Distinguishing PRC Informal Diplomacy and Sharp Power in Southeast Asia

• In Event: Major Power Competition and Internal Politics in Asia

Abstract

PRC outreach and public diplomacy efforts have in recent years taken on an informal dimension that focuses on ethnic Chinese communities overseas. State and party organs are more openly engaging community organisations such as clan and native place associations, temple associations, and business associations, often emphasizing support for and affinity with the PRC based on shared ethnic and cultural ties. Such engagement echoes the work of governments and political parties in China trying to mobilize support from ethnic Chinese communities abroad and their organisations between the late Qing and first decades of the PRC, roughly covering the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. Contemporary PRC efforts in this regard tend to be less systematically studied, much less conceptualized.

This paper explores PRC informal diplomacy targeting ethnic Chinese communities overseas in Southeast Asia by focusing on the cases of Malaysia and Singapore. It seeks to map the network of interactions between clan and native place associations and PRC state and Chinese Communist Party entities as well as the activities that characterise such engagement. In doing so, the paper seeks to distinguish between more benign exchanges from behavior that may negatively affect or distort political processes in host states. More precision in understanding informal PRC diplomatic outreach may prove useful for identifying activity relating to influence campaigns using ethnic and cultural grounds while reducing the potential overreactions over malign foreign interference in politics. Such distinctions may prove especially important given intensifying major power competition over and the persistent potential for state excess in Southeast Asia.

Author

• Ja Ian Chong, National University of Singapore