Taiwan's government is pushing back after Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office promoted a popular Chinese film as a symbol of Chinese national revival, calling it an attempt to ride on someone else's success.

• The film tells the story of a grandmother in southern China's Chaoshan region waiting for a husband who never returned from overseas, and the family letters and money migrants sent home.
• China's foreign ministry invited diplomats from more than 70 countries to watch it, saying it would help them "understand China."
• Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council says the movie itself carries no greater-China message — it was turned into propaganda from the outside, after years of official united front films drawing no audience.
• Singapore's media labelled it a united front film, and similar worries are expected among Chinese communities in Malaysia and Thailand.
• Taipei's line is that the migration story belongs to Southeast Asia's Chinese diaspora, not to Taiwan, whose own history followed a different path.

Outlook: Expect Beijing to keep leaning on popular culture rather than overt propaganda to court overseas Chinese audiences, and Taipei to keep calling it out.