provided the old MCP, which had changed its name to the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), with the facilities and support to run a radio station broadcasting as the Voice of Malayan Revolution from a military base in Hunan.

From 1969 to 1981, the Voice of Malayan Revolution broadcast calls to mount uprisings against the constitutional government in Malaysia and Singapore.

The broadcasting station was closed only after Mr Lee advised Deng Xiaoping that if China wanted better relations with South-east Asia, then he had to shut it down.

Evidently, Deng had decided he needed good relations with South-east Asia for his reforms to work.

Deng recognised that China should put aside the revolutionary zeal of its Mao years, which had alarmed its neighbours.

Instead, China should “keep low profile and achieve something” (or taoguang yanghui, yousuo zuowei” in Deng’s memorable phrase).

Deng was aware, like Sun Yat Sen, that he needed the support of the “overseas Chinese” communities to return to invest in China, if his reforms were to succeed.

China’s opening up under Deng posed a new set of challenges for Singapore and other Chinese communities in South-east Asia in responding to China’s call to its huaqiao to invest in their “motherland”.

But China in the 21st century, under President Xi Jinping, is moving away from Deng’s maxim, and the goal now is to “actively (jiji) achieve something”.

Beijing has shifted from responding and reacting to Asean initiatives in the South China Sea from 2009 to 2012. Under President Xi, China has adopted a more forceful and assertive response to initiatives by Asean and others in the disputed waters.

From 2014, China has moved to more-proactively assert its claims and presence in the South China Sea with the reclamation of reefs as islands.

It also attempted to impress upon Asean in various meetings that its actions in the South China Sea were entirely within its right and which Asean had no cause to comment on.

What happened since the NAM Summit at Venezuela can be seen as another cycle of China’s attempt to shape the opinions and interests of the Chinese community in Singapore about Chinese interests.

But the Chinese community in Singapore is different from that in 1965. Fifty years of nation-building have moulded the Chinese and other ethnic groups into a nation.

A new generation of Chinese Singaporeans have come of age. They do not have the affinity of their fathers or grandfathers for China. If, as entrepreneurs, they invest in China, it is not because of any attachment as a huaqiao for their motherland, but as a hard business investment.

More so than in the past, Singapore — as an independent multi-ethnic nation-state today — has to stand firm against demands by the ancestral homelands of Singapore’s diverse ethnic communities for their loyalty.

To cave in and cater to the demands of Singapore’s different ethnic homelands for the loyalty of their diaspora communities in Singapore will be to undermine the social glue that has held Singapore together these past 50 years.

While the trajectories of Singapore and China may have intersected in the past, and the interests of both would hopefully continue to mesh in future for mutual benefit, 50 years of nation-building in Singapore have meant that Singapore and China are, today, separate nations with separate destinies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kwa Chong Guan is a Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.