"Chinese Migration and the Shaping of a Multicultural Southeast Asia"
Asian history is filled with stories of human movements. Earlier times saw people traversing land and sea for various reasons. Some in pursue of trade, others in search of greener pastures, yet others were forced to leave their homeland in search of refuge and safety. Among those who were on the move were the Chinese. Their presence in Southeast Asia prior to the era of Western Colonialism is evident through their distinctive communities and institutions such as settlements, temples and cemeteries. And over centuries of interactions with locals and indigenous people, new breeds of people also began to emerge, results of intermarriages between the Chinese and the indigenous people and other people. Hence the hybrid communities of Ming Huong, Peranakan, Baba-Nyonya, and Mestizo. But throughout all these, most of the Chinese community remained intact, and continue to be distinctive from other communities. The advent of colonialism and with it, the colonial economies saw the beginning of a new type of migration – which lasted from the mid-19thcentury to the mid-20th century. This new migration brought in unprecedented larger number of Chinese migrants, and consisted mainly of labourers for the plantation and mining sectors, with some new capitals, artisans, scholars as well as some political activists. This paper seeks to re-examine this new migration, to determine among others; how different were these migrations, and in what way they were a continuation of the old migration; and how the distinctive Chinese communities in each country contributed to the notion of multiculturalism in the new nation-states that emerged at the end of colonialism; and finally, how the new arrivals have added on to the existing hybridity that were remnants of the old migration process.
Prof. Dr. Danny Wong Tze Ken
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
University of Malaya
Prof. Dr. Thitinan Pongsudhirak
Director, Institute of Security and International Studies,
Chulalongkorn University
Prof. Dr. Danny Wong Tze Ken is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. He is also Professor of History at the Department of History where he teaches history of China and Southeast Asia. His research interests include the Chinese in Malaysia, China’s relations with Southeast Asia and History of Sabah. He was Director of Institute of China Studies at the same university. Prof. Wong was Visiting Professor at Peking University (2018), Visiting Yip (China) Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge University (2017-2018); Visiting Scholar at the Hakka College, National Central University, Taiwan (2017); and Visiting Professor at the Center for Integrated Area Studies, Kyoto University (2010). Among his publications are: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2020), Chinese Studies in Malaysia and Singapore in a Global Context (2019), One Crowded Moment of Glory: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2019), The Diaries of G.C. Woolley, Vol. 1: 1901-1907 (2015); Vol. 2: 1907-1913 (2016) & Vol. 3: 1913-1919 (2018); and The Chinese Overseas in Malaysia in an Era of Change (2018).
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is the Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and Associate Professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. He was born in Thailand and grew up in a multilingual and multicultural background, attended high school and university in California, followed by post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics where he obtained his Ph.D. with a dissertation on the political economy of the 1997 Thai financial crisis was awarded the UK’s Best Dissertation Prize in 2002. Thitinan has held visiting positions at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Stanford University, Yangon University, Victoria University in New Zealand, and University of Tubingen in Germany, and currently serves on several editorial boards of academic journals. He has authored a range of articles, books, book chapters and over 1,000 op-eds in mass media such as The Bangkok Post, The Straits times, Nikkei Asian Review, South China Morning Post, International New York times, Project Syndicate, and Financial Times. His sought-after views have appeared in international media including CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Aljazeera, and others. Thitinan often provides briefings and lectures to business conferences, diplomatic missions, and universities abroad on the domestic politics, geopolitics and geoeconomics of Thailand and ASEAN. In 2015, he was awarded a prize for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia; in March 2018, he was appointed ASEAN@50 Fellow by New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade; and in May 2019, he was selected as Australia-ASEAN Fellow at Sydney’s Lowy Institute.
Prof. Dr. Danny Wong Tze Ken
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
University of Malaya
Prof. Dr. Danny Wong Tze Ken
is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. He is also Professor of History at the Department of History where he teaches history of China and Southeast Asia. His research interests include the Chinese in Malaysia, China’s relations with Southeast Asia and History of Sabah. He was Director of Institute of China Studies at the same university. Prof. Wong was Visiting Professor at Peking University (2018), Visiting Yip (China) Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge University (2017-2018); Visiting Scholar at the Hakka College, National Central University, Taiwan (2017); and Visiting Professor at the Center for Integrated Area Studies, Kyoto University (2010). Among his publications are: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2020), Chinese Studies in Malaysia and Singapore in a Global Context (2019), One Crowded Moment of Glory: The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the 1943 Jesselton Uprising (2019), The Diaries of G.C. Woolley, Vol. 1: 1901-1907 (2015); Vol. 2: 1907-1913 (2016) & Vol. 3: 1913-1919 (2018); and The Chinese Overseas in Malaysia in an Era of Change (2018).
Prof. Dr. Thitinan
Pongsudhirak
Director, Institute of Security and International Studies,
Chulalongkorn University
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