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A Point Of View: How China sees a multicultural world (2012)(bbc.com)
2 points by keepamovin 11 hours ago | 1 comments
ggm 11 hours ago | parent [-]

One mention of Tibet and Xinjiang. No mention of Uighers directly. So a discussion about the nature of Han Chinese identity and multiculturalism but almost no real discussion of the internal minority issues. Singaporean, Malaysian and Taiwanese take note: you're off the radar. Hakka too.

Nothing about Cantonese vs Manderin. I think this is a half asked question the bbc have set themselves. When the british in Malaya expelled 300,000+ Chinese they had little doubt they were Chinese, but I suspect Malay Chinese have no interest in a greater Han identity. Confucianism might be a stronger force tbh.

Post ww2 a small pocket of die hard western war resisters and trotskyists lived in the early communist china. Their status was confused. Many Jews who escaped through eastern USSR wound up in Dalien I believe,although most moved on and obviously there is now a huge Korean community. Macau retains its Portuguese flavour, Hong Kong is hardly all manderin. Hong Kong barely surfaces and Macau and its distinctive colonial history not at all.

There are many Chinese with kids living overseas now, many Australians come and go for trade, some settle. When tensions flare up over trade you can be sure of a street demonstration against the Japanese for evils undeniably committed, but now 80+ years ago I ask myself exactly what do they expect this to do, facing trade between modern nations? One might as well blame US UK trade relationships on that time we burned the white house, or British-Dutch on our invention of the concentration camp in the Boer war.

I expect better from the BBC.