The Overseas Chinese—I WORLD’S BIGGEST MINORITY PROBLEM

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29272, 2 August 1960, Page 14

The Overseas Chinese—I WORLD’S BIGGEST MINORITY PROBLEM

(Bu

RODERICK McFARQUHAR,

, Special Correspondent of the "Dflily fho noerseaii Chines* in etoht

Tslsgraph,” who has lately visited the overseas Chinm in eipht countries in South-East Asia]

(Reprinted bv Arrangement)

Ever since the Communists reunited China 10 years ago. the nations of South-east Asia have been increasingly aware that a powerful and possibly expansionist Government in Peking could represent a threat to their newly won independence. Their disquiet has been increased by the presence within their boundaries of individually small but economically powerful Chinese minorities, minorities whose loyalties, in the opinion of many Asian leaders, lay with the land of their forbears and not their countries of residence. I have just returned from a tour of eight South-east Asian countries during which I attempted to assess what sort of a threat these minorities—the "overseas Chinese” or hua chiao—-do represent to the indigenous Governments, to find if they were in fact a potential fifth column for Communist China. Let me start by describing these minority communities, though the complexity of the issues involved makes every generalisation liable to half-a-dozen qualifications. There are ethnic Chinese minorities in every country of Southeast Asia, from Burma to the Philippines. Their exact numbers are difficult to ascertain because of the paucity of census data and the complications of naturalisation and intermarriage. Indeed, as one American scholar has put it, “being a Chinese is, in South-east Asia, essentially a matter of selfidentification.” Economic Power In nearly every one of the eight countries I was given differing estimates by Chinese and nonChinese, the former trying to minimise and the latter to magnify the scope of the problem. The total probably lies somewhere between 10 million and 12 million. They are unevenly distributed. They range in numbers from a few thousand in Laos to perhaps 3 million in both Indonesia and Thailand, and in proportion from about half a per cent, of total population in Laos to almost 38 per cent, in Malaya. Singapore, of course, is a Chinese city with small Malay and Indian minorities. But, except in Malaya, it is the economic power of the Chinese community and not its physical size that worries the indigenous inhabitants of South-east Asian countries. This power is difficult to estimate, particularly as Chinese entrepreneurs often shelter behind indigenous “dummy” proprietors to escape local penal regulations. But it is safe to say that in most South-east Asian countries, Chinese shopkeepers occupy a strong, often dominant, position in the retail trade, both in the towns and in the countryside. In the Philippines, before the passage of an anti-Chinese retail trade bill in 1954, the Chinese owned 36.6 per cent, of the retail trade assets and did 46 per cent, of the business according to official statistics; though some outside observers consider these figures considerably underestimate Chinese participation. For Thailand, I was given a guess of 70-80 per cent by an informed diplomat. Elsewhere I found it impossible to get even Government officials to offer figures; they restricted themselves to adjectives like “powerful” and "controlling.” Certainly the small Chinese general store is a common phenomenon throughout the rural areas of South-east Asia. The owner will keep his shop open till all hours, providing a valuable service to customers that his local rival is usually too lazy to emulate.

If a customer is financially embarrassed, the shopkeeper may lend him money or give him goods on credit. His own position is protected by the willingness of the Chinese wholesaler in the towns to give him virtually limitless credit. Among the Chinese one’s word is one’s bond, and the mutual trust that exists among the members of the community, often organised into chambers of commerce based on their regional origins in China, provides the cement of trading networks, both rural and urban, that the locals have found impossible to rival. Other aspects of Chinese economic power are a shade easier to estimate. In Thailand, they own 85 per cent, of the rice mills, over 40 per cent of the larger rubber plantations, and the majority of the smaller tin mines and sawmills. In the Philippines, in 1948, their holdings represented 20 per cent, of the investment in the timber industry, and 10 per cent in all other industry, including an 80 per cent, share in the growing cigarette industry. In Malaya they control perhaps 40 per cent, of the tin mining industry (the rest is British) and 25 per cent of the rubber. Forgotten Fortune Figures such as these imply great wealth; and, indeed, all over South-east Asia, and particularly in Malaya and Singapore, the most dynamic members of a dynamic race have accumulated great fortunes. A British trader told me of a Singapore businessman whom he had heard casually informing his business manager of a bank account of his he had discovered in a small foreign country. "I’d forgotten I had it” he said. “Was there much in it?” his manager asked. “No, not much,” was the reply. “Only £175,000.” But. of course, the vast majority of Chinese are small traders, often quite poor, though better off relatively than their native competitors- In some countries, notably Malaya, Indonesia, and Thailand, Chinese have provided much of the labour in particular industries such as tin-mining Here and there one will find Chinese peasants, but they are the exception. The Immigrant Chinese, with their ample experience of back-breaking toil in the fields of their native land, have been only too glad to leave cultivation to the local inhabitants and to make an easier living out of commerce. Another important factor behind this occupational specialisation is that the orginal Chinese immigrants were looking for quick profits which they would then take back home and invest in

land. Investment in land abroad would have meant, above all. psychologically, a commitment to an alien country which even after several generations of residence, few Chinese families were prepared to make. The question arises: why did the Chinese, with their enduring attachment to their native land which helps to make them such a problem today, ever emigrate? Why were they prepared to desert their native villages thus incurring the odium of leaving untended the graves of their ancestors? Why did they risk execution at the hands of the Chinese Imperial Government concerned to prevent the loss of its subjects? But Chinese did not go south in earnest until the alien Manchus overthrew the Ming in the middle of the seventeenth century. As the English scholar, Victor Purcell, points out, the general unsettlement of the times led the inhabitants of the provinces nearest the nan yang, Fukien and Kwangtung, to seek refuge abroad. The growth of trade attendant on the arrival of the Europeans was another encouraging factor. Flight from Poverty As the Manchus imposed order in China, the more settled conditions led to a rapid growth of population. More emigrants went abroad to escape the poverty resulting from the increasing pressure on the land. Often they faced persecution from the new European masters of South-east Asia, who feared their growing economic power. But mostly the Europeans treated the question of Chinese immigration fairly casually. They were glad to make use of hard-working Chinese coolies and during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries immigration increased rapidly. The Chinese communities of South-east Asia became problems largely because they became communities. In the early years of Chinese migration, when mainly men came, there was considerable intermarriage and intermingling. But since about the turn of the century, when Chinese women began to come too in considerable numbers, Chinese have increasingly kept to themselves. Chinese separateness was encouraged by growth of Chinese nationalism after the 1911 anti-Manchu revolution and by the spread of Chinese education. The latter is very important. Even a Chinese firmly wedded to a foreign soil by long residence and business interests wishes his children to speak Chinese. There are exceptions, certainly. There are the descendants of the long-established families with considerable amount of local blood in their veins. There is inter-mar-riage to-day, though it mainly takes the form of a Chinese boy bringing an indigenous girl into the family and rarely that of a Chinese girl being lost to an. indigenous boy. And there are those who attempted to assimilate to the local elite and who speak Thai, English, or Dutch better than they do Chinese—if indeed they speak Chinese at all. But on the whole, the Chinese communities have been selfsufficient and aloof, interested only in getting on with their business, unconcerned with the political situation except in so far as it has affected their business.