Despite their fondness in thinking of themselves as "Sons of the Yellow Emperor", the Chinese people in Malaysia - like all their counterparts in the global Chinese diaspora - are all members of the Han ethnic group in China.

The Chinese are Han Chinese, and yet the Chinese seldom refer to this fact. It is a little strange that a people so fixated with their ethnic identity should pay so little heed to their ethnic origin nowadays. There are tangible reasons steeped in the long history of China.

The modern history of China in the last century and a half has been nothing but a tale of bloodshed, tears and subjugation at the hands of Western colonial superpowers, as well as the Japanese. Closeted in their self-delusion of grandeur, the once powerful and energetic Manchurian rulers of China had gone the way of decay and decadence through their three-century rule of a vast and rich country.

The turning point was in 1911, when Dr Sun Yat Sen's Nationalist Party unseated the Manchu Dynasty (1644-1911). The founder of modern China saw his new nation as a Republic of Five Nationalities, the Hans, the Manchurians, the Mongolians, the Hui or the Muslims in the Xingjian region, and the Tibetans. The five stars on the flag of the Nationalist Republic of China reflect this idea.

After the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, a serious effort was taken to categorise the peoples of China. Today, the Chinese government recognises 56 ethnic groups, of which the Han Chinese is the largest, constituting about 92% of the total population of 1.2 billion.

Genius of Dr Sun

The Han consciousness was the central mobilising force in the birth of the new China that agitated for liberation of a sort from the rule of an alien race originating in the North Eastern wilderness of their vast land. But modernity had set in, and it was a stroke of genius for Sun Yat Sen to propose the birth of a republic, thereby ending 5,000 years of dynastic rule. (The Chinese have never in five thousand years minded being ruled by dictatorial emperors, as long as they were Han dictatorial emperors.)

Nevertheless, the revival and reassertion of the Chinese Han identity had its dramatic turn in the later part of the 19th century, as the gates of China at Beijing, Shanghai and Canton were pounded to smithereens by gunboats from the western colonial powers, inflicting great shame on their national soul.

The idea that those red-haired pink-skinned foreign devils had the audacity to infringe upon the Heavenly Empire was a shock from which the Han national consciousness could not recover for a long time. But they had no choice, with their spears, swords and kung-fu pitched against the canons and rifles of the invading forces.

The humiliation was long and extreme. The Chinese defeat at the hands of the British navy in the first Opium War 1840-1842 led to many one-sided treaties that opened Chinese ports to Western powers. The free flow of opium into China addicted a nation, and the Chinese were later referred to as "sick men of East Asia".

In 1894, the Japanese smashed an archaic Chinese navy, thereby laying the groundwork for half a century of Japanese invasion and occupation of Chinese soil, first in the north-eastern provinces, and later throughout the coastal regions of China during the Second World War. The sea of blood spilled during this period still stands in the way of better Sino-Japanese relations today. (How my late mother used to hate the Japanese!)

Then something equally significant happened in 1900. In a desperate, futile and symbolic attempt to defy this national shame, the Boxer Rebellion resorted to a combination of visceral racism and black magic, killing off a number of Christian missionaries and foreign devils in Beijing.

In retaliation, eight Western powers raised a combined army that marched into Beijing, the seat of the Son of Heaven. The Empress Dowager's favourite garden, built with the money meant for modernising her Chinese navy, was totally destroyed. Much compensation in gold was paid to the invading nations, and concessions to lease out territories in major Chinese cities were granted. A common tale has it that, in one such leased territory in Shanghai, the border was marked by a notice which said: Dogs and Chinese not allowed.

The symbolic meaning of these events is akin to plunging a dagger into the proud heart of a sick nation.

The inability of the corrupt Manchurian court in defending the territorial integrity and national dignity of the people was the prime motivating force for mobilising the Hans against the conquering Manchu powers, and later the colonial invaders.

Long collective memory

Let us not forget that the Chinese people have a very long collective memory. As a reaction to their painful experience in the last 150 years or so, Chinese national pride has since determined the course of political events on mainland China, provided them with a bottom-line for their current foreign and defence policies, and coloured the perception of Chineseness among the global Chinese diaspora.

You can get an inking of their seething festering rage and their need to restore national glory from the lyrics of the national anthem of the People's Republic of China, March of the patriotic Volunteers:

Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves
With our flesh and blood
We shall build the new Great Wall
The Chinese nation now faces the most dangerous moment
From each of us shall issue forth this last roar
Arise! Arise! Arise!
We millions with one heart
Shall brave all enemy fire

March on! March on! March on!

Nothing can be more nationalistic and more martial than those near nihilistic call for warfare and battle!

There is no expression of aspiration towards the usual kind of collective destiny, no reference to the "pursuit of happiness", or to the creation of a land fair and free for all equal citizens. The entire Chinese consciousness is posited against real or imagined enemies in the defence of a homeland from which a humiliated but proud people had sprung. It is a manifest siege mentality.

When you understand this mixture of humiliation and pride, you can then see the logic of the Chinese government in their determination to recover "lost" territories like Hong Kong, Macau, and now Taiwan, while consolidating their rule in non-Han territories like Tibet and Xingjian. (I do not subscribe to this logic entirely.)

You can also begin to understand why the Chinese community tend to be so clannish and so successful in their survivalist existence on foreign soils.

Chinese citizens in Malaysia may not feel any political allegiance to the People's Republic of China. As far as I know, not one single Malaysian would want to live in China, even though a few visits would be welcome. The general consensus seems to be that Malaysia is a far better place in which to live, work and die.

Nevertheless, like cultural genes, the gamut of complex feelings hidden in the historical repository of the Chinese experience live on in the daily life in mutated forms. The nationalist pride and its collateral call for the revival of the Chinese spirit are translated to mean self-fortification and self-improvement through hard work and education, especially through mother-tongue education.

For this revival of the Chinese identity, it also means drawing strength and resources from the best of their long cultural traditions. The conversation and thoughts of most Chinese educated Chinese especially among the older generations will be sprinkled with such reminders of personal virtues as thrift, hard work, honesty, sincerity, honour, filial duty, self-denial for delayed rewards, and commitment to the welfare of the community.

Living as we do in the multiracial context of Malaysia, where racial politics has ravaged the minds of citizens for half a century, it is only natural that the siege mentality of Chinese ethnic nationalism has been reinforced beyond measure, often driving them into conservative, fearful and even solipsistic modes of thought.

Cultural lineage

Given their strength in number, and their success in the world of commerce despite adverse government obstacles, they would easily find the resolve and the confidence to resist all attempts at total assimilation. Political persecution will only harden that resolve further.

In this, they are helped by the inheritance of a cultural lineage extending back for a few millennia. Eventually, all forms and expressions of ethnic nationalism must find their origin, legitimacy, inspirations in different kinds of history, in the myths, legends, literature, and philosophy that constitute the collective memory and provide that sense of ethnic uniqueness.

Unfortunately, like all forms and expressions of ethnic nationalism, the Chinese' sense of identity that is anchored in their historical past is also impregnated with a deep-seated long-standing dosage of ugly racism.

In short, the complex and to others, often inscrutable mind of the Chinese is vulnerable to a decline into Great Han chauvinism, which is also embedded in the long history of the Han Chinese, and marked by an ethnocentric sense of superiority of the glory and greatness of the great Han race in relation to all non-Han peoples of the world.

In my short career as a human being, nothing has hurt me more than the following famous quote, uttered by numerous Chinese friends on countless occasions, wherever and whenever mandarin is spoken:

"Those not of our race
Their hearts are bound to be different."

To understand this ancient sentiment infecting the hearts of the worst type of Chinamen, we are compelled once again to travel back in time, into the labyrinth of ancient Chinese history.

(To be continued next Saturday)

Writer's note: This writer wishes to express his appreciation and gratitude to Steven Gan, Premesh Chandran and company for lasting the distance with malaysiakini. Well done and congratulations!