Bruno Maçães: belief

Transcript context

…If you think of the traditional Chinese view that ethnic Chinese overseas are almost like Chinese citizens, even if they’re not formally Chinese citizens at all, and China now seems to be taking much greater care to mobilize them as a force for Chinese national interests. What does the equilibrium to that process look like? That the overseas communities rebel and don’t cooperate at all? That they become a kind of fifth column where they live? That China gives up on this effort? What’s going to happen? That’s one of the very good examples of why we live in a world that is heading towards new and dangerous fronts of conflict. I think this is a very serious problem. China will not give up on its overseas citizens. They have obligations towards the motherland. On the other hand, we see already very strong reaction against this in the West, which, by the way, will feed into xenophobic tendencies in the West itself. Very quickly, people will start to assume that every Chinese is working for the Chinese state. I think, by the way — make a parenthesis here — that we’ll see some of the same dynamics in the case of India. Perhaps not as acute — India is a democracy and has rule of law. But what I found out in my recent visit to India is that India likes this way of thinking about the diaspora and is trying to apply it to its own diaspora. So it’s a world where borders are becoming very diffuse, where perhaps countries are becoming a bit footloose, like multinationals. A country like Russia or like China, in some respects, doesn’t stop at the borders anymore. It has stakes. It has participations in other countries. China has a 20 percent stake in Djibouti, and it has an 80 percent stake in the Chinese diaspora. When you look at a country, it is a combination, a diagram of different stakes all over the world, and not an organized national community within borders. This is the world we’re heading to, which is world ripe for conflict of all kinds. Which is the best Chinese regional cuisine?…

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