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Greater China and the Chinese Overseas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Wang Gungwu
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Extract

Some of the most important developments of the last quarter of the century have taken place in the Asia-Pacific region. Of these, the Chinese shift from Communist ideology and central planning to a commitment to build a market economy has had extensive ramifications. These have led to much speculation about the re-emergence of China as a powerful actor in world politics. The idea of Greater China is one of the products of that speculation. The lack of precision in the term “Greater China” – whether it should cover Hong Kong-Macao (hereafter Hong Kong), Taiwan and all of the People's Republic of China (PRC) or only parts of it – should not prevent it being used to explore some current and future developments. In this article, which examines the impact the concept of Greater China has on the Chinese overseas, the term would obviously not include those Chinese who live outside. Nevertheless, depending on which aspect is emphasized, the actual area covered can be significant.

Type
Greater China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 136 , December 1993 , pp. 926 - 948
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1993

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References

1. Harry Harding, “The concept of ‘Greater China’;,” in this issue.

2. Gungwu, Wang, “The origins of Hua-ch'iao,” in Gungwu, Wang, Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia (New Edition) (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992), pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

3. I have used this in the title of my book, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991)Google ScholarPubMed.

4. The Economist, 21 November 1992.

5. Suryadinata, Leo, “Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: problems and prospects,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1987)Google Scholar. Compare these figures with my estimates in “External China” in Hook, Brian (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 104–110Google Scholar; and its new edition (1991), pp. 84–90.

6. Yong, C. F., “Patterns and traditions of loyalty in the Chinese community of Singapore, 1900–1941,” The New Zealand Journal of History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1970)Google Scholar provides interesting examples of this experience.

7. The series of country by country volumes on the distribution of Overseas Chinese around the world, the Hua-ch ' iao published in Taiwan from the mid–1950s, provides a useful, if not always accurate, record of these successes.

8. FitzGerald, Stephen, China and the Overseas Chinese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 162–195Google Scholar.

9. The example of responses among the Chinese overseas to the tragedy at Tiananmen in June 1989 is instructive. In North America, Western Europe and Australasia, media reports were filled with emotional outbursts, especially from the younger generation. In South-east Asia and else-where in Asia, the reports of their responses were very muted.

10. There are numerous reports, ranging from the sensational to the matter-of-fact. The account in The Economist, 21 November 1992 remains one of the most useful to date.

11. Suryadinata, Leo, “Chinese economic elites in Indonesia: a preliminary study,” in Cushman, Jennifer and Gungwu, Wang (eds.), Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese since World War II (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1988), pp. 269–277Google Scholar; Robison, Richard, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp. 278–288Google Scholar.

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15. Deng Xiaoping's visit in January 1979 met with mixed receptions from the politicized sections of the Chinese American population, but was greeted with relief by most businessmen.

16. The only reports are to be found in the Hong Kong daily press. They are desultory and often unsourced, but the impression of steady and continuous activity is unmistakable.

17. Interviews with Indonesian and Malaysian consular officials in Hong Kong confirm this.

18. The material on investments in the Pearl River delta can be found almost daily, but the small but significant communities of Chaozhou, Minnan (Southern Fujian) and Ningbo businessmen ensured that Hong Kong enterprises would move further afield.

19. As government policy in Taiwan towards relations across the Straits began to change in the mid-1980s, its businessmen pushed ahead by using Hong Kong as a base. From 1988 onwards, a veritable flood of visitors from Taiwan to the mainland was a prelude to intensive funding of joint enterprises which the Taiwan government could do little to curb.

20. After the Deng Xiaoping visit to South China in January 1992, Hong Kong businesses, led by Peter Woo, began to look seriously at opening up the interior provinces and the north.

21. Regular interviews with South-east Asian businessmen from Singapore and Malaysia since the early 1980s have confirmed that sentiment will always be accompanied by assurances of profit.

22. This is common all over Asia, notably in Japan and South Korea and still true, despite strong assimilationist policies, in South-east Asia. But the examples of Chinatowns in the migrant states of the Americas and Australasia suggest that ghetto-like lives are historically widespread and may persevere.

23. There is a growing number of commentaries in the Western media since 1991 which stress this, but South-east Asian reports have also played on this theme from time to time.

24. The Chinese newspapers published among the Chinese overseas demonstrate this clearly, more so perhaps in North America, but also in much more carefully chosen words in Singapore and Malaysia.

25. The vigorous debates among new huaqiao, and especially the better-educated students and dissidents from the mainland, since 1989 have been found in newspapers and magazines not only in North America but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

26. The literature of this genre is now vast, mostly published in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also in various forms in mainland magazines as well.

27. Salmon, Claudine (ed.), Literary Migrations: Traditional Chinese Fiction in Asia (17th–20th centuries) (Beijing: International Culture, 1990)Google Scholar.

28. This subject is yet to be studied. The campaign to introduce Confucian values through translated texts in Singapore in the early 1980s is a good example; Wei-ming, Tu, “Iconoclasm, holistic vision, and patient watchfulness: a personal reflection on the modern intellectual quest,” Daedalus, Vol. 116, No. 2Google Scholar. Perhaps from the sublime to the not so ridiculous, the cartoon versions of the Chinese classics by Tsai Chih Chung now translated into English are read by the younger generation of the Chinese overseas. They are easily available in a Singapore edition published by Asiapac.

29. The impact of Hong Kong films, television and video tapes on the Chinese overseas is widely acknowledged.

30. The literature on this topic is growing. A good example of the genre is Lee, Joann Faung Jean, Asian Americans: Oral histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam and Cambodia (New York: The New Press, 1991), pp. 99–139Google Scholar.

31. Gungwu, Wang, “Early Ming relations with Southeast Asia - a background essay,” in Gungwu, Wang, Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese (Singapore and Sydney: Heinemann Educational Books and Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp. 43–57Google Scholar.

32. Three essays by Ma, L. Eve Armentrout, Ching-hwang, Yen and Fong, Mak Lau, in To, Lee Lai (ed.), Early Chinese Immigrant Societies: Case Studies from North America and British Southeast Asia (Singapore: Heinemann Asia, 1988), pp. 159–243Google Scholar, bring this out clearly.

33. Two examples from British Malaya and the Philippines are of interest: Dazhan yu Nanqiao [Ta-chan yu Nan-ch 'iao] (The Great War and the Overseas Chinese in South-east Asia) (Singapore: Southseas China Relief Fund Union, 1947)Google Scholar and Tan, Antonio S., The Chinese in Manila During the Japanese Occupation, 1942–1945 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, Asian Center, 1981)Google Scholar.

34. The classic example is Chen Jiageng (Tan Kah Kee). Yong, C. F., Tan Kah Kee: The Making of an Overseas Chinese Legend (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Tan had many loyal supporters who followed his example, pp. 175–297.

35. FitzGerald, C. P., The Third China: The Chinese Communities in South-East Asia (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1965)Google Scholar; Somers-Heidhues, Mary, Southeast Asia's Chinese Minorities (Melbourne: Longman, 1976)Google Scholar.

36. Mai Liqian, Huaqiao to Huaren, chs. 10–12; and Wickberg, Edgar (ed.) From China to Canada; A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), pp. 204–267Google Scholar, for North America.

37. Progress in North American research on Chinese communities has been remarkable; Lai, Him Mark, “Chinese American studies: a historical survey,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1988 (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1988), pp. 11–29Google Scholar. Also Ng, Wing Chung, “Scholarship on post-World War II Chinese societies in North America: a thematic discussion,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1992 (San Francisco), pp. 177–210Google Scholar.

38. The Qing government was not always prosperous, nor consistent in its policies towards the Chinese overseas; see Cushman, Jennifer Wayne, Fields from the Sea: Chinese Junk Trade with Siam During the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1993), chs. 4 and 5Google Scholar.

39. Ching-hwang, Yen, Coolies and Mandarins: China's Protection of Overseas Chinese During the Late Ch'ing Period (1851–1911) (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

40. Several essays in Cushman and Wang, Changing Identities, provide examples of what happened in South-east Asia during this period: notably essays by J.A.C. Mackie, Chinben See and Tan Chee-Beng (pp. 217–260, 319–334 and 139–164).

41. This is analysed in the last part of this paper, ”Changing groups and different responses”; see also my essay, ”Among non-Chinese,” in Daedalus, Vol. 120, No. 2 (Spring 1991), pp. 135–157Google Scholar.

42. There have been some exceptions. Sino-Land, an offshoot of a Singapore company, and Kerry Trading, a Hong Kong arm of a Malaysian company, had begun to make large investments by the mid-1980s.

43. The literature on the Chinese overseas written by scholars in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the PRC and by Western sinologists tend to focus on those Chinese who can still speak, read and write Chinese. This is less true of the anthropologists, notably the studies of Thailand by G. William Skinner, of Cambodia by William Willmott, of Indonesia by Donald E. Willmott and Mely Tan Giok Lan, and of Malaysia by Judith Strauch and Tan Chee-Beng. The latter studies show that most Chinese in the second or third generation were losing their ability to communicate in Chinese. Hence Maurice Freedman's reference to the need for re-sinification, see Clammer, John R., “Overseas Chinese assimilation and resinification: a Malaysian case study,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 9–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Beng, Tan Chee, The Baba of Melaka: Culture and Identity of a Chinese Peranakan Community in Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications, 1988)Google Scholar.

44. Gungwu, Wang, “Chinese politics in Malaya,” The China Quarterly, No. 43 (1970), pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also in Community and Nation (1981), pp. 173–200.

45. Gungwu, Wang, “Political Chinese: their contribution to modern Southeast Asian history,” in Grossman, Bernhard (ed.) Southeast Asia in the Modern World (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1972)Google Scholar, also in Gungwu, Wang, Chinese Overseas, pp. 130–146Google Scholar.

46. Gungwu, Wang, “Chinese politics,” pp. 4–6, 21–30Google Scholar; “Political Chinese,” pp. 132, 139–146.

47. Wah, Loh Kok, The Politics of Chinese Unity in Malaysia (Singapore: Maruzen Asia, 1982)Google Scholar is the best example.

48. Coppel, Charles A., “Patterns of Chinese political activity in Indonesia,” in Mackie, J. A. C. (ed.), The Chinese in Indonesia: Five Essays (Melbourne: Nelson, 1976), pp. 19–76Google Scholar.

49. Detailed studies of this phenomenon have begun to be published, for example two new books about New York City: Chen, Hsiang-shui, Chinatown No More: Taiwan Immigrants in Contemporary New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar and Zhou, Min, Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. They should be read together with an earlier study of New York's Chinese community by Wong, Bernard, Chinatown: Economic Adaption and Ethnic Identity of the Chinese (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982)Google Scholar.

50. A good measure of one of the consequences of the growth in numbers of Group A Chinese can be seen in Lai, H. M., “The Chinese press in the United States and Canada since World War II: a diversity of voices,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1990 (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1990), pp. 107–155Google Scholar.

51. Given the increasingly complex relationship between China and the United States and the large number of American sinologists who know Taiwan, Hong Kong and the PRC reasonably well, such Chinese may not find themselves all that useful. But elsewhere in the Americas and Australasia, many of them could render their governments considerable help.

52. Unless large numbers of fresh immigrants continue to come from Greater China, this may be unavoidable. On the other hand, it is difficult to predict what new factors might appear to change the course of development.

53. Gungwu, Wang, “Chinese politics,” p. 4Google Scholar.

54. Using the New York example, see Zhou, Min, Chinatown, pp. 219–233Google Scholar.

55. For a Canadian perspective, Wickberg, , China to Canada, pp. 244–267Google Scholar. Somewhat different is that in Australia, see Loh, Marig, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese in Victoria, 1848–1985 (Melbourne: Barradene Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

56. Liqian, Mai, From Huaqiao to Huaren, pp. 437–467Google Scholar.

57. I am not aware of any case where a South-east Asian Chinese entrepreneur has invested more money in either Taiwan or the PRC than he has invested in his own country. It is harder, of course, to determine if funds are transferred over time to Hong Kong and later re-invested in the PRC as Hong Kong investment.

58. Suehiro, , “Postwar Thailand,” pp. 54–57Google Scholar, gives examples of joint ventures with several multinationals from Japan, Germany, Britain and Hong Kong. Koon, Heng Pek, “The Chinese business elite of Malaysia,” in McVey, , Southeast Asian Capitalists, pp. 127–144Google Scholar, has many examples of close associations with public companies. Similarly, Richard Robison, “Industrialisation and the economic and political development of capital: the case of Indonesia,” in the same volume of essays, provides examples from Indonesia.

59. Asiaweek, 23 June 1993.

60. Interview with two delegations from Indonesia in 1987 and 1988.

61. The essays in n. 58 also show what enormous opportunities the entrepreneurs have within their own countries. The reports of what the Chinese overseas are doing in Greater China should be compared with what they are doing back home. For example, the report “SE Asian Chinese head for home,” in Asian Business, April 1993 would be alarming if it is thought that firms like Lippo, Kuok Group, Charoen Pokphand, Bangkok Land were taking most of their capital out to “bring home” to the PRC. If true, then Ian Stewart's story in the South China Morning Post, 22 May 1993, “Wrath of Asia as Chinese venture forth” would be justified.

62. McVey, Ruth, “The materialisation of the Southeast Asian entrepreneur,” in McVey, , South-east Asian Capitalists, pp. 7–33Google Scholar, analyses how the ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs perform successfully in the South-east Asian context.

63. The case studies by Tan Chee-Beng (Malaysia) and Antonio S. Tan (The Philippines) in Cushman, and Wang, , Changing Identities, pp. 139–164 and 177–203Google Scholar, show how this is happening.

64. The case of Thailand has always been special, as illustrated in the Chearavanont family, Asiaweek, 23 June 1993, “The growth machine.”

65. Group C Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia can be said to be still discovering themselves in a very fluid world of Muslim politics. With leaders like Suharto and Mahathir in power, however, they have been given a reasonable chance to prove themselves valuable as well as loyal. The relationships are personalized, so they may still be very unreliable.

66. Census figures showed a majority of local-born Chinese in both the migrant states and the new nation-states during the 1950s. Since then, however, the figures for Canada and the United States have changed significantly in favour of those born in Greater China.

67. I refer specially to the multi-cultural policies laid down by countries like Canada, Australia and the United States.