The China factor in diaspora economic diplomacy: comparing Chinese and Indian transnational networks in Southeast Asia

Abstract

China and India are gradually using the overseas Chinese community to form economic ties, spread culture and knowledge, provide investment support, and offer diplomatic support. Diaspora engagement generally refers to a tool for soft power projection or a bilateral relationship established between the government in the homeland and the expatriate community. Both ways in this paper fail to recognize the independence of diasporic communities and the political power of host countries. Singapore and Malaysia are selected as cases to compare China's increasingly coordinated party-state approach to overseas Chinese affairs with India's network-centred architecture of diaspora engagement. Building on Rajesh Rai's scholarship of transnational networks, changing identities and the demand to address migrants' new allegiances sensitively, this paper presents a host-state-embedded network system for diaspora economic diplomacy. It is thought that the impact of diaspora engagement depends on four interrelated conditions: the strength of connectivity with the homeland-state, the richness of transnational economic and social networks, the autonomy and host-country embedding of diaspora actors, and the ability to convert relationships into mutual economic benefits. China has institutional concentration that can rapidly mobilize resources and link business, talents and cultural networks, but it is also politically sensitive when ethnic ties are believed to have blurred the line between cultural ties and foreign political organisation. India has a less centralised system, and programmes such as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Overseas Citizenship of India, knowledge networks and cultural engagement operate through relatively plural and voluntary associations. Singapore and Malaysia show that neither the Chinese nor the Indian communities can be considered extensions of the ancestral homeland. Citizenship, class, language, generation and the political system at home all shape people's identity and interests. Therefore, diaspora-based competition in Southeast Asia will not be a simple zero-sum game, according to the article. The more sustainable model is one in which diasporic networks act as bridges for trade, technology, entrepreneurship and social exchange, and host-state sovereignty and diaspora autonomy remain explicit constraints on engagement with the homeland.