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Fan Chen

Beijing has staged a special screening of a blockbuster film that sparked a debate about propaganda in Southeast Asia, inviting 150 foreign diplomats and their families to the event to help them “better understand China”.
Diplomats from 74 embassies, including Indonesia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Peru, attended Monday’s screening of the film Dear You, which was organised by the Chinese foreign ministry.
The movie was shot in the Teochew dialect spoken in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong province and follows a man as he uncovers his family’s struggles over half a century through remittance letters sent from Thailand in the 1940s.
The story also touches on the issue of migration to Southeast Asia and the Chinese diaspora’s efforts to preserve their heritage.
Assistant foreign minister Hong Lei told the event that vast numbers of Chinese people had worked hard to make lives and careers in foreign lands.
He added that the film showed ordinary Chinese people’s care for home and country and their true kindness.
“[I] hope that by watching this film, everyone can further enter the deep recesses of the Chinese people’s hearts and minds, and better understand China,” he said.
Diplomats also met members of the production team after the screening and, according to the foreign ministry, vowed to continue promoting people-to-people and cultural exchanges with China.
The film has been one of China’s biggest box office surprises this year. Despite its modest 14 million yuan (US$2 million) production budget, it had grossed 1.9 billion yuan by June 27, less than two months after its release.
The film, starring a largely rookie cast, debuted in April and was initially available on less than 4 per cent of the country’s screens, but has since grown into a national phenomenon through word of mouth.
It has now reached international markets such as Malaysia, Singapore, Britain, France, Canada and Japan.

But it has triggered debates about Chinese soft power across Southeast Asia, particularly on the question of whether it is simply a heartwarming story about diaspora families or a tool in Beijing’s campaign for political and cultural influence.
The film’s producer, Luo Zhanhong, has thanked Beijing’s United Front Work Department – the agency tasked with aligning overseas communities with the Communist Party’s goals – for its support.
Similar questions were raised during a recent visit to China by Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, although it was not clear whether he had the film in mind when he spoke.
Lee said Singapore’s relations with China were based on “mutual benefit, not shared ethnicity or ancestry”.
The former prime minister added: “We are a Chinese-majority country, but we are a multiracial society. We are a separate country with separate sovereignty from China.”


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Visitors walk across representations of the kinds of letters and remittances Chinese migrants once sent back home at an event to promote Dear You in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, on May 20. Photo: Xinhua

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News

China

Staff from 74 embassies attend the screening of the smash hit that has triggered debates about propaganda across Southeast Asia


Staff from 74 embassies attend the screening of the smash hit that has triggered debates about propaganda across Southeast Asia.


Singapore

Thailand

Lee Hsien Loong

Dear You: Beijing holds movie night for diplomats to help them ‘better understand’ China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Staff from 74 embassies attend the screening of the smash hit that has triggered debates about propaganda across Southeast Asia

Staff from 74 embassies attend the screening of the smash hit that has triggered debates about propaganda across Southeast Asia