The politics of being Chinese
Vy-liam Ng explores the relationship between politics, ethnic identity and xenophobia in the current global climate.
Life is political.
I’ve lived most of my life avoiding what I considered to be an uninteresting, overtly tedious area of civil life that is modern-day politics. I just didn’t care. I had more pressing concerns growing up as a British Chinese boy in inner-city Birmingham. I had a faulty teen self-image to craft, noodles to serve and PlayStation games to beat.
But when expanding my life experiences through University and work, meeting people outside of my social bubble, I began to be confronted with social mores outside of my own; and with that, a truth which is impossible to ignore. This is that politics is a flawed and preposterously annoying institution. It is both a problem and solution which pervades every corner of life, but good-faith politics is probably one of the best things we have to address the problems we all undeniably face .
Famed political theorist, Hannah Arendt, said:
“Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making.”
The cycle of life is political. There is no way to avoid that and, as Arendt says, we, the people, should strive to perfect the system of politics. But I understand how this reality can be frustrating for those who feel that politics has always been a dirty, corruptible arena, full of snake oil salesmen and egomaniacal philanderers. As I felt growing up, apathy with politics bore from a realisation that ‘politics’ is not just confined to talking about the democratic process. It is this controversy of politicisation, in that being ‘political’ is often aligned with being ‘politically correct’ or being too politically partisan on social issues, to the point at which it feels like we’re being forced into a deliberate game of tribalism. This gamification of politics where it’s all about groups, divided by differing political dimensions, facing off with each other.
Look at us, having never been more divided in civil society, living in an age of ethno-nationalist populism, scientific denialism, conspiracy and the arbitrariness of social media, wherein we’re justifying basic concepts of virus prevention during a global health pandemic…it’s not outlandish to feel like everything, absolutely everything has this political dimension to consider.
Even my ethnic identity as a British-Born Chinese has a political dimension to consider. Especially now, where it feels like ‘being Chinese’ in 2020 is a case of defending your ethnic identity against bad-faith political attacks. Which is a strange feeling, thinking that 2019 was a good year for ESEA representation to only have 2020 be the year of the ‘Chinese’ antagonist.
Such hostile sentiments can be read in between this year’s headlines, throughout social and mainstream media, among which being Chinese is equated with being 2020’s political bogeyman:
The Chinese are at the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic
The Chinese are imprisoning the Uighur population in modern day concentration camps
The Chinese are dismantling the one country, two systems agreement with Hong Kong and engaging in acts of police brutality.
The Chinese are being openly racist to the African population during the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Chinese are facing off with India on their territorial borders to which Indian soldiers have lost their lives.
The Chinese are flexing their muscles again in the South-China Sea
The Chinese are engaging in neo-colonial tactics in Africa and Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Chinese are spying on people through Tik Tok. Chinese students were possibly spies. The Chinese are aligning themselves with right wing populists to defend their place as the ‘best minorities’
The Chinese and the US are engaging in a trade war which harms the working class.
Sometimes it feels too much. There’s no pause button as the world creates these narratives with or without us. And it’s no wonder that when confronted with such negative attention, some of us feel repelled by the politics of it all; where it feels like it’s necessary to defend your ethnic identity against such antagonism. Yet we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place when we find that we’re also inadvertently (or advertently) defending inhumane political practices.
Where do we actually fit on a political spectrum? Obviously, those with common sense can separate ethnic identity from one’s political ideology. This logic dictates not every Chinese person, diaspora or even those in mainland China, agree with the policies of the Chinese Communist party. But for those who already hold racist sentiments towards the 'Chinese', these headlines inject more fuel to their xenophobic fires as they see our faces plastered all over the news.
Source: BBC
This pain is felt not just by those of Chinese descent. Racism is ignorant to geography and culture, and those who look Chinese, who are racialised as Chinese despite being Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Loatian, Filipino, Burmese, Singaporean, Mongolian, Nepalese, Tibetan, Hmong, any face which can be perceived as Chinese, is equally impacted by this rise of sinophobia.
“Our faces are equated with bad politics, and it is unfair as we shout about how these political issues do not represent us all. We sometimes are left confused about what to do and in defending ourselves, some of us are forced into feeling powerless as these overbearing narratives subdue us.“
And there are those higher up who exploit this insecurity of identity by pulling us towards political extremes and leveraging our ethnic identity as being intrinsic to our personal politics. Invoking questions of loyalty to a Chinese national identity as a political weapon.
For some, these criticisms have revitalised a feeling of Chinese nationalism. That you must be proud of your heritage and align yourself with the politicians who best defend our ethnic identity.
There are some in my own family who will say you are not really Chinese if you do not defend your ‘Chinese-ness'. As if being Chinese is purely communal, and an attack on the ‘motherland’ is an attack on us all. As if we must pick a side. ‘You’re either with us, or against us,’ in a battle for our right to exist against western hostility, thus invoking a history of animosity between East vs West. As if this is personal.
But another political theorist, Francis Fukuyama, sums up how dangerous this thinking can be:
“National identity is frequently formed in deliberate opposition to other groups and therefore serves to perpetuate conflict.”
So yes, in 2020, the ESEA community as a whole is being demagogued by forces larger and louder than us. Such ‘othering’ can lead to radicalisation as we’re deemed undesirable in our own homes, and it is no wonder that Chinese ethno-nationalism is on the rise. For some it is the only way to combat such overt racism in granting a sense of power in spaces of insecurity of one’s identity, but this serves to just prolong a tiring and never-ending cycle of conflict which pits us against each other. This is how this gamification of politics can be both physically and emotionally draining.
However, the endless cycle of conflict can only materialise if we buy into this deliberate game of tribalism. If I buy into the idea that my ethnic identity is actually the basis of my political ideology.
This is stupid. I am a proud British-Born Chinese person and I have the privilege of being able to draw upon the positives of two cultures, and the clarity to assess something from outside in. If anything, my ethnic identity only serves to confuse my political ideology, so it only makes sense to ground my politics on something else. Like compassion for my fellow human.
Because with this, I can love Chinese people without supporting the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. I can stand in solidarity with the black communities facing injustices without placing my experience with racism above theirs. I can see the human experience for what it is when ‘politics’ renders humanity a game of winners and losers. In understanding politics as an imperfect system when pursued in bad-faith, I can choose to be part of the solution to fix this. To embrace the ‘political’, to act in good-faith and support the causes and policies which look to elevate us all.
Nowadays, being Chinese is political. That can’t be helped. But if it is political, then the question is not how I can use politics to give meaning to my own ethnic identity. It is a question of how we can fix a broken system, which preys on the insecurity of identity, to better humankind.
References:
Hannah Arendt, ‘What is Freedom?’ in Between Past and Future , 1961
Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, 2014
Vy-liam Ng is a writer, legal specialist, and PhD student, contributing regularly to platforms such as Resonate. His articles draw from his background in law, specifically, immigration and human rights. His current research focuses on the Rohingya, genocide and statelessness in East and South East Asia. He is also an International Student Adviser at Aston University. You can find him here on Twitter: @liam_vn, Instagram: @vyliamng and Resonate: https://www.weareresonate.com/author/vyliamng/
