For 10 years Cheuk Kwan, has been showered with praise by fellow Chinese Canadians for his regular appearances on community radio shows, where he is known for speaking out against Chinese oppression.
But last March, after the government cracked down on an uprising in Tibet, Mr. Kwan began to notice a profound shift in the attitude of his listeners. They still lit up his phone lines with fervour, though now it was to inform him that his attacks on the Chinese system had become tantamount to slighting the Chinese people themselves.
Suddenly, Mr. Kwan, who arrived in Toronto in 1976 and soon after helped found the influential Chinese Canadian National Council, was tarred as a traitor, a dissident and a rabble rouser. He was accused of "not being Chinese enough."
"They say don't touch my motherland. Don't you want to see China strong?" he says. "They see criticism of the regime as criticism of the people."
It is a stunning turnaround for Chinese Canadians, who have not traditionally taken a vocal nationalistic position, especially compared with other ethnic communities in Canada.
The Chinese-Canadian diaspora, a vast and diverse population now 1.2 million strong, trickled into this country across several generations and has never been known for its strong attachment to China. It was a nation marked by poverty, chaos, civil war, occupation and communism — hardly the conditions to spark affinity.
But now, as China moves closer to regaining status as a global power, its overseas community has begun fostering a new emotional bond with its homeland. The Olympic Games, in particular, have given Chinese Canadians a focal point, one that has many simultaneously spilling over with pride at China's success and frustration with the West's lingering focus on perceived Chinese failings.
"The Olympics by itself is an embodiment of a sort of Chinese coming-out party," said Mr. Kwan, who said excitement has been mounting throughout the diaspora since China was awarded the Games in 2001.
"The Chinese are looking at the Olympic Games as the kind of washing off of all humiliation and bad things that China used to represent," he said. "Chinese Canadians still hold dear the fact that they are Chinese. When China becomes a super nation, they feel proud. They feel that their status in society is tied directly to how China is being thought of on the world stage."
Mr. Kwan, who admits to a new-found sense of pride himself, said he worries the sentiments being expressed will be mistaken for "ugly Chinese nationalism" instead of shows of dignity and cultural pride.
The community's response to the negative portrayals has been to counter them with an unprecedented show of pro-China demonstrations which have unfolded across the country in ethnic media, online chat forums and most notably, with a protest in Ottawa in April, during which thousands of flag-bearing Chinese Canadians marched on Parliament Hill to rally support for their homeland. Companion protests were held across the country in other major cities, including Montreal and Toronto. Some who attended the Saturday protest in Ottawa — which received little coverage in English language media, including this paper — put numbers of attendees at close to 10,000.
"These are rare occasions the Chinese communities come together to identify," said Wenran Jiang„©, the acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. "They're rarely expressing anything. It takes quite extreme situations ¡K for so many of diverse Chinese backgrounds to say together coverage was bad, it was wrong," he said. "In major crises, we come together."
That sense of crisis is born out of the notion that Westerners have already made up their minds about China.
"It started as frustration and dissatisfaction about perceived bias in the reporting [on Tibet]," said Yuen Pau Woo, co-CEO of the Vancouver-based Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. "Many people felt that the reporting was overly negative, sensationalistic and distorted. This translates into the feeling that there is a prejudice against China and Chinese in general," he said.
