Page 91 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

BEYOND ASIA: DECONSTRUCTING DIASPORA

of fictive kinship and racial belonging are the basis of Huaren’s contribution to the
active production of the transnational community of diasporic Chinese. In his book
Global Diasporas Robin Cohen (1997: ix) notes that ‘a member’s adherence to
a diasporic community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link
with their past migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar
background’. It is precisely this acceptance of one’s primordial Chineseness that
Huaren wishes to strengthen or instil in anyone who has some Chinese ancestry.
From this point of view, any Chinese-American or Chinese-Canadian would do
well, to all intents and purposes, to be Chinese first, and American or Canadian only
second, and so help bolster the internal cohesion and solidarity of the global
Chinese diasporic community.
It is clear what is involved in this particular instance of diaspora politics. First
of all, it is based on the premise that historical origin is – or stronger, should be
– ultimately more important than the geographical present in determining one’s
contemporary identity and sense of belonging. It is also premised on the notion
that the signifier ‘Chinese’ alone, whatever its meaning, is sufficient to differentiate
between people who do and those who do not belong to this massively large
diasporic community, and to somehow seal and define the commonality of all
those who do belong. Further, the motivation for diasporic solidarity is implicitly
and explicitly justified by a stance of moral high ground: it is past and present
‘mistreatments’ (read: anti-Chinese racism) which urges ‘us’ to stick together.
Thus, apart from a commitment to document ‘Indonesian atrocities against
Huaren’ the Huaren website significantly dedicates much of its cyberspace to the
Nanjing Massacre of 1937 (Sun 2000). Finally, it is assumed that the move toward
transnational alignment with co-ethnics elsewhere provides an emancipatory lever
which enables diasporic Chinese ‘to circumvent disciplining by nation–states’
(Nonini and Ong 1997: 3) and, in the end, to racial harmony between ‘Chinese’
and ‘non-Chinese’. This stated idealism, however, is contradicted by the actual
hostility expressed towards various non-Chinese others (as I have discussed in
Chapter 3) and the hardening of the boundary between Chinese and non-Chinese
produced by it.
It should be pointed out that the production of the Chinese diaspora, as exem-
plified by Huaren, is first and foremost a matter of collective self-representation.
The interactive and participatory nature of Internet communication is a very
efficient vehicle through which a global sense of community and collective identity
is created: this very process helps bring the Chinese diaspora into being. As Tölölyan
puts it, ‘the diasporic collective subject [is] a figure that mobilizes dispersion into
diaspora and is fleshed out in the course of that mobilization’ (1996: 29). One can
object, of course, that only relatively few diasporic Chinese would ever take part in
the cyber-communication of Huaren and other similar organizations. However,
according to Tölölyan the (re)production of any diaspora worthy of that name
depends on a small number of political leaders and, most importantly, intellectuals
and artists who produce the cultural works and discourses that fuel the diasporic
consciousness and identity. And,

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