{"id":638273,"date":"2026-06-14T13:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T13:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638273\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T13:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T13:14:09","slug":"dear-you-the-chinese-migration-film-igniting-a-propaganda-debate-in-southeast-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638273\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear You \u2013 the Chinese migration film igniting a propaganda debate in Southeast Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

In less than two months, the indie film Dear You<\/a> has become an unlikely mass hit.<\/p>\n

Shot in the Teochew language from the Chaoshan region of southern China\u2019s Guangdong province, the movie follows a man uncovering his family\u2019s past by tracing remittance letters sent home from Thailand.<\/p>\n

As he pieces together his grandfather\u2019s life story, the movie also explores Chinese migration to the region and the diaspora\u2019s struggle to preserve its heritage.<\/p>\n

In one scene, an elderly schoolmaster risks arrest in 1950s Bangkok to secretly teach diaspora children their ancestral Chinese tongue.<\/p>\n

The movie has pulled in huge audiences and over 1.6 billion yuan (US$236 million) in China since its release on April 30.<\/p>\n

But it has also sparked a debate across Southeast Asia about China\u2019s soft power and political influence with Chinese communities in other countries.<\/p>\n

The response has varied throughout the region \u2013 from Chinese-majority Singapore, to Chinese-minority Malaysia to Thailand and the Philippines, where Chinese communities are more integrated into wider society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In less than two months, the indie film Dear You has become an unlikely mass hit. Shot in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[215494,5713,24321,891,215492,215496,141,96,215498,42380,215497,120257,215495,8626,2839,10784,3718,17271,4654,56,215491,54,158,55,5926,215493],"class_list":["post-638273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-asean-secretariat","tag-beijing","tag-belt-and-road-initiative","tag-china","tag-chinese-commercial-news","tag-dear-you","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-foreign-interference-countermeasures-act","tag-guangdong-province","tag-kaisa-para-sa-kaunlaran","tag-lee-hsien-loong","tag-lianhe-zaobao","tag-malaysia","tag-movies","tag-philippines","tag-singapore","tag-southeast-asia","tag-thailand","tag-uk","tag-united-front-work-department","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-xi-jinping","tag-zhihu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}