Diaspora

Chinese opera in Thailand

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Source: NYT (4/24/18)
‘We Don’t Perform for People, We Perform for the Gods’
A community has formed around Chinese opera in Thailand, preserving one of the oldest dramatic art forms in the world.
By Malin Fezehai

Backstage with the Sai Yong Hong Chinese Opera troupe. Actors spend hours applying layers of makeup and working on their hairstyles before performing.

BANGKOK — “Anywhere they play in Bangkok, I’ll be there,” said Warin Nithihiranyakul, 73, a dedicated fan of the Sai Yong Hong Chinese Opera troupe for more than 10 years. While waiting for his friends to arrive, he helps out by starting to set up plastic red chairs for the audience to watch the evening’s performance in an area just south of Bangkok’s Chinatown.

A devotee of 11 years, Wandee Tengyodwanich, 62, unwraps several small plates of Chinese dough sticks and cake, passing them around to her friends in front of the stage before the show. She says that Sai Yong Hong is the best Chinese opera in Thailand because it invests in very elaborate costumes. She and her friends go to see the group a couple of times a year. They eat and catch up as they reminisce about the first time they saw Chinese opera as children. Continue reading →

Survey show Chinese films gain ground in North America

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Source: China Daily (3/22/18)
Survey shows Chinese movies gain ground in North America
By Wang Kaihao | China Daily

Huang Huilin, a professor at Beijing Normal University and an initiator of the survey on the global influence of Chinese cinema, speaks at the annual event. [Photo provided to China Daily]

North America is increasingly taking to Chinese movies, but kung fu films–which were once popular–are now losing ground, says a report recently released by Beijing Normal University.

According to the report, which is based on 1,520 responses in the United States and Canada, the interviewees were least interested in upcoming Chinese kung fu movies. Continue reading →

Chinese students abroad and the battle for their hearts

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Source: SupChina (1/18/18)
Caught In A Crossfire: Chinese Students Abroad And The Battle For Their Hearts
China’s 800,000 overseas students represent a blind spot for the Communist Party in its ongoing battle against Western ideology. But many of them are returning home with more love and appreciation for their birth country than ever before.
By ERIC FISH

When 22-year-old Chinese student Langou Lian looks back at her decision to study in the United States, there’s one influence that sticks out: the Disney Channel movie High School Musical.

“I hated Chinese education,” Lian says, remembering the high-pressure test-centered schooling in her native Sichuan Province. High School Musical presented an alternative: a carefree atmosphere where even adolescent students are independent, free to speak their mind, and have a palette of social activities to choose from.

But after she arrived in the U.S., that rosy Hollywood image became complicated. “The one word that describes my impression of America before coming is freedom,” Lian says. “[But] after I studied here for a while, I started to kind of understand American society. My impression went from good to bad.” Continue reading →

Visiting scholars set up party branch at UC Davis (1)

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Source: Quartz (11/21/17)
China’s Communist Party briefly had a chapter at a California university
By Echo Huang

Seven Chinese scholars visiting the University of California, Davis, set up a local chapter of China’s Communist Party to guard against the “corrosion” of western ideas—only to realize they had set up a potentially illegal organization under US law.

Mu Xingsen, a visiting thermal engineering scholar from China’s University of Dalian Technology, founded the party branch in early November—an act that Mu’s university praised as “setting an example for overseas party members.” The idea was to study party doctrine, including lessons from the just-concluded 19th Party Congress, according to the South China Morning Post, which first reported on the chapter. Continue reading →

Visiting scholars set up party branch at UC Davis

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Posted by: Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>
Source: China Scope
Chinese Visiting Scholars Setup CCP Party Branch at UC Davis

According to an article Duowei News published, on November 4, seven Chinese visiting scholars at the University of California Davis campus formed a Chinese Communist Party branch office on campus. The Dalian University of Technology news website published the news first but then deleted the news from its website. The Duowei article reported that these seven visiting scholars are teachers from seven different universities in China who are either existing party members or probationary party members. The party secretary is one of the teachers from Dalian University of Technology School of Power and Energy. The other six teachers came from Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Dalian University of Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Jiangsu University, Nanjing Agricultural University, and Hohai University. The branch office vows to “continue to recruit new members; organize the group to study the latest party theory and ideology from China; resist the corrosive influence from the west; and enable the members of the branch office and other Chinese patriotic people to experience warm caring from the party office.” The branch office will recruit new members starting with the existing members to target their colleagues or neighbors. They will also have one group activity every two weeks. The branch office is currently under the management of the Dalian University of Technology in China, which recommended that the branch get in touch with other party organizations in the U.S. that the Chinese communist Party has set up in order to seek leadership in the U.S.

Source: Duowei News, November 19, 2017
http://news.dwnews.com/china/news/2017-11-19/60024426.html

Book critical of China pulled

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Posted by: Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>
Source: The Age (11/13/17)
Free speech fears after book critical of China is pulled from publication
By Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker

Author Clive Hamilton: ''The reason they've decided not to publish this book is the very reason the book needs to be ...

Author Clive Hamilton: ”The reason they’ve decided not to publish this book is the very reason the book needs to be published.” Photo: Rohan Thomson

Australian publisher Allen & Unwin has ditched a book on Chinese Communist Party influence in Australian politics and academia, citing fear of legal action from the Chinese government or its proxies.

The publisher’s chief executive, Robert Gorman, said last week that it would abandon publication of a completed manuscript by Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, called Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State. Continue reading →

Australian official warns about Chinese influence

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Things are really heating up in Australia, with the country’s foreign minister and other elected officials warning Chinese Communist activists in the country to respect Australia’s “values of openness and upholding freedom of speech.” –Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (10/16/17)
China’s soft power: Julie Bishop steps up warning to university students on Communist Party rhetoric
By defence reporter Andrew Greene and political reporter Stephen Dziedzic

Julie Bishop speaks into two microphones at a lectern. She is wearing a beige coloured suit and jewelled earrings.

Julie Bishop gives a speech. Ms Bishop said freedom of speech was crucial for all those living in or visiting Australia.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has issued a blunt warning to Chinese university students affiliated with the Communist Party, urging them to respect freedom of speech in Australia.

There are mounting anxieties about the way the Chinese Government uses student groups to monitor Chinese students in Australia, and to challenge academics whose views do not align with Beijing’s.

Australia’s security agencies are now pushing allies — including the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand — to hammer out a collective strategy to resist Chinese Government intrusions into Western universities. Continue reading →

The Giant Awakens

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THE GIANT AWAKENS
A Collection of Insights into Chinese Government Influence in Australia
https://www.visiontimes.com.au/the-giant-awakens/

Download the full PDF version of The Giant Awakens

Read the e-book version of The Giant Awakens online

Foreword

Influence /ˈɪnflʊəns/ [mass noun]:The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.

The Chinese government’s vast sphere of influence has been a widely debated topic over the past few months. In many instances, discussions have blurred the lines between China – a country with a rich history of 5,000 years – and the Chinese government – currently controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s culture, its arts and trade relations with Australia, have had a significant influence on Australia’s development as a well-integrated multicultural society. The cultural and economic contributions of the 1.2 million Chinese living and studying in Australia cannot be overstated. Continue reading →

Exile or Pursuit

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Wai-chew Sim’s translation of an excerpt from Exile or Pursuit, by the Singapore writer Chia Joo Ming. The translation is too long to include here in full. The whole translation can be found at http://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/sim/

Born in 1959 in Singapore, Chia Joo Ming (谢裕民) won the Singapore Young Artist award in 1993 and participated in the Iowa international writing program in 1995. He was also writer-in-residence in the Chinese program, Nanyang Technological University, in 2014. Chia is a three-time recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize, in 2006, 2010, and 2016. His works include: The Most Boring Nationality (最闷族, 1989),  New Words of Worldly Tales (世说新语, 1994), The Insignificance of Being (一般是非, 1999), Reconstructing Nanyang Images (重构南洋图像, 2005),  M40 (2009), 1644: The Year A Dynasty Was Hanged (甲申说明书, 2012), and Exile or Pursuit (放逐与追逐, 2015). He is currently a senior executive sub-editor in Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报), Singapore main’s Chinese-language newspaper.

Exile or Pursuit (2015) tells the story of Hok Leong (福良), whose family runs a won ton noodle stall in a food centre. It follows his experiences through school, national service (compulsory military service), and early adulthood, detailing in the process a distinct period in the Singapore socio-historical formation and experience.

Kirk A. Denton, editor

Exile or Pursuit (an extract)

By Chia Joo Ming [1]
Translated by Wai-chew Sim [2]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright October 2017)

1

The year it all started, Hok Leong had just entered secondary two. A new student came into their classroom. Her name is Lin Chiu-yun, the form teacher said. She’s from Indonesia. From now on—everybody—please help her out as much as you can.

Hok Leong’s tentative memories of school life began more or less from that period.

To welcome the new student, the teacher clapped his hands, willing everyone to join in. Hok Leong felt that this was a tad unsophisticated but was prepared to go through the motions. He raised his hands and was about to bring them together when suddenly he heard his name.

“Hok Leong. Your Chinese is pretty good. You should help Chiu-yun.”

The boys in the class started to hoot. Hok Leong felt embarrassed and put his arms down. Continue reading →

Singapore dispute

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Source: NYT (7/4/17)
Dispute Over Singapore Founder’s House Becomes a National Crisis
点击查看本文中文版
By RICHARD C. PADDOCK

Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s residence, center, in Singapore. He did not want it to become a museum after his death. CreditEdgar Su/Reuters

SINGAPORE — Two years after his death, no memorials, statues or streets in Singapore are named after Lee Kuan Yew, who established this city-state as a modern nation and built it into a prosperous showcase for his view that limited political freedoms best suit Asian values.

Now a bitter and public family dispute over the fate of his modest house has shattered Singapore’s image as an orderly authoritarian ideal and hinted at deeper divisions about its political future. Continue reading →

Can free speech withstand Chinese nationalism

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Source: China File (5/25/17)
Can Free Speech on American Campuses Withstand Chinese Nationalism?

The ChinaFile Conversation is a weekly, real-time discussion of China news, from a group of the world’s leading China experts.

Earlier this week, Kunming native Yang Shuping, a student at the University of Maryland, gave a commencement speech extolling the “fresh air” and “free speech” she experienced while studying in the United States. Video of her speech spread on the Internet, and Yang and her family found themselves under attack by fellow Chinese students in the U.S. and a chorus of critics on Chinese social media, who argued—at times viciously—that she had betrayed her country. Yang then apologized for the speech and asked for “forgiveness from the public.” Why was she attacked? What do her speech and the reaction it engendered reveal (or obscure) about the experiences of Chinese students on American campuses, and what do they portend for the future of academic freedom in the U.S.? To what extent is Chinese nationalism reshaping university life in America? —The Editors

Comments

Yifu Dong

I’m not surprised that Yang Shuping had to apologize in the face of severe nationalistic backlash against her speech. The following is part of the speech I would have given at my graduation, if Yale was not so obviously anti-Chinese to let me freely express myself on the podium during its two-hour Class Day ceremony. I regret missing an opportunity to garner respect from like-minded Chinese netizens and set an example for all future Chinese students who are tasked with the sacred duty of nationalistic speech-giving in paper tiger imperialist regimes. Continue reading →

China funds new garden in Washington

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Source: Washington Post (4/27/17)
China wants a bold presence in Washington — so it’s building a $100 million garden
By Adrian Higgins

The Ge Garden in Yangzhou, which will be replicated in the National China Garden at the National Arboretum. (Courtesy of the National China Garden)

This summer, a construction team is expected to begin transforming a 12-acre field at the U.S. National Arboretum into one of the most ambitious Chinese gardens ever built in the West.

By the time Chinese artisans finish their work some 30 months later, visitors will encounter a garden containing all the elements of a classical Chinese landscape: enticing moongate entrances, swooping and soaring roof lines, grand pavilions with carved wooden screens and groves of golden bamboo. The grounds will boast two dozen handcrafted pavilions, temples and other ornate structures around a large central lake. Continue reading →

Confucius Institutes

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See below for a nice summary of the state of play as regards the Confucius Institutes, in the light of both the recent report from the National Association of Scholars, “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education” (published April 26, 2017, download at: https://www.nas.org/projects/confucius_institutes), and of the efforts in China to curb Western “infiltration”. –Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: NY Review of Books (4/28/17)
Should the Chinese Government Be in American Classrooms?
By Richard Bernstein

Imaginechina via AP Images: Students from a Confucius Institute in the US visiting the Confucius Temple in Qufu, China, April 17, 2013.

Since their beginning in 2005, Confucius Institutes have been set up to teach Chinese language classes in more than one hundred American colleges and universities, including large and substantial institutions like Rutgers University, the State Universities of New York at Binghamton and Albany, Purdue, Emory, Texas A & M, Stanford, and others. In addition, there are now about five hundred sister programs, known as “Confucius Classrooms,” teaching Chinese in primary and secondary schools from Texas to Massachusetts. Continue reading →

Tibetan posters vandalized at Cornell

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The Cornell Daily Sun, the campus student-run newspaper, carried an article on the recent anonymous night-time vandalization and theft of a university-approved lawn exhibit mounted on campus by the Tibet student group. –posted by Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: The Cornell Daily Sun (4/27/17)
Students Divided Over Swiped Pro-Tibet Signs Depicting Self-immolation
By Yuichiro Kakutani

More than half of the 34 signs were swiped, members of the Tibet Initiative at Cornell said in a recent interview, emphasizing a campus divide on Chinese policy. Tibet Initiative at Cornell, via Facebook

Two dozen posters in the Arts Quad depicting Tibetans self-immolating in protest were snatched last week by an unknown person or people on the same night a Cornell group had put the signs up. Continue reading →

Swedish police arrest man for spying

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Swedish security police have arrested a man for spying on the Tibetan refugee community. This is big news in Sweden. A few years ago, in 2009, a naturalized Swedish citizen was arrested and sentenced to jail for similar espionage on Uighur refugees, and a Chinese diplomat was expelled. In this new case, nothing has yet been said about which country is behind the spying. For more reports in English, see:

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6640681
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/02/28/man-arrested-sweden-spying-tibetan-refugees/

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: The Local (2/27/17)
Man arrested for ‘refugee espionage’ in Sweden
TT/AFP/The Local

The Swedish security police (Säpo) office in Stockholm. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

Sweden’s security police Säpo has arrested a man suspected of spying on refugees in the country.

Säpo arrested the man on February 26th on suspicion of aggravated unlawful intelligence activities in the country. He is believed to have illegally obtained intelligence about people related to Tibet in Sweden on behalf of another country. Continue reading →