[–]Boogie_p0p 40 points 2 hours ago*
Need more info. Are they fresh china immigrants or Singaporeans for at least a few generations already because that would determine the response you should take.
[–]WarmVoice7978[S] 23 points an hour ago
Naturalised Singaporeans hailing from the strait settlements
[–]Boogie_p0p [score hidden] 34 minutes ago*
Ah, then they're prolly getting their propaganda from across the border in MY and mixed it with the discrimination faced by msian Chinese by the MY gov, you got a nice pool of people that seek validation from their ancestral lands.
Your best response would depend on how much effort you would want to put into stopping them from being china shills because you would have to challenge their mindset subtly rather than responding with a list of facts, and it can be more helpful to engage the underlying beliefs or perspectives that make this information attractive in the first place (e.g feeling disfranchised and left out because the lingua franca is English)
My personal experience with my mom is that she's the kind that will share misinformation because she's scared and wants to protect the people she loves so she shares everything (fake or otherwise) "just in case." So what I would do is to do my own research on the topics I know she has been talking about and pose questions that would lead her to question the integrity of the info. Like, she would say things about mRNA vaccines being dangerous (and therefore CN vax are more superior) and I would pretend I'm interested and ask questions about the info she's pushing, e.g "Oh really ah? That's weird. China's vaccines are so powerful why SG gov say need 4 doses compared to Pfizer and the others."
Most of the time you gotta play by their rules a bit (usually working with the underlying assumption that something is positive about China) to get them to see the flaw in their logic (e.g If China is so good then why are people leaving China? If the people leaving are "bad" then why would China want those overseas Chinese to come back? If their vaccines are so good, why are their lockdowns so long etc)
The doubt won't be immediate, but it's definitely growing in their mind every time they see such news. It's sorta like their non-mRNA immunization where you need to deliver small doses multiple times over a period of time to get them inoculated.
[–]Prize_Used [score hidden] 42 minutes ago
Meaning malaysia?
[–]jacksh2t [score hidden] 12 minutes ago
Malaysia? My Malaysian colleagues are kinda pro China. They always cite their bad experiences growing up in Malaysia, and they will go on a semi racist rant. Can’t fault them. Their view is that if Malaysia was pro China/Chinese the resources (human/natural) would have been put to better use, instead of the downward spiral that Malaysia is having now.
[–]_IsNull 66 points 2 hours ago
Ask them if they would like to move to China for work/retirement?
The answer properly = no.
[–]RoamingArchitect 30 points an hour ago
The issue is that this is not a rational love. A friend's father was in the cultural Revolution as a student and when I first talked to him he slowly ranted more and more how China is better than Germany (where he moved to in the 80s and now is semi-retired). Being naturally curious I slowly uncovered that everything he loves about China was Maoist China, and he thinks that this was the pinnacle of living through the rose tinted glasses of his youth. Obviously this mindset drives him to be anti-western and even anti-German at times. He finds quite a few positives within Xi's harder course of late, but when I asked him whether he would prefer going back if it weren't for his children and store in Germany he declined and said that China has gone to shit in many aspects. Unless you quite explicitly address and question this irrational mindset you got a typical pro PRC pro Xi guy on your hands but it runs much deeper than that, with a mix of ideology, memories of home, childhood, and family and a longing for a country that no longer exists.
This is incidentally not exclusive to China. There are quite a few older Singaporeans abroad who are very pro Singapore and pro PAP thinking everything is the bee's knees here and way better than wherever they are living but whenever they return suddenly everything has gone to shits with the semi-urbanised Kampong they grew up in long since demolished, MM buried, Great World being a mere station name, hardly anyone who isn't Malay speaking malay anymore, national theatre demolished ... The list goes on. They'll just moan about everything here for a few weeks and complain back home but give it a month or two and suddenly Singapore is number one again.
It's a mindset for many first and second generation expats the world over and it just so happens that China sees a resurgence of the national pride, radical policies and hardliner course that marked the nostalgic early years of the PRC for many older people. Thus they got something more concrete to latch onto and buy into without having to face any of the downsides of all of those politics experienced by people who are actually living in Mainland-China.
