In recent years, the growing reach of the Chinese Communist Party’s (C.C.P.’s) political influence abroad has prompted numerous countries to reappraise their engagement with China. Optimism about Chinese convergence with international norms has been replaced with concerns over C.C.P. influence strategies in the wider world. As the pendulum swings from naivety to vigilance, dangers abound, not least to overseas Chinese communities. In some cases, these communities face both suspicion in their own countries and pressure from Beijing to present an image of China that accords with the C.C.P. narrative. Observers of China need to be much more careful when discussing the influence tactics of the Chinese Party-state in order not to implicate vast swathes of people identified in various ways under the umbrella term “Chinese.” We ought to pay greater attention to the difference between “official” China and “unofficial” China—that is, between the position of the state on the one hand and the often obscured lived experience of Chinese people in the private realm and in the diminishing space beyond officialdom’s grasp.