Pattberg with famed journalist Frank Ching in Beijing, July 2013

Certainly one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining talks I've heard at Peking University this year, also because it wasn't the usual propaganda work (the speaker is ethnic Chinese, but a naturalized American citizen). Frank Ching, famed journalist [Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the list is long] talked about Chinese nationalism, nationality, and the identity crisis of overseas Chinese. [The event took place in a little classroom, not one of the halls, letting alone one of the big auditoriums.] There are so many brilliant observations in his talk (read the transcript here), and the one that resonates best with my experience was the fact that China officially holds onto "all descendants of its people who emigrated overseas and claims them as its own." This, of course, makes all ethnic Chinese in the US potential spies, and most of the people of Singapore "foreigners in their own country." Chilling.