A Summary of The Nanyang Chinese and the Manchurian Incident

Abstract

After the successful unification o China under Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, the Kuomintang (KMT) attempted to extend its influence over Chinese communities in Southeast Asia Being revolutionary in nature, the KMT tried to place Chinese nationalist movements at home and abroad under party control. In the years between 1928, the year of the Tsinan Incident, and 1932, the second year of the Manchurian Incident, the KMT and its party-controlled government enacted a series of acts and regulations aiming at strengthening the party's hold over the Nanyang Chinese. As a result, the anyan Chinese anti-Japanese movement, which began in 1908 over the Tatsu-Maru Incident, was transformed from a boycott movement led by merchants to a national salvation movement directed by the party and the government, as well as by their overseas agents. At the same time, modern Chinese Nationalism, epitomized in Sun Yat-sen's “People's Three Principles”, had gained strength as China was being unified under a single government for the first time in nearly two decades. She was also being faced with external threat. This nationalism, kindled by propaganda and a desire for the emergence of a strong China, was prevalent among Nanyang Chinese, particularly among students and young intellectuals and leaders of business circles who had immigrated from China in the recent past, and who had received traditional Chinese education.It is in this context that the Nanyang Chinese started the national salvation movement when the Manchurian Incident broke out in Septemder 1931. Boycotts began in early October throughout Southeast Asia, attesting to the degree of KMT coordination in the movement. For a few months, the boycotts had a telling effect on Japanese trade in Southeast Asia but they petered out by February, 1932. Other methods used by the national salvation movement, such as monetary contributions and material donations, were also comparatively ineffective. The overall effect o the movement upon Japan's trade position vis-a-vis the Nanyang region was light compared with that of the 1928 national salvation movement, a consequence of the Tsinan Incident, whose boycott lasted much longer, and had a more severe economic effect on Japan.Reasons for the rather disappointing results of the 1931-32 movement are as follows:1. The economies of the Nanyang countries were suffering from the Great Depression. The Nanyang Chinese, particularly merchants who were principals in boycott, were simply in no position to conduct the boycott so soon after the Tsinan Incident boycott, from which Chinese communities suffered as much as they succeeded in hurting Japan's economic and trade position in Southeast Asia.2. By nature, the Nanyang Chinese economy had small capital accumulation and depended on handling Japanese consumer goods for livelihood. Chinese merchants could not continue the boycott for long without hurting themselves and undermining their business and economic position. In short, the longer they continued boycotting, the more they lost their economic position to Japanese who, with government subsidies, tried to establish their own retail network in order to be less dependent upon Chinese merchants for the distribution and sale of their merchandise.3. The national salvation movement, which had been evolving gradually into a political movement as the KMT's influence grew, became the object of suppression from colonial and native governments. Colonial governments were afraid of indigenous nationalist movements being contaminated of Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, the native governments of Siam and the Philippines were increasingly resentful of the predominant Chinese hold over their economies. Consequently, these governments, motivated by their own brands of nationalism-Thai-ification and Filipinization-tried to wrest economic control from the Chinese and restore it into their own hands. Because of these factors, Chinese had to be