116 Views
China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
The 1980s was a decade of surging local consciousness among the Chinese communities across East and Southeast Asia. As a result of Cold War geopolitics the rise of local identity had become a significant force since the 1940s and 50s. As early as the Chinese Civil War, however, when the Nationalists and Communists were vying for international recognition of their cause and influence over the diaspora, propaganda in the form of drama was an outreach tool launched to maneuver the overseas Chinese, which continued well into the Cold War. On top of expressing a stronger allegiance to the “Chinese motherland,” the dissemination of propaganda on the Chinese diaspora, however, led to two unintended consequences. First it launched a “local Chinese identity vs. China-Chinese identity” debate, planting the seeds for a local consciousness that was to germinate in the decades to come. Second, during the Cold War communist sympathizers were expelled from the Chinese diasporic sites and activities that were sympathetic to the communist cause were avoided at all costs, leaving a vacuum for drama that propagated a consciousness alternative to the Chinese mainland to be filled. This paper attempts to discuss the geopolitics surrounding the region and account for the important role of drama in identity formation in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan amid their tensions and convergences with China.
Wah Guan Lim
University of New South Wales, Australia