Tellingly, in a Singaporean forum where this was posted, the China shills got very upset.
Related: Explaining China Shill Psychology
‘Born-Again’ Chinese: Singapore’s PRC apologists
In the last decade or so, and especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago, there has been a growing trend of older, English-educated Singaporeans (usually, but not always, ethnic Chinese) embracing and propagating Chinese government propaganda. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 probably represents a high watermark of this trend, but affinity and support for China’s policy positions (say on the Ukraine war) are still evident today. Each time there is an online article by Channel News Asia or the Straits Times on the war in Ukraine, there would be numerous comments parroting the Russian and Chinese narrative that Russian aggression is justified because Ukraine or NATO provoked it.
Besides the war in Ukraine, Covid-19 also likely caused a dramatic increase in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda efforts abroad. In the first year of the pandemic, as one country after another failed to contain Covid, the Chinese propaganda machinery went into overdrive, trumpeting China’s success in viral suppression and pointing to it as proof of the superiority of Chinese governance. Later, as China persevered with zero-Covid while the rest of the world (including Singapore) shifted to living-with-Covid, Chinese state media denigrated other countries for “lying flat” in the “war against Covid”, and accused them of being reckless, callous, and Darwinian.
After the pandemic, as the Chinese economy struggled to recover from
zero-Covid, its apologists downplay the severity of the slowdown and the
deflation pressures that China has been grappling with for nearly three
years. They echo the (official) conspiracy theory that the pessimism
surrounding the Chinese economy not only reflects the western media’s
bias but is also part of a concerted campaign of “cognitive warfare”
against China.
Living in Hong Kong, China, I have a material stake in China’s success. I’m pro-China in the sense that I would like the Chinese economy to overtake America’s to be the largest in the world. This would represent a reduction in global inequality (China having four times more people than the US) Since I teach mostly Chinese master students for a living, it would even be good for my own finances. But being pro-China does not require me to be naively optimistic about China’s trajectory or to overlook its economic problems and weaknesses. As a behaviourist, I’m also mindful of the optimism bias, the natural tendency for us to assume that our preferred scenarios are the likeliest. One should not conflate desirability with probability, much less inevitability. In fact, the more desirable an outcome is, the more we should ask how and why it might not occur. By seeking disconfirmation (rather than confirmation), we are less likely to be blindsided by our biases. Clearly, however, this is not how some of my fellow Singaporeans think as they triumphantly parrot CCP propaganda.
Singapore’s authorities are not blasé about the risk of China apologists becoming a driver of polarisation in Singapore. In February 2024, the Ministry of Home Affairs designated Chan Man Ping Philip, a 59-year-old businessman naturalised Singaporean originally from Hong Kong, as a “politically significant person” under the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act (FICA). In a media statement, the ministry said that “Chan has shown susceptibility to be influenced by foreign actors, and willingness to advance their interests.”
With older, Chinese-educated Singaporeans, it is hardly surprising that they should take pride in a resurgent China and a China that stands up to the west. After all, this generation of Chinese Singaporeans grew up on stories of China being humiliated and divided by western powers and Japan in the century preceding the Chinese civil war. Domestically, Chinese-educated Singaporeans have also laboured under a system that privileged the English-educated. What is less comprehensible is why some English-educated Singaporeans, many of whom can barely string together a cogent argument in Chinese, and who have a superficial understanding of Chinese history (even though they often claim otherwise), might hold similarly strident, pro-China views.
Compared with their Chinese-speaking counterparts, Anglophone Singaporeans who embrace China’s worldviews may be more effective in spreading Chinese propaganda in Singapore. Being culturally westernised, their praise of China is less expected and therefore received as more credible. They can thus be more potent in shaping public opinion in Singapore (whether they intend to or not). And with the second Donald Trump presidency in the United States likely to generate growing disappointment in and resentment toward the US in Singapore and other countries, these Singaporeans would find a more receptive audience and can more easily steer public opinion in Singapore in an anti-western, pro-China direction.
BACs in Singapore
The Singaporean cultural studies scholar, Liew Kai Khiun, has used the term “born-again Chinese” to describe people of Chinese descent living outside of China (especially Singapore and Malaysia) who identify strongly with, and hold blindly optimistic views about, China. The term draws parallels with the “born-again” Christian phenomenon. Just as born-again Christians aren’t usually born Christian, born-again Chinese (BACs) may not be born Chinese or raised in a Chinese-speaking environment. Being educated in English, BACs usually have a poor command of the Chinese language and have little understanding of Chinese history and literature. Yet, like born-again Christians who are often more “public” about their faith than born Christians, BACs can be shriller and more strident than people who are born Chinese in defending their “motherland”.
Sociologists have long noted that diasporic or immigrant communities may sometimes identify more with their motherland even as they become more distant linguistically or culturally. We see this in various settings. For example, third and fourth-generation Arabs in France or Germany whom we expect to be more assimilated by, and integrated with, their host societies, are often more conscious of their Arab (or Muslim) identities than first and second-generation immigrants. They may also be stricter in their observance of traditional practices (whether cultural or religious), or more conservative in their outlook, than their parents or grandparents.
This paradox can be explained by cultural alienation. In many immigrant societies, the failure of host societies to assimilate newer immigrant communities produces a profound disillusionment and resentment, leading these immigrants’ progeny – despite having been disconnected from their countries of origin for many generations – to find solace and meaning in the ethnic or religious identities of their ancestors, and to identify more with the countries and cultures their forefathers had left.
This is the identity politics of the right, one that is opposed to the identity politics of the left. Whereas the latter is about celebrating diversity or hybridity in all its forms (ethnic, cultural, gender, etc.), the former is about protecting an idealised, “pure” version of our (constructed) identities against threats, real or imagined. Cultural alienation – and the identity politics of the right it produces – is, arguably, the main force that enabled Brexit, Trump’s ascendancy, Putin’s irredentism, and the rise of far-right parties in many European countries.
In Singapore’s context, ethnic Chinese are the majority, but cultural alienation could also help explain the BAC phenomenon. In this case, it is an alienation from a western-dominated world. Despite years of operating in professional systems that are based on western norms, and in many cases excelling in the best western universities, many Singaporeans believe they are not accepted as equals by their western peers. Some seem to cope with this alienation (by the west) by finding meaning in an abstract, but highly performative, “Chineseness” that bears little semblance to a more rooted Chinese person’s sense of who he/she is. Shorn of the social, cultural, and linguistic realities that define the Chinese person in China, the BAC bases his recently discovered identity on the promise of China’s political and economic ascendancy – just as some born-again Christians base their newfound faith on the promise of material prosperity.
Without the ability to engage culturally or linguistically with his newfound Chinese identity, the BAC overcompensates with an idealised, romanticised idea of a China is that inevitably rising, that stands heroically against a hegemonic west (often represented by the evil US) – confident in his (BACs are usually men) belief that history is on China’s side. For BACs, President Xi Jinping’s proclamation that “the east is rising, and the west declining” thus evokes powerful emotions of ethnic pride, hubris, and manifest destiny. But as Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach (both cognitive scientists) say in The Knowledge Illusion, “As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding.” We shouldn’t mistake BACs’ conviction for knowledge.
For instance, BACs in Singapore are mostly quite ignorant of the struggles facing highly educated Chinese youths in China today. Singaporeans who visit China are often bowled over by their world-leading modern infrastructure and by how digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are widely applied. This appeals to our techno-utopian bias: the unquestioned belief that technology will solve all our problems, generate prosperity for everyone, and further the public interest. But as Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson argue persuasively in Power and Progress, whether technology benefits society is largely determined by how power is distributed and exercised. More often than not, technological progress generates riches, social respect, and political voice for those already powerful. “For most of the rest of us, there is the illusion of progress.”
China’s technological feats of marvel, often developed and deployed by the state, may also appeal to our authority bias, the tendency to view authority figures as more credible and respectable. This authority bias leads to a deference to (traditional) hierarchy. It explains why BACs find protests in China (say those in Hong Kong in 2019) offensive. It also feeds into a sense of cultural superiority in which these individuals believe they should be at, or near, the top; this may explain their discomfort with discussions about privilege.
Singaporean BACs are also mostly unaware of the long-term risks facing the Chinese economy: insufficient domestic demand and weak consumption growth in the last three years; stubborn deflation pressures and falling property prices; deleveraging caused by too much debt accumulated over the years by Chinese firms, households, and local governments; and a shrinking population since 2022. Convinced by by their religious-dogma-like belief in the inevitability of China’s rise, the BACs underestimate or ignore the Chinese economy’s growing headwinds and structural weaknesses (many of which are explained in my recent book on the Chinese economy, The Price of Zero: China’s Policy Missteps During and After Covid). To the extent that they acknowledge China’s slowdown in the last three years, they echo CCP propaganda in scapegoating the west.
Getting China wrong
BACs are thus defined by their unwavering faith in China’s ascent and their belief that its rise is inevitable. They present a triumphalist, Panglossian account of the China story. Perhaps the most well-known BAC in Singapore is the former Foreign Minister, George Yeo. At the height of the pandemic in October 2020, he proclaimed that China’s growth – supported by its Covid-suppression efforts and its dual circulation strategy (emphasising domestic demand) – was “virtually unstoppable”, and that after the pandemic was over, “the league tables will change dramatically” and “China will emerge much stronger.” Turns out he was almost completely off: China’s share of global GDP (in USD terms) fell from a peak of 18.3% in 2021 to 16.9% in 2023; it probably fell again (or did not increase much) in 2024.
In recent years, terms like “peak China” and “China’s Japanification” have become mainstream among serious economists, reflecting a general view that China’s rise (in relative terms) has stalled. Further, the latest projections are that the Chinese economy will not overtake the US’ economy in the next 20 years, updating the earlier projection (made in 2019) that China will surpass the US in the early 2030s.
More importantly, the policies that George Yeo confidently said would underpin China’s post-Covid ascent — its dual circulation strategy and its successful efforts to contain Covid — have turned out to be the very things holding back China’s recovery. China’s zero-Covid policy scarred consumer and investor confidence long after the policy was abandoned, and the country’s consumption growth in the last three years has been tepid.
A second characteristic of BACs is that they attribute intentionality, rationality, and correctness to almost everything the Chinese state does. They are one of the CCP’s biggest cheerleaders; almost regardless of what the party does, it is correct. This belief fails Popper’s falsification test. As Karl Popper argued more than a century ago, if one cannot specify the conditions under which a statement that he/she is making is false, that statement is meaningless. Similarly, if one cannot state the conditions in which a policy is wrong, the statement that the said policy is a correct one is meaningless. Unfortunately for the BACs, their assumption that Chinese policy is always correct undermines their credibility. One might be more inclined to agree with them if they are willing to concede major errors by the Chinese authorities in recent years.
Take for instance how some of the BACs in Singapore defended the zero-Covid policy in China and criticised the Singapore government’s efforts to live with Covid from the middle of 2021. But when the Chinese authorities abruptly swung from a strict zero-COVID policy to a de facto COVID-for-everyone policy at the end of 2022 – leading to the very dystopia that Chinese state media had mocked other countries for – BACs applauded. A few months later, the Chinese authorities brazenly declared that China’s COVID-19 policy had been “completely correct” even as they scrubbed references to the tight restrictions that had traumatised its citizens and the economy for much of the pandemic. Justifying Chinese policies, as they lurch from one extreme to another, requires the BAC to engage in ever more contorted mental gymnastics.
Third, the positions taken by the BACs are seldom based on principle, but on whatever the Chinese propaganda machine puts out. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, BACs argued that Russian operations in Ukraine were motivated by self-defence, by the broken promise that NATO wouldn’t expand eastwards, and by American interference in Ukraine. The BACs also suddenly discovered John Mearsheimer’s lecture from a decade ago about why the US shouldn’t poke the Russian bear, conveniently ignoring the fact that Mearsheimer’s main motivation is his belief that China is the real threat to the US and that the US should therefore find an accommodation with Russia to contain China. (A BAC told me that agreeing with Mearsheimer in opposing American support for Ukraine does not require him to agree with Mearsheimer’s view of China as the main threat.) They also accused the US of using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia, and of being the real warmonger.
Now that Trump wants to withdraw US aid to Ukraine and end the war, consistency demands that these BACs support Trump’s actions. Why haven’t they done so? After all, Trump seems to be doing what Mearsheimer says America should do. I suspect the reason BACs have been reticent in their support of Trump is that the Chinese state is deeply suspicious of Trump’s efforts to make a deal with the Russians that could isolate China. The Chinese recently abstained from the UN vote on the Ukraine war even as the US backed Russia. This exposes the intellectual vacuity of the BACs’ position when they say they would like to see an end to the war in Ukraine. It seems that for the BACs, peace is desirable only if it does not involve Russia getting into bed with the US. And because that is probably bad for the Chinese state, BACs don’t welcome it.
Fourth, the BACs tend to view the world in binary terms: the good guys versus the bad guys. Geopolitics and geoeconomics are reduced to a simple morality play, in which good (eventually) triumphs. This binary bias is understandable; it is what we were told as children, and it helps people deal with a complex and often ambiguous reality. And with ample evidence of Trump bullying other countries, the BAC’s simplistic but increasingly resonant story of the US as the bad guy and China as the good guy gains traction. When someone points out that what China does is undesirable or bad, the BAC’s instinctive response is to engage in whataboutism: but the US is worse.
Fifth, at the heart of the optimism bias of the BACs is their unshakeable belief that the Chinese state is exceptional and exceptionally ethical. For the BACs, China’s leaders are unusually intelligent, far-sighted, and meritocratic; they formulate policies rationally based on science and evidence. It is also a government for the people rather than one captured by vested interests. Viewing the Chinese government through this prism of exceptionalism makes it hard for China bulls to imagine that the authorities might be unpredictable, capricious, and prone to sudden U-turns (whether on Covid policy or one economic stimulus). Hence, when the policy reversals and U-turns occur, BACs must construct elaborate, often implausible theories to “explain” them. Not doing so would cause too much cognitive dissonance.
The reality of course is that the Chinese state is not all that exceptional or ethical. Like the governments of other countries, it is often myopic and torn between short- and long-term goals; ideology and loyalty regularly come into conflict with rational, evidence-based decision-making in the public interest; and there is often a large gap between (legitimate) policy goals and the Chinese state’s capacity to achieve those goals. In short, the reason BACs often get it wrong is that the authorities they feel compelled to defend and justify often get it wrong too.
Inoculating society against BACs
I have come to realise that trying to reason with these BACs is as much of a fool’s errand as trying to reason with diehard anti-vaxxers: they do not let facts get in the way of their good stories. Behavioural science also highlights the backfire effect – the more one tries to persuade a person with strong beliefs with logical argument, the more resistance the persuader is likely to face.
It is far more fruitful for those of us who are more sceptical of big countries, their motivations, and their actions to inoculate the wider public against BACs. The same applies to the Singapore authorities: rather than try to silence or suppress the BACs in Singapore, it’s much better for the state to inoculate citizens against BAC propaganda and so limit the amount of polarisation that BACs can cause. Using the state’s repressive arsenal of tools against BACs may be tempting but is likely to be counterproductive as that could breed public sympathy, support for the views propagated by the BACs, and suspicion that there is some uncomfortable truth behind BAC claims.
Perhaps the most powerful (but not necessarily the most practical) way of inoculating people against one-sided positions is to require them to have skin in the game. A vivid demonstration of this occurred last year, when a Singaporean hedge fund manager, Chua Soon Hock, had to shut down his fund after suffering an “unprecedented drawdown” following China’s stock market rout and Japan’s rally at the start of the year. Chua, a well-known China bull in Singapore’s investment industry, had bet heavily on Hong Kong and China equities while shorting the Nikkei. In January 2024, both markets moved in the opposite directions from what he had predicted. “I have reached the stage whereby my confidence as a trader is lost,” Chua was reported to have written to his investors. He said that tough trading since October 2023 and a “disastrous” January “have proven that my past experience is no longer valid and instead, is working against me”.
Obviously, it’s not realistic to require people to invest according to their political biases. But this is a simple test that most people can grasp: unless someone who holds strong views (say of China’s ascendance) has bet accordingly in a meaningful manner, we shouldn’t take his/her views seriously. For instance, my favourite response to BACs now is, “How much did you put in Chinese stocks in the last five years?”.
A second practical suggestion is for all of us to interact more with mainlanders in Singapore. Such interactions will naturally help us avoid essentialising or stereotyping the Chinese people. Since my arrival in Hong Kong more than six years ago, I have had the privilege of teaching, engaging with, and learning from hundreds of bright Chinese youths. Their views of China’s future are diverse and multi-faceted; they find the blindly optimistic views of the BACs in Singapore quite laughable. Some of them even asked me why well-educated Singaporeans who do not live inside the Chinese propaganda bubble would parrot the views of CCP propagandists.
Finally, we should all try to think more in terms of scenarios and less in terms of predictions. Stripped of its jargon, scenario thinking is simply a way of thinking probabilistically about the future; it’s an exercise in coming up with various plausible futures. While our predictions reflect and reinforce our prior beliefs, scenario thinking helps us to question (or at least suspend temporarily) our assumptions and biases (such as the excessive optimism and confirmation). The Institut Montaigne, a French think-tank in Paris, recently published an excellent set of scenarios on China and its relations with the world. Faced with increasing uncertainty, our ability (as individuals and as society) to think in terms of scenarios is indispensable.
