Ambivalent fatherland: The Chinese National Salvation Movement in Malaya and Java, 1937–41

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Kankan Xie
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
National Salvation ◽  
Natural Result ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Rare Opportunity

China's resistance to Japanese aggression escalated into a full-scale war in 1937. The continuously deteriorating situation stimulated the rise of Chinese nationalism in the diaspora communities worldwide. The Japanese invasion of China, accompanied by the emergence of the National Salvation Movement (NSM) in Southeast Asia, provided the overseas Chinese with a rare opportunity to re-examine their ‘Chineseness’, as well as their relationships with the colonial states and the increasingly self-aware indigenous populations. This research problematises traditional approaches that tend to regard the NSM as primarily driven by Chinese patriotism. Juxtaposing Malaya and Java at the same historical moment, the article argues that the emergence of the NSM was more than just a natural result of the rising Chinese nationalism. Local politics and the shifting political orientations of overseas Chinese communities also profoundly shaped how the NSM played out in different colonial states.

Landscapes of Memories: A Study of Representation for Translocal Chinese Cultural Heritage in Kaiping, Guangdong, China

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-37
Author(s):  
Bo-wei Chiang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Local Economic Development ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Migration History ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, many young people emigrated from Guangdong to the American West in search of a better living, mainly through building the Pacific Railroad and panning for gold in California. Some of these overseas Chinese who eventually accumulated wealth sent remittances back to their hometowns to provide their families with a better life, or they built mansions for their own retirement. They also used their wealth to renovate ancestral halls, establish schools, get involved in local politics and issues of local public security, public hygiene, etc. The overseas Chinese were one of the important new rising social strata in modern China before the 1960s. This paper will focus on translocal Chinese cultural heritage in Guangdong and try to discuss how people memorize, narrate, preserve, and represent their migration history in these hometowns. Meanwhile, the meaning of the tangible cultural heritage as a landscape of memories in local society in China will also be discussed. Firstly, I think that there are three types of overseas Chinese memories: the memory of suffering, the memory of making fortunes, and the memory of a philanthropic image; secondly, I will deal with the narrative and representation of the collective memories since the 1990s and check how the collective memory became the cultural heritage beneath the state’s discourse; and finally, I will analyze how the overseas Chinese cultural heritage became resources for cultural tourism and local economic development, and show a process of commercialization of those landscapes.

Hybridity and Transformation: The Political Orientation of the Chinese in the Dutch East Indies

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-157
Author(s):  
Dong-Yu Lin ◽  
Ping Lin
Keyword(s):  
Life Histories ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
General Assumption ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Colonial Government

Abstract During the early twentieth century, strong nationalistic ideas sprang up in Indonesia. Some Chinese elites in professional positions under the Dutch colonial government tended to side with the Dutch with the pro-Dutch attitude; some working for Chinese newspapers or agencies developed the pro-China stance; some supported and cooperated with the indigenous people with the pro-independence tendency; and others had their inclinations transformed over the course of time. After examining the life history of a few prominent Chinese figures, this article shows that three levels of factors—international politics in East Asia, local politics in the Dutch East Indies, and their life histories under Dutch rule (together with travel experience to China)—were critical for each Chinese person in establishing or transforming their often hybrid political orientations. The Chinese preference was neither monolithic nor settled, so the general assumption that “Chinese people are loyal to China” in Indonesian politics of the colonial era should be revised.

What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese? Sojourn Work and the Place of China's Minority Nationalities in Extraterritorial Chinese-ness

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Vasantkumar
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Diaspora ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Chinese Nation ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiethnic Populations

This essay argues that to adequately answer the question its title poses, anthropological approaches to national and transnational China(s) must be grounded in the history of Qing imperial expansion. To this end, it compares and explores the connections between three examples of the “sojourn work” that has gone into making mobile, multiethnic populations abroad into Overseas Chinese. The first example deals with recent official attempts to project the People's Republic of China's multiethnic vision of Chinese-ness beyond its national borders. The second highlights the importance of the early Chinese nation-state in the making of Overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia in the first decades of the twentieth century. The final case foregrounds the late imperial routes of nascent Chinese nationalism to argue that, in contrast to much of the current rhetoric on the Chinese “diaspora,” national and transnational modes of Chinese community emerged together from the ruins of the Qing empire. Together the three examples point to the need to question the usual ways scholars have conceptualized (Overseas) Chinese-ness.

The Kuomintang-Communist United Front in Malaya during the National Salvation Period, 1937–1941

1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Leong
Keyword(s):  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
United Front ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
National Salvation

While it can be accepted that the politics of the hua-ch”iao or overseas Chinese in Malaya during the pre-war period generally reflected the politics of China (overseas Chinese responses to such events as the Chinese Revolution of 1911, the Twenty-One Demands of 1915, the May Fourth Incident of 1919, the Tsinan Affair of 1928 and the Mukden Incident of 1931 strongly substantiate this), this quality of hua-ch”iao politics can give rise to misleading assumptions regarding other events. The Kuomintang (Nationalist)–Communist united front during the Sino-Japanese War is a case in point.

scholarly journals The changing political identity of the "Overseas Chinese" in Australian Politics

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Chongyi Feng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Australian Society ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
National Values ◽  
Party State

This paper explores the role played by the Chinese communities in the Australian politics of multicultural democracy from the perspective of political socialisation and resocialisation. It argues that there is no such a thing as inherent “cultural values” or “national values” that differentiate ‘the Chinese” politically from the mainstream Australian society. This paper focuses on the Chinese nationalism of Han Chinese migrants in Australia. Within the “new mainland migrants” who have come to Australia directly from the PRC since the 1980s, nationalism is much weaker among the Tiananmen/ June 4 generation who experienced pro-democracy activism during their formative years in the 1980s. Nationalism is much stronger among the Post-Tiananmen Generation who are victims of the “patriotism campaign” in the 1990s when the Chinese Communist party-state sought to replace discredited communism with nationalism as the major ideology for legitimacy.

Kissinger and the Limits of Power

Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
Ralph Buultjens
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
World War ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
White House ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Rare Opportunity

In the early 1970s the international relationships that had been frozen since soon after World War II showed signs of decongealing. Sensing the historical moment, the Nixon administration aspired to be both the catalyst and the beneficiary of this time of rare opportunity. As national security assistant and then secretary of stale, Henry Kissinger was uniquely situated to participate in, shape, and observe these efforts. The first volume of his memoirs, White House Years, detailed his part in the early Nixon period, January. 1969, to January, 1973. Now he continues the story in a weighty second volume. Years of Upheaval (Little. Brown; 1,283 pp.; $24.95) takes us from 1973 to the Nixon resignation in August, 1974.

“Chinese, but not quite”: Huaqiaoand the Marginalization of the Overseas Chinese

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Soon Keong Ong
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
State Building ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
World War ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Chinese Nation

Abstract This article reflects on the representations of overseas Chinese in Chinese political and popular discourses from the late Qing to World War II. It argues that contrary to prevalent views, which credit the success of the Chinese nationalist discourse in mobilizing the overseas Chinese to their re-incorporation into the Chinese nation, extraterritorial Chinese nationalism depended not so much on the rhetoric of inclusion, but rather on the separation of the overseas Chinese as a sub-ethnic group, particularly after they were “rebranded” as huaqiao, or Chinese sojourners. This analysis begins by looking at the key reasons for Chinese political activists’ newfound interest in the diasporas — in soliciting huaqiao contributions to China’s state-building projects — and argues that they imbued huaqiao with certain positive qualities only insofar as these made them relevant to China. The truth is, prejudices against the emigrants have persisted and Chinese within China continue to view huaqiao as uncouth, uncultured, and even “unChinese.”

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