Introduction
While ties between Southeast Asia and China stretch back into antiquity, the ten ASEAN countries together became China’s largest trading partner in 2020 (Han 2024). This development has arguably generated strong incentives for China to create an atmosphere conducive to maintaining these important trade links. My research focuses on whether Southeast Asians’ attitudes are indeed shifting in a more pro-China direction, be it due to intentional or unintentional steps by China (or missteps by the United States). In this study, I focus on Malaysia and Singapore, two countries with shared histories and significant and long-standing Chinese diasporas.[1] My main research question is: What do Singaporeans and Malaysians think of China and its effects on the region?
Turning away from the US and towards China
To answer this question, I first analyse waves 3 to 5 of the nationally representative Asian Barometer Survey[2], conducted over 2010/2011 – 2019/2020. Here, I highlight a few trends and variations in Singaporeans’ and Malaysians’ attitudes towards China, along with their views on the United States for comparison.
First, I focus on wave 5, which was conducted in 2019 in Malaysia, but in 2020 after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore. The survey results in Singapore should thus be viewed in the context of the pandemic, as well as the Trump presidency.
Respondents were asked whether China’s and the United States’ influence on world affairs is a good or bad thing. On average, Malaysians and Singaporeans think that China’s influence on world affairs is slightly better than that of the United States. Malaysians rate China’s influence higher than Singaporeans do (mean scores of 6.26 vs 5.84), and Singaporeans rate the influence of the US lower than Malaysians do (mean scores of 4.41 vs 5.22). For the most part, respondents’ most popular answer was a noncommittal 5/10. However, it is worth nothing that 11%of Singaporeans and 8% of Malaysians gave the US a solid 1/10 ‘Very bad’rating, far exceeding the proportion who have strongly positive sentiments towards China.
Secondly, respondents were asked which country should be seen as a role model for their own country’s future development. The percentage of Malaysians who chose China increased from 13% in 2011 to 28% in 2019 (though they still rate Japan higher), and the percentage of Singaporeans who chose China increased from 12% in 2010 to 36% in 2020, with China becoming Singaporeans’ most popular choice.
I analyse the responses to this question further using regression analysis to examine which demographic characteristics are associated with a higher likelihood that respondents would choose China.[3] Respondents of Chinese ethnicity in Singapore are 9% more likely to choose China as a suitable model for their own country’s future development, controlling for other factors such as gender, age, education, and income. In Malaysia, that figure is 20%. Malaysian women are also 6% less likely to pick China as compared to Malaysian men, but this gender difference is not significant in Singapore. Finally, in both countries, being a decade older is associated with a 1-2% greater likelihood of a respondent choosing China as a model for their own country’s future development.
It must be emphasised that it would be incorrect to conclude that Chinese ethnicity causes people to have favourable attitudes towards China. Apart from the fact that the data does not allow for causal conclusions to be drawn, Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese people’s loyalties lie with the Southeast Asian countries they call home, proud of China’s achievements though they may be (Chang 2024). However, the results of my analysis do suggest that this variation in attitudes warrants further investigation, which is where I turn to qualitative interviews.
Proud to be Chinese, mixed feelings about China
In this section, I present a sample of the many talking points that were raised in my interviews in Singapore and Malaysia. At this stage in the project, all bar a couple of my interviewees came from families who migrated from China at least two generations ago,[4] and this commonality is possibly a reason why their views on China did not differ all that much between the two countries.
However, where Malaysians and Singaporeans differed was less about China per se and more about the changes in their own societies. “The most common opinion I hear,” reflected one Singaporean interviewee, “is that … ‘they’ are out to take our jobs, or buy up all the expensive houses. Kind of like they’re moving into our territory and taking what’s rightfully ours,” echoing a sentiment that is often heard in the West and indicative of the affluence of some new Chinese migrants. On the other hand, some of the Malaysians I interviewed were keenly aware of their minority status in the country and were concerned about their place in a multicultural social fabric that was under pressure from increasingly strict Islamisation.
Positive sentiments towards China came in two varieties. The first is a more general admiration for China’s miraculous growth over the past few decades and its increases in technological and engineering prowess, including how Chinese authorities managed to get a brand new hospital built in 10 days during the Covid-19 pandemic (BBC News 2020). Interviewees also spoke positively of their Chinese identity and how it is distinct from mainland Chinese culture. One Singaporean interviewee said, “we have the most international-looking ethnic Chinese”. A Malaysian interviewee who had grown up during the Malayan emergency expressed that they were “happy” and “proud” of their Chinese heritage, relating an anecdote where a Chinese official invited to an event at the Chinese Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur[5] was amazed at how joyful the festivities were as compared to their experiences with more sombre official events in China.
The other variety of favourable attitudes towards China, dubbed ‘pro-China’ in common parlance, tends to go hand-in hand with anti-American views, stemming from a deep sense of injustice over colonialism and imperialism, including that the US is actively trying to arrest China’s development. One declared that the US’ foreign policy stance was: “If you don’t tilt towards me, I’ll confiscate your money.”
“Western democracy has failed,” said another interviewee, pointing to the corruption, short-termism, and sclerotic policymaking and policy implementation plaguing the West. Some criticised Western debt-trap diplomacy, perhaps still resenting the actions of the IMF in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, in contrast to China’s ostensibly more generous Belt and Road Initiative, which provides very visible and tangible infrastructural improvements to its beneficiaries.
Furthermore, some conversations were indicative of respondents’ experience with Chinese state-backed influence campaigns targeted at the overseas Chinese[6] (Nimmo, Eib, and Tamora2019; Nimmo et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2021; Mahtani and Chandradas 2023). “My father’s YouTube feed needs to be regularly cleansed,” said one interviewee. Another related that they were being sent messages from their relatives that parroted talking points pushed by disinformation campaigns originating in China, such as that “the Covid-19 virus started in Fort [Detrick]” (BBC News 2021). Another interviewee shared they had turned to YouTube and TikTok for news because Western media such as“Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times, [and] the New York Times [were] all generating fake news”[6]. That said, the efficacy and reach of such influence operations must not be overstated in the absence of further evidence – most of the people I spoke to had no direct or indirect contact with such messaging. Much about these influence operations is still unknown, and I intend to investigate this further in future research.
Ultimately, most people I spoke to took a measured stance. “Well, our business is affected, that’s number one,” said one interviewee in Singapore, taking a bread-and-butter approach. Another interviewee observed that “very hardworking” and “very brilliant” mainland Chinese professionals, particularly in the tech sector, were increasingly competing with locals for white-collar jobs, which is a departure from a decade ago where the competition was mainly for blue-collar jobs. The effects of China’s growing economic dominance – and potential weaknesses in the Chinese economy – was just something they had to navigate in their lives and livelihoods.
In terms of geopolitics, one respondent said that “China’s desire to engage more meaningfully with the region” was “fundamentally a good thing.” Some expressed hope that China as a global superpower would be “magnanimous,” but were not keen on China replacing the US as the hegemon in a unipolar system. “You cannot only have one group of people who is a minority in the world to be all powerful at the expense of the rest of the world,” said one interviewee. “So, besides China, there should be other powers.”
In conclusion, an anecdote from a friend of an interviewee encapsulates the feelings of the Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese well. Despite the “spiritual strength” they feel as a result of China’s increasing ability to wield influence on the world stage, “as a Malaysian Indian, once I hit my seventies, I may actually settle in India. But … none of the Chinese [I speak to have] a similar plan of settling in China. How come ah?”
“End of the day,” another interviewee said, referring to Malaysian Chinese who had moved to China for work but were retiring in Malaysia, “they don’t mind coming home.”
[1] In Singapore, the Chinese are the majority ethnic group, and the Malays are the second-largest ethnic group. In Malaysia, the Malays are the largest ethnic group, and the Chinese are the second-largest ethnic group. Unlike Indonesia, for example, Chinese Malaysians were not subject to violent forced assimilation.
[1] I focus on waves 4 (2014) and 5 (2019 for Malaysia and 2020 for Singapore) for data availability reasons.
[2] Data analysed in this blogpost were collected by the Asian Barometer Project (2010-2012), which was co-directed by Professors Fu Hu and Yun-han Chu and received major funding support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University. The Asian Barometer Project Office(www.asianbarometer.org) is solely responsible for the data distribution. The author(s) appreciate the assistance in providing data by the institutes and individuals aforementioned. The views expressed herein are the author’s(s’) own.
[3] My sample unfortunately does not yet contain any Malay people.
[4] “China Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur is the official cultural and tourism organization accredited by the Chinese government to Malaysia.” https://www.chinaculturalcentre.my/
[5 ]China is by far not the only country engaging in online information campaign stargeted at populations abroad. For example, the US also flagrantly engages in propaganda – a recent example is the US military’s efforts to discredit China’s Covid vaccine Sinovac, particularly in the Philippines (Bing and Schlectman 2024). However, China’s online influence is particularly significant in Southeast Asia.
[6]Ironically, this is also a talking point of the American right.
Bibliography
BBC News. 2020. ‘Wuhan Hospital “Built in 10 Days”’, 2 February 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-51348299.
———. 2021. ‘Wuhan Lab Leak Theory: How Fort Detrick Became a Centre for Chinese Conspiracies’, 22 August 2021, sec. US & Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58273322.
Bing, Chris, and Joel Schlectman. 2024. ‘Pentagon Ran Secret Anti-Vax Campaign to Incite Fear of China Vaccines’. Reuters, 14 June 2024. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/.
Chang, Peter T. C. 2024. ‘Chinese in Malaysia: Proud of China’s Rise, Yet Fiercely Malaysian’. Fulcrum, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. https://fulcrum.sg/chinese-in-malaysia-proud-of-chinas-rise-yet-fiercely-malaysian/.
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*The LSE Southeast Asia Centre PhD Research Support Fund supported Tiffany to attend the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies conference in Amsterdam in July 2024. This blog post is adapted from a working paper presented there.
* Banner photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
