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Q: Does the PRC believe it has a manifest destiny?
The government tries to influence ethnic Chinese countries and communities like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Chinese living abroad. When officials travel abroad, the foreign ministry encourages (pays) Chinese people to welcome them with banners and songs.
This attitude can be seen in the average mainlanders speech as well. when talking about an ethnically Chinese person born in America, commonly called Chinese American, they refer to them as American Chinese. Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here but the attitude seems to be that no matter what, ethnically Chinese people do and always will belong to China.
What do you think?
I once read comments of many people who were the third or fourth generations of Chinese emigrants overseas,but they still said they were Chinese.Maybe the reasons were that they looked like Chinese in appearance and they were always told to be Chinese by their parents and people around.
Depends where.
Most Chinese-Americans I know will say they are American. Some will even be offended if you try to speak Mandarin to them (though Cantonese is much more prevalent in Puerto Rico than Mandarin, but even the third generation on does not speak it).
However, I cannot speak for other countries.
The PRC is an abstract, it isn't alive, therefore it cannot 'believe' anything.
I am sure some of the people who live here do, just as I am pretty sure the vast majority don't give 2/3rd of a gnats ass about destiny as they are too busy trying to make a living. Much like most of humanity.
As to race, yes, most Chinese people I've met consider themselves Chinese, even if they aren't 'pureblood', (what a horrible phrase, sounds like something from Harry Potter). Although I have heard this may not be the case with second or third generation American born Chinese, but I have no first hand experience of them.
Edit: I also think some of the confusion here is between Chinese the race and Chinese the nationality, most people who hail from China consider themselves as racially Chinese for many generations while at the same time being proud of their (insert birth nation here) nationality.
Good question, the idea of a manifest destiny of some sort could probably be applied to large amounts of the ethnically Han Chinese elite if not to many of the minorities also living in China. As pointed out any ideas of cultural superiority would be very much elitist government views rather than ideas shared by the wider Chinese community as such.
Ethnically (this is more precise than racially) most Chinese people, especially in the Eastern provinces of China, would consider themselves Chinese. This is especially true for the ethnic majority of Han people in China though, as it may not always apply to people of other ethnicities also living in China. On the basis of this, any children of ethnically Chinese parents would then be considered Chinese as well.
To finally come to the main part of your question, I would say that the Chinese government is trying to influence the Chinese cultural community more so than the ethnic community, mostly with the aim of exercising power over more people. As such, while it might be described as a manifest destiny, it has very practical and pragmatic reasons. Gaining cultural power over all people considered Chinese inside and outside of China.
