Rally Around Flag, China Tells Diaspora

John Garnaut, the Sydney Morning Herald’s correspondent in Beijing reports:

Beijing has called on the Chinese diaspora to unite around the Communist Party on the basis of “blood lineage” and to spread the “truth” about separatism in Xinjiang.

Wang Zhaoguo, a Politburo member and a former head of China’s United Front Department, congratulated delegates at the Eighth National Congress of Returned Overseas Chinese and their Relatives for using “blood lineage”, “home-town feeling” and “professional linkages” to achieve “outstanding results in uniting the broad masses of overseas Chinese”. But Mr Wang exhorted them to “do a better job of uniting the force of the circle of overseas Chinese around the party and the Government”, according to the text of his speech posted on the congress website.

Many of Australia’s 700,000 ethnic Chinese are steadfastly loyal to Australia and ignore Beijing’s overtures, or embrace cultural and ancestral links without identifying with the Communist Party’s politics.

Read also from John Garnaut:
* No challenge to communist rulers’ hegemony is too trivial
* Uncle Ji and the scandal that rocked a Chinese province