Post-Chineseness as epistemology: identities and scholarship on China in the Philippines

The current study relies on the social psychological notion of altercasting and the anthropological notion of post-Chineseness to appreciate the identity strategies of the Philippine’s China watchers. Basically, the case study suggests that the attainment of the sympathetic capacity to understand China can enrich the knowledge of those China watchers coming from an external position. However, adhering to an internal position of China watching would disempower ethnic Chinese scholars in the Philippines in fully participating in the indigenous community. Therefore, in the long run, the trend is for all ethnic scholars to establish distance from internal perspectives on China and practice watching China from the outside from time to time.