Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the End of the 20th Century, by Gary G. Hamilton (ed.)

 

2: Localism and the Organization of Overseas Migration in the Nineteenth Century

Edgar Wickberg

 

Nineteenth Century Migration

By 1900 at least 3 million Chinese lived outside China, 90 percent of them in Southeast Asia. Overseas settlement was not a new story for the Chinese. Migration within Asia was centuries old. But nineteenth-century migration was much larger in volume than before, and it included several new destinations outside Asia. Between 1840 and 1900, an estimated 2.4 million Chinese traveled to Southeast Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and Australia/New Zealand. By century's end, the overwhelming number were still in Southeast Asia, but over 250,000 lived elsewhere: perhaps 30,000 in Australia/New Zealand, 90,000 in the United States, 15,000 in Canada, substantial numbers in Peru and Cuba, and smaller numbers in South Africa and parts of Europe. ₁ The other new development in Chinese overseas migration in the decades after 1850 was its jumping-off and return point, which increasingly came to be Hong Kong.

Why this great emigration push and why these destinations? In China by the nineteenth century a combination of internal and external pressures had become severe. Internally, three centuries of rapid and sustained population growth had put increasing pressure on the cultivable land stock of this basically agricultural country. Commerce had grown apace, but there was no breakthrough: An industrial revolution that might have given employment to displaced peasants did not happen. Added to this was a new external force: the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century brought an unwilling China into the capitalist world system. The combination of these internal and external pressures, and the growing inability of the Chinese government to handle them, led to severe dislocation, especially in coastal China. The Taiping Rebellion and other massive sociopolitical upheavals cost millions of lives and devastated large areas of East and Southeast China. Those who survived sought opportunity by migrating overseas.

Overseas opportunities–the new ones, at least–took the form of demand for large numbers of laborers to work in mines and plantations and to build railroads. In Southeast Asia, colonial rulers responded to the demands of industrialized economies elsewhere by attempting to become more systematic producers of goods for export–whether agricultural or mineral. In the Western Hemisphere, territorial expansion over continental land masses engendered huge railroad-building projects.

Two migration systems were designed to meet these demands (Sing-wu Wang 1978). One was the contract, or so-called "coolie labor," system, which supplied labor to plantations and mines, principally in Southeast Asia and Latin America. The other was the "credit ticket" system, used for most other kinds of migrants. In the first, laborers were recruited on contract to work for specific time periods; their passage to and from the work-site country was paid by the contractor. Non-Chinese were usually the ultimate contractors in the country of destination, but Chinese usually served as the immigration brokers and recruiters on the China coast. This trade, which flourished from 1840 to 1870, led to shameful abuses: recruitment by deception, high mortality rates aboard overcrowded ships, and ill treatment in the country of destination. The Chinese themselves contemptuously called it a "pig trade." Eventually, through international negotiation, the trade came to an end. Although this form of migration carried a large portion of the migrants for a time, it served only certain areas of the Diaspora, and, over the whole nineteenth century, more migrants went via the credit ticket system. In this system a prospective employer or relative–the latter frequently already overseas–paid for ship passage, which was to be worked off after arrival at the new destination. In addition to these two major migration systems, a third method, chain migration, is often mentioned. In this version, a single male member of a family who had established himself abroad sent for a teenaged son or nephew or took one back with him after one of his own periodic visits to China; or, alternatively, an old emigrant returned to his native village to recruit new migrants (Chan 1986: 11-12; Wickberg 1965: 172).

Mention of the family recalls how important kinship–and home locality–were to the overseas migration of Chinese. Migration–even within China itself (and there was a long history of that)–was a common strategy used by families to cope with hard times or improve family fortunes. Within China, single males migrated and sojourned elsewhere, then commonly sent back remittances. Migration might be to nearby towns or to near or distant cities. Thus, within China, a basic pattern was set–one of single-male rural-to-urban movement, sojourning, and remittance sending. Moreover, once in an alien environment, it was localism, or common native-place ties, that drew together sojourners from the same place into mutual aid organizations (Honig 1992: 7; Rowe 1984: chap. 7). These two patterns were repeated for most migrants overseas right up to the post-World War II era. overseas migration usually occurred from rural China to an urban site overseas.

Most Chinese overseas migrants of the nineteenth century were rural peasants from the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong on the southeast coast of China. These people had a long history of migration within China and especially overseas. The latter was an outgrowth of their local economies. Arable land was in short supply and population was crowded on it. Hence, overseas trade went back many centuries. As a Fujian gazetteer put it, "The fields are few but the sea is vast; so men have made fields from the sea" (Cushman 1993; frontispiece). Asian and non-Asian traders had long visited Fujian and Guangdong ports; and seagoing junks from these provinces ranged up the coast of China, east to Japan, and south and west to the Malay Peninsula and beyond. By the sixteenth century, about 10 counties in Fujian had developed a regular practice of overseas migration as a family and locality strategy. By the nineteenth century many localities had economies that were dependent on fishing, overseas trading, and remittances from family members overseas (Lin et al. 1993: 228; Ng 1983, 1990; Skinner 1957: 123-24; Wickberg 1965: 71 n., 172, 226-27; Zhuang 1958).

Families were not the only beneficiaries of overseas migration. In Fujian and Guangdong families were almost always a part of localized kinship organizations or lineages (zu). These were bodies of anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand members who shared descent from a common male ancestor. This ancestral principle was the basis of their corporate ownership of property, sponsorship of education and welfare for members, and ritual and other collective activities. By the nineteenth century, local lineages competed with one another for local prestige, wealth, and power (Freedman 1979: 341). Thus, though lineages did not necessarily finance overseas migration, the earnings of overseas members were of interest to them. ₂ A migrant overseas, having satisfied his obligations to his own family, might send additional surplus to be used for local amenities or assets that would benefit the lineage. Contributions to the construction of a new lineage ancestral hall might come from that source, as indeed they do in the 1990s.

In short, then, nineteenth-century overseas migration was not merely a short-term response to current demands; it was also an expansion of long-established practices for the families of coastal Fujian and Guangdong, the lineages to which they belonged, and the localities in which they lived. By the nineteenth century, many such localities had become "emigrant communities" (Chen 1940), heavily dependent upon remittances from members overseas. They were also centers of outward orientation and familiarity with the outside world. The peasants of these regions had, in effect, received preparation for life overseas through information brought back by family members or others from their locality.

A migrant left his village for a nearby port city. In earlier centuries, when emigrants traveled only on Chinese junks, ports of embarkation were numerous (Cushman 1993: chap. 2; Ng 1983, Ng 1990: chap 2; Skinner 1957: 41-42). But a new system came into being as a result of the Opium War. China's defeat in that war opened up the coast to Western trade and residence on terms essentially dictated by the victorious British. Five ports were to be opened by treaty (hence, the "Treaty Ports") to Western trade and residence. These now became centers of business development. Western square-rigged vessels–and later, by the 1870s, steamships–ran passenger lines from the Treaty Ports to Southeast Asia, which Chinese migrants now began to use. The Treaty Port cities were also a cultural twilight zone between the outside world and the Chinese interior. Their business methods and way of life were a mixture of Chinese and Western (Hao 1970; Hao 1986; Murphey 1974). As colonial cities simultaneously developed in Southeast Asia, along partly Western and partly Asian lines, there was a kind of commonality between them and China's Treaty Ports. Migrating Chinese who had been to a Treaty Port already had an idea of what they would encounter in a port city in Southeast Asia. Of the five original Treaty Ports–Shanghai, Ningbo (Ningpo), Fuzhou (Foochow), Xiamen (Amoy), and Guangzhou (Canton)–two (Fuzhou and Xiamen) became major ports for overseas migration. Fuzhou took the smaller number of emigrants who left from counties in Northern Fujian. Xiamen took the major flow of South Fujianese, or Hokkiens. Guangzhou's possible role was largely preempted by the establishment of Hong Kong.

 

Hong Kong: The Center of Demarcation

Added to the Treaty Ports was the new port of Hong Kong. The island of Hong Kong became a British possession in 1842 as a result of the Opium War. In subsequent years, the Kowloon Peninsula was added and, in 1898, and only by 99-year lease, the then rural New Territories were added. Hong Kong, now a free port, became both the major port on the South China coast and the transshipment and distribution point between Southeast Asian and East Asian trade. It was in this entrepôt role that Hong Kong flourished. So important did it become that ships carrying passengers and goods to one or another of the Treaty Ports almost invariably stopped at Hong Kong. Hong Kong was like a Treaty Port on a grander scale. It became a kind of home base and communications center for Chinese who had gone abroad. In Hong Kong the leading Chinese merchants set up a number of charitable institutions for the Chinese population. One of these, the Tung Wah Hospital, also took on the job of being the informal communications conduit between the Chinese Diaspora of the day and officials in China. When Chinese overseas donated money for famine relief and other causes in China, the Tung Wah collected the funds. When overseas Chinese leaders sought independent and informed Chinese advice on their affairs and China's, they found it at the Tung Wah. Elderly Chinese overseas who hoped to be buried in their native locality could be assured that the Tung Wah would handle it (Sinn 1989; Wickberg 1965: 216).

When a non-contract migrant went abroad, he typically began by working for someone else–either someone to whom he was indentured or else a relative. If all went well, this could be a kind of apprenticeship. After learning a trade, he might then be able to go out on his own. Working for oneself–not for others–was a characteristic desire of Chinese migrants. A job with less income might be preferable if it meant being one's own boss. If the employer were the owner of a large shop or other business in Southeast Asia (a towkay), he might give a line of credit and the opportunity to run a branch operation to the erstwhile apprentice.(Wickberg 1965: 72-74, 176). Whatever the case, much depended upon hard work, frugality, and good fortune. Though actually derived from their Southeast Asian experience, these virtues of hard work, frugality, and the associated dream of "rags to riches" became inscribed in the thinking of migrants as basic Chinese values (Abraham 1986; 13-14 especially). Few lived the story, but most dreamed it.

Whatever the outcome, a young migrant would at some point return to his home locality to find a bride. Leaving her to care for his parents, he would return to the "field," making periodic trips back to father children, some of whom (sons) would be brought overseas as teenagers. If his business prospered, he might at some point bring his wife and female children as well. But that rarely happened in the nineteenth century, partly because it was not the custom for women to emigrate. In fact, the few women in overseas Chinese societies were usually prostitutes.

In short, overseas Chinese societies of the nineteenth century were, in appearance if not in law, "bachelor societies." Remittances were sent to support families–wives, small children, and elderly dependents waiting in the "emigrant communities." But retirement to one's native locality in China was an ideal. If that could not be achieved in life, then, as indicated above, one's bones should be buried in home ground if financially possible. Chinese are a great migrating people but, paradoxically, also one with a strong sense of home place and a desire for rootedness.

 

Designation: Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, or the Nanyang (South Seas), was always the major destination for overseas migrants from China. Routes of migration in the nineteenth century were partly traditional but partly the result of modifications caused by economic and technological changes. Five regional and dialect-based groups of Chinese migrated to the Nanyang. The Hokkiens, from southern Fujian, were the earliest, settling in substantial numbers in Manila and Batavia (Jakarta) by the early seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century, members of the other four groups were also migrating. These were the Teochiu (Chaozhou) from eastern coastal Guangdong, the Hakka from highland regions in eastern Guangdong, the Cantonese from a dozen counties around and to the west of the Pearl River delta, and the Hailam, or Hainanese, from the island of Hainan off the Guangdong coast. Teochiu and Hakka exited via Swatow (Shantou) at the mouth of the Han River Delta, and Hainanese from ports on that island. Cantonese usually did not embark from Guangzhou; Macau had been the emigration port for some time before the nineteenth century. It continued for a time as a coolie trade port, but increasingly, general emigration business was taken over by Hong Kong.

In the countries of destination, the mix of Chinese regional groups varied from one place to another and changed with immigration flows. In 1800, the Chinese population in the Philippines was entirely Hokkien; by the end of the nineteenth century, there was a Cantonese minority of 5-l5 percent (Wickberg 1965: 22, 177, 179). In the nineteenth century, the Teochiu attained a majority position in Thailand, much ahead of the other four groups. Cantonese were the leaders in Cambodia (though overwhelmed by Teochius in the twentieth century) and dominated in Vietnam, despite a strong Teochiu presence (Willmott 1967: 17; Skinner 1957: 35-52). Farther west and south, leadership was less discernable. Hokkien continued to enjoy certain linguistic and occupational advantages since they had arrived first. But all five groups were strongly represented in Malaya, Singapore, and Indonesia. Burma's Chinese were Hokkien, Cantonese, and Yunnanese, the last of whom had immigrated across a land border. Everywhere, occupations tended to become monopolies, or a least areas of advantage for one group or another, though which groups dominated which occupations varied among countries. But these classifications were hardly static. Overseas, as in China, dialect-based and more localized groups competed, and sometimes fought, over economic opportunities and advantages.

The range of occupations and economic activities of the Southeast Asian Chinese was extremely broad, as was their contribution to the economies of the area. Besides working as laborers in the nineteenth century, the Chinese were engaged in the China-Southeast Asia trade at both ends. Within their countries of residence they were wholesalers and retailers. They imported and distributed goods from China and elsewhere, and they collected local produce for export abroad. They were a major force in retail trade at all levels. The leaders of local Chinese populations were also the most important merchants, whose activities might include coolie brokerage and revenue farming. This last meant contracting with colonial governments for the lucrative monopoly distribution of opium and alcohol products (Skinner 1996: 80-85; Trocki 1990). Besides these leaders, there were other merchants of descending size and importance. Chinese were also artisans and service providers. The business section of a Southeast Asian city looked very "Chinese." And guidebooks to Western trade in Southeast Asian ports generally listed the major merchants of the locale with whom the foreigner would be doing business–all Chinese (Chronicle and Directory 1873, 1891). In short, Chinese occupied a leading position in the urban economies and their urban-rural networks in Southeast Asian countries.

Although most Chinese were urban, there was an important rural element (Heidhues 1996). Mining and plantation work was, of course, non-urban. But Chinese were also independent farmers–from market gardeners around Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok to reclaimers of vast tracts of land in parts of Indonesia. Sometimes they worked together in large groups bound by brotherhood-type organizational ties. At other times they farmed as individual small freeholders. In the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia stressed crops for international markets. It was the Chinese who were often the innovators of cash-crop farming, developing such goods as sugar, pepper, gambier, and rubber. This aspect of Chinese enterprise appeared not only in Southeast Asia but was found also in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley region of California (Chan 1986). In Southeast Asia, urban and rural came together when urban merchants, most often Hokkien or Teochiu, financed and collected the crops that other Chinese farmers, often Hakkas, produced.

In the colonial parts of Southeast Asia, governments viewed the Chinese with some ambivalence. Governments made use of the Chinese at several levels: at the top, as revenue farmers and trading agents for governments, or at the bottom, as gang labor to develop mines and plantations. The entrepreneurial and general economic value of the Chinese was much appreciated, but at the same time, there was apprehension that the Chinese, if allowed their way beyond a certain point, would simply overwhelm, exploit, and marginalize the less aggressive and economically less sophisticated indigenous people. In some colonies, such as the Philippines and Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), colonial governments applied elaborate rules to restrict certain Chinese activities and limit their contact with non-Chinese. This did not always work as planned. The Dutch limited travel for Chinese in nineteenth-century Indonesia. But in the interests of state revenue, Chinese opium contractors were exempt, thus allowing them to establish long-distance opium distribution networks that became general trading networks (Rush 1990). The Spanish in the Philippines formally organized Chinese and non-Chinese into separate self-regulating bodies. But these broke down in the course of economic growth in the nineteenth century (Wickberg 1965: 30, 135). Beyond a certain point, too, self-governing Chinese were a threat to the late-nineteenth-century colonial goals of greater, more efficient territorial and administrative control. The Dutch fought a war to end the independence of Chinese settlers in West Kalimantan (Borneo). The Spanish allowed the rule of Chinese headmen (capitanes) over their fellows, but only with the intervention of a Spanish parish priest. In British Malaya and Singapore, brotherhoods ("secret societies") were brought under control and outlawed, and the independent power of the headman reduced thereby (Skinner 1996: 80-86; Trocki 1990: 161-182).

Local non-Chinese also viewed the Chinese with some ambivalence. They appreciated the innovative contributions of the Chinese in such areas as sugar-processing technology and double-cropping techniques for growing rice. In many regions Chinese were addressed by natives as "uncle," implying respect and perhaps even acceptance of a kind of tutorial relationship. ₃ In Vietnam, Chinese immigrants benefited by popular association with the Chinese culture, which was the model for Vietnamese government, and the Chinese language, the written language used by educated Vietnamese. Chinese theater was performed and appreciated by non-Chinese in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Farther south, by the last years of the nineteenth century, Chinese historical romances and novels were being translated for non-Chinese readers into Malay and Indonesian (Salmon 1987). But there was also resentment of Chinese economic preeminence and, as nationalism began to develop in Southeast Asia, a growing awareness of Chinese dependence upon colonial rulers for their advantageous economic position. In the Philippines, intsik, originally a form of respect when addressing Chinese, became a term of opprobrium. In anti-colonial risings, Chinese sometimes sided with the native peoples. But the feeling grew among the latter that Chinese could not be relied upon because their commitments were seen as strictly family and business related.

For their part, the Chinese brought to Southeast Asia not only their skills and experiences but also a set of Chinese cultural values as had developed in Southeast China by the nineteenth century. These centered on ancestral locality versions of Chinese familism, with emphasis on both ancestry by genealogy and by place. Family prosperity was a major goal and the means were family discipline and mutual support. But along with economic goals were cultural considerations, sharpened by contact with non-Chinese, whose apparent values could easily be contrasted, often negatively, with those the Chinese ascribed to themselves. Chinese brought their religions: Chinese Buddhism in the form of exclusively Buddhist temples and Chinese Popular Religion–a mixture of Buddhism and Popular Taoism–in the form of temples of syncretic religion. Local tutelary deities that protected specific "home" regions in Fujian or Guangdong were imported and given new mandates. But Chinese, in this as in so many other ways, were amazingly adaptable. In the Philippines, many Chinese converted to Catholicism, often identifying Catholic saints or manifestations of the Virgin with Chinese popular deities. Saints' feast days were celebrated with fireworks and Chinese musical groups on parade (Wickberg 1965: 193). In mainland Southeast Asia, where Theravada Buddhism was strong, Chinese easily adjusted their Mahayana version to fit or simply switched from one to the other. Islam, in Malaya and Indonesia, was more difficult. But some Chinese converted, at least nominally (Reid 1996: 45; Skinner 1996).

Most interesting of all, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, whatever their original intentions, were both sojourners and settlers (Reid 1996). Business was often too successful to abandon for a return to China. But there were also family considerations. Single, Chinese males and indigenous women regularly formed alliances, whether legitimized or not. This was a phenomenon dating back to at least the seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century important and distinct societies of local-born Chinese had developed, intermediate between the Chinese from China and the indigenes. These were locally adapted or creolized groups, and they were found in the Philippines, Indonesia, and British Malaya. The Mestizos of the Philippines, the Peranakans of Indonesia, and the Babas of Malaya had varying historical trajectories. The Mestizos, descendants of Chinese and Filipinas, acquired business skills and opportunities from their fathers but took their religion and much else, culturally, from their mothers. They were Catholic and attracted to Spanish culture, but identified themselves completely with the Philippines. During the nineteenth century they joined the rising Filipino middle class to form the new elite of the Philippines. They thus disappeared as a special class. Peranakans, whose culture was a mix of Indonesian and Chinese with Dutch overtones, remain as a separate, formally defined group down to the present. Babas blended Malay and Chinese with English overtones. They were a much smaller group than the Mestizos and Peranakans, and by the middle years of the twentieth century, they were disappearing. Classified as Chinese by governments, they were being reabsorbed into the Chinese community of Malaysia (Skinner 1996).

Thailand was a different case from those just related. The Chinese there were never part of a colonial society, and until the early years of the twentieth century, they enjoyed great freedom of movement and opportunity. The more successful Chinese were part of the Thai monarchy's business operations and its extensive trade and diplomatic relations with China. Successful Chinese in Thailand intermarried, assumed Thai names, and moved with and into the highest levels of Thai society. The Thai royal dynasty, established late in the eighteenth century, was itself of part-Chinese origin (Skinner 1957).

Of the Chinese in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia, then, we can say that they were deeply and creatively involved everywhere in local economy, society, and culture. They were economically salient as well as socially and culturally influential. But they were politically vulnerable, dependent on their usefulness to governments. Late in the century, as China began to show interest in the Chinese abroad, a way out of that problem seemed to appear. Chinese in Southeast Asia negotiated with China for the establishment of consulates to protect their lives and property in the face of rising anti-Chinese incidents. The Singapore consulate, established in 1877, soon became a consulate-general for all of Southeast Asia. Other consulates would follow in the twentieth century.

 

Destination: North America

The second great destination of the nineteenth century was North America, specifically, the United States and Canada. Here the historic, ethnic, and economic situations were totally different from those in Southeast Asia. In both locations, Europeans were taking over new territories and strengthening their control over them. But in the Southeast Asian case that had developed slowly over 200 years or more, the Chinese had acquired a strong position in regional and local economies. When Europeans introduced industrialism in the nineteenth century, the Chinese there were already in an entrenched position, with bases and networks in place to benefit from the new opportunities.

By contrast, in North America, the European frontier met the Chinese frontier on the West Coast of the continent in the 1850s. For a brief interval there were several places on that coast where Chinese were 20 percent or more of the population and an even larger proportion of the labor force (Chan 1986: 42-5l; Saxton 1971 3-18, 258; Wickberg et al. 1982: 49; tables 1, 5; Wynne 1964: appendices I, III, V, VIII). But that soon ended. As in Southeast Asia, the Chinese wished only to govern themselves and had no interest in governing non-Chinese. The Europeans, however, wished to control territory and all those in it, and so established European-style governments and laws, to which the Chinese became subject. Some of those laws limited Chinese immigration by excluding Chinese laborers (the American version); others established a head tax to achieve the same end (one Canadian version); and most governments also denied the franchise to all ethnic Chinese, thereby making it difficult for any changes in their favor to occur (Wickberg et al. 1982: chaps. 4-5). Clearly, from the viewpoint of the descendants of immigrants from European shores, Europeans were meant to control western North America, deciding whether or not and on what terms these useful but troublesome "strangers from a different shore" (Takaki 1989) could remain. In British Columbia, the denial of the franchise was shortly followed by rulings of professional societies: persons who could not vote could not qualify to practice dentistry, accountancy, or law in that province (Wickberg et al. 1982: 83). All across western North America, the Chinese were viewed as physically and culturally alien and economically threatening. European labor saw Chinese labor as undercutting them and pointed out the willingness of Chinese to act as strike-breakers in some cases. (There is, however, abundant evidence of Chinese forming their own labor organizations and going on strike because of unfair treatment [Lai 1980: 220; Saxton 1971: 9-10, 104, 215-18; Wickberg et al. 1982: 47, 50, 130-311.) Chinese were treated as a despised minority that could be ridiculed and mistreated without fear of reprisals from mainstream society.

The European frontier, which carried with it industrialism and Western legalism, thus nipped Chinese in the bud, limiting their numbers and making it impossible for them to secure toeholds in most sectors of the new order except for the lowest. As in Southeast Asia, the Chinese were imported because they were considered industrious. But in North America, their willingness to work cheaply came up against militant white labor, a situation for which there was no analogy in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was a more attractive frontier for Chinese. It was clearer and easier to get to, Chinese already had established a strong position there, and there was some hope that China's nearness might provide some protection for Southeast Asian Chinese. In the 1880s and 1890s, the new Chinese navy sent out warships to cruise that area (Wickberg 1965: 218-26). Nothing like that could have occurred along the west coast of North America. There, the Europeans could readily bring their economic and military power to bear once the railroads were built (Chan 1986: 39-42).

Ironically, it was Chinese who built much of the railroads that linked the United States and Canada and made it possible for European-derived economic and political power to prevent major Chinese influence on the economy. Railroad building was a second-stage activity of the Chinese immigrant tide. The first-wave members were gold seekers, who arrived in response to the strikes in California and British Columbia and the expectation of additional finds elsewhere in the American West. By the 1860s in the United States and the 1880s in Canada, industrialists recruited Chinese for railroad and other types of manual labor. This recruitment made use of the networks of Chinese already living in North America. Cantonese, who had come from the same dozen counties of Guangdong that had fed Southeast Asian emigration, now recruited other Cantonese, who departed, as had the previous emigrants, via Hong Kong or Macau. Although some came on contracts, the abuses were not comparable to those in Latin America.

But at the end of their contracts, the Chinese often were not sent back, thereby becoming a floating population that drifted to towns, cities, and farmlands, or areas of resource industries, looking for work. Chinese now became active in many stages of the farming, fishing, mining, and forest industries. Like many non-Chinese immigrants to the United States and Canada, they were sojourners at first, moving about from one region and one occupation to another. By the 1880s, they were moving east across the continent, establishing Chinatowns in places like Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, New York, and Boston, to join those already founded in San Francisco, Portland, Victoria, and Vancouver. Chinese occupations were myriad: market gardeners around towns and cities; restaurateurs; factory workers; miners; cowboys (and cooks for miners and cowboys); and the classic domestic occupations (laundryman and houseboy), all pursuits that neither competed with nor threatened white males. In the American South, the end of slavery brought a brief demand for Chinese plantation labor and led to a scattering of Chinese in that region. These Chinese, like those on the Canadian prairies, often became operators of general stores serving a diverse clientele. Wherever there were concentrations of Chinese, there were Chinatowns, and wherever there were Chinatowns, there were stores established to serve other Chinese, as well as laundries and tailoring shops that might serve non-Chinese (Chan 1986: 51-78; Lai 1980: 219; Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration 1885). The "rags to riches" dream was present, but unrealized–again, quite unlike Southeast Asia, where wealthy Chinese were beginning to appear by 1900. In North America the major merchants were major only in the small and mostly unimportant (California agriculture aside) "ethnic" economy of the Chinese. Leading merchants of Chinatowns imported goods from China only for other Chinese, not for the general public. They were not involved in the export trade to Asia.

The trend of Chinese settlement by 1900 was increasingly from rural to urban. Chinese who worked in the forests, on mining frontiers, or in fishing areas sometimes formed brotherhood organizations ("secret societies"), such as the Zhigongtong (Cheekongtong) in the gold rush settlement of Barkerville in British Columbia. The Zhigongtong organizations, related to the Hongmen tradition from which a variety of "secret societies" or "tongs" sprang up, attempted to control certain kinds of gang labor opportunities, as had similar societies in Malaya (Ownby and Heidhues 1993; Wickberg et al. 1982: 30-35, 92-93). But these societies moved to towns and cities in keeping with the rural-to-urban trend. In Hawaii, contract laborers from one county of Guangdong, brought to work on sugar plantations, completed their contracts and headed for Honolulu (Lai and Ueda 1990: 232). Similarly, Chinese in Peru headed for Lima as soon as they had fulfilled their plantation labor commitments (Wong 1978). Only the Chinese of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys remained in agriculture on a large scale, making major contributions to California's agriculture. Unlike Southeast Asia, where Chinese technological and organizational innovations were usually recognized, there is little evidence of such in North America. ₄

The Chinatowns that developed in the cities were quite unlike those in Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, Chinatown was the place where everyone shopped. In North America, it was where everyone gambled and sought opium (legal in North America until the early twentieth century). Until 1900, there were almost no Chinese women in North American Chinatowns. But unlike Southeast Asia, that did not result in a large number of intermarriages. By the 1880s, the trend was for Chinese to move from rural to urban sites. The more the Chinese retreated into Chinatowns from rural areas and small towns, the less contact they had with non-Chinese (Chan 1986: 404-07), and hence the less likelihood of intermarriage. In Southeast Asia, the indigenes were the majority of the population and they were constantly in touch with the Chinese. In North America, aboriginal people were a minority and rarely played an important role in Chinese lives. Given attitudes in the European majority, there was little intermarrying in that direction and no geographical concentration of those who did. The few "creolized" second-generation Chinese in North America who appeared in the twentieth century were the offspring of all-Chinese families and did not form a separate cultural group.

Chinatowns were the focal point of Chinese culture. North America was strictly a Cantonese frontier, so there were no dialect-based regional groups, although there were sub-dialect locality organizations. Language and culture were those of the seiyap (Four Counties) region of Guangdong. Chinese religion was expressed more often by shrines in homes and shops than by freestanding temples as in Southeast Asia. Christian churches directed some of their mission work toward local Chinese, who often responded positively. The English lessons taught by churches were often the initial attraction, but the social and religious dimensions of Christianity were also valued (Wickberg et al. 1982: 94-97, 122-28). In the late nineteenth century, anti-Chinese movements and incidents became common in western North America. Europeans tended to view the Chinese as acceptable only for jobs Europeans did not want. Otherwise, they were treated with scorn and ridicule. An abundance of stories documented supposed European superiority. Chinese were labeled "Chink" and "John Chinaman," with accompanying negative stereotypes. Racial and cultural stereotypes and economic and political history combined to produce a multitude of anti-Chinese incidents, many of them violent. These took place in cities, towns, and rural areas, from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver to Chico (California), Ashland (Oregon) and Rock Springs (Wyoming) (Chan 1986: 39-40, 58, 88; Lai 1980: 220; Saxton 1971: 6-l0; Wickberg et al. 1982: 62-63; Wynne 1964: 72, 97-98, and chap. 6).

There was little the Chinese could do to fight against this. North American governments, unlike those in Southeast Asia, derived little revenue or other direct economic benefit from the Chinese. Once major labor needs had been met in the 1880s, governments had little vested interest in protecting the Chinese. China established an embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1875 and a consulate in San Francisco, the latter's mandate informally including western Canada as well as the western United States. The Chinese ambassador to the United States had to deal mostly with Chinese labor and protection issues. Hence he was also put in charge of representing China in Peru and Spain (with reference to Cuba), where similar problems existed. Despite China's weakness and its distance from North America, Chinese diplomats achieved some successes in negotiation, notably indemnities to Chinese for the Rock Springs incident (Yen 1985: 224-234).

 

Settlement Patterns In The Early Twentieth Century

In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese overseas continued to settle increasingly in urban areas. Chinese women began to migrate and family reunions overseas had become common everywhere by the 1930s. In Southeast Asia, intermarriage declined somewhat but continued to be important. The children of all-Chinese families, and often mixed families, too (Indonesian Peranakans excepted), now underwent an experience of re-sinification. The larger number of families–and thereby children–in overseas Chinese societies and China's growing political interest in overseas Chinese led to the establishment of Chinese schools, in which the governments of China took a keen interest. Children of all-Chinese families and those of mixed background attended. The Southeast Asian schools were comprehensive, all-day affairs, teaching academic courses and occupational skills as well as Chinese language and culture. Increasingly they oriented the students toward a presumed future as citizens of a modernizing Chinese nation. By the 1930s, as Japan invaded China, China's leadership urged Chinese schools overseas to put the salvation of China ahead of their local concerns (Akashi 1970; Purcell 1965; Wang 1991: 198-200). Meanwhile, nationalist and independence movements were growing among the indigenous people of colonial Southeast Asia–movements with little room for the Chinese. Even in Thailand, where Chinese could elect to become Thai citizens, as was generally impossible elsewhere, Chinese and non-Chinese were growing apart.

In North America, as Chinese family life developed, much of it was centered on Christian churches. In the United States, the second generation, locally born, were thereby citizens who could claim rights as Americans, whether successfully or not, and could go to court to seek them. In Canada, citizenship (British Subject status) was more complex as to rights possessed and did not become clear-cut until the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 (Wickberg et al. 1982: 119, 181, 208-209). In any case, the relevant discriminatory laws were based on race, not nationality. Discrimination continued for both of these second-generation groups.

Theirs was a dual educational experience unlike anything in Southeast Asia. North America's Chinese schools were supplementary, not comprehensive. The after-school Chinese school taught only language and culture. During the normal school day, Chinese children interacted with non-Chinese peers, when they were not segregated. They learned the lessons appropriate to full status in North American society. In the after-school hours they learned, with other Chinese children, the lessons appropriate to their economic and social marginality. One had to learn Chinese language and cultural skills in order to fit into the jobs available to young ethnic Chinese, which were all in Chinatown. Their schooling thus provided lessons in the ideal by day and in reality by night.

Meanwhile, China pulled at the Chinese of North America as it did those of Southeast Asia. For many, a strong, modern China was seen as the only hope of improving opportunities for themselves abroad and for their families in South China. From the last years of the nineteenth century, governments in China increasingly sought to involve the Chinese abroad in the strengthening and modernizing of China. China's Citizenship Law of 1909 claimed ethnic Chinese everywhere as citizens of China. The term "overseas Chinese" entered official usage, implying ultimate political and other commitments to China. After 1912, the republican governments of China encouraged Chinese abroad to invest economically and participate politically in China. Some of China's political parties established branches abroad. Especially effective was the Kuomintang (KMT) of Sun Yat-sen, who was himself a Cantonese with an overseas Chinese background. Much money was raised in overseas Chinese societies in support of Sun's revolutionary movement and subsequent campaigns and causes. The KMT government of post-1928 China paid especial attention to overseas Chinese affairs, including support for overseas Chinese schools. By the 1920s and 1930s Chinese societies abroad were commonly divided into "left" and "right" factions, reflecting the politics of China itself (Wickberg et al. 1982: 74-77, and chaps. 8, 12, 14).

For many Chinese overseas, China's politics were a preoccupation and a kind of distraction. But they also made up one dimension of the reality of Chinese life abroad: uncertain political status wherever they were, which left them in a kind of limbo, caught for a prolonged period between China and their countries of residence. In some ways this problem was more acute for the Chinese of North America. Southeast Asian Chinese were educated in Chinese for a life in which Chinese was the key language of business and signs of Chinese economic salience and business success were everywhere. Discrimination and political marginality were at least partly offset by the fact of economic centrality. North American Chinese youth had the stark contradiction between the ideal and reality thrust in their faces. The language and culture they learned fitted them for a life in a small, marginal part of the economy. And they were just as marginal in every other way: socially, culturally, and politically. Small wonder, then, that when Chinese-American writers emerged after World War II, the historical question they had to address was one of marginality and its causes.

 

Conclusion: Chinese Migration Today

With this historical background, let us now "fast-forward" to the present. As the later chapters in this book will show in more detail, the overseas Chinese we see today are in sharp contrast to those just discussed. Although some are poor, a large number come with substantial assets, which include both money and skills. They arrive on jets from Hong Kong or some other jumping-off place. Although some seek merely reunion with families and have modest hopes of life-success, many come in order to advance careers that are already well begun. Such people need never be restricted to Chinatown and ethnic job-patronage methods of the old sort. Their business and professional skills allow them to participate in the general, cosmopolitan economy. They are not limited to any marginal, ethnic enclave economy. In fact, in some cities, they play a major role in the local economy. Indeed, since the 1970s and 1980s, countries around the world are once again recruiting Chinese, but this time Chinese with the skills and entrepreneurship needed for national success in a technological age.

Chinese now come as families. If a single male goes ahead, he may be a university student who will soon be followed by the rest of the family. Or, more often, wives and children come and are settled abroad first, while the father commutes between their residence and his business interests in Asia. Sojourning still occurs, but now that Chinese communities are made up of families, it is family sojourning. Hopes are not fixed on retirement to native villages in south China. Sojourners are those who are looking ahead to the next country of possible residence if things fail to work out at the present site. Indeed, there are now many Chinese who have lived for a time in more than one locale outside of China. Thus, favored destinations like San Francisco, New York, Sydney, Vancouver, Toronto, and London receive immigrants of this kind. These sojourns offer a rich experience. Rather than being, say, Cantonese who are coming direct from China, these immigrants may be Cantonese who have lived for long stretches in Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and Manila. Where, then, is a "home" to go back to? Even those whose experience has merely been of travelling from Guangdong to Hong Kong and spending several years there are very different from earlier Cantonese migrants. They, or their parents, may have been rural people from Guangdong, but they have spent their lives in urban Hong Kong at a time when it was undergoing tremendous economic growth and cultural changes. Thus, most of the immigration of the past few years is not from rural China to urban overseas city, but from urban (inside or outside of China) to urban.

Because the Chinese who migrate now come not only from China but from all over, with all kinds of experiences, the diversity of overseas Chinese communities has greatly increased. A Hokkien migrating directly from Fujian to Vancouver is very different from a Hokkien Taiwanese migrating to the same place. Both are different again from a Hokkien from the Philippines who has settled in Vancouver, or a Hokkien from Singapore who has reached Vancouver after living in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Chinese, in short, are a global Diaspora. They are now "from" everywhere, have been everywhere, and have done everything. They still look back to China and send money to aid lineage halls and schools in ancestral districts. But in family terms, they are less likely to send remittances than to bring presents upon visiting ancestral villages, or to try to bring some family members overseas to be with them.

But not all Chinese are in constant motion. On the whole, Southeast Asian Chinese are not. In the post-war era, newly independent ex-colonial states cut off immigration from China. At the same time, the People's Republic restricted emigration and pursued ambivalent and inconsistent policies regarding overseas Chinese. Feeling cut off from China, the Southeast Asian Chinese became true settlers. Though subject to various economic and cultural restrictions, they generally prospered and their younger generations acquired university educations and moved into new professional and business fields, banking and property development in particular. These developments brought on the emergence of a new Chinese middle class able to communicate readily with non-Chinese and increasingly committed to the country of residence. In some places in Southeast Asia, the anti-Chinese laws and practices of the 1950s and 1960s were softened in the 1970s, and everywhere the opening of China to trade and travel brought new opportunities by the 1980s. Thus, Southeast Asia, once the favored destination of emigrants, could not be so in the 1950s-1970s, and by the time it was slightly opened again the changing immigration policies and economies of the major Anglo-Saxon countries were more attractive. It is these countries–Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom–that are the most important attractions. Southeast Asia, however, continues to grow in population, due almost entirely to natural increase. It remains the home of over 80 percent of the world's overseas Chinese.

Those 30 million global Chinese represent a tenfold increase in number since 1900. Most of that growth has occurred in the past 25 years, as China has loosened its polices on emigration and return, as well as on investment by overseas Chinese and others. North America is second to Southeast Asia, with perhaps 3 million ethnic Chinese. At the end of World War II, as Euro-American attitudes toward Asians began to soften and grow more positive, Chinese in North America were given new opportunities. That and the growing economy produced, as in Asia, a local-born Chinese middle class. But just at that point, changes in immigration policy brought a flood of new immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan who revived the old Chinatowns with their money and attempted to redefine "Chineseness" in North America. Chinese schools had declined, because after 1945 Chinese youth had access to a wide range of "non-Chinese" jobs. But now new language and culture schools are being set up partly for heritage purposes but also to encourage the study of Chinese as a business language.

Hong Kong remains the door into and out of China, as well as a diversified manufacturing, trading, and banking center of global proportions. But more than that, it is the home of a self-created version of modern Chinese popular culture to which Chinese everywhere are attracted. Whatever other values Chinese carry with them as they go abroad or travel from one destination to another, we can be sure that they all look to Hong Kong as an example and model of modern Chinese economic success and as the capital city of modern Chinese culture.

 

Notes

Note 1:  Estimates are based upon Chan 1986: 43; Lai 1980: 218-23; Lin et al. 1993: 78; Mackie 1996: xxiiii; Price 1974: 277; Wang Sing-wu 1978: 311-14; Wickberg 1965: 61, 169-70, and especially 148 n. 5; Wickberg et al. 1982: 296, 300.Back.

Note 2:  Hokkien lineages did often finance overseas trade (Ng 1983: 216).Back.

Note 3:  In Vietnam, "uncle" (Purcell 1965: 202, quoting Dennery 1933); in Java, encik (Nagtegaal 1996: 233); in the Philippines, intsik (Wickberg, personal knowledge).Back.

Note 4:  Two exceptions are mentioned in Lai 1980: 219, the most familiar being Ah Bing of Milwaukie, Oregon, developer of the cherry variety that bears his name.Back.

 

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