Why I No Longer Talk About Asian Politics
High risk, low gains.
I knew about Substack sometime during the pandemic, during my conversion away from progressive liberalism. Maybe Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish is mentioned somewhere in City Journal or Bari Weiss’s Common Sense, now The Free Press, is mentioned on Fox News. I came to find more brave writings (this was 2021) on a new website that was more accessible than Medium.
I created my Substack account sometime in 2022 and thought about what to name my blog. Three years before, I reviewed an academic book about a magistrate at the far end of the Chinese Empire, in what’s now Hong Kong. They were men stuck with the serious problems of poverty, salt mines, and piracy. They were well-versed in the idealism of Confucianism and other Chinese philosophies and attempted to practice them in the wilderness.
As I read about wokeness in America, including on issues affecting Asian Americans (assaults by black Americans blamed on Trump, school admission, Asians as part of BIPOC or not), I saw myself as a Chinese Indonesian not affected by these issues, but they were my main concern. Why did other Southeast Asians on Twitter go woke as well? Why did the term ‘Karen’ get thrown away loosely, including to describe other Asian women? Why did we have to hate white people, especially white liberals?
I could examine the problems from the point of view of a Confucian scholar administrator, a mandarin. And yet I’m not an American, not even Australian. I live in the provincial part of planet Earth, not even the best part of Southeast Asia. Just a low-rate mandarin not fit for the capital.
Provincial Mandarin is another term for a Chinese Indonesian. When watching Perfect Strangers, I realized the title was a synonym for “Model Minorities” (another topic of the early 2020s, even to this day among Asian Americans). In the global sense, Indonesia is provincial. Even despite living in the largest third city of Indonesia, I’m still provincial for Jakartans, akin to how Londoners see people from Manchester or how New Yorkers see Chicagoans.
Might my words carry more weight had I lived in Singapore or Sydney? Who am I to the Sydneysider, to the Londoner, to the Los Angelinos, to the New Yorker? And yet, I have decent English knowledge, a publishable writing skill, and some wit and a sense of humor formed by American sitcoms, British articles, and Boomer Indonesian literature. Where I live might matter for a professional career, but less so for sharing thoughts online.
I activated my Substack to share some thoughts on Australian republicanism post-Elizabeth II, and then explore my feelings on Australia. Certainly, Asian politics remain an unknown part of Substack for a reason. Like Bluesky, and unlike X (which was the new name and form of Twitter by the time I began my Substack), Substack is still very much driven by the Anglophone world, the settler colonies in commie parlance. It’s very much still a realm of Americans, Canadians, Britons, and Australians.
Sure, there are Asians and topics on Asian politics, history, and economies here, but they are not as common as in X. No one stops me from making my Substack about Asian politics, history, and economies, and that’s precisely the point.
First, no one but the government. I am not the most rebellious person, but talking about politics in Asia is indeed different than in Asia. On one hand, political websites and accounts on X are dominated by the Left. I’ve learned over the last three years that center-left journalists and academics in Asia could be more to the left than their American and British counterparts, and this could apply to any race. White academics and journalists in Asia could be more to the left than their peers in the US or UK, and this is ironic considering that Asian universities and newspapers are supposedly much more conservative than their Western counterparts.
That is to say that they are more vulnerable to censorship and lawfare than I am, but that’s not my business. More personally, I have learned that having negative opinions about China could have a bad effect on my writing career in Indonesia, much more than having negative opinions about the Indonesian government. How curious. In short, I won’t please both the Left intellectuals and the Right authorities.
Second, no one cares. I enjoy reading about challenges for women’s rights in different parts of Asia, and those posts have their audiences, but they are no longer my gig. I cannot ask people to care more about Asia the way people cannot ask me to care more about Trump, AI, or Latin America. Everyone has their topics.
Finally, despite the illusion that we could have both, life remains a choice between the white suburbs and Chinatown for me. I’ve set myself too comfortable in a cyber-suburbia, which is not just American by now but also Australian, and a conservative one (ironically called Liberal with a big L in Australia). I’ve made friends with some conservative Asians living in Australia, the US, and Singapore over the years. But with some exceptions, I’ve turned my back on the mainstream Asian academia, journalism, and liberalism, and feel happier and freer in doing so.
I keep my door open. I open my senses to the views of other Asians. The problem on my end is I cannot stand antisemitism, obsession with privilege, and irrational hate against white women. I cannot stand illiberalism, left or right. And to my dismay, they remain the mainstream views of Asian intelligentsia.
It’s not supposed to be that way. Either it’s always been I’ve duped myself into thinking otherwise, or this is a new development in line with the evolution of political thinking in the West over the last decade. I want to understand why and what’s the optimum solution, but I prefer to think while walking instead of sitting. I would love to walk with you in these testing times, but if you want to spend your time being angry about Trump and privilege and Zionism and tying them to Asian stories, go ahead and see you later, maybe.