Civilisation Is Not Citizenship: Why Beijing’s Diaspora Strategy Misreads History

Across Southeast Asia, more than 35 million ethnic Chinese live as citizens of independent nation-states. Their families have been in the region for generations; their identity and loyalty are shaped by Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines—not by the modern Chinese state. Yet in recent years, China and her proxies have increasingly framed the global Chinese diaspora as part of a transnational “Chinese nation,” suggesting that cultural heritage should translate into political sympathy or even alignment.

This expectation is not only inaccurate. It rests on a misinterpretation of Chinese history and risks destabilising the very societies Beijing hopes to influence.

Civilisational Continuity Is Not Political Unity

China is often described as a “civilisational state,” invoking a lineage of more than 5,000 years. But this framing obscures a fundamental historical fact: Chinese civilisation endured precisely because no single state ever monopolised it.

Across the centuries, distinct regimes governed what we today call China. The Qin, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties all presided over different territories, ideologies, and administrative systems. In the modern era, both the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) claim to represent this civilisational legacy.

More importantly, Chinese history is filled with long periods of fragmentation. The Three Kingdoms, the Sixteen Kingdoms and Eastern Jin, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms represent four centuries of political disunity. Even during the prosperous Song dynasty, multiple non-Han regimes—the Liao, Jin, and Xixia—controlled the northern regions whilst adopting Chinese language, bureaucracy, and culture.

This pattern reveals a critical truth:

Civilisation, identity, and state were never identical in the Chinese world.

The contemporary belief that the PRC uniquely embodies “China” is thus historically untenable. And projecting that claim onto the diaspora is even more problematic.

Diaspora Identity Is Civilisational, Not Statist

Most Southeast Asian Chinese trace their ancestry to migrants who left during the late Qing and early Republican periods. Their departure predates the establishment of the PRC in 1949. Their identity, community structures, and worldview were formed long before Mao Zedong declared the founding of the new state.

For these communities, “China” is a cultural memory—language, festivals, kinship, values.  “Chinese” is also an ethnic category. But political allegiance belongs to the states in which they live and hold citizenship.

Expecting them to identify politically with the PRC is baseless. They neither left the PRC nor belonged to it. Their ancestors were not PRC citizens. Their sense of self was shaped almost entirely outside the political sphere of contemporary China.

Thus, the idea that the diaspora should view the PRC as a political homeland is without historical or legal foundation.

The Strategic Risk of Conflation

Beijing’s narrative of civilisational belonging has become central to its diplomacy and its United Front work, which seeks to shape opinion among ethnic Chinese abroad. This approach rests on an assumption: that ethnicity and civilisation create a natural political affinity.

But this assumption carries strategic risks—for China, for Southeast Asia, and for the diaspora itself.

Firstly, Governments and publics may begin to view ethnic Chinese as potential extensions of Beijing’s influence. This undermines social cohesion and threatens the long-term stability of plural societies.

Secondly, diaspora communities familiar with Chinese culture understand that civilisation is not the same as the PRC. This familiarity often inoculates many of them against simplistic civilisational appeals.

Thirdly, civilisational identity becomes a tool for states to “claim” communities abroad, forcing ethnic Chinese to make choices between heritage and citizenship—choices that should never arise in the first place.

Finally, policymakers who assume the diaspora is politically sympathetic to Beijing risk misreading both local dynamics and China’s actual influence.

China’s civilisational rhetoric is therefore not just historically flawed; it is strategically counterproductive.

Why the Diaspora Must Reject Civilisational Claims

It is equally important that Southeast Asian Chinese themselves resist the subtle pressure to equate civilisational pride with political allegiance.

There are three reasons:

First, it misrepresents their own history.

Most of their ancestors left a China governed by the Qing Empire or the early Republic—not the PRC. They inherit culture, not citizenship.

Second, it undermines national belonging.

Citizenship, not ancestry, forms the basis of political identity. Accepting external civilisational claims dilutes local civic cohesion.

Third, it invites foreign interference.

If cultural descent becomes a basis for political mobilisation, the diaspora becomes vulnerable to influence operations—not only from China, but from any state that uses ethnicity as a geopolitical tool.

Southeast Asian Chinese can love Chinese literature, history, and philosophy without accepting any political obligation to a modern state that neither shaped their origins nor represents their citizenship.

Civilisation Enriches; It Does Not Bind

Chinese civilisation is vast, plural, and resilient precisely because it transcended dynasties, borders, and regimes. The PRC is a significant actor in world affairs, but it is not the sole bearer of Chinese civilisation, nor does civilisation grant it authority over people who are citizens of other nations.

Ethnic Chinese abroad should therefore embrace their heritage, whilst making clear that ancestry does not create allegiance.