THE FUTURE OF THE OVERSEAS CHINESE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
By Lea W. Williams
McGraw-Hill, New York
1966, 143 pp., US$5.50
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
It is estimated there are more than 12 million overseas Chinese, most of them in Southeast Asia. One of the widely circulated canards is that these overseas Chinese are, as the author of this study puts it, "woven into a giant subversive net ready to paralyze and conquer Southeast Asia on command from Peiping". These reports, he hastens to add, are inaccurate. The reports even enter into the debate on the American policy regarding relations with Communist China. One of the commonly cited justifications for nonrecognition of Peiping is the argument that the Chinese abroad would be swayed toward Red China by a change in American policy.
This aspect of the overseas Chinese influence is one of many discussed in this fourth volume in the series "The United States and China in World Affairs", sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations through a grant from the Ford Foundation. The project is guided by a Steering Committee headed by Allen W. Dulles. The author of this volume, Dr. Lea W. Williams is an associate professor of government and director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Brown University. From 1944 to 1948 he was in the U.S. Foreign Service in China. In 1952 and 1953 he was a member of a research team in Indonesia and he spent 1961-1962 as a visiting professor of history at the University of Singapore. He is also the author of Overseas Chinese Nationalism published in 1960.
The overseas Chinese have attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars and journalists in recent years. Dr. Williams suggests that "no other population in Southeast Asia has received such substantial and sustained attention." Much of what has been written, he adds, is nonsense. The fact is, he insists, that the overseas Chinese are anything but monolithic in their loyalties and orientations. The term, "overseas Chinese", he points out, is not satisfactory. The Chinese phrase hua-ch'iao, which means Chinese sojourning abroad, is more precise. It indicates that the expatriates are linked to China in a vague emotional way and in a more practical way to Chinese culture. The overseas Chinese, the author explains, "regards himself as a result of his own or his forebears' economic striving. He is a member of the overseas Chinese people, which in turn are part of the greater Chinese nation, and is so regarded by those around him."
The chapter entitled "The Maneuvers of the Communists and the Nationalists" is of special interest to Taiwan. The Nationalists, Dr. Williams writes, "carried to Taiwan a tradition of concern for the Chinese abroad. Since 1911 no major Kuomintang statement of purposes and principles has ignored the overseas Chinese." Taiwan emphasizes, he adds, that it is the custodian of Chinese culture and tradition. There is no doubt in his opinion that the policy of inviting overseas Chinese to return to Taiwan for such holidays as the Double Tenth, the policy of providing scholarships for overseas Chinese students, the urban vigor of Taipei and the prosperity of the countryside have been effective. He adds: "On the island itself the climate of confidence and the sense of progress strike all visitors. Life appears normal; the future not without hope. Above all, the Nationalists earnestly work to win over overseas Chinese hearts."
After analyzing the causes and signs of change among the overseas Chinese, it is the author's conclusion that the present tendency is toward political assimilation in their adopted countries. Such assimilation, he believes, will mean a more stable Southeast Asia and fewer worries for the United States. He suggests that the United States should indirectly encourage assimilation.
His concluding words are significant. He writes:
"For the Chinese, as well as for the other people of Southeast Asia, American support of those striving for independence and growth can be vital. Without that support, there can be only halting progress toward political maturity. The greatest American gift to the area would be time to seek solutions to internal difficulties. The overseas Chinese have much to contribute, but denied an opportunity, they cannot serve."
This is a timely and a thoughtful book. It deserves attention, both in Asia and in the Western world.
LOVE AND HATE IN CHINA
By Hans Koningsberger
McGraw-Hill, New York
1966, 150 pp., US$3.95
Reviewed by William Chou
Hans Koningsberger is a Dutch national living in New York. He waited four years for a mainland visa, then entered the mainland from Russia and departed via Hongkong. After reading his book, the reader who is knowledgeable about the Chinese Communists may conclude that he would have done better to stay home. The best that can be said is that (1) he is prejudiced against the Republic of China, (2) that he is exceedingly naive about Red China, and (3) that he has scant knowledge of Chinese culture and history.
These are some "Koningsbergerisms":
—"Or, for that matter, can anyone in the West fathom how hated foreigners really were, all of us, the sweet missionary and the understanding Pearl Buck-type writer, and how hated we still are—and not the least by those Chinese who need us (always an unforgivable relationship), from the Hong Kong Hilton busboys to Chiang Kai-shek." He sounds as though he interviewed only Red Guards—or Boxers!
—Shanghai has changed—"yet it would seem one has to be pretty thick-skinned or just plain dull-witted to long back for that repulsive and sad hodgepodge of gangsters, refugees, and whores, which made up Shanghai's fame". And when did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Koningsberger?
—After a walk back to his Shanghai hotel: "In the warm, dark night the wide-walks were sprawling with people, lying on mats, sitting on little chairs, children running through it all, in every state of dress and undress ... a crowd of men and women secure in their food, work, and way of life, but without-property ... " In other words, a Utopia with everything except a place where people can lay down their heads.
—"Among the shoppers are quite a number of pretty girls and women; but also among the coolies dragging their carts are girls who are still pretty. I saw a ragged young woman one evening huddled on an empty cart under a tree, waiting to catch her breath. No one paid any attention to her. She had a face of pure classic beauty." Another fine advertisement for the worker's paradise!
—"Chiang Kai-shek, discredited, had actually already resigned as president while still in China ... " Chiang Kai-shek temporarily withdrew from the presidency in the vain hope a compromise could be worked out with the Communists. This, incidentally, was a compromise advocated by the United States at the time.
—Chiang's "government now publishes the wildest hate-(Red)-China diatribes and says it would welcome American bombs on Chinese towns ... " Oddly enough; here in Taipei, the present seat of the government of the Republic of China, neither diatribes nor invitations to American bombings can be found. There is intent to overthrow Communism's leaders. But the people of the mainland are the kith and kin of nearly 2 million of the Chinese on Taiwan. The last thing these Chinese want is any irresponsible slaughter and destruction on the mainland.
—"If we wanted to be sensible (a big if), we could without effort switch to a well-nigh perfect Roman phonetic alphabet of twenty-six letters and four accents for pitch, now designed by the Chinese themselves." The Chinese Communists designed it and they are stuck with it. They have virtually abandoned attempts to force it on the mainland people.
—"Hong Kong ... made China, with all the many bounds put on the inhabitants there, seem orderly and moral, and in spite of China's poverty, it made it seem glamorous." Admitting that Hongkong is not China at its best (the author attests that Hongkong is not Chinese), he still might have mentioned that some 2 million people have fled to the colony to escape the oppression of the mainland.
In fairness, Koningsberger does not find everything perfect. But to make up for his discernment of a few faults, he repeats all the old bromides: happy, enthusiastic, hardworking people; no flies and mosquitoes; cleanliness and respect for human life; the noble peasant entering the modern world. He also, strangely, has sought to create a "Chinese-hate-Americans" myth largely based on racism. He hasn't yet found out that when the Chinese feel racist, they think of themselves as superior and not inferior.
His picture of an Asia waiting to lash out at the white man to make up for centuries of colonial enslavement and abuse is distorted. Asia has dislikes and hates. However, there is no anti-white phobia. The Chinese Communists have attempted to whip up such hatred without success. Individual Westerners—many of whom are boorish and uncouth, and poor representatives of their countries and their culture-are disliked and resented in Asia, just as they are in their own lands. Other Westerners may be liked and admired.
What is good about this book? Koningsberger is a person of sentiment and at times an acute observer. He writes with beauty. For example:
"Sight-seeing from a Chinese train window is most satisfactory. It means, for once, observing without being observed, no one to provide commentary, and unlimited cups of tea in the process. Views glide by, almost painfully allusive, as if arranged by an art editor: a little girl in a bright red dress, playing all alone in a vast, empty, green and silvery rice field; three old men bathing in a muddy stream under the broken arch of a brick bridge; a man sitting by himself by a little three-legged stool on a hill amidst a new planting of pine saplings; a cluster of people around a new irrigation pump, painted bright blue—they are just staring at it, and the pump isn't working yet; a young woman in calf-length purple slacks, holding a naked infant by the hand, a hat dangling down its neck, and walking along a dike away from the train tracks, with no visible destination within miles."
Then he shows ignorance in complaining that the noisiness of people in the diner was "very un-Chinese". He liked Chinese food. He also should know that when consuming it in public, the Chinese make a great deal of noise—and apparently drown out the propaganda loudspeakers that are standard equipment on mainland trains. Even Koningsberger's disposition to be friendly did not prevent him from silencing his speaker in one minute.