Chinese In The Philippines Research Articles

Surviving Turbulent Times: A Close Reading of Manila Shinbun’s Portrayal of Chinese Filipino Communities during the Pacific War

Abstract This paper aims to explore the experiences of the Chinese in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) by analyzing the only Chinese newspaper, Manila Shinbun Chinese Edition. Although the Manila Shinbun certainly reflected the military administration’s will and possessed characteristics of news propaganda, being the only Chinese-language newspaper permitted to publish at the time, it nonetheless offers invaluable insights into the experiences of the Chinese community. With limited research, gaps persist in understanding the Chinese community’s story during this period. This study seeks a more comprehensive understanding of their history by meticulously analyzing news coverage and delving into underlying narratives. Ultimately, it reveals the failure of Japanese attempts to control and unify the Chinese community through military means, leading to the collapse of the Manila Shinbun and the Japanese-controlled Chinese Association prior to the arrival of the U.S. Army.

The Spread of t he Thousand Islands Poetry Society in t he Philippines

The Thousand Islands Poetry Society is the most famous modern Chinese poetry society in the Philippines. It has promoted the understanding of Chinese poetry culture among Chinese Filipinos, promoted the development of Chinese Philippine poetry, and given Chinese Philippine literature a place in Philippine literature and incr eased the visibility of Chinese Philippine literature in the Philippines and in East Asia and even in the world. This article will start with the establishment and cont ribution of the Thousand Islands Poetry Society in the Philippines, introduce the member s and works of the Thousand Islands Poetry Society in detail, and explore several characteristics of the Thousand Islands poetry, such as the wandering spirit of the po et, the rootless, the homesickness, the expression of family affection, the care for the world and the Philippine characteristics. It is further found that Thousand Islands Poetry Society spreads Chinese Filipino poetry by publishing literary supplements, books, disseminating Wechat public accounts, holding lectures on Chinese Filipino poetry , interacting with Taiwanese poetry groups, and setting up youth poetry awards. The colorful activities have given more room for the creation of Chinese Philippine poetry, inspired the creation of Filipino Chinese poetry, and showcased the unique poetic ch arm of Filipino Chinese poetry.

A study on the interaction between civil business groups and the state from the perspective of public sphere theory—A comparison between the Shanghai branch of the China association and the Philippine Chinese charitable association Inc.

This article attempts to use public sphere theory as a starting point to compare the behavior of the British government in protecting the interests of British business in China in the 19th century with the Chinese government’s neglect of the interests of Chinese business in the Philippines. Mill’s method of finding identities will be used. This article uses the Shanghai Branch of the China Association and the Philippine Chinese Charitable Association Inc. as representatives of civil business groups in the UK and China. For the UK, due to the public sphere of competition with the central government within the UK, civil business groups must consult with relevant civil business groups when implementing any economic foreign policy. This process promotes consensus between the British government and society to promotes the British government’s determination to maintain British business in China. However, for China, due to the absence of a public sphere where the central government interacts with society, even though Chinese civil business groups have huge interests overseas, the state and society have always been unable to form a positive interaction. At the same time, this situation also results in Chinese business in the Philippines having to rely on their abilities to maintain their local interests.

The Challenges to Prohibition: Opium Law, Opium Smuggling, and Chinese in the Philippines, 1910–1935

Abstract Opium was one of the issues that had to be resolved by the Americans upon their colonization of the Philippines. The debate on the potentialities of opium dates back to the Spanish colonial period, when the colonial government framed the opium issue as both economic and moral in nature. In the end, the economic potentialities of opium outweighed its moral repercussions because the Spanish colonial government allowed its regulated use among the Chinese. In contrast, the American officials in Manila crafted a progressive prohibitionist policy based on the recommendation of the investigative Opium Committee in 1905. In terms of opium in the Philippines, the majority of research has focused on the American policies on opium and their international consequences. This study focuses on the aftermath and challenges of the American prohibitionist policy from 1910 to 1935, particularly as they related to smuggling. Using archival documents such as annual reports from the governor-general of the Philippines and other government records, the paper aims to demonstrate how and in what ways opium was smuggled in the Philippines and to analyze the various motivations, reasons, and methods used by smugglers. Furthermore, the paper explores the involvement of the Chinese in various notable opium-related cases in the Philippines. I also argue that an increase in the smuggling of opium was an unwanted aftermath of the American prohibitionist policy. The present study hopes to contribute to the growing body of literature on narcotics, drug policies, and empire building.

Chien-Wen Kung's Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints is an internationally refereed journal that publishes scholarly articles and other materials on the history of the Philippines and its peoples, both in the homeland and overseas. It believes the past is illuminated by historians as well as scholars from other disciplines; at the same time, it prefers ethnographic approaches to the history of the present. It welcomes works that are theoretically informed but not encumbered by jargon. It promotes a comparative and transnational sensibility, and seeks to engage scholars who may not be specialists on the Philippines. Founded in 1953 as Philippine Studies, the journal is published quarterly by the Ateneo de Manila University.

Juan Cobo’s Thoughts on the Chinese–Occidental Cultural Integration

Juan Cobo, a Spanish Dominican, preached to the Chinese in the Philippines between 1588 and 1592. During this time, he translated Ming Xin Bao Jian 《明心寶鑒》, which was the first Chinese classic translated into a Western language. In addition, he also authored an evangelical work: Bian Zheng Jiao Zhen Chuan Shilu 《辯正教真傳實錄》. His approach was notably different from his contemporary Dominicans’ orthodox inclinations. Juan Cobo’s works show his enthusiastic admiration for the Chinese culture, which is demonstrated in his open attitude towards the Confucian and Daoist doctrines, as well as in his recorded egalitarian discussion with a Mandarin scholar. In this article, based on Juan Cobo’s works, an analysis is undertaken regarding how this missionary adopted Neo-Confucian concepts and ideas, which then occupied a mainstream position in the local academic world, in his evangelical work with the Chinese people. Furthermore, this analysis also investigates how Juan Cobo intended to integrate the Oriental and Western philosophies, despite their theoretical and methodological divergences, in order to achieve the quick acceptance and diffusion of Christianity among the Sangleys. The historical background, the causes, and the results of such practices are also discussed in the present article.

Review: Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s, by Chien-Wen Kung

In this well-written monograph based on extensive archival research and fieldwork, Chien-Wen Kung explores how the Philippine Chinese became the “world’s most exemplary Cold Warriors” (p. 1). Borrowing from Stephen Krasner’s concept of “shared sovereignty” (p. 9), Kung convincingly argues that the Kuomintang, often with the cooperation of the Philippine government, instigated a “re-organization” of institutions and networks such that “threads of anti-communism [were] woven into the fabric of Philippine Chinese society” (p. 122). Along the way, Kung shows how the Communist left became increasingly marginalized as Philippine Chinese in different social classes “practice[ed] anti-Communism” for both “ideological and self-interested ends” (p. 78).The first two chapters trace the prewar history of the KMT, Chinese society and Chinese Communism, as well as the subsequent triumph of KMT vis-à-vis Chinese Communist influence in the Philippines. The remaining five core chapters examine select individuals, organizations, and activities.Kung’s analyses underscore two main points. The first focuses on the KMT’s dominant influence in Philippine Chinese society, with the tacit acceptance of the Philippine state, which in turn allowed the Republic of China (ROC) to assert non-territorial sovereignty over the Chinese. The clearest example lies in Kung’s examination of the Quintin and Rizal Yuyingtung case. As publisher and editor of Chinese Commercial News, they deviated from the dominant anticommunist discourse and were arrested for publishing pro-Communist material and deported to the ROC to be tried as ROC nationals.The second centers on the Philippine Chinese’s adaptation to the anticommunist climate by practicing anticommunism in myriad ways and for a variety of reasons. Kung examines individuals and groups to try and assess their motivations. Alfonso Sycip, a wealthy businessman with no hardline ideological leanings, likely assumed leadership of the Philippine-Chinese United Organization in Support of Anti-Communist Movement in 1951 to establish his “credentials” in the new geopolitical climate. Shih-I-Sheng, who did not come from an elite background, opportunistically positioned himself as a “go-to expert” on Chinese communism even though the information he provided was questionable (p. 92). Among those Philippine Chinese who participated in tours to Taiwan arranged by the ROC/KMT were those who viewed their trip in “sentimental and ideological terms” (p. 167) and others who viewed it in practical terms associated with professional development (p. 174). Taken together, the individual cases exemplify the ways in which Philippine Chinese negotiated their own paths in the anticommunist climate of the Cold War.Kung’s monograph makes important contributions to the scholarship of the Cold War in Asia. By delving into Philippine Chinese society and culture, the study provides us with a nuanced view of how the Cold War was experienced by individuals on the ground. In analyzing the influence of the KMT and the ROC in shaping the seemingly uniform anticommunist orientation of Philippine Chinese in collaboration with successive Philippine governments, Kung also shows how the influence of the KMT/ROC in the Philippines was exceptional when compared to its neighbors such as Malaya and Indonesia. More importantly, Kung’s work rightly focuses our attention on intra-Asian connections that are often overlooked in studies that center on the role of the United States in the Cold War.

Islands Apart: Explaining the Chinese Experience in the Philippines

What explains the general absence of disdain against the Chinese Filipino community in the Philippines? One common answer focuses on the high rates of intermarriage—a legacy of Spanish colonialism. Yet, this explanation ignores how the Chinese were explicitly targeted—culturally during the American occupation and economically in the aftermath of independence. Moreover, it runs against theoretical expectations that when there are national security threats, there is a domestic backlash in the threatened state against the diaspora from the aggressor state. Simply put, we should observe rising discrimination against the Chinese-Filipinos given escalating maritime disputes between Manila and Beijing in the West Philippine Sea. Yet we do not. In this paper, we argue current patterns of minimal discrimination is the product of government–tempered nationalism. Despite the territorial conflicts, the Duterte administration has gone to great lengths to highlight the positive economic aspects between the two countries. To test this argument, we employ an original survey data, scrape speeches by government officials, and conduct interviews with local officials and business leaders.

Augmenting Senior Secondary ESL Learners’ Reading Skills Through Explicit Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies

Reading and comprehending a text or selection in a language that is different from one’s native tongue can be a daunting task to many English as a Second Language (ESL) learners due to several reasons. Hence, teachers’ instructional strategies play a pivotal role in developing students’ reading skills. This study used a quasi-experimental design to discover the effects of using explicit or direct teaching of metacognitive strategies on the reading skills of students—comprehension skills and vocabulary. Forty grade 11 ESL students from a Chinese–Filipino school in Manila were selected through convenience sampling to be participants of the study. The performance of the two groups in comprehension and vocabulary was compared through pre-test and post-test. Using two-tailed t-test of dependent means, the significant difference between students’ performance in the reading comprehension test and the vocabulary test after the intervention was determined. Based on the results, there is no question that one’s comprehension and vocabulary size could be improved using explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies. The study has practical implications to the teaching of reading among ESL learners. Recommendations for future research are also provided in this paper.

Augmenting Senior Secondary ESL Learners’ Reading Skills Through Explicit Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies

Reading and comprehending a text or selection in a language that is different from one’s native tongue can be a daunting task to many English as a Second Language (ESL) learners due to several reasons. Hence, teachers’ instructional strategies play a pivotal role in developing students’ reading skills. This study used a quasi-experimental design to discover the effects of using explicit or direct teaching of metacognitive strategies on the reading skills of students—comprehension skills and vocabulary. Forty grade 11 ESL students from a Chinese–Filipino school in Manila were selected through convenience sampling to be participants of the study. The performance of the two groups in comprehension and vocabulary was compared through pre-test and post-test. Using two-tailed t-test of dependent means, the significant difference between students’ performance in the reading comprehension test and the vocabulary test after the intervention was determined. Based on the results, there is no question that one’s comprehension and vocabulary size could be improved using explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies. The study has practical implications to the teaching of reading among ESL learners. Recommendations for future research are also provided in this paper.

From Private Eye to Public “I”: The Chinese Filipinos in Charlson Ong’s Hard-Boiled Fiction

Charlson Ong’s Blue Angel, White Shadow (2010) is a hard-boiled fiction that revolves around the issues of crime, corruption, and death in a postcolonial Southeast Asian state. Predominantly dark, gloomy, and mysterious, the mood of the narrative establishes a strongly morose reading experience. The narrative world portrayed in the novel is simultaneously sorrowful and somber. Binondo, the historical ethnic Chinese epicenter of the Philippines, is depicted with excessive chaos and moral disarray. I argue that the novel has attempted to reshape the usual form of hard-boiled fiction by systematically interrupting the narrative’s serious and cynical tone. More specifically, humor was deployed by the author as a mechanism to intervene in the novel’s subscription to the norms of hard-boiled fiction. The novel puts into perspective different facets of Chinese Filipino identity mediated through the Philippine postcolonial landscape. Ultimately, I initiate a discussion on the intersection of Chinese Filipino literature, identities, diaspora, and genre theory. I maintain that Chinese Filipino literature, like the subject of the present inquiry, is borne out of the diasporic experience through collective histories and memories.

Ambivalent Repetitions: The Commonsensical and Performative Nature of Chineseness among Young Chinese Filipinos in Contemporary Metro Manila

Ambivalent Repetitions: The Commonsensical and Performative Nature of Chineseness among Young Chinese Filipinos in Contemporary Metro Manila

Anti-American Expressions: The 1957 Taipei Incident and Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong

Abstract Although scholars have investigated the intricacies of anti-Americanism, few have examined the factors that affected the abilities of minorities or colonized people to protest U.S. policies. This article compares and contrasts the responses of Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong to the May 24th Incident of 1957, when 25,000 Chinese attacked the U.S. embassy and ransacked the U.S. Information Service Office in Taipei, Taiwan, due to the acquittal of a U.S. soldier for killing a Chinese. While U.S. military and economic aid motivated recipients to rally behind the anti-Communist banner, geopolitics, domestic conditions, and anti-Chinese racism also played pivotal roles in determining whether the Chinese could voice or act upon their anti-American sentiment. The Philippines’ heavy dependence on U.S. military and economic aid, coupled with long-lasting anti-Chinese racism, limited the potential for Philippine Chinese to critique U.S. policies. By contrast, tenuous U.S.-Thai relations and domestic anti-Americanism emboldened Thai Chinese to lambaste U.S. military injustice. Although the largest U.S. aid recipient, Britain adhered to neutrality in its Cold War politics and permitted a vibrant cultural industry in Hong Kong, resulting in strong criticism of U.S. policies among the city’s Chinese.

Chinese Capital as a Cultural Object: Self-Identification and Filipino-Chinese Discourses on Sinicization, Brokerage, and Distinction

Abstract Our article analyzes how Chinese capital inflows in the Philippines shape the self-identification of Filipino Chinese. Through a discursive analysis of five Filipino Chinese social media groups, which comprise at least 25,000 members, we argue that comment writers in Filipino Chinese groups readily interpreted Chinese capital in the Philippines, particularly in relation to the South China Sea disputes, Rodrigo Duterte’s rapprochement with China, Xi Jinping’s Philippine visit, and the rise of online gambling, through the prism of culture-based idioms. We find three contradictory discourses. First, there is a discourse of Sinicization that defines Filipino Chinese through a singular definition of Chineseness. Second, a discourse of brokerage has emerged, wherein Filipino Chinese positionality is represented by a synthesis of Chinese, Filipino, and Western identities. Finally, a discourse of distinction has also grown, framing Filipino Chinese as different from the mainland Chinese and the Filipinos.

The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama: Lessons in History, Identity, and Culture, and Interconnections with the Chinese in the Philippines

Abstract The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama have had long histories of migration dating back to the nineteenth century, when British and Spanish colonial powers started to bring them to the Caribbean and Latin America from Guangdong province. The primary goal was to provide labor for the sugar cane, guano, bird nest, gold and silver mining, and other industries. In the 1870s, Havana could boast of having the largest Chinatown in the Caribbean, with more than 10,000 Chinese. Today, it has fewer than 100 Chinese Cubans. Trinidad and Tobago’s population of Chinese waned after the nineteenth century, but many Trinidadians have some Chinese ancestry, while Panama currently has the highest percentage (7 percent) of Chinese among Latin American countries. What stories, approaches, and lessons can be learned by comparing their histories to that of the Chinese in the Philippines? More specifically, how are the experiences of the Chinese in these three countries, whether citizen or recent immigrant, similar to those in the Philippines? What can we learn from the scholarship on the Chinese in the Caribbean that can help shape our own research agenda in studying the Chinese in the Philippines? Through a combination of historical and ethnographic research, this essay discusses the ways in which the identities of each Chinese diasporic community are being shaped by local and external forces, including China’s increasing presence in the region. This essay hopes to serve as a guidepost to Chinese diaspora scholars interested in examining further the transhemispheric connections between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.

From ‘sangley’ to ‘Chinaman’, ‘Chinese Mestizo’ to ‘Tsinoy’: unpacking ‘Chinese’ identities in the Philippines at the turn of the Twentieth-Century

ABSTRACT This paper examines the historical antecedents of the terminologies ascribed to the Chinese in the Philippines, focusing on the late Spanish to the early American colonial periods. Many government records, newspapers, or books categorized the “Chinese” as either sangley, intsik, Chinese mestizo, or “Chinese/Chino,” in contradistinction to Christianized natives who were labeled as “Indios” and later “Filipinos.” Following dominant and nationalized classifications of race, past scholarship on the Chinese in the Philippines also tended to paint the “Chinese” in the Philippines in a binarist opposition against “Filipinos.” The essentialization of ethnicities has resulted in the perpetuation of a homogenized and monolithic “Chinese” identity that we see in the country today. Using government and non-government publications from the period under study, this paper seeks to demonstrate the power dynamic at particular moments in Philippine society that has led to the reification, reinvention, and reconfiguration of what it means to be “Chinese.”

Enduring fears: the monstrosity of Chinese Filipinos in Chito Roño’s Feng Shui (2004)

ABSTRACT This paper examines enduring fears and anxieties about ‘Chineseness’ that widely and persistently circulate in the Philippine cultural imaginary. Chinese Filipinos have historically been implicated in a prejudicial politics of recognition within the Philippine postcolonial state, which has attempted to forge a national identity through problematic notions of ethnic and cultural purity. To undermine what Franz Fanon calls the pitfalls of national consciousness, scholars have often turned to concepts such as syncretism and hybridity, which celebrates heterogeneity and diversity as it opposes essentialism and purity. The agenda of this paper, however, is to examine the forces that generate obstacles to an affirmative politics of cultural assimilation and belonging. Toward that goal, we offer a symptomatic reading of the film Feng Shui (2004), which we suggest condenses anxieties about Chineseness that circulate in the Philippine cultural imaginary, anxieties that amplify difference and potentially undermine the reparative force of hybridity.

Living Carriers in the East: Chinese Cargadores in Nineteenth-Century Manila

Although the history of the Chinese in the Philippines is generally well known, what has not been probed is the way working-class Chinese lived and conducted their trades amid restrictive colonial policies. Using previously unexplored archival materials, this article examines the lives and circumstances of Chinese cargadores (stevedores and transporters) within the urban and commercial milieus of Manila during the nineteenth century. Chinese cargadores were regarded as highly dependable workers, but were treated, because of their ethnicity and numerical strength, as both marginal and dangerous, needing to be strictly regulated and disciplined by the Spanish colonial state. KEYWORDS: CHINESE • MANUAL LABORERS • PHILIPPINE HISTORY • NINETEENTH CENTURY • SPANISH COLONIALISM

Hope Beyond Disappointment: A Reparative Reading of Charlson Ong’s Of That Other Country We Now Speak

The practice of depicting ancestral homeland as a mythical and ideal place where the diasporic subjects will eventually return has been problematized and contested in diasporic studies. Seemingly pioneering, such an approach perpetuates a paranoid reading of homecoming and return as an experience of disappointment, confusion, and conflict, which in turn bolsters the sense of alienation of diasporic subjects. Despite the contentions, the idea of home still has its hold on diasporic subjects. Considering the complexity and significance of the notion of home in diasporic studies, I argue that the homecoming journey could also create positive impacts on healing the wound inflicted by diasporic experience. Employing Eve Sedgwick’s theory of reparative reading, which empowers generative mode of analysis that explores alternatives through textual critique, I offer a reparative reading of the title story in Of that Other Country We Now Speak and Other Stories, a recent collection of short stories by the award-winning Chinese Filipino writer Charlson Ong. I focus especially on the experience of the protagonist Jeffrey and examine how his adversity is complicated by the diasporic experience, the symbolic meaning of his homecoming trip as well as how his narration of a mythological story parallels with and symbolizes his endeavors to heal the misfortune. In doing so, this essay hopes to provide an alternative perspective on the often negatively-perceived homecoming experience.

Vowel system or vowel systems?

AbstractThe Manila variety of Philippine Hybrid Hokkien (PHH-M) orLánnang-uèis a contact language used by the metropolitan Manila Chinese Filipinos; it is primarily comprised of Hokkien, Tagalog/Filipino, and English elements. Approaching PHH-M as a mixed language, we investigate linguistically and socially conditioned variation in the monophthongs of PHH-M, focusing on the extent to which the vowel systems of the three source languages have converged. This analysis draws on data gathered from 34 native speakers; Pillai scores are calculated to assess the degree of merger. Contrary to certain predictions of prior work on mixed languages, PHH-M is found to have a unified, eight-vowel inventory distinct from any of its sources. Older women use more stable vowels across source languages, suggesting that they have led in the development of PHH-M as a mixed code; however, signs of change among younger women suggest either the endangerment of the code or its evolution in response to the community’s shifting identity. We contextualize our conclusions in relation to the sociohistory and language ecology of metropolitan Manila’s Chinese Filipino community.