lately I’ve been watching a lot of videos on YouTube about China. it’s partly due to all the chaos around Trump’s tariff, but mostly these are videos done by expats sharing about their life in China. from the technology, the culture, the speed of development there.
then I got into the economy topic, binge watching interviews of Keyu Jin, a china-born US-educated economic analyst and lecturer in LSE. her main thing is trying to shed light on common misconceptions about how China runs its economy and how its culture play into it.
and I can see how my perception towards China changed slowly
I remember noticing this shift of perception in local online scene too. I recall a while back, seeing some Indonesian netizens praising China’s strictness on how male celebrities cannot appear effeminate. the other phenomenon I noticed is how there’s this “Chindo fetish” rising, of non-chinese indonesians proclaiming that they’d like to get Chindo as romantic partners.
interesting.
I’ve always thought Chinese is hated here. but in hindsight, with all the racial discriminations and animosity (“aseng”, the 98 riot), perhaps the sentiment towards China in indonesia is still better than how Indonesian feel towards the US — probably due to its relation with Israel in the Gaza genocide (here I’m also thinking about how most netizens align with Russia in the Ukraine conflict, probably because US seems to be aligning with Ukraine, at least until recently). yes the boycott on McD and Starbucks are going strong, but platforms from Meta are still going strong too. hehe
anyway, this made me reflect on my own context and complex history in relation to the idea of “China”: the country and the ethnicity
I’m a third generation Han Chinese immigrant to Indonesia. my grandmother was born in Indonesia while my grandfather immigrated here from Guang Zhou in his 20s. while both grandparents from my father’s side were born here in Indonesia. I’ve personally been to China twice, the first was to Guang Zhou as a baby and the second to Beijing in 2000 — both for medical purposes.
Mandarin was my first language. I studied the language for 5 years by the time I was in senior high (as well as English, some Japanese, and some Esperanto)
but I also have deep shame of being Chinese indonesian.
I’ve internalized the racial discrimination. I am very conscious of the stereotype of the Chinese descent in Indonesia, and have deeply influenced how I carry myself in public: trying to become the good ambassador of “my people”, not incite racial hate, or perhaps to shift the perception of those who has come into contact with me. to not be flashy, appear well off, to be friendly, to blend in, to not ever be rude to “locals” even though culturally I’m as “local” as most people around me are, as Indonesia is itself immensely multicultural.
I have never held a very favourable view of mainland China.
partly falling for the western media’s depiction of the country. partly hearing, seeing, and experiencing anecdotal proof of the rude, loud, entitled, greedy, unhygienic, scheming, scamming, bribing, stinky, drunkards, Tibetan and Ughyur oppressor who grants no freedom to their people (I know I’m conflating the government and the people here, but you know what I mean). and partly (50%) due to my mother’s own China nationalism.
my mother was educated in Maoist ideologies in the 60s back when there were still Communist schools in Indonesia and (obviously) before the Indonesian mass killings of Communists in 65. and she brought that ideology to her adulthood. this means I hear conflicted view of Mao. on one hand my mother idolizes him, but on the other hand I hear he’s a vicious dictator who has wiped out 40 millions Chinese people?
my father on the other hand, has less of ideological foundation of this “China pride”, but mostly based off an built-in sense of Sino supremacy (we all have inherent talent to be racists, don’t you think?) and, mostly, racial hate (fear) based on his own experience growing up as minority in Indonesia.
and you know how you don’t give something a fair chance because you sense the strong propaganda motifs behind it? that’s the condition that defined my attitude towards China. I roll my eyes hard at the idea of “China is great”.
but lately, I think perhaps there’s more nuance and truth in the opposite.
that my hate and dismissal are not fully warranted. the country seems to have excelled in some way.
I do admire many Chinese people’s ability to work hard and hustle. their can-do, pragmatic attitude. the way the PRC runs its government seems to work. the centralized political and decentralized economical approach seems necessary to get the country to where they are today (there are literally billions of people there, not an easy feat). there’s real genius there.
anyway, that’s all I want to share.
I’ll end by sharing one of the many takeaways from the different videos I watched: you don’t know what you can trust or what to think about something or someone, until you open yourself to knowing them beyond what’s convenient and comfortable. clouded judgments are unavoidable but clouds will fade.
