Identity politics in state-sponsored youth camps for Chinese overseas

The genealogy of the youth camps programme

The genesis of China’s camps for Chinese overseas youth was closely associated with the adoption of new policies on Chinese overseas during the late 1970s. Originally, Chinese overseas were under the purview of the Chinese Central Government Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (中央人民政府华侨事务委员会), an administrative organ responsible for issues concerning Chinese overseas and their domestic relatives. This commission was abolished during the Cultural Revolution and renamed in 1978 as the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council (国务院侨务办公室, hereafter the Overseas Chinese Office) with approximately the same duties. Other governmental and semi-governmental institutions on overseas Chinese affairs were also back in place. For example, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (中华全国归国华侨联合会, hereafter the Federation of Overseas Chinese) was resuscitated in 1978 as a semi-governmental organization parallel to the Overseas Chinese Office. By 1999, more than 10,000 branches of the Federation of Overseas Chinese had been established in all of China’s provinces except Tibet. ⁶

The end of the Cold War was conducive to reaching out and renewing ties with Chinese overseas through the ‘three pillars’ of the Chinese overseas community: traditional Chinese schools, Chinese newspapers, and Chinese community organizations abroad. In the process of restoring connections with Chinese overseas, Chinese authorities have gradually come to understand the differences between first-generation immigrants and Chinese overseas youth who were born and raised in the countries in which they reside. Because China-oriented generations who feel a relatively strong attachment to their ancestral home in China were destined to be replaced by local-oriented generations, the question of how to appeal to them became critical to China’s policy of soliciting resources from Chinese overseas. Liao Hui, Deputy Director of the Overseas Chinese Office, expressed his concern regarding China’s weakening ties with the younger generations at a national conference in 1984. ⁷ At the National Conference on Overseas Chinese Affairs in 1985, he commented in particular on the significance of Chinese overseas youth to China:

While the older generations of Chinese overseas are very patriotic, the younger generations have been gradually assimilated into their country of residence. To retain the connections of Chinese overseas with the motherland [the ancestral motherland], [we] must focus on the second and third generations [the middle-aged and youth] and the new immigrants who emigrated overseas in recent years. ⁸

Accordingly, a youth camps scheme that would offer the younger generations of Chinese descent first-hand experience of Chinese culture, history and language learning was understood as a useful way to reconnect with these youths. This programme was based on the assumption that ‘Chinese culture and language are the most useful links bonding Chinese descendent youth with the ancestral motherland’ ⁹ and that exposure to China’s history and culture, the Chinese language, and China’s rapid economic growth would lead them to feel proud to belong to the ‘Chinese people’ (中华民族) and would thus strengthen their affinity for their ‘roots’: the ancestral motherland (China). ¹⁰ The programme expressed the expectation of the Chinese authorities that overseas youth of Chinese descent who participated in the youth camps were likely to maintain social, economic, and emotional ties with China and become a source of active support for the motherland or would at least be likely to be on friendly terms with China while remaining politically oriented towards their country of residence. This discourse that associated race, history and culture with a potential attachment to China permeated local governments and educational institutions. A senior camp organizer from Huaqiao University used a well-known poem from the Tang Dynasty to explain the manner in which youth camps were assumed to exert a subtle influence on Chinese overseas youth: ‘silent and soft, it smoothens everything’.

The emergence of the programme also involved the Beijing–Taipei rivalry as it related to competing for the support and sympathy of Chinese overseas. Taiwan’s youth camps for Chinese overseas youth began substantially earlier than those of the mainland. At a government conference in 1986, Liao Hui made it clear that the Chinese authorities should take effective measures as a counterbalance to Taiwan’s outreach efforts that included offering Chinese overseas youth incentives such as summer camps and tours to Taiwan. ¹¹ The accelerated pace of localization and de-Sinicization in Taiwan since the mid-1990s only served to emphasize the increasing importance of such youth camps. A textbook compiled by the Overseas Chinese Office for training Chinese officials unmistakably clarified the relations between Mandarin education and the mainland’s unification project:

Over the years, Taiwan’s authorities did not dare to overtly promote ‘political independence’. Instead, activities in connection with ‘cultural independence’ were rampant. They wantonly propagate [these ideas] overseas, such as ‘New Taiwanese’, ‘Taiwan Experience’, the ‘General Phonetic Guide’, and make frantic attempts to sever the ties of Chinese overseas with the motherland – mainland China. Therefore, by providing Chinese education and practising ‘overseas Chinese work’, [we] could cultivate a powerful force to safeguard national unification, to correct this tendency and to channel public opinion. ¹²

Thus, winning over younger generations of Chinese descendants was considered instrumental to curbing Taiwan’s attempts at independence and to promoting China’s peaceful unification. To establish close links with Chinese overseas youth, the Chinese authorities employed a pre-emptive method that imparted pro-mainland sentiments to Chinese descendants aged 16 years and under before they were invited to rival Taiwanese camps. ¹³

Three tendencies appear alongside of the proliferation of the youth camps: the increasing involvement of the central government, diversification, and a growing number of school partners. Regarding the first tendency, in the late 1990s, the Overseas Chinese Office and the China Overseas Exchange Association began organizing ‘assembly camps’ – general assemblies for camp attendees – in Beijing. These Beijing assembly camps hold their inaugural ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, which is the hallowed meeting place of the National People’s Congress, and national leaders are frequently observed on these occasions. Second, more diversified camps appear to have targeted specific groups of Chinese overseas, including camps for Chinese children adopted by foreign families, for ‘outstanding Chinese overseas teenagers’ and for winners of Chinese culture and essay contests. By diversifying the camps, the Chinese authorities could more effectively address a greater number of Chinese overseas youth and resourceful individuals of Chinese descent. To expand the outreach to students who prefer to attend camps in their country of residence, Huaqiao University has dispatched Chinese teachers and artists abroad since 2006 under the auspices of the ‘Chinese Cultural Camp’ (中华文化大乐园) scheme to establish overseas camps. Third, a growing number of educational institutions have become involved in this programme. Because youth camps primarily offer a combination of training in Mandarin, cultural immersion and fieldwork tours, ordinary Chinese schools are also competent to provide the requisite courses. Dozens of universities and schools have been selected as Mandarin Education Bases at the national level by the Overseas Chinese Office. Local governments have also nominated educational organizations as provincial ‘Mandarin Education Bases’. ¹⁴ One duty of these selected schools and tertiary institutions is to meet the needs of the numerous youth camps by providing employees, service staff, space and expertise. A corresponding initiative to coordinate educational resources in and outside China was to confer the honorary title of ‘Model School of Mandarin Education’ (华文教育示范学校) on ‘exceptional’ Chinese schools established by Chinese overseas across the globe. As of 2014, 220 Chinese schools overseas had received this honour from the Overseas Chinese Office. These model schools were generously supported in terms of teacher training, funding, and textbook compilation and supply, in addition to receiving support for other activities, such as youth camps. ¹⁵

Despite the increasing diversification of the programme, these camps manifest an institution-to-institution pattern in terms of their mode of operation. The camps were primarily organized via close collaborations between organizations in China, including the Overseas Chinese Office and the Federation of Overseas Chinese, schools, various arms of the state apparatus, and organizations outside China (such as regional associations and Chinese schools). Whereas overseas organizations undertook the tasks of disseminating camp information and recruiting attendees, Chinese institutions typically designed courses and activities and administered the camps. Regarding operating expenses, there are three types of Chinese government support: full financing, partially subsidized support, and at participants’ expense. The fully financed camps were often initiated by the Chinese government, whereas the other two types were often established when overseas institutions took the initiative to request that the Chinese government or educational institutions hold camps for their Chinese youth. ¹⁶ Overseas organizers and camp participants from various countries are motivated by myriad factors to participate in the camps. What follows next is an ethnographic account of an annual summer camp for Chinese-Filipino students.

Organizing Mandarin-learning camps for Chinese Filipinos

The Mandarin-learning camps held in China’s southeastern province of Fujian are an annual programme that began in 2001 and that had served 9993 Chinese-Filipino students by 2014. ¹⁷ These camps are operated by several schools and universities in China and the Chinese authorities in close collaboration with the Philippine Chinese Education Research Center (菲律宾华教中心, hereafter Philippine Chinese Center), thus involving national, institutional and personal interests.

In 1991, the Philippine Chinese Center was established in the context of the declining quality of Chinese language education. ¹⁸ The organization was initiated by the Philippine Cultural College and its Alumni Association, with funds donated by numerous wealthy Chinese who were concerned about the degenerated condition of Chinese language education. The Philippine Chinese Center focused primarily on Chinese language education reform while calling for a pedagogical reorientation to teaching Chinese as a second language and an objective readjustment towards cultivating younger Filipinos of Chinese descent in the interests of the Philippines. To a certain extent, it acted as a nationwide non-governmental organization to promote Chinese language education by compiling new textbooks based on second-language teaching theory, holding conferences, publishing books and journals, and arranging exchanges with relevant foreign institutions. To address a lack of qualified teachers, the Philippine Chinese Center launched a project known as ‘blood transfusion’, referring to an effort to bring Chinese teachers from China on a short-term basis in association with the Overseas Chinese Office, the Confucius Institute Headquarters, and numerous other educational institutions. Although short-term Chinese teachers remained crucial as a source of qualified teachers for Chinese schools, a leader of the Philippine Chinese Center commented that this project did not represent a long-term solution partly because most volunteer teachers returned to China after they acquainted themselves with the details of teaching Mandarin and partly because of the impact of the particularly bitter and hostile territorial disputes that characterized Sino-Philippines relations. A better solution to this problem would be to recruit more Chinese-Filipino students as Chinese schoolteachers and train them in mainland China. Thus, in 2004, the Philippine Chinese Center launched the ‘hematopoietic project’ as a supplementary undertaking. Certain Filipino students selected by the centre undertook a full-time Chinese education undergraduate degree programme in mainland China which was funded by scholarships provided by the universities and funds solicited by the centre. A scholarship recipient is required to serve a five-year contract as a Chinese schoolteacher in the Philippines after graduation.

There is no doubt that the Chinese authorities regard cooperation with the Philippine Chinese Center and numerous Chinese schools in the Philippines as instrumental to strengthening China’s influence on Chinese overseas communities and to counter-balancing Taiwan’s influence. ¹⁹ Despite the increasingly blurred boundary between pro-mainland and pro-Taiwan groups in the Philippines, ²⁰ the long-standing fragmentation has not subsided but continued to influence the Chinese community generally and Chinese schools in particular. The reform of the Chinese education system that was led by the Philippine Chinese Center has not been fully embraced by all Chinese schools, particularly those that have traditionally sided with Taiwan. The Philippine Chinese Center has closer cooperative ties with the PRC’s state agencies and educational institutions. Such close relations laid the groundwork for numerous youth camps, in which a large number of Chinese Filipinos have sought to discover their ‘roots’ and learn the Chinese language and culture in various regions of mainland China.

Lucio C. Tan, a Chinese Filipino of Jinjiang ancestry, was a prominent figure behind the annual youth camps. Born to an impoverished family in Southern Fujian in 1934, Tan migrated to the Philippines with his parents during his youth. He received his secondary education in a Chinese school and then studied chemical engineering at Far Eastern University. ²¹ As one of the most successful self-made tycoons in the Philippines, Tan has been considered to be closer to Beijing than Taipei, and he has been an important figure in – and even chairman (1999–2001) of – the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (a leading organization in the Chinese community in the Philippines) ²² and has invested considerably in banks and real estate in Xiamen. ²³ Tan attributes his success (at least in part) to Chinese culture, and he has sponsored numerous teachers to receive training in the teaching of Chinese in the PRC in response to the decline of Chinese education in the Philippines. In an interview, Tan mentioned that he sponsored the annual summer camps in the hope that Chinese-Filipino youth could ‘learn the Chinese language, and most importantly, could be taught traditional Chinese virtues’. ²⁴ He expressed his intention to continue subsidizing summer camps at the camp’s opening ceremony in 2013:

I figure that few Chinese Filipinos of the younger generation can fully appreciate the old generation’s sentiments towards their ancestral homeland and Chinese culture. I have persistently stressed the saying ‘a tree has roots in the same way that a man has ancestors’. Thus, I sponsored the ‘Mandarin-Learning Summer Camps for Chinese Filipinos’ every year to help our progeny find the roots of the ‘Chinese people’ and never forget them. I believe this project is worthy of efforts, and I am perfectly willing to [support it] regardless of how much it costs. ²⁵

With Tan’s sponsorship, the Philippine Chinese Center directly contacted China’s educational institutions, including Xiamen University, the Chinese Language and Culture College (formerly a preparatory school for ‘returned Chinese overseas’ students in Xiamen) of Huaqiao University, and Jimei University, to request that they hold an annual summer camp. ²⁶ It is a popular programme among Chinese Filipinos, as demonstrated by the generally increasing number of participants since its inception. Participation rapidly increased from 100 in 2001 to 810 in 2013. ²⁷ One factor that contributed to the programme’s popularity was Tan’s continuous subsidization. Although the Fujian Overseas Chinese Affairs Office began subsidizing RMB 500 (approximately US$77) for each attendee in 2013, Tan has provided much of the funding every year. For example, prior to 2008, each participant paid only US$600 dollars that covered a round-trip airfare to China, nearly two months of dormitory room and board, tuition, entertainment, and the cost of visiting various Fujian tourist attractions. After the 2008 financial crisis, Tan increased the level of the subsidy he provided and lowered the out-of-pocket cost per attendee to approximately US$400 dollars to ease the burden on the parents of participants.

The relatively low price has attracted more students to attend the camp. A number of students mentioned that their parents encouraged them to attend the camps to learn Mandarin. Yin (a pseudonym), a first-time attendee from Grace Christian College, attended the camp at the Huaqiao University base with two older brothers, one who had attended the camp twice and the other three times. Yin was born in Metro Manila into a merchant family and spoke Tagalog and Chinese at home. His father, a Chinese migrant who immigrated to the Philippines and married his mother (half Chinese and half Filipino), hoped he would learn Chinese to communicate with his grandparents who lived in China. More importantly, given that many successful merchants in the Philippines are Chinese overseas, his father believed that fluency in Chinese would help Yin cultivate a personal network and business success. This association of camp attendance with business and career prospects was a common feature of discussions with other attendees. However, many Chinese-Filipino students viewed the camp primarily as an enjoyable, inexpensive vacation with friends from the same school.

As noted earlier, the summer camps exhibit a typical institution-to-institution mode of operation, which primarily involves the Philippine Chinese Center, schools and universities in China and the Chinese state apparatus. The Philippine Chinese Center is the overseas organization in charge of student recruitment. The youth camps are an integral part of its broader project to promote Chinese education in the Philippines. According to the deputy chairwoman of the Philippine Chinese Center, a number of attendees would subsequently apply for the hematopoietic project, which supplies eligible teachers to Chinese schools. The Philippine Chinese Center mailed application forms and guidelines to Chinese schools across the country in September 2013 and requested nominee lists and fees to be submitted to the Philippine Chinese Center by schools in preparation for the 2014 camp. To qualify, attendees should be students from grade four in primary school to grade four in secondary school who did not fail any subject taken during the previous academic year. ²⁸ In addition, the Philippine Chinese Center selected a small number of Chinese teachers from programme-related Chinese schools to accompany and monitor students. The application results, flight information, and the date of the preparatory gathering before departure were published in the Philippines’ leading Chinese newspaper.

Upon arrival in Fujian, camp attendees followed the activities and itinerary of the camp designed and arranged by the Chinese educational institutions. Out of approximately 600 participants, 133 students attended the 2014 camp held at the Chinese Language and Culture College of Huaqiao University. The other students were distributed among the other five schools and universities. To Huaqiao University, a national university affiliated with the Overseas Chinese Office, organizing youth camps for Chinese overseas was an obligation rather than a money-making activity significantly motivated by profit. Similarly, the private schools that were involved were not driven exclusively by economic considerations. Given that these camps were widely covered in the local and national media, the private schools probably aimed to increase their reputation and cultivate relations with local governments by serving as bases for a state-sponsored scheme. Although the involvement of the educational institutions was not driven primarily by profit, several universities enjoyed considerable benefits as a result of establishing and maintaining close relations with Tan during the camps. For instance, Tan donated RMB 11 million to Jimei University for the construction of a building for Mandarin learning in 2005 and a library in 2007. Both buildings were named after his father. However, Tan did not stop at Jimei University. He donated RMB 50 million to Huaqiao University to help construct a building ²⁹ and RMB 27 million to Quanzhou Normal University, another major camp base, in 2014. ³⁰

According to the director of the Training Department at Huaqiao University, the principle behind arranging varied courses and field trips for Chinese overseas youth was customization based on participant nationality, Mandarin proficiency, camp duration, primary interests (i.e. tours or language learning) and requests by overseas organizations, all of which involved a combination of Mandarin learning, cultural experience and tours. Language learning and cultural immersion appear to have been the focal point of the seven-week camp. After the Philippine Chinese Center informed the Chinese Language and Culture College of the number of students to expect, its staff members began selecting Chinese teachers and class advisors from among second-year undergraduates majoring in teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages. The class advisors were to stay with a group of Chinese-Filipino students round the clock to maintain security and order. Chinese culture class teachers with relevant expertise were selected from other schools. All the students who were seeking internships through the youth camps were subsidized by Huaqiao University.

The fact that Chinese Filipinos were drawn from different years, schools and regions underscores their uneven competence in Mandarin. In 2014, at Huaqiao University’s Chinese Language and Culture College, there were students who hailed from Metro Manila, Cebu City, and Davao City. To facilitate Chinese language teaching, the Chinese Language and Culture College conducted a proficiency test to evaluate attendees’ Chinese proficiency. The results were used to place the students in classes appropriate to their level. ³¹ According to the class schedule and the interning teachers, Mandarin classes were held in the mornings and Chinese culture classes – covering topics ranging from martial arts to painting, dancing, and music – were held in the afternoons from Wednesday to Sunday. The summer camp used a Huaqiao University-compiled textbook for the spoken Mandarin course and a textbook compiled by Jinan University for another Mandarin course. On Mondays, the Chinese-Filipino students took field trips to visit historic monuments, such as Turtle Garden, home to the mausoleum of a prominent Chinese overseas patriot, Tan Kah Kee, and other sites of interest, such as Nanputuo Temple and Gulangyu Island, and on Tuesdays students engaged in other recreational activities. All the courses and activities offered aimed to familiarize students with the Chinese language, Chinese culture and history, and prosperous Chinese society in an attempt to invoke or (in some sense) reinvent the cultural attachment of the participants to China.

Garnering political credit in a marginal state apparatus

The proliferation of the youth camps was apparently driven by the attempts of the Chinese authorities to establish and sustain relations with younger generations of Chinese descent and to win the Beijing–Taipei rivalry with respect to Chinese overseas. However, the preoccupation with national and institutional considerations oversimplifies the complexity and nuance of the programme because it neglects the role of local officials. Against the backdrop of the predicament of overseas Chinese affairs, the camp programme was closely related to the active involvement of local state agencies and individual officials’ desires to earn political credit.

In the Chinese political system, government officials owe their political career to their superiors rather than to the public. The dependence of individual officials on their superiors is termed ‘upward accountability’ by Shiuh-Shen Chien and sharply contrasts with politicians’ downward accountability to citizens, which describes how a democracy works. ³² However, in the context of asymmetric information, the competence, talent, and efforts of subordinates are not directly observable to upper-level authorities. ³³ Thus, from the perspective of local leaders, it is rational to impress one’s superiors by launching political achievement projects, such as showy construction projects. Similarly, the substantial need for lower officials to garner political credit has contributed to the growth of the youth camps programme, although it is clearly inaccurate to label these camps as extravagant ‘political achievement projects’. In the case of the camp for Chinese Filipinos, although it was primarily sponsored by Tan, officials from Xiamen Overseas Chinese Office include it in their annual report to upper-level government as evidence of their efforts to woo Chinese overseas youth. ³⁴

The presence of the state in the Mandarin-learning camps is manifest in various forms: the PRC embassy in the Philippines, the Overseas Chinese Office (including its affiliate, Huaqiao University), and local governments. The PRC embassy provided free visas to all Chinese-Filipino participants, and the opening and closing ceremonies were often attended by officials of the Overseas Chinese Office and by higher-ranking government officials. The opening ceremony of the 2014 camp was held in a hall in Jimei District for all the students. The camp was called ‘The 2014 “Root-Seeking Trip in China”: The Mandarin-Learning Summer Camp for Chinese Filipinos, Opening Ceremony’ (2014 年‘中国寻根之旅’: 菲律宾华裔学生学中文夏令营开营式), and these words were prominently displayed on a large red curtain on stage. The ceremony began with speeches by officials from the Overseas Chinese Office, followed by a ritual presentation of a flag (which bore the programme’s logo and formal title: Root-Seeking Trip in China) by officials and Tan to representatives of the attendees. To a degree, the flag handover, during which those involved broadly smiled to the photojournalists in attendance, could be understood as the ceremony’s apex. Another important ritual of the Mandarin-learning camp was the closing ceremony, which was held at the universities and schools separately and again featured speeches from officials in addition to a ceremonial presentation of graduate certificates and prizes. To demonstrate the camp’s effectiveness, the participants were requested to present performances on the occasion of the closing ceremony, which ranged from short dramas or martial arts demonstrations to folk dancing and singing Chinese songs.

Analysing a youth festival sponsored by the Chinese government for Chinese Americans, Louie remarked that the festival’s opening ceremony was ‘a failed ritual of the state’. This argument was based on the assumption that the festival was ‘supposed to produce a sense of transnational Chinese unity by emphasizing connections between “race”, culture, and nationalism’ on the part of the organizers. ³⁵ However, what if those in attendance in the hall were only part of the targeted audience? In other words, what Louie might have missed was that the rationale for holding the opening ceremony was also closely associated with a bid for political credit by the state agencies involved and by individual officials to their superiors. In fact, the opening and closing ceremonies were the key moments of the entire summer camp programme for officials to produce and claim recognition for their work. Although simple and relaxed, these ceremonies arranged by local governments and schools resembled government conferences (e.g. they featured numerous speeches from officials and seating arrangements in accordance with official position). In particular, the opening ceremony seemed to be used as an occasion to demonstrate the support of the Chinese authorities for the programme in which not only the hundreds of Chinese Filipinos (who were required to wear their camp uniforms in the hall) were addressed but also – and more significantly – a broader audience. Many news reports on the 2014 summer camp focused on these two ceremonies and featured photographs of Chinese officials handing over the camp’s flag to several Chinese overseas youth. As soon as the opening ceremony ended, the local state agencies submitted their reports to their superior governmental agencies and the media, and news of the ceremony appeared far and wide in local newspapers (e.g. Xiamen Weekly 鹭风报), national newspapers (e.g. People’s Daily 人民日报) and on various websites.

A closely related factor is the relative marginalization of overseas Chinese affairs. Although no Chinese leader would publicly deny the importance of overseas Chinese affairs, the state bureaucracies in charge of Chinese overseas are widely recognized as peripheral state agencies by both government officials and the general population. The situation has become even worse in traditional emigrant-origin areas, such as Xiamen, in which local cadres find themselves literally running out of things to do due to the aging population of family dependents and returned Chinese overseas and a shrinking number of first-generation migrants. Particularly at lower governmental levels, the relative importance of the government agencies focused on Chinese overseas pales in comparison with those agencies directly in charge of the top priorities of the party-state, such as economic growth in the reform era (e.g. the National Development and Reform Commission 发展和改革委员会) and the ‘Taiwan question’ (e.g. the Taiwan Affairs Office 台湾事务办公室). During my fieldwork, it was not uncommon to hear officials grumbling about their marginalization by the local government. The financial and symbolic resources that these disadvantaged agencies can mobilize are also miniscule in comparison with other agencies. These circumstances beg the question regarding how local officials in a marginalized department can achieve political credit.

The operation of another camp that involved the Overseas Chinese Office was instructive with regard to how youth camps were viewed as a tried tactic for disadvantaged government agencies to curry favour with local leaders. The municipal Overseas Chinese Office and a district Overseas Chinese Office collaborated with a Chinese school abroad to hold a summer camp in 2014. The camp’s attendees received financial support from two government agencies when they arrived in Xiamen. An official who administered the camp programme explained why the municipal branch held the camp in association with the district branch:

Currently, government agencies focused on Chinese overseas have been weakened at the municipal level. The situation is even worse at the district level. The municipal branch collaborates with the district branch to hold the summer camp, thereby bringing ‘work’ to the district-level Overseas Chinese Office. Otherwise, how do they write an annual report at the end of the year? How do they report their performance to district government leaders? If your allocation is spent organizing camps, you can re-apply for an allocation next year.

According to his interpretation, holding a camp with the district Overseas Chinese Office includes the possibility of mobilizing additional resources and providing the district Overseas Chinese Office with an accomplishment to report, with which they can earn political credit. Therefore, this is a win-win situation. In this manner, it is perhaps impossible to bring a peripheral department to the attention of local government based on the priorities of the reform era. However, these camps do enable careerist local cadres to be favourably judged by their superiors.

Additionally, the flexibility and diversity of the programme allows government agencies at all levels to organize youth camps with limited resources. Among the camps I observed, the Chinese-Filipino project was the camp par excellence due to the tremendous financial support it received from Lucio Tan. Most camps held by local governments are shorter in duration, ranging from several days to three weeks, and include dozens of participants, on average. An official of the Federation of Overseas Chinese in another district stated that the number of participants was typically limited to several dozen and the length of the camps was limited to a week, all in accordance with their capacity to accommodate the participants. As a result of flexibility and the need to claim political credit, there has been an intensification of efforts by lower-level governments to organize youth camps, and even state agencies at the township level can afford these camps.

Effects of Mandarin-learning youth camps

To what extent might China succeed at influencing the cultural and political identities of Chinese overseas youth with a transitory immersion in Chinese culture, language, history and society? Undoubtedly, it is problematic to generalize the effects of a programme consisting of myriad camps for Chinese overseas youth from different counties by only analysing a single camp for Chinese Filipinos. With an acute awareness of this limitation, I nevertheless propose that the Chinese-Filipino camp provides a preliminary understanding of how the camp experience has been received and the responses to such an experience. I argue that the programme has made a substantial contribution to Chinese language education and to a relatively positive image of China among Chinese-Filipino participants; in addition, it was more successful at influencing the cultural and ethnic orientations of Chinese-Filipino youth than it was at influencing their political identity.

The Chinese authorities’ showcasing of China’s modernity through the camp was generally positively accepted. The experience of studying at a local university in Xiamen (a coastal city that is highly popular among Chinese tourists for its natural beauty, Southeast Asian architecture and modern cityscape) and travelling to different attractions positively influenced the image of China for many Filipino students. Several informants, particularly those who had not previously visited mainland China, related that they had imagined Chinese cities as extremely dirty and desperately poor before attending the camp. ‘I thought it [mainland China] would be dirty and that homeless people would be begging for food and help in the street’, a male student from Cebu City admitted. Throughout the 2014 trip, after a long day of studying these Filipino students frequently visited the night market next to the Chinese Language and Culture College to eat delicacies and do some shopping. The same student observed that ‘the night market is packed and vibrant; China is not poor at all’. Other students who recalled their experiences of visiting multiple attractions in Xiamen were positive, some even exuberant, about every aspect of the city: ‘Xiamen is very clean, much cleaner than Manila. Manila is a dirty city’ and ‘Chinese people are very friendly’. To varying degrees, these reactions to China’s vibrant economy and the spectacle of Chinese modernity are contextualized by the living conditions in the Philippines. Of course, this does not mean that there were no negative impressions of China among the participants. ³⁶ Overall, the trip to Xiamen was successful in that it fostered a relatively positive image of China.

The programme’s efforts to improve the competence of the participants’ Mandarin were also successful. As previously noted, all the students were assigned into a three-tier teaching system based on their Mandarin proficiency, which helped the instructors design suitable courses. The intensity of language training also accounted for the students’ improved Mandarin. There were four classes for Mandarin study daily, five days a week on average. The extent to which the Mandarin skills of the participants were developed and enhanced for effective communication depended not only on teaching design but also on student motivation and particularly on students’ interactions with their instructors and classmates. Even those students who viewed the camp primarily as an amusing holiday felt that their Mandarin, particularly in the area of communicative competence, more or less improved during the seven-week intensive training. In addition to their improved Mandarin, the programme was partly effective at fostering interest in Chinese culture and at convincing the participants to embrace their cultural identities. The informants indicated that the exposure to various forms of Chinese culture during the camp enabled them to appreciate it more. A few went further to link Chinese culture with an affinity for China. For example, a female student stated that ‘Chinese culture is very nice and the Chinese are very respectful. . . . [There is] more culture than in other countries. I do feel a bit closer to China compared with other countries.’

By contrast, the camp was less effective at affecting the political identities of the students, although they felt varying degrees of cultural affinity towards China during the trip. The political standpoints of the students were largely shaped by the Philippine society in which they were born and raised. The brief (less than two months) trip to China seemed to have little or no influence on their political disposition. Thus, the Chinese authorities’ desire to persuade Chinese overseas to conform to Beijing’s political stance appeared to be of no avail. An informant explained the political viewpoints she held regarding the Taiwan issue and the island disputes between China and its neighbours:

Taiwan should be independent if the residents on that island want it. . . . As for the conflict between Japan and China over an island, honestly, I support Japan because there are also conflicts [over islands] between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea.

A Philippines-oriented political identity is the primary reason behind this informant’s support for Japan rather than China in the territorial disputes. Another factor affecting the political effectiveness of the root-seeking camp programme is the apolitical attitude of many of the participants. Many Chinese Filipinos candidly stated that their attendance was initiated by their parents and that they primarily viewed the camp as a form of tourism.

However, it is inaccurate to deem the camp completely ineffective in terms of imparting the PRC’s political views to the students. A second-generation Chinese Filipino from a pro-Taiwan Chinese school was encouraged by his Chinese father to attend the camp. He described how his ideas on the Taiwan issue had been reinforced during the trip.

My school is more [interested in] Taiwan camps; they do not like Chinese [PRC] camps. They do not show pictures of Chinese camps; they don’t announce [them]. We just knew [about] it from the newspaper. . . . Our school has more connection with Taiwan. But I think Taiwan is a part of China. I get it from [my] father, mother and friends, and from teachers here [in the camp].

In contrast to Louie’s argument that the youth festival for Chinese Americans was ‘a failed ritual of the state’, ³⁷ Elena proposed that ‘it was perhaps premature to deem these efforts so unsuccessful’. ³⁸ Highlighting an account written by a Kazakhstani Dungan, Barabantseva argued that ‘the official version of national history has potency to influence how “overseas Chinese ethnic minorities” view their history and articulate their identities’. ³⁹ In a case more relevant to this study, Ellen Wu examined the Overseas Chinese Youth Language Training and Study Tour to Taiwan under the auspices of the Taiwan government. She concluded that the Taiwan government failed to spur Chinese Americans to engage in political activism on behalf of Taiwan, while the tour ‘was somewhat successful in meeting the Nationalists’ goal of influencing the transnational ethnic and cultural identities of the participants’. ⁴⁰ The reactions and comments of my informants echo the views of Barabantseva and Wu in that the programme does subtly influence its participants with varying degrees of success in different regards. Thus, the Mandarin-learning camp indicates that the question of ‘being Chinese’ among local-born generations cannot be thoroughly understood without considering the direct or indirect, complex, and multilayered influences of China. ⁴¹

Conclusion

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China’s connections with Chinese overseas have been rapidly restored by both political and economic forces. However, the PRC’s persistent relations with and attempts to exploit the potential of Chinese overseas communities have been threatened by China’s weakening ties with younger generations of Chinese overseas. Accordingly, a long-running youth camps programme was established partly because the Chinese authorities believed that estranged Chinese overseas youth could be persuaded to bond with China by acquainting them with Mandarin, Chinese culture, and historical and natural landmarks and partly because of the long-standing, legitimacy-related Beijing–Taipei rivalry over the affection of Chinese overseas. The accelerated pace of localization in Taiwan since the mid-1990s lent the youth camps additional political significance as they sought to curb the pro-independence faction and champion China’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.

The case study on the summer camp for Chinese Filipinos revealed that neither a top-down approach to decision-making nor a bottom–up analysis of policy implementation illuminates the reasons behind the growth of the youth camps. Analysing the policy implementation pattern in rural China, Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li highlight ‘selective policy implementation’ by grass-roots rural leaders accountable for a region’s all-round governance. ⁴² These generalist cadres tend to pay more attention to measurable, binding targets, such as birth control and tax collection, and to ignore less quantifiable policies. The Xiamen youth camps reveal the inapplicability of this pattern in explaining the policy implementation of a single agency with limited duties, such as a local Overseas Chinese Office. Despite a lack of readily measurable outcomes, individual officials in a marginalized local state apparatus are willing to mobilize the networks maintained with Chinese overseas communities to host camps that contribute to their political credit. The flexibility and diversity that characterize these camps enable even lower-level state agencies with limited resources to participate in the programme and to include that participation in their annual performance reports to their superiors, which increases the popularity of the youth camps among such officials. In addition to a combination of top-down and bottom–up approaches, it is imperative to look beyond national borders to understand the transnational programme for Chinese overseas youth. The meanings and agendas that multiple social actors attach to this programme must be considered. As previously noted, the operation of the camp is contingent on the convergence of many self-defined interests and agendas, including the Philippine Chinese Center’s attempts to revitalize Chinese education in the Philippines by drawing on resources from China.

Because wooing Chinese overseas youth is considered a long-term policy, it may be acceptable for the Chinese authorities that the results of the camps may not be immediately apparent. Research on study tours in Taiwan also suggests that the Chinese overseas youth programme in Taiwan has continued to function in the context of party alternation because the study tour may be viewed ‘as a purposeful, albeit indirect, investment, the results of which may not be seen for years or even decades’. ⁴³ However, to what extent can China’s camps programme succeed at influencing relations between Chinese overseas youth and China, smoothening everything silently until its effects become visible? Given the flexibility and longevity of this transnational programme, a meaningful answer to this question necessitates follow-up research on different camps. Additional research is required to better understand the transnational practices of Chinese overseas youth and the programme’s impact on the Beijing–Taipei rivalry and China’s relations with Chinese overseas in the long run.