identity, democracy and the Chinese "nation"

I hate to disappoint the cancer guy but here’s some real China wonkery for you, tying in an oblique way with the great cultural relativism debate. It does, however, start with something of general interest, namely a good riot:

Australian and New Zealand troops and police have landed in the troubled capital of the Solomon Islands to try to quell two days of rioting and looting sparked by the election of a prime minister who foes say is being funded by Taiwan. Rioters claimed the new government of Snyder Rini, who was elected by secret parliamentary ballot Tuesday, would be heavily influenced by the government in Taipei, which the Solomons recognizes diplomatically, and businessmen among some 2,000 ethnic Chinese in the South Pacific nation's 538,000 population.

Not surprisingly, this received widespread coverage in the Chinese language media. According to reports, the Taiwanese government took steps to protect its own passport holders, but did nothing to help any other ethnic Chinese targets of the rioters. The Taiwanese foreign minister said:

"The shops that got burned, the so called Chinese operated shops, are opened by old migrants from mainland China. They are not from Taiwan.”

The PRC government, by contrast, arranged for the evacuation of any and all Chinese victims, whatever their nationality. The contrast received widespread comment. Roland Soong translates a commentary from Sing Tao:

As of the evening of April 22, the mainland Chinese government began a large-scale evacuation of the refugees. More than 300 people took the chartered flights organized by the Chinese government to leave the Solomon Islands. During this period, Chairman Hu Jintao was in Saudi Arabia and he personally directed the Foreign Ministry to take action. The overseas Chinese in the Solomon Islands lost their houses and businesses and suffered irreparable losses, but their precious lives were saved.

As for Taiwan which has diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands, we did not see the government do anything. They did not make any effort as the entity with diplomatic relations with respect to protecting the lives and properties of the overseas Chinese, they did not do anything that they were expected to, and they did not offer any assistance to the overseas Chinese in distress…

I’m excerpting the Sing Tao piece partly because it’s the best selling Chinese paper in Britain and has numerous international editions, so it’s representative of the kind of perspective overseas Chinese communities are getting on the events. I’m also doing it because the paper’s not, contrary to what you might expect from the above, a CPC mouthpiece (in fact, it was traditionally the most pro-Taiwanese paper in Hong Kong). Like Rupert Murdoch, the proprietors have business interests in China and so treat the regime with the same kind of circumspection. But they don’t have the same sort of mandate to pile on Taiwan as united front publications like Ta Kung Pao.

You can argue that China was simply point scoring with overseas Chinese in relation to Taiwan. But that raises the question of why the Taiwanese gave them the opportunity to do it. How come the plucky, democratic underdog of the Chinese speaking world – a pretty rich underdog, at that – couldn’t find it in its heart to help out compatriots suffering at the hands of violent mobs, especially as Taiwan’s relations with the Solomons were the pretext for an outbreak of violent anti-Chinese racism?

Part of the answer lies in the question. The primary long term aim of the pan-green coalition running Taiwan is formal independence. This is a no-brainer for westerners; a democracy shouldn’t be absorbed into a dictatorship, and that’s the end of it. But for the Taiwanese, democracy is simply part of a historically and culturally founded separate national identity. Westerners think that Taiwan is proof that Chinese culture can sustain democracy. Supporters of Taiwanese independence tend to believe that the existence of democracy on the island helps to prove that they are not Chinese. “Chineseness” on Taiwan was represented by the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. It is now represented by the threat of invasion from the mainland. Democracy itself is a declaration of independence from this heritage.

And being “not Chinese” was the issue in the Solomon Islands. As far as the Taiwanese government is concerned, they owe no more to Solomon Islanders of Chinese ethnicity than the British would do to Italians or Swedes in similar circumstances.

Diaspora Chinese communities, especially in Asia, are extremely sensitive to anti-Chinese pogroms, and this goes along with a sense that Chinese-ruled states should take the lead in offering support to Chinese communities in trouble of one sort or other. And for its part, the PRC claims a kind of quasi-representative status for all ethnic Chinese, whatever their nationality.

Now ethnic solidarity can be a dubious thing, to say the least. But it’s a fact that historically, diaspora Chinese have had to rely on themselves and on each other for help and support, and traditionally have looked to the homeland for any supplementary help required – back in the 1920’s, for instance, the Kuomintang organised and funded a Chinese sailor's union in Liverpool. There have been other anti-Chinese pogroms in recent years, notably in Indonesia, which have conspicuously failed to generate much general sympathy across the world, and it’s been China that has generally stepped in with offers of help. This has in turn re-inforced Beijing’s prestige amongst diaspora Chinese – at last, the motherland is willing and able to live up to its responsibilities.

Now the Taiwnaese could make a good argument that if democracy in Taiwan is going to survive, then the Island needs to move from de facto to de jure independence. And in order to do that, it needs to stress it’s separateness from the wider Chinese "nation". It’s all very well for overseas Chinese living far away to get sentimental about the motherland. When you start talking about belonging to one big, Chinese family in Taiwain, you immediately start hearing giant sucking sounds from just across the Straits.

Or so might go the argument. The problem is that it binds up the institution of democracy with a policy towards overseas Chinese communities in trouble that is seen, accurately, as unbending and callous. And in so doing it also tends to reinforce the idea that democracy is un-Chinese. That may not be unwelcome as far as the Taiwanese government is concerned, though they won't be pleased with the direct outcome of the affair, which lookslike leading to the Solomons dropping Taiwan and recognising the PRC.

The riots on the Solomons also represent a clash between styles of diplomacy, specifically the economic diplomacy through which the PRC and Taiwan compete for influence against the militant interventionism practiced by the US and its allies over the past few years. For more on that, see China Matters.

Comments

[John Hardy]

Spot on again, Jamie.

It's one of those complicated feelings that overseas Chinese have about China and wherever they are living. It's both disturbing and reassuring at the same time as my wife discovered at the airport on her first visit to China. "Welcome home" was the greeting, she's fifth generation Malaysian-born.

Everyone in SE Asia remembers those rescue boats being sent to Indonesia during the 1960s, there a large colony of former Malayan insurgents still living on Hainan (some are not even of Chinese descent).

It's a comfort to know that when things go really bad "there's always China" as a place to go... although this comes way down on the list of preferences after the America, Europe and Australia.

[Duncan]

I agree that this seems to be the Taiwanese government's thinking, but the general reaction of the international (ethnic) Chinese community seems to illustrate that most Chinese see themselves as part of a same ethnic grouping with ties of resonsibility to each other. Given that Taiwan's the recognised diplomatic partner, it should perhaps have intervened (as I'm sure the UK would have helped Swedes or Italians if it had been the only EU country with representation in a country exploding into civil strife). That it didn't may hav more to do with the fact it doesn't want to draw attention to its role its stimulation of corruption has played in fueling the violence.

And incidentally, the Chinese intervention in Indonesia in the 1960s caused such huge difficulties (accomodating an expensive bunch of capitalist small business folk in the midst of the cultural revolution) that the subsequent Chinese response to Indonesian pogroms has been steadily less impressive on every occasion. China's response to Pol Pot's persecution of Cambodia's Chinese minority was also less than stellar.

[moorethanthis]

I assume by "ethnic Chinese" you're talking about Han Chinese. It's a distinction, and one that the government in Beijing takes pains to make.
On a related note, have you seen this piece on Han migrants in Tibet? Shows the discussion on "the Chinese nation" in a whole new light.

[Paul Lyon]

Re Indonesia and Suharto's atrocities

It probably did not pass unoticed in Beijing that the U.S. was backing Suharto.