Chinese culture does not belong to the Chinese government

My heart sank. Since moving to Beijing in 2014 as a Wall Street Journal correspondent, I have seen Xi Jinping’s regime regularly invoke Chinese culture to consolidate its dominance, supporting the nation’s “great civilization” and the party’s efforts. keep it and support it. But I found it especially sad to see a childhood icon enlisted in the effort.

What does it mean to love a culture and be proud of it, but not the government that serves as its most prominent reminder? For members of the Chinese diaspora, such questions can be difficult, especially at a time when global distrust of China and its leaders is developing. A recent Pew survey in 14 countries, for example, found record unfavorable views on China, with an average of 78% of respondents saying they did not trust Mr Xi to do the right thing on world issues. .

When I was a child in the US in the 1990s, my identity as someone of Chinese ethnicity felt mostly like a cultural affair: dim sum halls, Chinese lessons, participating in the San Francisco Lunar Year parade. However, we are moving forward today, and as Beijing plays a more visible role on the global stage, politics and culture now feel much more mixed.

Celebrities like Jackie Chan have become vocal supporters of the government, with Mr Chan saying “we Chinese have to be controlled”. On Twitter, Chinese state media mixes posts denying the atrocities in Xinjiang – where Western governments say authorities have detained a million or more Uighurs in internment camps – with tributes to the tai chi virtues and Chinese cuisine.

“China’s soft power has been steadily growing, which stems from its attractive traditional culture,” said Chinese nationalist tabloid The Global Times, referring to YouTube star Li Ziqi, whose film photos of her lifestyle Traditional Chinese countryside has garnered millions of views.

Clarissa Wei, an American food writer based in Taipei, says that when she started writing about Chinese food a decade ago, the subject seemed harmless. Lately, however, her work has received a negative reaction, with some critics accusing her of being part of Beijing’s soft-power force. “She feels when you say ‘Chinese culture’ too loudly, it almost feels like a dirty word,” says Ms. Wei, adding that her intention was to celebrate some of her legacy and that she does not support the party.

By the time the Monkey King video was released, I had recently left Beijing and moved back to the United States. I was pregnant and thinking about my child and how to raise him as an American of proud Chinese ethnic origin, as my parents had me raised.

But just before he was born, questions came in, including something as simple as writing his Chinese name in English. The Wade-Giles system created in the 19th century – which my parents used to transliterate my name – felt old and we did not feel comfortable using the pinyin system propagated under the communist regime in the 1950s, which became a global standard. . My grandparents were members of the Kuomintang, the party that lost to the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and later fled to Taiwan – as a child, my father grew up shouting “Recover the continent!” at home – and I imagined that they were rolling in their graves at the thought. So, for my son’s name, we ended up using a completely different romanization system, one developed in Taiwan.

I want my son to grow up feeling connected to China. In my time as a reporter, and before that, I lived in China for years – all the more so than I lived anywhere except my hometown of Oakland, California. Beyond my family’s roots there, it’s a place I love deeply.

It is also a place that I find difficult to talk about. Since returning to the United States, people have frequently asked me about the worst parts of the country and its government, about the Communist Party’s campaign to eliminate dissent and its growing political repression. “What a place to be a reporter,” they will say. “You must be so relieved to be back.”

I mean yes, but also that it is a place full of kind and smart people, who are constantly finding ways to reinvent their lives, with a propulsive mixture of pragmatism and playfulness. I can’t count how many times I’ve been invited from the street to people’s homes or describe how much I miss China today. Food and language, yes – but especially people. I don’t know how to speak in a transcript that captures all this.

As China became more uncontrollable in its authoritarian ambitions, some found it clear in the total elimination of the “Chinese” label. Nathan Law, a Hong Kong activist in London, says he once identified as Chinese and cheered the Beijing Olympics, but no more. Like many in Hong Kong, as China increasingly invaded the city’s autonomy – most recently by adopting a draconian national security law that froze speech and led to dozens of arrests – Mr. Law began to be called Hong Kong. “The term ‘Chinese’ has been abused,” he says. “The way Xi marks the term forces people to establish a more localized identity.”

For Arlen Tsao, an IT professional in Taiwan, Beijing’s efforts to embrace the mantle of traditional Chinese culture feel ironic, given how the party’s Cultural Revolution has led to the widespread destruction of such a culture, with temples shattered and those suspected of fidelity to old persecuted traditions. “It’s propaganda and it annoys me,” he says.

I tell him I had similar thoughts. I think of the way art was used in Nazi Germany and the way Beethoven’s New Symphony was interpreted in propaganda films, half a century before Chinese protesters interpreted it as a cry during the protests in Tiananmen Square since 1989. For authoritarian regimes, cultural pride is a ready-made fig leaf.

“The government is always trying to promote Chinese culture in order to project China as a peaceful and friendly growing power,” said Sheng Ding, a professor of political science at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. However, he says, the push for soft culture has met with increasing resistance in recent years. Many Confucius institutions in US universities – Beijing’s flagship vehicles for promoting the Chinese language and culture – have recently been closed, for example, amid security concerns and a wider response. Mr Ding says he has sought to teach his children that it is possible to love a country, but not its government. “What the Chinese government is doing has nothing to do with the Chinese people,” he said, adding that he was telling his students the same thing.

The other day, I started reading my son the Monkey King books I had saved as a child. It was a joy to sink again. After challenging the heavens, the Monkey King defeats an army of heavenly soldiers and proves impossible to execute. I was reminded that the immortal Chinese swindler is first and foremost a rebel – and that every empire, no matter how powerful, can sometimes be overthrown.

-Miss. Chen covers work and work culture for the Journal and is the author of a new collection of short stories, “The Land of Big Numbers,” which will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 2.