As someone from this part of the world I feel like I am inclined to breakdown this hilarious article.

Promoting these communities as a vehicle for China’s geopolitical ambitions has become something of a mantra in Beijing, often wrapped in bland rhetoric like building a “shared future.” But in seeking to incorporate citizens of other countries into its vision, critics say, Beijing is stoking divided loyalties, and their potentially destabilizing consequences, across Southeast Asia — home to more than 80 percent of the ethnic-Chinese people outside China and Taiwan, researchers say.

This is often said but China is acting very restrictedly, dare I say completely non-antagonistic compared to the West if we look at history.

Compare how foreign European settlers were utilized by European geopolitical goals in Southern Africa. Nothing remotely close ever happened in Southeast Asia, in which, like the article itself mentions, is where an overwhelmingly majority of the Chinese diaspora lives.

“If too many Chinese Singaporeans are foolish enough to subscribe to Xi’s version of the ‘China Dream,’ the multiracial social cohesion that is the foundation of Singapore’s success will be destroyed,” said Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary of Singapore’s Foreign Ministry. “Once destroyed, it cannot be put together again.”

I don't think someone who authored a book called "China is Messing with Your Mind" is a neutral actor, but sure.

according to an examination of more than 700 Lianhe Zaobao articles through 2022 and early 2023 by The Washington Post and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

lol.

Additionally, the paper has been running regular opinion columns since 2016 from at least two CCP officials without noting their party affiliation, referring to them simply as China affairs commentators.

Super based. There's too many anglophone Western worshippers in this damn region (anything more than 0 is too much).

(I am different, I am an anglophone who hates the West )

Beijing sees Southeast Asia as a key sphere of influence, and it has been increasing its public diplomacy and media presence there as part of a multibillion-dollar campaign under Xi, with ethnic-Chinese communities a significant target, according to researchers.

Yes because we are neighbours with a population of almost 700million - same as the Latin American population and how the Yankees treat them as their backyard (to kill everyone they disagree with).

It's only you white-washed Western worhsippers who believe in Eurocentric understandings of International politics, including the "rational" nation-state, liberal democracy and the "end of history". It is not a "sphere of influence", it is a logical conclusion of Southeast Asia's millenia long interactions with China. India should also try to learn from it's roots and engage in peaceful diplomacy - but we all know why they can't.

Chinese state television in both Chinese and English is ubiquitous in Southeast Asia, as is China Radio International, which broadcasts in most Southeast Asian languages as well as Chinese. Beijing is also promoting its official news agency, Xinhua, to media organizations in the region, creating content-sharing agreements. Chinese companies or businesspeople with strong commercial interests in China have bought up local Chinese-language newspapers in Malaysia.

American state television is also ubiquitous in Southeast Asia - what is their point?

Should I even mention the utterly cursed Filipino News Ecosystem?

Apart from these direct efforts, the sheer weight of China’s economic power has become an incentive to heed Beijing’s wishes, undermining traditional constraints in Singapore on taking sides.

The West would never do what China does!

The paper is one of three main vernacular newspapers in Singapore, each serving a predominant ethnic group — Chinese, Malay or Indian. The majority of Singapore’s 5.4 million people are bilingual, proficient in English and one other language: Mandarin, Malay or Tamil.

To the dismay of European colonizers who destroyed their own linguistic diversity for "nation building".

Zaobao also partners with a Chinese company that has been pinpointed as complicit in rights abuses. In late 2022, Zaobao started working on digitization efforts with an artificial intelligence firm called SenseTime, which has been placed under sanction by the U.S. government for the use of facial recognition technology against the Uyghur ethnic minority.

lol.

Propagating a pro-China line that “doesn’t distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party state, Chinese culture, Chinese ethnicity” creates “confusion over self-identification and where loyalties should lie, especially at a time where friction between the PRC, the U.S. and other U.S. friends and allies in the region are increasing,” said Chong, of the National University of Singapore.

It can only be miscontrued as "pro-China" if you fall into the West's centuries long struggle against us practicing our own cultures and perspectives.

Only in the West and anglo-brained liberals think that we can't celebrate diversity and be proud of our cultural heritage. As we all know here, the large aspect of the Amerikan cultural appartus is assimilating those who are different, so even if people are phenotypically different, they are all part of the same individualistic devil spawn (Amerika) and can't even talk positively about their culture without self-hatred.

Friendship “associations are designed to build emotional links to China on the one hand, and allow the United Front department to use those emotional and other connections as levers to serve the goals of the Communist Party, whether economic, political or social.”

Elderly Chinese, who were Mandarin-educated and feel as if they’ve lost their place in a Singapore that is largely Anglophone, are the most easily swayed by Beijing’s messaging, analysts and residents said. One person who describes her parents, in their 70s and 80s, as having “extreme” pro-China views said the CCP has become like a “fictional hero.”

Based.

Overall, I say 2/10 for effort. For the West to act like they celebrate cultural diversity, they seem really intent at perptuating myths of "divided loyalties" that got many (working class and Communist) Chinese people killed in 20th century Southeast Asia.

Maybe they do not actually care? Just a thought.