Archaic thinkers’ view of modern China

Last Sunday there were two articles about China’s new law to protect overseas Chinese or people of Chinese descent as part of the Chinese Civilisation in the Sunday Times. One piece was written by Cheong Suk Wai as a commentary on Leo Suryadinata’s book, The Rise of China and The Chinese Overseas. Another piece was by another eminent Chinese scholar, Prof Wang Gung Wu related the same topic and the book.

In gist, both professors were looking at the new Chinese law from an archaic and coloured perspective tinted by centuries of a weak China and in a way accepted that the victimization and persecution of overseas Chinese is a faith that overseas Chinese must accept. I will deal with these perceptions later, but let me first look at a few points that I think are rubbish even if coming from eminent professors of Chinese history and civilization. “Leo Suryadinata says: Wow, China is there to protect us immediately’. The ethnic Chinese overseas can be safe only if they know how to protect themselves.”

I call this kind of thinking rubbish primarily because the overseas Chinese cannot protect themselves even if they think they know and can protect themselves. That is why there is a long history of ethnic cleansing in SE Asia and the overseas Chinese were simply helpless, witless, with no ways to avoid being persecuted, being murdered in broad daylight even up to 1998 and last year when the threats of another racial bloodbath was close to become a reality in the Low Yat Incident in kuala Lumpur. And the recent election of the Jakarta governor when Ahok was found unacceptable by some extremist groups and again the threat of shedding Chinese blood was on the card not forgetting the burning of Chinese Indonesian homes in Batam recently. Can the overseas Chinese really know how to protect themselves? Yes, by running away, hiding or begging for mercy and be very grateful if the death would be a few lesser and a few women folks raped.

See how rubbish is this kind of archaic thinking. Even the intervention by the Chinese Ambassador in KL was deemed unfavourably, that he should not say anything. What would this professor think would have happened if the Chinese Ambassador did not step in? The Malaysian Chinese able to avoid another ethnic bloodbath? They know how to protect themselves?

Both professors cautioned against China’s policy of protecting overseas Chinese as a selfish act, to want to have more overseas Chinese to help in the OBOR project and that China’s interest is only there to protect its own interest. Should the interest deviates like the cases of the ethnic cleansing in Indonesia in the Suharto era and during the Pol Pot regime, China would look the other way.

There are some elements of truth in the sense that it would definitely be good if the interest of China and the overseas Chinese coincide. This would make things simpler. The point that China is using the charm offensive to woo overseas Chinese to support the OBOR project is true but not the most important consideration in this policy change. A handful of good overseas Chinese is all that China needs to change its fortune just like the return of Qian Xue Sen and a few of his fellow scientists in the 1950s that changed the fortune of China today. Just like the few rich overseas Chinese in recent times that pumped in capital in the early stages of China’s modernization. They are the ones that contributed greatly to what China is today. And the China of today does not really need much assistance from overseas Chinese to continue on its path to modernization and to be the next economic and military superpower. It already is.

What is this new policy and law of protecting overseas Chinese all about? To Leo Suryadinata, this policy is detrimental to the overseas Chinese as it stokes ‘suspicion and resentment among indigenous peoples of the Chinese in their midst, no thanks to the latter’s enterprise, wealth and economic dominance.’ Leo actually gave the answer for the suspicion and resentment, not due to the new Chinese law. The suspicion and resentment of overseas Chinese, even if they have been in their adopted countries for generations did not go away and would not go away if recent threats of ethnic cleansing are to go by.  And this is one of the main reasons for China to make this stand. But this stand did not go against China’s earlier position that the overseas Chinese should be loyal citizens of their new country. That did not change.

China today is no longer a weak and hapless nation, unable to protect its people all over the world. The days when China and the Chinese have to swallow bitter pills and be victims of racial and ethnic discrimination and genocide, and suffered quietly are over. The days when it was natural, and a habit, to attack and kill overseas Chinese are over. China’s new law is about the pride of a civilization, the right to be treated as equals, respectfully as any human beans, that China and the Chinese Civilisation would not be willing and hapless victims of racial and ethnic cleansing.  The old thinking that the Chinese should accept their fate of being at the mercy of primitive instinct must be erased from the minds of not only the primitive tribes, but also from the meek and dismissive overseas Chinese thinking. If the overseas Chinese have to say sorry and apologise to the primitive tribes for violating them, raping their women, looting and burning their homes and killing them whenever they feel like doing, then they deserved to be massacred by these tribes.

China does not adopt this law to disrupt or to stoke tension and disloyalties among the overseas Chinese in their new countries. It is only a natural thing, that China is a new superpower and please don’t think you can kill overseas Chinese anytime you like. Other than this, this policy would be just there as a warning to stop the primitive tribes to think they can still kill Chinese at will.

The overseas Chinese should look at this new law positively and not to have wild imaginations or think too highly of themselves that they are so important to China as a fifth column. China is doing the right thing as a superpower, to be able to protect the Chinese Civilisation from persecution and genocide, nothing more, nothing less. China would look real bad if the primitive tribes are out on a rampage to kill overseas Chinese again and it could not do a thing like in the past.

The primitive tribes did not care about the feelings and sensitivities of the Chinese when they were out there doing the raping and killings. Why should the overseas Chinese be so sensitive to their primitive feelings and sensitivities? Now that China is strong and powerful, it is about time the primitive tribes be sensitive to the feelings and sensitivities of China and the Chinese Civilisation. The Chinese Civilisation should be treated equally with mutual respect and regards, no more rapings and killings because they are Chinese. Period. But for those overseas Chinese who think they could look after themselves and want to continue to be sensitive to the feelings of the primitive natives and subject themselves to their mercy, please continue, bend your head low, bend down and be prepared to be screwed, and go about your life quietly, timidly and meekly, and pray they have mercy on you by sparing your lives when they got the itch to kill you. That is your chosen status quo of an era gone by when kicking your ass, raping your women, robbing your possessions, burning your homes and killing you in broad daylight at their whims and fancy, was and can continue to be the norm. You pathetic beans are afraid, very afraid that they would kill you again if you upset them intentionally or unintentionally or on the slightest excuse.

China is not telling the overseas Chinese Civilisation to be rude, to be arrogant, to rebel, to oppose their govt and be a destructive force in their new countries. Just be good and responsible citizens and be left to live your life normally, but if threatened by primitive instinct, there is China looking over their shoulders, that there is a China to tell them to stop their savage acts. Now would the overseas China want that?

I am not going to waste them explaining the stupid assertion that the OBOR is a new tributary system or shades of it of China. Come off it, the OBOR project was painfully and tediously negotiated with every govt on an equal and willing partner basis with each govt looking very carefully at what they stood to gain in this project. Does Leo Suryadinata really believe that the govt of the 60 plus countries are dumb and stupid and did not know what they were doing and were forced by China to participate in the so called new tributary system? If they are, they would be shot by their own people for treason.  And Beijing got this project off without consulting the govts of these countries? I quote, “However, it is also true that this was suggested by Beijing, without consulting other countries.” Please do not insult their intelligence and integrity.

Come on, say something more credible. The days of colonialism were over many decades ago when the colonial power used to put a gun over the local chieftains or kings and said sign or else, and they signed. Could China do this to any independent country to sign onto the OBOR project?