Anticommunism, Sinocentrism, and elite Chinese identity: the 1957 Declaration of the First Convention of Chinese Schools in the Philippines

Abstract

ABSTRACT In April 1957, Chinese educators from across the Philippines gathered in Manila for the First Convention of Chinese Schools in the country. This article comprises a translation of and commentary on the declaration that was published to commemorate the occasion. I use it to illustrate the little-known extent to which elite-authored Chinese identity in the Philippines was deeply infused with a particular strain of Cold War ideology that emphasized unyielding support for the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and Sinocentrism. Texts such as these call attention to the Philippines as a largely neglected site for historicizing and differentiating among Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities after 1945. Read carefully and contextually, they offer a very different perspective on identity formation within these societies from that found in mainstream, typically Malaya-focused narratives of cultural hybridization, localization, and depoliticization.