This is a certain incorrect tendency among many diaspora groups living in settler-colonial states that must be firmly opposed.
Despite the historical trauma and lived experience of Asia by Western colonialism and Japanese imperialism, some living in settler-colonial states such as Canada and Imperialist America hold incorrect views toward Indigenous people, shining a light on the capitalist West’s racist propaganda efforts.
These efforts have drawn diaspora groups further from the correct ideas prevalent in many of their motherlands; for instance, the Communist Party of China works toward the modernization of underdeveloped regions while simultaneously ensuring cultural heritage is supported and helps with decolonial efforts in the Afrikan continent through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In an interview with RT, Lawrence Freeman, an Afrikan affairs analyst and journalist, stated:
China under this president [Xi Jinping] has a vision for the future. They develop themselves and they develop their neighbors and they develop other countries around the world.
So, the whole concept of the ‘Belt and Road’ is counter to geopolitical thinking, it is countries working together, they call it win-win. And the problem is that the West has no vision for development of Africa, has refused to develop Africa, so therefore they attack Africa, they complain about Africa’s loan, they complain about the debt. The debt under Western countries, the IMF and the World Bank far exceeds anything that the Chinese have in terms of debt with African countries.
So, the West has to get over their problems, get over the geopolitical thinking, stop demonizing China and actually if the president was intelligent in this question, he would join the ‘Belt and Road’ because if China and the US joined together, we could transform the continent and eliminate the poverty and hunger.
Of course, neither diasporas nor those living in their areas of ethnic origin are monolithic. This is not to say that anti-Black racism, for instance, does not exist in China, but oftentimes mainland Chinese react with intrigue, not disgust, when seeing a dark-skinned visitor.
Similarly, while there exist some Zionists within China, there is broad support for Palestine liberation movements among the masses in the motherland and special administrative regions.
Pressure to assimilate and the modern minority myth
The incorrect ideas held by diaspora groups seem to stem from several ideas propagated throughout society by the capitalist elite.
These narratives obscure the historical realities of genocide, slavery, land theft and dispossession, and systematic exclusion, issues that Western nations tend to avoid confronting.
For instance, the model minority myth promises success through hard work, capitalist individualism, and the assimilation of Asian migrants into the dominant white society.
Asians are encouraged to distance themselves from groups portrayed as “less assimilated,” such as Black and Indigenous, in hopes of being seen as respectable and non-threatening.
Capitalist scarcity politics play a role as well; diaspora communities and marginalized groups view each other only as competitors, fighting for resources, recognition, and political attention rather than confronting colonial structures, the common source of harm.
Historical amnesia and poor education in the capitalist West
The children of migrants then learn through the capitalist, colonial education system, whose educational failures are well-documented.
In schools, they learn about the “horrors” of “communist dictators” such as Stalin and Chairman Mao, with inflated death tolls that include Nazis, Nazi collaborators, Japanese imperialists, and even deaths from natural disasters, among others.1
This was seen most recently with the “Memorial to the Victims of Communism” in Ottawa, Canada, which originally included “over 330 names linked to Nazis [and] fascists,” as reported by Ottawa Citizen after alarms were raised by Jewish groups and independent Canadian media outlets such as Ricochet and The Maple.
Jan Grabowski, a historian at the local University of Ottawa, suggested that this “Holocaust envy, … the need to ‘elevate’ the suffering of the victims of communism to the level of the Holocaust,” received most of its support from right-wing nationalist organizations that are mostly active among Canadians of Eastern European backgrounds, such as Ukrainians.
The “memorial” now stands blank.
This distorted view of history undoubtedly contributes to the self-hatred of certain racialized people groups, ideologically conditioning those originating from socialist states in Asia such as China and Vietnam and drawing them further away from the correct views of those in their homelands.
Misunderstanding of the term “settler” and refusal to directly engage
The vast majority of Indigenous landback movements distinguish between settler-colonial populations (that is, those who arrived through conquest and continue to benefit from land theft) and other racialized groups whose presence stems from slavery and indentured labour, such as slaves brought over by the white colonizers from the Afrikan continent; war; or non-colonial migration.
As I often quote, Chairman Mao Tse-tung asserted that without investigation, one has “no right to speak.”
Some diasporic Asians, while recognizing they are not settlers in the colonial sense, continue to hold anti-Indigenous and anti-Black biases rooted in colonial ideologies.
Further, many have not directly engaged or spoken with any of the local Indigenous.
Indigenous leaders often explicitly state that Afrikan and Asian communities are not their enemies. They have articulated that land back does not aim to deport immigrants as white supremacists do but to dismantle the colonial systems that harm all groups.
Despite this, many diaspora groups continue to misinterpret the term as a racial accusation rather than a structural category; without a firm understanding of this distinction, they believe they are unfairly blamed and respond defensively, and in the absence of real relationships, fear and misinformation brought forth by the capitalist elite fill the void.
The same logic of extraction, hierarchy, and domination that fueled Western and Japanese imperialism in Asia continues to structure settler‑colonial societies today.
Recognizing a shared struggle does not erase differences but illuminates a common enemy: the ongoing systems of imperialist, colonial power.
Ties between colonized and formerly colonized peoples should be strengthened, and the imperialist and colonial efforts of certain Western nations should be firmly opposed.
See the journal article “Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism” for a fuller look at how death tolls were counted. On Mao specifically, see also Meisner’s Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic and braised pork blog’s “Myths about Mao Debunked.”
Being brown has one bear witness to the incredible amnesia and subsequent unconscious imitation of colonial practices and behaviors. The colonized and peripheral subject in parallel with its proletariat has more in common with each other than the west and its bourgeois.
As an Indigenous person, thanks for witing this.