National identity internalization and sense of belonging among overseas Chinese youth in the context of political education in the digital age: A comparative psychological study between China and Kyrgyzstan

The research explores the issue of the selection of national identity and sense of belonging of the overseas Chinese youth who are in China and Kyrgyzstan under the influence of political education and digital media. The case study discusses the role of political education and digital platforms with the help of survey, semi-structured interviews, and digital content analysis, in the formation of identities through two different socio-political contexts. Findings indicate that 90 % of actors in China interact regularly with political learning via formal education and online sources such as Xuexi Qiangguo which has created a high national pride as 96 % of young Chinese have reported high levels of national pride. Comparatively, younger people in Kyrgyzstan engage in political education less frequently and 48 % of them have identity conflict as they often find themselves caught between the Chinese culture and the Kyrgyz one. In the reflected use of digital media, nine out of every ten young people in China have discussed the political content agent of WeChat and Weibo, and only eight out of ten adolescents in Kyrgyzstan document the same story, which shows how predominant the Chinese media is in defining the identity of a foreign young person. The work has also discovered that one out of every seven youths had identity conflict in Kyrgyzstan, whereas only 1 among 10 youths in China had that problem. It can be explained based on these findings that, structured system of political education in China is playing a strong role in reinforcing national identity whereas the youths of overseas Chinese community in Kyrgyzstan have struggled with the single sense of identity because of lack of access to formal political education and difficulty in balancing the two cultures. The paper demands increased inclusion in the educational policies and special digital content to support the needs of diaspora youth in a better way. In further studies, other diaspora communities, the long-term impacts of digital political learning and influence of social media influencers on national identity must be examined.