Deportation of “Undesirable” Chinese in the Philippines, 1837–1882

Between 1837 and 1882, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines deported “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, drunkards, unemployed, idlers, pickpockets, undocumented, and the “suspicious”—to various parts of the archipelago. Deportation, in this context, refers to the transportation or banishment of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the state to different far-flung areas of the islands or outside the colony but still within the Spanish empire. Deportation primarily served as a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate and improve the wayward lives of “criminals.” This paper examines the deportation of “undesirable” Chinese in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Using underutilized primary materials from various archives in Manila and Madrid, it interrogates the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing such individuals. It argues that while deportation served its punitive and reformative functions, Spanish authorities also used it to advance their colonial project in the islands. Chinese deportees formed part of the labor supply the state used to populate the colony’s frontier areas and strengthen its control over its newly-acquired territories.

A New Embassy from Taiwan: The Zheng Regime as Extraterritorial Arbiter of Ethnic Peace in Manila, 1662–1683

In 1662, shortly after conquering Taiwan, Zheng Chenggong wrote to the Spanish governor of Manila, threatening to invade the Philippines if the Spanish did not swear vassalage to his new regime. Although the Spanish refused, Chenggong died before he could carry out his threat, and his successor Zheng Jing wrote a second letter offering terms for peace. These exchanges provide some of the only surviving direct recordings of the Zheng leaders’ beliefs regarding the rights, responsibilities, and boundaries of “Chinese” identity, in particular the relationship between Sangleys and Chinese rulers. Both Zhengs claimed rulership over Manila’s Chinese, but where Zheng Chenggong stated a right to direct rule over this population, Zheng Jing compromised by requesting changes to the Spanish laws which governed his “subjects” in the Philippines. These demands recall modern notions of citizenship and extraterritoriality, and provide a rare contemporary Chinese perspective on colonial Manila’s policies of ethnic segregation. The Zheng state’s active pressure, by contrast to Ming and Qing emperors’ customary disinterest in overseas Chinese, forced the Spanish to reduce their oppression of and reliance on the Chinese, but this also involved expelling thousands of migrants and enforcing long-ignored legal limits on immigration. I argue that this period of conflict clarified the Spaniard’s notion of where chinos fit into their empire’s particular ethno-legal system. This episode thus shows how the Chinese experience in the Philippines was shaped not just by European attitudes, but also by the nature of the Sangleys’ political links to China.

Chinese Capital as a Cultural Object: Self-Identification and Filipino-Chinese Discourses on Sinicization, Brokerage, and Distinction

Our article analyzes how Chinese capital inflows in the Philippines shape the self-identification of Filipino Chinese. Through a discursive analysis of five Filipino Chinese social media groups, which comprise at least 25,000 members, we argue that comment writers in Filipino Chinese groups readily interpreted Chinese capital in the Philippines, particularly in relation to the South China Sea disputes, Rodrigo Duterte’s rapprochement with China, Xi Jinping’s Philippine visit, and the rise of online gambling, through the prism of culture-based idioms. We find three contradictory discourses. First, there is a discourse of Sinicization that defines Filipino Chinese through a singular definition of Chineseness. Second, a discourse of brokerage has emerged, wherein Filipino Chinese positionality is represented by a synthesis of Chinese, Filipino, and Western identities. Finally, a discourse of distinction has also grown, framing Filipino Chinese as different from the mainland Chinese and the Filipinos.

Infodemics and Deadly Racist Viruses: covid-19 Response in the Chinese-Filipino Community

In the last decade, the Philippines has experienced an escalation of anti-Chinese sentiment due to many factors, founded and unfounded. The growing presence of illegal immigrants and crimes associated with them; an increase in the number of Chinese workers, who are perceived as competing with Filipino workers; an increase in Chinese businesses, especially in retail, some operating without permits; the continuing dispute between China and the Philippines over the islands in the West Philippine Sea; President Rodrigo Duterte’s China pivot policy and what has been deemed as favoring China to the detriment of the Philippines. This confluence of events has served to worsen the image of China. The covid-19 pandemic and the way the government responded to it worsened the sinophobia directed at anyone considered “Chinese,” including Filipinos of Chinese ancestry. This paper explores the racism vented against the Chinese and how the local Chinese-Filipino community has responded with positive action to help mitigate the anti-Chinese wave.

The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama: Lessons in History, Identity, and Culture, and Interconnections with the Chinese in the Philippines

The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama have had long histories of migration dating back to the nineteenth century, when British and Spanish colonial powers started to bring them to the Caribbean and Latin America from Guangdong province. The primary goal was to provide labor for the sugar cane, guano, bird nest, gold and silver mining, and other industries. In the 1870s, Havana could boast of having the largest Chinatown in the Caribbean, with more than 10,000 Chinese. Today, it has fewer than 100 Chinese Cubans. Trinidad and Tobago’s population of Chinese waned after the nineteenth century, but many Trinidadians have some Chinese ancestry, while Panama currently has the highest percentage (7 percent) of Chinese among Latin American countries. What stories, approaches, and lessons can be learned by comparing their histories to that of the Chinese in the Philippines? More specifically, how are the experiences of the Chinese in these three countries, whether citizen or recent immigrant, similar to those in the Philippines? What can we learn from the scholarship on the Chinese in the Caribbean that can help shape our own research agenda in studying the Chinese in the Philippines? Through a combination of historical and ethnographic research, this essay discusses the ways in which the identities of each Chinese diasporic community are being shaped by local and external forces, including China’s increasing presence in the region. This essay hopes to serve as a guidepost to Chinese diaspora scholars interested in examining further the transhemispheric connections between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.

Across, Between, and Beyond Nation States: Overseas Chinese Private Remittance Networks, 1850s–1930s

This paper examines the development of private remittance networks that came into being in response to the practice of migrants sending financial resources back to their families in China from 1850 to 1930s and analyses them through the lens of transnational space. It discusses the transnational space between the diaspora and the homeland and the structures that link them. My research has shown that these networks contributed to a space transcending national borders. The material comprising the basis of this research project includes newspapers from the diaspora, remittance letters and receipts, and reports conducted by the Taiwanese governmental institutions and secondary material focused on both emigrant home villages in China and communities in destinations. In the diasporic context, space is created through shared experiences of migrants, who are physically separated from their families but remain linked through networks such as the remittance trade.

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

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.