ABSTRACT
The intensification of economic and cultural exchanges between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and overseas Chinese has brought about a spectacular expansion of the contacts of the latter with Chinese political structures and officials (Cheng and Ngok 1998) while serving, on the other hand, as one of the main motors of a revival of Chinese cultural identity in the diaspora (Nyíri 1997). This, against the background of the PRC government's increasingly explicit promotion of a cultural triumphalism as the official state discourse of Chineseness, has given rise to the reappearance or strengthening of fifth-column discourses in Southeast Asia, most recently in the Philippines (José 2000).
