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Xinlu Liang

In less than two months, the indie film Dear You has become an unlikely mass hit.
Shot in the Teochew language from the Chaoshan region of southern China’s Guangdong province, the movie follows a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letters sent home from Thailand.
As he pieces together his grandfather’s life story, the movie also explores Chinese migration to the region and the diaspora’s struggle to preserve its heritage.
In one scene, an elderly schoolmaster risks arrest in 1950s Bangkok to secretly teach diaspora children their ancestral Chinese tongue.
The movie has pulled in huge audiences and over 1.6 billion yuan (US$236 million) in China since its release on April 30.
But it has also sparked a debate across Southeast Asia about China’s soft power and political influence with Chinese communities in other countries.
The response has varied throughout the region – from Chinese-majority Singapore, to Chinese-minority Malaysia to Thailand and the Philippines, where Chinese communities are more integrated into wider society.

Suspicions were raised in some quarters when the producer, Luo Zhanhong, publicly thanked Beijing’s United Front Work Department for its support.
Observers wondered whether the film was simply a benign expression of kinship or part of a campaign for cultural and political influence.
One of the major responsibilities of the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department is to influence and build solidarity with members of the diaspora and their organisations to align them with the party’s goals.
Unease over the movie’s links to the department really broke into the open when correspondent Sim Tze Wei reviewed the film last month for Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore’s most widely read Chinese-language newspaper.
Despite being deeply moved, Sim wrote on May 21 that the film was a masterclass in “non-coercive” united front propaganda aimed at evoking a sense of closeness to China.
The commentary went viral on Chinese social media, with a related topic on Quora-like forum Zhihu viewed 4 million times. The post that kicked off the discussion on the site asked, “Why is Singapore so agitated?”
The digital fallout soon seemed to cross paths with high-level politics.
The debate coincided with an official visit to China by Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In Shanghai on May 22, Lee drew a sharp line between ethnic affinity and political sovereignty, though it is unclear if he had the movie in mind when he spoke.
“We are a Chinese-majority country, but we are a multiracial society,” the former prime minister said. “We are a separate country with separate sovereignty from China.”
Singapore’s economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing are grounded strictly in “mutual benefit, not shared ethnicity or ancestry”, Lee said.

Analysts said Singapore was particularly sensitive about the topic due to its demographic make-up.
Benjamin Loh, an associate professor at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, noted that the city state’s demographics – about 76 per cent of citizens are ethnically Chinese – and location made it uniquely vulnerable to narratives emphasising ethnic connections with China.
“As a majority ethnic-Chinese state embedded in a predominantly Malay-Muslim region, Singapore has always had to work harder than its neighbours to ground its foreign policy legitimacy in civic and national interest terms rather than ethnic affinity,” said Loh, who previously served at the Asean Secretariat.
Loh said Lee’s statement was a reaffirmation of “foundational Singapore statecraft” that has come under strain as the region continues to “navigate the enduring tension between deepening economic integration with China and managing strategic alignment with the United States”.
This strategic balancing act was fully on display during Lee’s visit – just two days after US President Donald Trump’s summit with President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
In southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, he discussed the region’s expanding role as a major strategic gateway for Asean-China trade. In Shanghai, he toured a government-backed robotics incubator.
Loh said Lee’s suggestion that identity was something that had to be managed was “telling precisely because it was said in China, against the backdrop of two economies more deeply intertwined than ever”.
“The management challenge grows harder as the relationship grows closer – not easier.”


He said it was not surprising that a movie like Dear You would raise eyebrows in the city state.
“A film that, by the producer’s own account, carries state-adjacent backing from Beijing, and whose premise centres on Teochew-dialect heritage shared by a significant portion of Singapore’s Chinese community, cannot be separated from that balancing act,” Loh said.
“Even if, on the ground, the community’s response is likely to be far more uneven than Beijing’s calculations account for – or perhaps care to.”
While it has long been Beijing’s policy to engage with the Chinese diaspora, China has broadened its objectives in recent years, especially in Southeast Asia, from projecting a good image to promoting its geopolitical vision.
During the mid-20th century, China urged its diaspora to luodi shenggen – settle down and put down roots.
This was aimed to ease ethnic tensions in newly independent Southeast Asian nations suspicious of communist infiltration, according to Leo Suryadinata, author of The Rise of China and the Chinese Overseas: A Study of Beijing’s Changing Policy in Southeast Asia and Beyond.
But in the 21st century, Beijing has blurred the line between Chinese nationals living abroad and foreign citizens of Chinese descent.
Its rhetoric has shifted towards luoye guigen – returning to one’s original roots – as a way to mobilise overseas ethnic Chinese to champion its own geopolitical ambitions, including the Belt and Road Initiative, Suryadinata wrote in his book.
The United Front Work Department appears to be using the popularity of the movie for its own agenda.
Over the past month, in parts of China with strong links to the diaspora such as Shantou, Chaozhou and Fuzhou, united front branches and chapters of the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese have organised screenings of the film.

Often, they have invited community leaders from overseas and chamber of commerce presidents to attend post-screening seminars themed around patriotic topics.
The united front views Dear You as a blueprint for a new era of cultural persuasion, moving away from ideological lecturing towards soft, localised narratives – such as regional dialects and ordinary human stories, according to an array of articles published by the department and its local branches.
For example, according to an article published on the official website of the Zhanjiang united front branch, it is necessary to design “experiential” united front strategies to target second- and third-generation ethnic Chinese.
“This will help them achieve a progressive transition from ‘bloodline recognition’ to ‘cultural identity’ and ultimately to ‘national identity’, thereby preventing the generational decline of emotional ties,” it wrote.
The article said “the patriotic passion” generated at community screenings of the movie could be turned into real economic benefits, leveraging the diaspora’s “unique role in areas such as business investment and talent recruitment”.
In other countries besides Singapore, the reaction has been influenced by the history of local Chinese communities and their integration into majority non-Chinese societies.
On June 18, the film will premiere in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau. The official release dates in Thailand, the Philippines and other countries have not been confirmed.
Rather than relying solely on mainstream cinematic channels, the distributors have collaborated directly with clan associations, such as the Thailand Teochew Association, and hosted community screenings.
In Malaysia, where ethnic Chinese make up 22 per cent of the population, the film’s reception has been emotionally charged, according to Peter T.C. Chang, a research associate at the Malaysia-China Friendship Association.
The film resonates with the older generation, as the Teochew language evokes “strong historical memory, nostalgia for their ancestral homeland and a sense of linguistic intimacy”, he said.
The younger generation, though less fluent in Teochew, reacted strongly due to greater exposure to Chinese media via social media platforms such as TikTok and RedNote, which fostered “curiosity about their roots, a growing pride in ethnic identity and the influence of pan-Chinese pop culture”, Chang said.


But he warned that the cultural resonance came “with a political cost”, as the Malaysian Chinese community had long found it hard to balance preserving their heritage and becoming fully accepted as Malaysian citizens.
United front-backed cultural products like Dear You ran the risk of widening Malaysia’s communal fault lines, said Chang, who is also the former deputy director of the Institute of China Studies at Universiti Malaya.
“While the film may strengthen ethnic pride and cultural ties, it may also deepen suspicions among other communities in Malaysia that Chinese Malaysians are culturally and politically aligned with Beijing rather than committed to a truly multicultural Malaysian identity.”
Chang said Chinese in Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia faced the challenge of being viewed as a “branch” or extension of China itself, separate from their host country’s national identity.
Given this, China’s rising status is a double-edged sword for Malaysia’s Chinese community.
On one hand, their cultural fluency positions them as the ones who understand China best, granting them an edge as indispensable commercial intermediaries. On the other hand, this advantage places them squarely in the crosshairs of local suspicion.
This was highlighted by Chinese ambassador Huang Huikang’s 2015 visit to Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, ahead of a planned rally calling for greater Malay participation in the area.
In the speech, he called China the “maternal home” of Chinese Malaysians and said Beijing opposed racism and extremism.
That prompted the Malaysian government to summon Huang to explain his remarks and provoked a backlash from some among the Malay majority, who viewed it as interference in domestic politics.

This kind of political suspicion over Dear You has been largely absent in the Philippines, where Chinese-Filipinos, or Tsinoys, make up around 1.5 per cent of the population.
“If you did not mention it, I don’t even know there were debates about the movie concerning united front work,” said Wesley Chua, a board member of Kaisa Para Sa Kaunlaran, an organisation advocating for the integration of Chinese-Filipinos into local society.
According to Chua, many older and middle-aged Tsinoys who have a family history of the kind of remittances and letters portrayed in the film were moved by the film’s themes.
“As a third-generation Tsinoy, I did not feel anything political about the movie, just the harsh reality of life before and memories of my grandfather and grand-uncles who migrated from China to the Philippines in the 1930s to escape war and famine, and to seek green pastures,” said Chua, who is also the editor-in-chief of Chinese Commercial News, the Philippines’ oldest Chinese-language newspaper.
Chua rejects the idea that Singapore’s hyper-vigilance is a sentiment shared across the region, pointing to the assimilation of the Tsinoy community.
“The Philippines is a multi-ethnic country with Chinese, Indian, Arab and Japanese immigrants since ancient times,” he said.
“Although China mentions ‘shared roots’, maybe just first-generation immigrants will hold such sentiments.
“We Tsinoys recognise our Chinese ancestry and bloodlines, however, we are already Filipinos in heart and in mind.”
Chua also said that Chinese-Filipinos were embedded in the country’s politics, openly taking part in rallies and campaigning for local leaders, such as Naga mayor and former Philippine vice-president Leni Robredo.
In recent years, however, an influx of new Chinese immigrants to the Philippines, servicing the offshore gaming sector, has triggered financial crime investigations and worsened anti-Beijing sentiment fuelled by South China Sea territorial disputes.
In Thailand, about 10 to 14 per cent of the population is ethnically Chinese.

Associate professor Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt of Thammasat University in Bangkok has written that while Chinese Thais of the baby boomer generation faced pressure to assimilate, it was normal for later generations to have multiple identities.
This had continued among Gen Z, as their Chinese identity was something they could use to take part in “transnational youth cultures”.
For young Southeast Asian Chinese, their “imagined China” is no longer a rural homeland but a “hyper-modern, urban, trend-driven and aspirational” culture reflected in social media trends such as Shanghai fashion, Chongqing nightlife and viral snacks, according to Chang.
But this algorithmic affinity posed a challenge for regional policymakers, Loh warned.
The big question, he said, was whether these social media outlets were politically independent.
Ultimately, it was “a question of how national identity is contested in a networked world”, he said.
Critics worry that if left unmonitored, these networks will quietly serve Beijing’s broader geopolitical goals by swaying public opinion.
Southeast Asian states are already building defences.
In a milestone enforcement of national security in 2024, the Singaporean government used its Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act to formally designate a naturalised Singaporean businessman as a “politically significant person” after authorities determined he had shown a willingness to advance Beijing’s interests.
It was the first time the city state had explicitly penalised domestic proxies trying to steer public opinion towards alignment with China.
Additional reporting by Meredith Chen


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Dear You – the Chinese migration film igniting a propaganda debate in Southeast Asia

 Illustration: Henry Wong

Suspicions were raised about Dear You in some quarters when the producer publicly thanked an organ of the Communist Party for its support. Photo: Handout

In the 21st century, Beijing has blurred the line between Chinese nationals living abroad and foreign citizens of Chinese descent. Photo: Getty Images

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

For young Southeast Asian Chinese, their “imagined China” is no longer a rural homeland but a “hyper-modern” culture, a researcher said. Photo: Handout

 Critics fear that Beijing might be able to use its growing soft power to influence politics overseas. Photo: Handout

Chinese tourists flock to Teochew sites after indie film becomes surprise hit

A poster for Dear You, an independent film set in Chaoshan, Guangdong province, which has become an unexpected box office hit in China. Photo: Handout

From Indonesia to Singapore, China’s rise is affecting ethnic identities in Southeast Asia

A couple walk past wall murals in a back alley in the Chinatown area of Singapore. Photo: AFP

Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Reuters

A Chinese devotee during the Guan Ping Festival in Kuala Lumpur, which is believed to bring prosperity for local businesses. Photo: Reuters

Philippines urged to avoid ‘sensationalising’ arrests of Chinese nationals amid Sinophobia fears

Philippine military chief General Romeo Brawner (front right) speaks alongside National Bureau of Investigation chief Jaime Santiago (front centre) and undersecretary of the Department of Justice Raul Vasquez (front left) during the presentation of five arrested alleged Chinese spies (back row) in Manila on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Chinese national Deng Yuanqing (second from right) with an unidentified Filipino companion (second from left) are escorted inside the Department of Justice office in Manila, the Philippines, on January 20. Photo: EPA-EFE

Noemi Deng (left), wife of arrested Chinese national Deng Yuanqing, listens to Filipino-Chinese human rights advocate Teresita Ang See during a press conference in Quezon City earlier this week. Photo: EPA-EFE

People buy food at a restaurant in Chinatown, Manila. Some political figures have questioned Chinese-Filipinos’ loyalty to the Philippines. Photo: Shutterstock

Why Malaysia is winning praise from RedNote’s Chinese influencers

Yili, a RedNote content creator from China, says she is seeing “more and more Chinese bosses” in Malaysia. Photo: RedNote/Yili

Zhi Zhi, a Malaysia-based Chinese parent and content creator on RedNote, praises Malaysia’s international schools, saying her child has benefited from the system. Photo: RedNote/Zhi Zhi

Tutu bb, a RedNote content creator from China, says Malaysia has “the most complete Chinese-language education system outside China”. Photo: RedNote/Tutu bb

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Some are worried that the Teochew-language drama represents a new, softer era of propaganda targeting the diaspora


Some are worried that the Teochew-language drama represents a new, softer era of propaganda targeting the diaspora.


Dear You – the Chinese migration film igniting a propaganda debate in Southeast Asia

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Some are worried that the Teochew-language drama represents a new, softer era of propaganda targeting the diaspora

Some are worried that the Teochew-language drama represents a new, softer era of propaganda targeting the diaspora