Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete

Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case

Study of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since the Reform

and Opening up

Jingying Du

School of History Culture and Tourism, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, China

Keywords: Malaysia, Chinese Diaspora, Cultural Identity.

Abstract: Since the Ming Dynasty, Chinese merchants have been trading in Malaysia. Up to now, a considerable

Chinese community has been formed in Malaysia. After World War II, although the independent Malaysian

government imposed strict restrictions on the Chinese in terms of nationality, political participation, education,

and other aspects, it did not implement assimilation policies in the field of traditional Chinese culture, which

made the Chinese community in Malaysia maintain a strong traditional Chinese culture and customs. With

changes in international relations, China's overseas Chinese affairs policy has shifted from the "united front"

to the economic and cultural center. Since the reform and opening up, the Chinese government has regarded

the "Spring Festival" as an "invented tradition" and influenced the Spring Festival activities in Malaysia

through policies, to build the shared cultural memory between China and Malaysia and promote the economic

and trade exchanges between the two sides.

1 INTRODUCTION

Diaspora used to refer to the dispersal of Jews

worldwide due to historical events. After World War

II, the concept of dispersion spread from the original

Jewish group to the world's ethnic groups. Under the

influence of political, economic, cultural, and other

reasons, these groups moved from their original

ancestral country to other countries and adopted

various ways to preserve the ethnic culture and the

idea and identity of their homeland. With the

intensification of transnational mobility, "dispersion"

has gradually developed from an objective group to

an abstract "cultural dispersion”. Cultural dispersion

means that discrete communities maintain group

identity through shared cultural symbols and focus on

the continuation of cultural identity rather than

relying on territorial returns to the ancestral country

and political mobilization to maintain identity (Robin

Cohen, 2008).

Since modern times, a large number of Chinese

workers and businessmen have gone to Southeast

Asia to seek a way out, so the scale of the Chinese

diaspora in Southeast Asia is quite large until today.

To adapt to the ever-expanding Chinese population,

China's overseas Chinese affairs policy has been

constantly adjusted. Especially with the arrival of the

21st century, China's overseas Chinese affairs policy

began to pay attention to the cultural ties with the

Chinese, hoping to improve the situation of

deepening localization of the new generation of

Chinese in Southeast Asia and weak Chinese cultural

identity. Different from other countries in Southeast

Asia, although the independent Malaysian

government after World War II imposed strict

restrictions on Chinese people in terms of nationality,

political participation, education, and other aspects, it

did not implement assimilation policies in the field of

traditional Chinese culture, which makes the Chinese

community in Malaysia still maintain a strong

traditional Chinese culture and customs. The unique

historical background makes the current Chinese

overseas Chinese policy in Malaysia to combine with

the local Chinese culture relatively successful,

through the Chinese government to promote the

Spring Festival activities, the Malaysian Chinese

build the identity of Chinese traditional culture.

Therefore, the study of how the Chinese

Du, J.

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case Study of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since

the Reform and Opening up.

DOI: 10.5220/0014293800004859

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science (ICPLSS 2025), pages 58-65

ISBN: 978-989-758-785-6

government influences the construction of the Spring

Festival cultural identity of the diaspora Chinese in

Malaysia through its overseas Chinese affairs policy

has an important reference role for China to improve

the overseas influence of the Spring Festival activities

through overseas Chinese, which is conducive to

improving the cultural identity among countries and

promoting the establishment of a community with a

shared future for mankind.

2 THEORY

At present, the Chinese academic community is

inclined to analyze the construction of Chinese

cultural identity in Malaysia from the perspective of

Chinese education. Among the relatively

authoritative studies, for example, Zheng Shuliang's

"The Development History of Chinese Education in

Malaysia" systematically combs the evolution of

Chinese education in Malaysia from the 19th century

to the end of the 20th century, revealing the difficult

development of Chinese education in the context of

colonial history, ethnic politics, and the wave of

globalization (Zheng Liangshu, 2007); Wang

Xiaoping and Zhang Xin's "The Malaysian Chinese

Education Movement since the 1990s and the Crisis

of Chinese Cultural Identity" proposed that the

Chinese language education system in Malaysia

experienced a crisis in the late 1990s. The decline of

Chinese language education led to a transformation in

the construction form of Chinese cultural identity

from a resistant identity to a planned identity. This

transformation is manifested as the crisis of Chinese

cultural identity (Wang Xiaoping and Zhang Xin,

2021). These studies, mostly from a multidisciplinary

perspective, reveal that Chinese education is the core

bond for constructing the Chinese cultural identity in

Malaysia. Compared with domestic studies, foreign

scholars pay more attention to the construction and

localization process of the multicultural identity of

the Chinese in Malaysia. Among them, Tan Chee-

Beng’s "Chinese Overseas, Cultural Transformation,

and Identity: A Review", takes the festival customs of

the Chinese in Malaysia as an example and proposes

the argument that the Chinese form the characteristics

of a "Third Culture" that is neither purely

"Chineseness" nor completely "locality" through

selective retention, creative transformation, and

functional substitution (Tan Chee-Beng, 2004); Yao

Souchou’s "The Chinese Paradox: Political Loyalty

and Cultural Struggle", explores the complex tension

between national loyalty and ethnic cultural identity

of the Chinese in Malaysia and how they construct

their own identity in this struggle (Yao Souchou,

2008); Shamsul A.B’s "Identity Contestation in

Malaysia: A Comparative Commentary on

'Malayness' and 'Chineseness'", compare the

construction and competition of "Malayness" and

"Chineseness" in Malaysian society, and analyzes

how national policies shape ethnic identities through

the "racialization" framework. The Chinese, being

positioned as "non-indigenous", are systematically

excluded, forcing them to maintain their ethnic

identity through cultural practices (Shamsul, A. B.,

1996).

However, no matter whether Chinese or foreign

scholars, when studying the construction of Chinese

culture in Malaysia, they rarely consider the factors

of Chinese traditional festivals, which are also the

identity of Chinese in Malaysia, so there are few

studies in this aspect. The more famous scholar is

Ong Seng Huat. In the article “On Functions and

Values of " Jie" Tradition of South Sea's Chinese”,

the scholar proposed that the Spring Festival customs

of Chinese in Nanyang emphasize "ancestor" and

"community", that is to express the cultural

consciousness and historical sovereignty of "I am

China" as the carrier of ancestral culture combined

with land resources (Ong Seng Huat, 2018). In fact,

as a symbol of cultural symbols, festivals are of great

significance to the construction of cultural identity

and national unity, which many scholars have

discussed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger put

forward The theory of "The Invention of Tradition"

in The Invention of Tradition, arguing that many

seemingly "ancient" rituals, festivals, and symbols

were used by modern nation-states for political

purposes such as consolidating power and shaping

collective memory. Through repetitive ritual and

symbol systems, the creation of products, and using

the Scottish Highland Games as an example, reveals

how rulers created a shared "highland tradition" to

dissolve the historical antagonism between the

Scottish lowlands and the Highlands, Shaping a

unified 'Scottish national' identity (Eric Hobsbawm

and Terence Ranger, 1983). Fei Xiaotong, on the

other hand, put forward the theory of "cultural

consciousness" in his book “The Pattern of Unity in

Diversity of the Chinese Nation”, arguing that the

Spring Festival, which originally originated from the

farming culture of the Han nationality, has become a

cultural symbol shared across ethnic groups through

the long-term interaction between the Han nationality

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case Study

of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since the Reform and Opening up

and other ethnic groups, thus weakening ethnic

boundaries (Fei Xiaotong, 2018). Both Chinese and

foreign scholars have deeply revealed the positive

effect of festivals on ethnic unity. For the Chinese

nation, the Spring Festival is a common spiritual

symbol, so it plays an important role in consolidating

the cultural identity of overseas Chinese. This paper

will focus on the traditional festivals of Malaysian

Chinese, which are relatively weak in academic

research at present, and take the Spring Festival

activities of Malaysian Chinese as an example to

analyze how China's overseas Chinese affairs policy

has an impact on the construction of diaspora culture

of Malaysian Chinese.

3 METHOD

Firstly, this paper uses literature analysis to

understand the historical background and current

situation of Chinese Spring Festival activities in

Malaysia by consulting and analyzing relevant kinds

of literature, policy documents, and academic papers,

to build the background of Chinese Spring Festival

activities in Malaysia. With the help of the historical

development context of Chinese in Malaysia, it is

helpful to further discuss the current status of Chinese

Spring Festival activities. Secondly, history analysis

is applied, historical facts and existing research

results are combined, history and international

relations are combined with Eric Hobsbawm's

"invented tradition" theory as the framework, and the

relationship between China's overseas Chinese affairs

policy and the Spring Festival activities of overseas

Chinese in Malaysia is reviewed and analyzed. To

draw up their theoretical viewpoints and view the

cultural ties between China and Malaysian Chinese

from multiple perspectives. Finally, using the case

study method, we select the "Happy Chinese New

Year" cooperation case and the CCTV Spring

Festival Gala activity between China and Malaysian

Chinese and analyze the specific performance of

these two projects in the Malaysian Chinese

community and the results brought by their

construction of cultural identity of Malaysian

Chinese, which has never supported the views of this

paper.

4 ANALYSIS

4.1 Historical Evolution and Current

Situation of Overseas Chinese in

Malaysia

With the voyages of Zheng He during the Ming

Dynasty, Chinese official trade links with the Malay

Peninsula deepened. In the famous Malaysian

literature "Malay Annals", there is also a special

record of the Ming Dynasty Princess Han Baoli

marrying Malaysia, although historians disagree have

this history, this story can reflect the friendly

diplomatic exchanges between China and Malaysia in

the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, the

authorities imposed several maritime bans, but

Chinese merchants still went to Malacca to engage in

trade activities. Some of them intermarried with the

local population, giving birth to a new community

known as the Chinese Peranaka or Baba-Nyonya

(Mohd Fahimi Zakaria, Ashlah Ibrahim, 2022).

The middle of the 19th century to the early 20th

century was the "golden age" for Chinese immigrants

in Malaysia. During this period, the immigrant group

shifted from the commercial class to the working

class. After the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty in

1824, Britain established control over the Malay

Peninsula and urgently needed a large number of

laborers to develop the local tin mines and

plantations. After the defeat of the Second Opium

War, China was forced to sign the "Convention of

Peking" with Britain, allowing Chinese workers to go

abroad, so a large number of Chinese workers began

to outflow. According to statistics, from 1881 to

1915, there were approximately 770,000 contracted

Chinese workers who entered the British Malay

Peninsula. The vast majority of them were engaged in

tin mining and plantation labor (Yen Ching-hwang,

1985). Some of these Chinese workers returned

home, but some also became free laborers and stayed

in the local area to make a living, engaging in small

traders, artisans, planting, and other industries, so that

during this period, the number and scale of the

Chinese community in the Malaya Peninsula

expanded rapidly. After the early 20th century,

influenced by the Industrial Revolution of the host

country, Southeast Asia witnessed economic

prosperity and attracted a large number of Chinese

immigrants. Especially during the First World War,

the colonial masters were involved in the war and had

no time to look to the East, and almost all investment

in Southeast Asia was interrupted, leaving a hollow

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

power for the rise of Chinese business capital.

According to the Colonial statistics of the United

Kingdom in 1904, nearly 90% of the tin production in

the Malaya Peninsula was controlled by the Chinese

(Great Britain. Colonial Office, 1904), and more than

10 years after the end of World War I, China's

immigration to the Malay Peninsula reached its peak.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War,

accompanied by Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia,

Chinese enterprises in Southeast Asia were seriously

damaged, a large number of Chinese fled back to

China, and the wave of immigration to Southeast Asia

was blocked. After the end of World War II, the

"crackdown" on overseas immigration in New China

and the resistance of Southeast Asian countries to

Chinese immigration made the number of Chinese in

the Malaya peninsula natural growth and slow rise

from the 1950s to the 1970s. With the rise of Malay

nationalism, the Federation of Malaya declared

independence in 1957. The Malay nation maintains

the concept of "Malay supremacy" in many fields

such as economy, culture, and education. On the one

hand, it subdues the Chinese in Malaysia and makes

their living situation more difficult, but at the same

time, it also encourages the Chinese to speed up their

integration into the local society, weakens their

"Chinese" identity, and becomes a new group

integrating Chinese culture and Malay culture, and

forms a unique cultural tradition. With the continuous

deepening of exchanges between China and

Malaysia, the role played by Chinese people has

become increasingly important, forcing new changes

in China's overseas Chinese affairs policies since the

reform and opening up.

4.2 The Transformation of China's

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy

Since Reform and Opening Up

From the perspective of China's overseas Chinese

affairs policies, a significant transformation has taken

place before and after the reform and opening up. In

the document "Instruction from the Central

Committee of the Communist Party of China on the

Work Concerning Overseas Chinese Nationals" in

1952, it was clearly stated that "For overseas Chinese,

we should take workers, intellectuals and the petty

bourgeoisie as the foundation, win over the

bourgeoisie, and form a broad patriotic united front of

overseas Chinese, isolate the small number of

reactionary elements among overseas Chinese, and

crack down on, weaken and disintegrate the

reactionary forces of the Chiang Kai-shek bandit

clique" (Instruction from the Central Committee of

the Communist Party of China on the Work

Concerning Overseas Chinese Nationals, 1952),

which reflects the overseas Chinese affairs policy

with the core of "united front" in the early days of

New China and has a strong political color. Due to the

special significance of overseas Chinese in Southeast

Asia, the document also put forward for overseas

Chinese in Southeast Asia that "We should start from

the practical issues of overseas Chinese, inspire their

patriotism, and through various lively forms such as

publishing, literature and art, and journalism, widely

publicize the various achievements of New China,

explain and help solve the problems among overseas

Chinese compatriots, and fight against the sabotage

activities and slanderous propaganda of the

reactionary elements among overseas Chinese"

(Instruction from the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of China on the Work Concerning

Overseas Chinese Nationals, 1952). Obviously, at

that time, the focus of the central government's work

on overseas Chinese affairs was on "patriotism",

hoping to establish political and emotional

connections between the Chinese mainland and

overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia through the

national sentiment of "One China" held by overseas

Chinese.

With the reform and opening up in 1978, China's

overseas Chinese affairs policy changed its focus

from "politics" to paying more attention to economic

and cultural relations with overseas Chinese. In the

"Regulations on Encouraging Investment by

Overseas Chinese and Compatriots from Hong Kong

and Macao" document of 1990, a large number of

preferential policies and treatments were set up. For

instance, it was mentioned in the document that

"Overseas Chinese and compatriots from Hong Kong

and Macao who transport a reasonable quantity of

daily necessities and means of transportation for their

use during their employment in enterprises are

exempt from import duties, unified industrial and

commercial taxes, and are exempt from obtaining

import licenses."(Regulations on Encouraging

Investment by Overseas Chinese and Compatriots

from Hong Kong and Macao, 1990). These policies

are largely designed to attract overseas Chinese to

bring capital into China. Compared with the early

stage of reform and opening up, in the 21st century,

China's overseas Chinese affairs policy has further

strengthened the policy orientation of cultural

communication. In the "Outline for the Development

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case Study

of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since the Reform and Opening up

of National Overseas Chinese Affairs Work (2006-

2010)" document, the "Overseas Chinese Language

Education Project" was proposed, hoping to ensure

the role of the Chinese language as a link among

overseas Chinese. In addition, the Overseas Chinese

Affairs Office of the State Council has also launched

a large number of cultural exchange projects, such as

the "Cultural China-Festivals of Spring" project,

hoping to take the Spring Festival as an opportunity

to jointly hold large parties at home and abroad to

celebrate the New Year with overseas Chinese, to

enhance the cultural ties between the two sides. The

"Chinese Culture Paradise" project aims to enhance

the sense of identification with Chinese culture

among overseas Chinese by organizing them to

participate in traditional Chinese culture courses and

through practical experiences. Since the beginning of

the new century, the policies of China's overseas

Chinese affairs department have recognized the

policy transformation brought about by the changes

in the Chinese immigrant group. They advocate

seeking common ground while reserving differences,

paying attention to the role of culture in the

construction of national identity, and hoping to

reconstruct the connection between the two through

culture.

4.3 The Practice of Chinese New Year

Activities of Overseas Chinese in

Malaysia Under the Influence of

Policy

The shift from the "United Front" as the core to the

"economic and cultural exchange" as the core of the

overseas Chinese policy, on the one hand, is to adapt

to the changes in the domestic situation, on the other

hand, it also reflects the reality that Chinese leaders

pay more attention to the role of cultural values. Eric

Hobsbawm once proposed the concept of "invented

tradition" in his book "The Invention of Tradition",

which means that "invented tradition" is usually

controlled by rules and has symbolic and ceremonial

meanings. By repeating them, the ruler inculcates

established values and behaviors into a specific

population, thus forming a "fictional continuity" from

the past to the present (Eric Hobsbawm and Terence

Ranger, 1983). Under the guidance of this theory,

Hobsbawm connected the country, festival, and

nation, and believed that to consolidate power and

shape national identity, the rulers of nation-states

artificially constructed and transformed "tradition",

thus forming "invented tradition", which was deeply

rooted in people's hearts through association with

history and culture, with strong political meaning. At

present, this theory is mostly used to analyze the

invention of national festivals in Western Europe,

such as Bastille Day in France and plaid skirts in

Scotland. This paper believes that this theory is also

applicable to the anatomy of the shaping process of

the Chinese Spring Festival tradition. Culture is the

comprehensive composition of a nation's beliefs,

values, morals, customs, and habits, and symbols are

its generalization and performance. Since ancient

times, the changes of rites and customs during the

Spring Festival have often accompanied the political

needs of the rulers and become the spiritual bond of

political management. As the festival with the highest

participation of the Chinese nation at present, the

Spring Festival has a strong symbolic significance of

cultural symbols. All ethnic groups have formed a

shared national cultural memory through

participating in the Spring Festival. In the public

memory, the Spring Festival shows the long history

and culture of the Chinese nation.

When it comes to the essential activities of the

Spring Festival, most people's first reaction is the

"Spring Festival Gala", but the Spring Festival Gala

is a "tradition" that appeared only in the middle of the

20th century. As an "invented tradition", the Chinese

government connects the common national emotions

of the Chinese and overseas Chinese through the

Spring Festival Gala. The Spring Festival Gala can be

traced back to the documentary "Spring Festival

Gala" produced by the Central News Film Studio in

1956. In the following decades, Chinese television

stations intermittently broadcasted the gala, but due

to the technical limitations and the background of the

time, watching the gala did not become a tradition.

Since 1979, the TV Spring Festival Gala began to

recover. Under the condition that video recorders

were more common at that time, the Spring Festival

gala broadcast was recorded in advance, but it was

difficult to directly connect the Spring Festival gala

program with the audience's mood. There is no doubt

that the development of new media has provided the

necessary conditions for the custom of "watching the

Gala" to become a popular Spring Festival activity.

The real significance of the CCTV Spring Festival

Gala began in 1983. With the popularity of television,

it was decided to hold it in the form of a live broadcast

this year, which effectively narrowed the distance

between the audience and the Spring Festival Gala. In

addition, 8 o 'clock Beijing time is also determined.

The deep meaning behind the broadcast time can also

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be seen from the broadcast time. 8 o'clock Beijing

time is on the same day around the world, so it can

ensure that Chinese people all over the world watch

the Gala on the "same day” and enhance the national

memory of Chinese people all over the world

watching the Gala together. To improve the audience

rating of the gala, the 1983 Gala invited four

representatives of "popular culture" who were well-

known at the time: Jiang Kun, Liu Xiaoqing, Wang

Jingyu, and Ma Ji served as hosts and adopted the way

of audience demand. The highly popular party

arrangement made the 1983 Spring Festival Gala

achieve a rating of up to 60%. Since then, the Spring

Festival Gala has become a necessary ceremony for

the New Year from 1983 to now.

The Spring Festival Gala has been associated with

the cultural and entertainment industry from the

beginning, and songs, dances, crosstalk, and other

performance forms have also been throughout the

program arrangement of the Spring Festival Gala. But

with the official recognition and promotion of the

gala, the gala's political expression gradually

strengthened. In addition to the addition of satirical

sketch programs, the most important program of the

1984 Spring Festival Gala was the singing of

"Unforgettable Tonight". The purpose and

characteristics of the "invented tradition" are

invariable, and they will bring about certain fixed and

formal activities, such as repetitive movements (Eric

Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1983).

"Unforgettable Tonight" is a fixed final program from

1984 to now, but also the specific embodiment of

repetitive movements, through year after year of

singing to become the audience in the hearts of the

New Year must listen to the repertoire, the lyrics of

"no matter the ends of the earth and the corners of the

sea, China with the embrace", "good motherland" by

the audience in mind. After the gala gradually became

a symbolic symbol of the Spring Festival in the minds

of Chinese people, the Chinese government began to

further expand the scope of its influence. In 1993,

with the establishment of the CCTY-4 Chinese

International channel, the Gala began to be broadcast

live overseas via satellite, and Malaysian Chinese

began to watch the Gala through satellite TV such as

Astro. Since the beginning of the 21st century, with

the rapid development of Internet technology, the

coverage of the Spring Festival Gala has further

expanded. In 2010, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala

could be stably rebroadcast through mainstream TV

media in Malaysia. The rise of numerous video

platforms has also provided convenient viewing

channels for Chinese people in Malaysia. Most of the

Chinese in Malaysia migrated from Fujian and

Guangzhou provinces, inheriting the saying that

"winter solstices are as big as years" of the generation

of Fujian and Guangdong. The Spring Festival lasts

from winter solstices to Yuanxiao, and the customs

are the same as those of Fujian and Guangzhou.

However, with the expansion of the influence of the

"Spring Festival Gala", the custom of holding a public

festival celebration and watching the gala together on

New Year's Eve has gradually been accepted by the

Malaysian Chinese. Since 2018, the China-Malaysia

Joint Spring Festival Gala has been held and hosted

by the Chinese Embassy in Mali. A large number of

senior Malaysian government officials and overseas

Chinese have participated in the previous gala, which

has become an important place for cultural exchanges

between China and Malaysia. It also shows that the

Spring Festival Gala has gradually become a

symbolic symbol of the Spring Festival in the hearts

of Malaysian Chinese. Although there is no clear

official document by the Chinese government to

define the gala, since the reform and opening up, the

Gala, as an "invented tradition", has shaped the shared

national memory of the Gala through the integration

of traditional folk customs of various ethnic groups in

the program, the unity of national emotions, and the

fixed broadcast time and the song "Unforgettable

Tonight". Through this "invented tradition", the

Chinese government has narrowed the distance from

the Malaysian Chinese, broken the cultural

restrictions of the Malaysian Chinese in Minnan and

Guangdong, and reshaped the new cultural

connection between the Chinese in the two countries

since the 21st century.

As an "invented tradition", the gala plays an

important role in the Spring Festival, which has a long

history, through repeated activities. In addition, a

strong ritual system should be formed around these

situations, such as traditional folk activities and

Spring Festival decorations (Eric Hobsbawm and

Terence Ranger, 1983). The ritual atmosphere of the

Spring Festival has deeply influenced the cultural

memory of the Malaysian Chinese. According to

local media reports in Malaysia, the Jichang Street of

Malacca, held a countdown event to welcome the

Spring Festival, martial arts dragon and lion big

Lantern Festival, etc. In addition, Jichang Street also

combined the oracle bone inscriptions with local

elements to hold the Chinese "intangible heritage"

elements of the Spring Festival, hoping to promote

Chinese characters; The Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case Study

of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since the Reform and Opening up

was decorated with many Lunar New Year colors and

many activities were held (ACFROC, 2024). In

addition, the Chinese government has been

strengthening cultural cooperation between China

and Malaysia. In the 14th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese

government emphasizes promoting the international

spread of Chinese culture, and the "Happy Chinese

New Year" is a concrete measure to implement this

strategy. As a key project under the guidance of the

Ministry of Culture of China, the "Happy Chinese

New Year" campaign aims to promote the Spring

Festival overseas. Through the project, China has

successfully "held" several Spring Festival activities

in Malaysia. The 2025 "Happy Chinese New Year"

Global launch ceremony and "Happy Chinese New

Year: Five Continents" performance were held in

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysian Prime Minister

Anwar Ibrahim attended the ceremony. In his speech,

he raised the cultural significance of the Chinese New

Year to the Malaysian people and said that China and

Malaysia can enhance mutual understanding and

respect from the perspective of culture and

civilization. To promote bilateral cooperation

(Ucapan, 2025); Tiong King Sing, the Chinese

minister of Tourism, Arts, and Culture of Malaysia,

also said at the opening ceremony that "Enhancing

exchanges between China and Malaysia, reinforcing

cultural and economic ties between the two countries,

and exploring new avenues for bilateral tourism

cooperation." It can be seen that the "Spring Festival",

as a cultural symbol, not only affects the cultural

memory between Malaysian Chinese and mainland

Chinese but also provides a way for cultural

cooperation and exchanges between China and

Malaysia.

Chinese government departments also continue to

draw closer to China-Malaysia relations based on the

common cultural traditions of the Spring Festival

which play a positive role in the cooperation and

exchanges between China and Malaysia. In the

"Some Opinions on Strengthening and Improving

Cultural Exchanges Between China and Foreign

Countries", it is proposed that "we should strengthen

the education, dissemination, and practice of

knowledge and concepts related to people-to-people

and cultural exchanges, guides overseas Chinese to

actively participate in people-to-people and cultural

exchanges, and incorporate people-to-people and

cultural exchanges into the daily interactions between

Chinese and foreign people." Driven by the Spring

Festival atmosphere, especially after the mutual

implementation of visa facilitation measures between

China and Malaysia, it has greatly promoted the

development of tourism on both sides, according to

Malaysian official statistics, from December 2023 to

December 2024, nearly 4.15 million tourists from

China. The economic and trade cooperation between

Chinese and Malaysian Chinese has deepened

increasingly. Under the promotion of the Chinese

community in Malaysia - the China-Malaysia

Chamber of Commerce, the bilateral trade volume

between China and Malaysia has grown from less

than 160 million US dollars when China and

Malaysia established diplomatic relations in 1974 to

212 billion US dollars by 2024. Among them, the

famous overseas Chinese hometowns of Fujian and

Guangdong account for 23%. Fujian and Guangdong,

as hometowns of overseas Chinese, have a unique

appeal to the Chinese community in Malaysia. Not

long ago, during the 2024 Sabah Chinese Economic

Conference Alliance in Malaysia and the Overseas

Chinese Association of Zhuhai City jointly organized

the Saba-Zhuhai Economic and Trade event, not only

were cultural programs showcasing the integration of

Chao-Shan culture and Malaysian culture, promoting

cultural identity between the two sides, but also a

large number of cultural and educational projects

were signed on this basis (Publicity and Cultural

Center of Guangdong Provincial Federation of

Returned Overseas Chinese,2025). In addition, Fujian

has also carried out the Xiamen University Malaysia

Branch project and the China (Fujian) -Malaysia

Product Cooperation Symposium with Malaysia.

With overseas Chinese in Malaysia as the

intermediary, the economic, cultural, and educational

exchanges between China and Malaysia have become

increasingly frequent, promoting mutual benefit and

win-win results.

5 CONCLUSION

Since the 19th century, a large number of overseas

Chinese have come to Malaysia, and after years of

development, a large-scale Chinese diaspora has

formed in Malaysia. Although the Malaysian

government used to suppress the Chinese community

from education, economy, politics, and other aspects,

the cultural traditions with unique Chinese

characteristics are well preserved, so the Malaysian

Chinese are a kind of cultural dispersion, and the

preservation of this culture is well reflected in the

"Spring Festival" activities. Although the Chinese

now exist as a race in Malaysia, especially after the

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

abolition of the dual nationality policy in China, the

political ties between the Chinese and China have

been weakening, but the Spring Festival, as a cultural

symbol, has become an important cultural memory

linking the Chinese in the mainland and Malaysia,

and also an important cultural way to promote

exchanges between China and Malaysia.

Since the reform and opening up, the Chinese

government has taken the Spring Festival as a bond

and held various innovative folk activities during the

Spring Festival through various policies. Through

these "invented traditions", the Spring Festival can

not only exist in Malaysian society for a long time but

also establish cultural ties with China. As Malaysian

Chinese who understand both cultures, they

contribute to promoting the building of a "community

with a shared future for mankind" between China and

Malaysia. Therefore, the Chinese government has

been constantly narrowing the distance between the

two sides and establishing emotional ties through

cultural connections. This kind of common cultural

memory has promoted the economic and trade

exchanges and investment between Malaysian

Chinese and China, and the similar cultural values

have also provided the possibility for the signing of

several cooperation projects between China and

Malaysia, such as culture, tourism, and education.

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/3/0/6/000154.htm

Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy and the Construction of Discrete Cultural Identity from the Perspective of Transnationalism: A Case Study

of Chinese New Year Activities in Malaysia Since the Reform and Opening up