Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, and Ideas from China Are Changing a Region PDF
Preview Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, and Ideas from China Are Changing a Region
Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia 9780295999296_print.indd 1 9/21/16 5:08 PM 9780295999296_print.indd 2 9/21/16 5:08 PM Chinese ENCOUNTERS in Southeast Asia How People, Money, and Ideas from China Are Changing a Region Edited by Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan Foreword by Wang Gungwu University of Washington Press | Seattle and London 9780295999296_print.indd 3 9/21/16 5:08 PM Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia was made possible by support from IRASEC (www.irasec.com). This publication also was supported by the Donald R. Ellegood International Publications Endowment. Copyright © 2017 by the University of Washington Press Printed and bound in the United States of America Composed in Minion Pro, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach 21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. University of Washington Press www.washington.edu/uwpress Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nyíri, Pál, editor. | Tan, Danielle, editor. | Container of (work): Nyíri, Pál. Investors, managers, brokers, and culture workers. Title: Chinese encounters in Southeast Asia : how people, money, and ideas from China are changing a region / edited by Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan ; foreword by Wang Gungwu. Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016027761 | ISBN 9780295999296 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780295999302 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Southeast Asia—Relations—China. | China—Relations—Southeast Asia. | Southeast Asia—Civilization—Chinese influences. | Chinese—Southeast Asia. Classification: LCC DS525.9.C5 C54 2017 | DDC 303.48/259051—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027761 The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ∞ 9780295999296_print.indd 4 9/21/16 5:08 PM Contents Foreword by Wang Gungwu vii List of Abbreviations xi Introduction: China’s “Rise” in Southeast Asia from a Bottom-Up Perspective Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan 3 Part 1. Identities 1. Investors, Managers, Brokers, and Culture Workers: How Migrants from China Are Changing the Meaning of Chineseness in Cambodia Pál Nyíri 25 2. Multiplying Diversities: How “New” Chinese Mobilities Are Changing Singapore Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Weiqiang Lin 42 3. Translocal Pious Entrepreneurialism: Hui Business and Religious Activities in Malaysia and Indonesia Hew Wai Weng 58 Part 2. Livelihoods 4. Border Guanxi: Xinyimin and Transborder Trade in Northern Thailand Aranya Siriphon 79 5. Ambivalent Encounters: Business and the Sex Markets at the China-Vietnam Borderland Caroline Grillot and Juan Zhang 97 9780295999296_print.indd 5 9/21/16 5:08 PM Part 3. Norms 6. Entangling Alliances: Elite Cooperation and Competition in the Philippines and China Caroline S. Hau 119 7. Chinese Enclaves in the Golden Triangle Borderlands: An Alternative Account of State Formation in Laos Danielle Tan 136 8. “China in Burma”: A Multiscalar Political Economy Analysis Kevin Woods 157 9. Water Governance in the Mekong Basin: Scalar Trade-offs, Transnational Norms, and Chinese Hydropower Investment Oliver Hensengerth 174 Part 4. Aspirations 10. “Search for Knowledge as Far as China!” Indonesian Responses to the Rise of China Johanes Herlijanto 195 11. Stimulating Circuits: Chinese Desires and Transnational Affective Economies in Southeast Asia Chris Lyttleton 214 Glossary 235 References 237 Contributors 271 Index 275 9780295999296_print.indd 6 9/21/16 5:08 PM Foreword Wang Gungwu Relations between Southeast Asia and other interested powers, most notably China, are quickly changing. Some events cause alarm bells to ring in state capitals, distracting attention from developments occurring at nonstate levels that might produce significant social, economic, or cultural changes. In this volume of rich empirical studies, the authors seek to understand what is happening on the ground in Southeast Asia by paying attention to recent Chinese commercial initiatives and their impact on local societies and enterprises. In the introduction, volume editors Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan highlight a bottom-up perspective and provide a succinct and persuasive case for a fresh look at new Chinese ventures. Of particular interest are initiatives in mainland Southeast Asia of entrepreneurs from China and the Chinese diaspora who are opening up remote border areas and bringing agents of different hues to these zones. Are the local responses of the multiplicity of mountain peoples harbingers of modernization or not? Regardless, these activities are helping the states of Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam to consolidate their hold over often inaccessible areas. How these efforts affect future interstate relations, particu- larly those with China, will be of growing interest to neighbors throughout Southeast Asia. There is a case for taking a longer perspective on regional change where the agency of the Chinese is concerned. The contributions in this volume foreground two questions surrounding Chinese engagements with Southeast Asia: who defines what is Chinese, and can old and new ideas of statehood coexist? When I first wrote about the “Nanyang Chinese” in 1958, I was struck by the way China’s officials in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties described their subjects who traded to the south, especially those who had gone abroad without approval. Among the harshest were terms referring to these people as outlaws, bandits, and pirates from the Min-Yue (Fujian and Guangdong Provinces). There was no word for them as “Chi- nese” (or its equivalent in different languages), the name that other groups vii 9780295999296_print.indd 7 9/21/16 5:08 PM viii Foreword used as a generic term for people from that large empire. The Qing intro- duced the culture-based term Hua, which could include Manchu and Han. At the end of the nineteenth century, faced with new ideas of national iden- tity, the ending qiao (“sojourn”) was added to help all Hua in the Nanyang (Southern Sea) to see themselves as sojourners temporarily living abroad but no less subjects of the empire. Until then, these trading peoples from southern China had thrived in a terrain without clear borders. The Chinese state was not greatly interested, and local kingdoms and European colonial and trading authorities found merchants from China, who, most of the time, cooperated profitably, useful. Different Chinese communities thus learned to look after themselves locally. When they wanted to extend their activities, they did so through a variety of tightly knit networks. During the twentieth century the Republic of China, and later the People’s Republic of China, affirmed that all Chinese should be treated as a single group of Nanyang Huaqiao. These disparate communities, given a distinct name, were identified by the government as belonging to the Chinese nation. The right to decide who is Chinese became increasingly political. By the 1950s the label “Nanyang Chinese” no longer described the Chinese in Southeast Asia. In the countries I knew something about—Indonesia, Malaya, Philippines, and Thailand—the differences among the population that was called “Chinese” seemed as great as their similarities. On the ground, even the various Chinese groups within Malaya were different from one another. A new kind of polity, the nation-state, was replacing the colonial state, which further underlined the difficulties the Chinese in the region faced thereafter. Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia draws attention to another feature of diversity throughout the region. As the countries made their transition to new sovereign states, even greater differences emerged when in the 1990s the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) achieved its regional identity with the addition of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. This called for new views concerning the future place of Chinese immigrants in these countries. Three of these countries have historical overland relation- ships with China, and Cambodia (like Thailand) has had significant overland (especially along the Mekong River) and maritime links. Through extensive fieldwork, several authors show that land borders may be no less open than maritime borders. Their contributions highlight phenomena that have been true for centuries but neglected in the scholarly literature, in part because the global forces of modernization depended more on transportation by sea. The 9780295999296_print.indd 8 9/21/16 5:08 PM Foreword ix fact that borderless oceans could determine the range and scope of a modern world economy in ways unknown before the eighteenth century led many to ignore overland connections. The essays in this volume thus point to something that the Chinese had never been seen to have done before. Under certain circumstances, as in the highlands of the northern Southeast Asian mainland, the Chinese could represent a force for modernization. On one side, typically viewed as posi- tive growth, are roads and railways, plantations and factories, fresh urban sites with the latest technical facilities. On the other are developments that are strikingly negative: innovative gambling centers, vicious crime, and mindless consumerism on an unheard-of scale, on top of the traditional vices of drugs, human trafficking, and alcoholism for which the region had been renowned. The difference is that this modern mix of activities now takes place in countries with internationally recognized borders. Concerned officials are quite aware of the role of a new wave of adventurers from China, as well as of other diasporic Chinese, in shaping these developments. How these realities consolidate control for the young states, and whether or not that consolidation will reinforce their boundaries, deserves closer attention. Exploring these themes may contribute additional insights into the nature of state building among new nations. The chapters on developments in island Southeast Asia are no less inter- esting in demonstrating the interactions resulting from a rising China and dynamic local economies. The Muslim Hui from northwestern China, for example, have added novel features to Chinese enterprise in Malaysia. Chi- nese princelings have reached out to their equivalents in the Philippines, and these partnerships illuminate innovative political dimensions in Sino- Filipino business cooperation. For the first time in centuries, Indonesian entrepreneurs seek to explore opportunities with Chinese in China that had been largely forgotten during the colonial era. Not least remarkable is how the unique multicultural identity of Singapore, and the exceptional relation- ship between China and Singapore, is being tested by local Singaporean Chinese responding to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of xinke (“new guests”) from the People’s Republic. Many scholars expected that the reemergence of a strong and prosperous China would usher in changes for Southeast Asia, not least for those of Chi- nese descent. But no one anticipated the speed and scale of China’s rise. Few could have predicted that new Chinese could enter the region in so many new ways. Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia provides a view of what has 9780295999296_print.indd 9 9/21/16 5:08 PM
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