the overseas chinese today and tomorrow

The Overseas Chinese Today and TomorrowAuthor(s): William E. WillmottSource: Pacific Affairs, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 206-214Published by: Pacific Affairs, University of British ColumbiaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2754400 .

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The Overseas Chinese Today and Tomorrow A Review Article

IT MAY BE TAKEN AS a self-critical comment that anthropologists study- ing the overseas Chinese have been interested primarily in two questions

that appear to be far from the main concern of most others, scholars or laymen, who have concerned themselves with these communities. One of these questions concerns the nature of social organisation in Chinese communities all over the world; the other relates to the study of the various mechanisms that preserve the cultural boundaries of these communities and the interchange that occurs across those boundaries, using such concepts as acculturation, assimilation, and accommodation. When other than anthropologists read about or study the Chinese diaspora, their interests centre primarily on historical and political questions, depending on their bent. The more daring try to predict the future of the Chinese in various countries. Whichever of these focuses they take, their main concern is with relations between China itself and her overseas "compatriots." In fact, of course, the two problems tackled by anthropologists provide part of the answers to the questions raised by others, for, as Professor Freedman has recently pointed out, the social organisation of Chinese communities has a great deal to do with their persistence, and one cannot relate their cultural identity merely to their origin from China.'

Whatever the reasons for it, the persistence of these communities as recognisable entities in almost every country of the world has led to an increasing number of publications by writers of varying persuasions, disci- plines, and capabilities. In this article I shall review the latest half-dozen and discuss some of the issues emerging from them. Because the vast majority of the overseas Chinese reside in Southeast Asia, and because it is in these countries that they present the greatest "problem," one must focus primarily on this area. After discussing the issues in history, assimilation, relations to China, and implications for American policy, this article will end with a brief note on books about Chinese in other parts of the world.

Of the recent books, by far the best is Lea Williams' study, curiously

1 Maurice Freedman, The Chinese in South-East Asia: A Longer View (Occasional Papers 14), (London: The China Society, I965, 24 pp.).

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The Overseas Chinese Today and Tomorrow titled The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.2 Professor Williams has produced a readable general statement that is ambitious in its conception and successful in its execution. While one can fault him on minor points and feel some unease with the aim of the study (to examine the question in terms of its significance to U.S. policy), the book will undoubtedly stand for some time as an excellent summary for those whose interests do not carry them into the vast and growing literature on specific countries. His chapter on "Historical Foundations" provides a useful overview of a process of migration that has been proceeding for centuries under varying circumstances. He clearly recognises it as an integral part of the global phenomenon of movement from farm to city, the aspects of which were probably far more important to its participants and to Southeast Asian society than the "international transplanting" (p. 43) of Chinese to somewhat alien shores that has been the topic of detailed studies by many historians.

At the opposite pole of historiography stands Mr. Song Ong Siang's history of the Chinese in Singapore.3 First published in I923 for the centen- nial of the founding of Singapore (i8i9-i919), this book has been issued again by photographic reproduction-one wonders why. The book consists of a chronological compendium of everything Mr. Song and his faithful helpers could glean-from the Straits Times and other sources-that related in any way to the activities of Chinese in Singapore. Salted among descriptions of wealthy weddings, funerals, and concerts, one finds a vignette on an exotic temple or the daily life of a Chinese girl and descriptions of particularly outstanding businessmen. Part of a typical chapter description reads as follows: "Old Rafflesians' dinner-Rev. Father Michael Sect-Public Pro- test Against Municipal Bill (i9ii)-Fall of the Tsing Dynasty-Chess Match-Seow Tek Lin.. ." The book is divided into chapters by decades, and no theme or thesis mars the pure reproduction of facts. Fortunately for serious students of history, the book contains a large index, filled primarily with the names of prominent Singaporeans of Chinese ancestry, many of whose photographs also appear in the book.

Somewhere between the brief interpretive statement by Professor Wil- liams and the undigested collection by Mr. Song falls the now classic study of Victor Purcell on the Chinese in Malaya.4 Also a reissue without re- vision (it was first published in 1948 by the same publisher for Chatham House and the IPR), this book represents the fruits of twenty-five years' experience in the Malayan civil service, as well as research undertaken during that time, and was the impetus for his subsequent study of The Chinese

2 Lea E. Williams, The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (New York: Mc- Graw-Hill, for the Council on Foreign Relations, i966, 143 pp., $5.50).

3 Song Ong Siang, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: University of Malaya Press; Toronto: Oxford University Press, i967, 602 pp., $io.oo).

4Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Malaya (London and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967, 327 pp., $5.50).

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Pacific Afairs in Southeast Asia (i95i, second edition i965) which remains the major general book on the subject. The present book provides excellent material for any student of Malayan history, for it describes the activities and fortunes of the Chinese secret societies in Malaya in more detail than can be obtained anywhere else. Although the book aims at comprehensive coverage rather than coherence, the reader can get a set of useful ideas regarding the Chinese in Malaya, who are one of three segments (Singapore and Sarawak being the other two) of the most important Chinese community in Southeast Asia. I shall return to this point after a discussion of the relationship between overseas Chinese and China.

From the point of view of Southeast Asian nation-builders and of great powers seeking to define policies appropriate to the governments in the area, the nature of the loyalty felt by overseas Chinese to their motherland is of paramount importance. Expressed at its simplest (and most naive) one often hears references to the "Chinese fifth column" in Southeast Asia, conveying the idea that a Chinese anywhere is loyal to China above all. Since China is now under a communist government, this implies to many people a commitment to a communist ideology by the overseas Chinese en masse.

It is undeniable that the Chinese emigrant, for the most part, left China to sojourn abroad with the intention of returning with his fortune. Even that preliminary statement must be modified, however, to take into account the many who left as political refugees from a regime they could not tolerate, whether Manchu or communist; Professor Williams is wrong when he states that the political refugee is a "recent" phenomenon (p. 5), for thousands fled China following the establishment of the alien Ch'ing dynasty, settling mainly in Annam and what became Cochin China. One source even speaks of "Sung patriots" fleeing to Southeast Asia from the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century.' Nevertheless, the vast majority of Chinese came to the Nanyang as temporary immigrants.

Once having established themselves in business, however, Chinese immigrants were less eager to return to their native villages in southeastern China. Often even those who did return prolonged their sojourn until their retirement, leaving their on-going businesses in the hands of their sons. Chinese business, therefore, became a permanent establishment throughout the area.

One measure of commitment to China, even for those who never re- turned, was the volume of money remitted to relatives in China or invested there. The recognition of this as an important factor, however, has not produced much reliable information, for remittances are extremely difficult to track and count. The most recent study of this phenomenon by Chun-hsi

5Chen Su-Ching, China and Southeastern Asia (China Council Series 5), (Chungking: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1945), p. 5.

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The Overseas Chinese Today and Tomorrow

Wu surmounts this difficulty less convincingly than his two major predeces- sors.6 He has provided a useful survey of the mechanics of remitting to China. He summarises how changes in policy and the nature of restrictions have affected remittances and provides a useful discussion of the various avenues and agencies used by overseas Chinese for getting money into China. The reader should be warned that the charts describing types of remittance agents are not flow-charts but an attempt to illustrate categorisations-an attempt that is marred by the lack of co-ordination between text and illustrations. Wu should be congratulated for keeping his own biases under control, although one wonders if he really is accurately quoting a document from China in placing in inverted commas a proclamation to set up "Special Stores for Overseas Chinese in Canton, Swatow, Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Peiping" (p. 50)!

The study is spoiled primarily by the poor presentation of materials, some of which suggest slipshod scholarship. For example, Table I4 (p. 89) records widely varying guesses from various sources on total remittances to Hongkong; without any attempt at evaluation, Wu provides an arithmetic average of the guesses, which he then uses to compute further statistics. Tables vary unnecessarily from yuan (JMP) to Hongkong dollars to Ameri- can dollars, making comparison, especially for figures in yuan (CNC) during the worst period of inflation, extremely cumbersome for the reader. Tables IS and i9 are identical, although their titles differ and the number of significant figures has increased from one to the other. On page 29, Wu makes the claim that "it was looked upon as an obligation" for returning Chinese to serve as messengers for friends and relatives abroad, and he even provides a reference note for this fact; yet when one consults the note, it merely states that "it has been customary for many years for overseas Chi- nese to send money from their new homes back to their families in China," and cites the Far Eastern Economic Review for this inconsequential information. One's confidence in the reliability of the study is not increased by the number of, clearly, typographical errors in numbers (e.g. p. 63: 2, 6I7 for 2.6I7; p. I39: 8o.6% for i8.6%).

A second major limitation of Wu's study is the interest that inspires it. The author seeks to determine the extent of China's foreign exchange potential, and his examination of remittances by overseas Chinese is seen solely from this perspective. From the point of view of students of Southeast Asia, the interest really lies in the continuing relations, as exhibited by remittances, between Chinese businessmen abroad and China itself. It would have been interesting, for instance, to measure his estimate of annual remittances against some estimate of total Chinese-owned capital in Southeast Asia, rec- ognising that both figures would be, of course, soft estimates. On the basis

o Chun-hsi Wu, Dollars, Dependents, and Dogma: Overseas Chinese Remittance to Com- munist China (Stanford: The Hoover Institution, i967, 23I pp., $7.00).

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of my estimates of Chinese capital in Cambodia, for instance, and using Wu's figures for remittances, one can estimate that between the years I956 and I962, remittances dropped from o.i per cent of investment to 0.03 per cent, for as remittances went steadily down, investment went rapidly up. Ex- pressed in other terms, the annual remittances from Cambodia to China dropped from U.S. $0.33 to $0.25 per individual Chinese over the same period. From Wu's study, one can conclude that this downward trend in remittances is general throughout Southeast Asia. There is no doubt that remittances are falling, although to what extent this is due to increased restrictions and to what extent to decreasing commitment cannot be de- termined from this study. From sociological facts, one would conclude that the commitment to China is, indeed, diminishing among overseas Chinese, for the communities are no longer replenished with immigrants, and the proportion of those born in the host-countries therefore increases regularly.

The question of loyalty to China has been of interest for some time, of course, particularly when revolutionary activities in China seemed to threaten the status quo in Southeast Asia. At such times, governments have looked with suspicion upon their Chinese citizens, and many non-Chinese have assumed all too easily that all Chinese would favour new developments in China. More sophisticated observers have assumed a division of opinion by class, as does Song in writing about the difference between the workers who supported the i9ii revolution and the merchants who would have nothing to do with it. An excellent summary statement, provided by Profes- sor Williams, is worthy of extensive quotation here: Despite the popular indigenous belief that most settlers are merchants, the overseas Chinese display no economic-class cohesiveness. The largest of their occupational groups is composed of men of trade, but that body is far from united as an interest group. Its membership includes at one extreme men who sell one cigarette at a time to customers too poor to afford more and at the other end men who deal in tons of rubber and tin on the world market. The Chinese of Southeast Asia, because such a weighty per- centage are in trade, ought logically to be model bourgeois; they are not. Their class interests, loyalties, and identifications are manifold; their political convictions are far from solid.... Some analysts have concluded that backing for Peking is massive and disciplined; others have argued that the Chinese abroad form a vast real or potential reservoir of support for the Nationalists on Taiwan.... Possibly the shrewdest evaluation in the experience of the present writer was offered by a man not claiming speciali- zation in the subject who expressed the simple thought that the overseas Chinese appear fundamentally pro-overseas Chinese.7

An interesting parallel quotation from the Straits Times of February I9I4 is cited by Mr. Song: The recent upheavals of the political situation in China did not affect this plodding, matter-of-fact, steady-going community to any appreciable extent. That they sympathised in some measure with the aims and projects of the revolutionists could be easily un.

tWilliams, op. Cit., p. 21.

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The Overseas Chinese Today and Tomorrow derstood, but that they would never voluntarily jeopardise their personal security, or cripple and injure their material resources and vested interests, at the call of a host of fanatical and unpractical schemers, could also be readily predicted.... .8

One need not agree with the writer's estimate of the i9ii revolution to accept his point about the loyalties of the overseas Chinese. The question remains, however, whether this loyalty to the overseas Chinese community itself stands in the way of nation-building, a question that is usually treated in terms of assimilation.

Our understanding of assimilation has advanced somewhat since the Sino-Japanese war in Southeast Asia, particularly since the colonial era, when it was taken to mean assimilation to the colonial power. It is quite clear from his book that Song believes the best Chinese is a good Englishman, one who participates in British sports, literature, drama, and ritual (both ecclesiastic and state) with a maximum of British panache. This Southeast Asian Uncle-Tomism has been buried with the political colonialism that nurtured it, but an element of it survives, albeit modified, among many Chinese and students of the Chinese. No longer the best Englishman, Frenchman, or Dutchman, but still the best Malay, the best Javanese, the best Khmer, or the best Burman remains the ideal of Chinese assimilationists. There is the assumption that people in the minority can demonstrate their patriotism to the new state only by adopting the culture of the dominant ethnic group. In my view this assumption stems from the fact that the nation-builders of Southeast Asia are following the model of European nation-states, where culture and society are more congruent, and they are encouraged in this by every Western observer and writer on Southeast Asia.

Nowhere is this a more serious problem than in Malaysia, for this "country" has no resemblance in any dimension to the nations it attempts to emulate except in its centralised control of the instruments of suppression- the armed forces. In this region of many cultures and various loyalties, where Chinese form a plurality of over 40 per cent of the population, it is patently absurd to insist or expect all groups to move towards the Malay culture. Indeed, the definition of the Malay as the indigene and the Chinese as the immigrant is a legacy of the British Raj, whose cogent reasons for thus defining the population are no longer valid. Unless Malaysia can move towards a definition of its identity in terms of cultural plurality, it will not survive as a polity.

Even the otherwise excellent study by Professor Williams is curiously myopic in this regard. He identifies as "chauvinistic" all left-wing move- ments (even Barisan Socialis) in which Chinese participate, yet applauds Chinese participation in the Alliance despite its avowedly communalistic organisation and program. While the guerrilla force of the Emergency

8Song, op. cit., p. 504.

2II



Pacific Affairs undoubtedly consisted almost entirely of Chinese, it would be a mistake to assume from that fact that it represented Chinese chauvinism. Quite the opposite; its aims were nationalist in the Malayan sense, and most of its adherents espoused an ideology that emphasised internationalism to a far greater extent than did those Chinese who supported British rule at the time. From this point of view, it is not surprising that Professor Williams advocates (p. II7) that American aid be designed to encourage assimilation.

This problem comes into sharpest focus in Sarawak, and we await with great interest Michael Leigh's imminent study on the Chinese community there. As in Singapore, the dominant group in Kuching politics is the Chinese, but unlike Singapore, Sarawak is a viable "country" on its own, and therefore one in which the Chinese may well see their future better assured by permanent independence from the Federation. The limitations on this course of action lie mainly outside Southeast Asia, for it is unlikely that a powerful United States would be willing to countenance such a move without itself moving to block it in some way. American policy is therefore of considerable importance in shaping the future of Southeast Asia.

While there is a certain truth in Professor Williams' statement that "Washington stands to gain the most in a stable region, while Peking can operate best in turmoil" (p. 113), it is at best a paradoxical truth today, for the major source of instability in the area is a war in which the United States has attempted to set aside international agreements in favour of its own self-interest. This has produced growing concern throughout the region, not only among opposition politicians, but among governments as well, both neutralist and pro-Western. The statement contains a more fundamental point, however, which is even more disturbing. The United States stands to gain, provided opposition can be contained, by maintaining economies that are in essence undeveloped and which therefore export raw materials rather than finished products, as is the case in every Southeast Asian country today. American aid agencies are therefore caught in a dilemma, for while some of their aid is directed towards "development" in terms of building communications and power facilities (notably in Thailand), much of it is aimed at maintaining the speculative commercial sector by providing dollars that can be used only by private enterprise to buy only American goods. Governments benefit indirectly through counterpart funds, but the economic consequences operate against development. To the extent that Chinese control commerce (in Cambodia 95 per cent under American aid, elsewhere somewhat less but still substantial), the latter form of American aid serves to enrich overseas Chinese. Professor Williams argued that this is a good thing from the American point of view (one wonders what his own views are on this matter), for "Chinese prosperity can be regarded as proof of the productivity of free enterprise" (p. ii8).

It is not hard to see that indigenous development can come through

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The Overseas Chinese Today and Tomorrow

encouraging industrial investment at the expense of commercial investment, as Cambodia has done by rejecting American aid since i963. Given conditions of peaceful trade in the area, this policy might well become more wide- spread and would undoubtedly adversely affect Chinese business houses, many of whom make their major profits in the area of commercial imports. Professor Williams' opening statement is perhaps the most important in the book: "The fate of Southeast Asia is not in the grip of the overseas Chinese; on the contrary, the future of the overseas Chinese will be deter- mined within the transitional societies of the region" (p. 3).

If one were in a position to advise American policy-makers, the major point to be made would be to stress the inappropriateness, and in the long run impossibility, of a great power dictating the future of Southeast Asian countries, let alone of any minority group within them. Professor Williams' penultimate sentence comes close to saying this: "The greatest American gift to the area would be time to seek solutions to internal difficulties" (p. I26).

For a number of reasons, studies of overseas Chinese elsewhere than in Southeast Asia have suffered by comparison with the major works on the Chinese in that part of the world. The present selections are no exception to this rule.

Mr. Ng's study of the Chinese in London is the best because the least pretentious.9 Commissioned by the Institute of Race Relations, Ng has re- written a master's thesis into a readable little book which provides a summary of facts on London's Chinese unencumbered by theoretical apparatus or attempts to integrate the various topics he covers. It is objective and factual, if superficial, and his examination of the question of relations with China (in this case Hongkong) suggests a number of factors other than remittances that indicate continuing connections. Hongkong is not, of course, con- temporary China, and it would therefore be dangerous to attempt generalisa- tions about communities whose provenance lies within China today.

Mr. Coppenrath writes on a more exotic subject: the Chinese in Tahiti.'0 It is disappointing, therefore, to discover that he has read none of the literature on Chinese elsewhere and consequently has been unable to formu- late the interesting questions that might have produced worthwhile research. His bibliography includes only a few of the worst books on overseas Chinese and none of the best, and the introductory survey of Chinese around the world is woefully weak as a result. Apart from an excellent set of photographs, he adds very little indeed to the two studies on Tahitian Chinese by Richard Moench already published.

9 Ng Kwee Choo, The Chinese in London (London and Toronto: Oxford University Press, for the Institute of Race Relations, i968, 92 pp., i5s. paper).

10 Gerald Coppenrath, Les Chinois de Tahiti (Paris: Musee de iHomme [Publications de la Societt des oceanistes, 2I], i967, I44 pp., 400 fr.).

2I3



Pacific Affairs Passage to the Golden Gate is written for children and contains no

bibliography or references." It provides an interesting early history of the western United States, particularly of the reconstruction of the Union Pacific Railroad. The illustrations are rather silly; there is no excuse for misleading children about the nature of the Chinese dragon!

University of British Columbia, February 1969 WILLIAM E. WILLMOTT

11 Daniel and Samuel Chu, Passage to the Golden Gate: A History of the Chinese in Amer- ica to s91o (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, i967, II7 pp.).

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the overseas chinese today and tomorrow

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